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(Continued from overleaf)

We also noted that the third minister to be accused, Michael Howard MP, was Hamilton's predecessor at the DTI who had recommended the appointment of the DTI inspectors in the first place.  However, Howard was cleared of Fayed's quite different bribery allegations against him when the civil servant appointed to investigate them, Sir Gordon Downey, dismissed the only evidence in support of the charges - which was the testimony of Fayed and other of Fayed's employees.
  These factors and other evidence led us to conclude that, although Fayed had undoubtedly alleged that Greer had paid Smith back in July 1993 when the Guardian's investigations began, Fayed had not alleged that Greer had paid Hamilton until he was driven to do so out of spite a year later in September 1994 - i.e. just four weeks before the Guardian's original story was published - as a consequence of his failure in the European Court of Human Rights to have overturned the 1990 DTI inspectors' report. 

Crucially, during the 1980s, when Mohamed Fayed was perceived as a philanthropic Anglophile and Tiny Rowland a bribing rogue, Hamilton had previously sympathised with Fayed's battle against Rowland for House of Fraser, and (like many MPs and journalists) had enjoyed Fayed's hospitality.  Yet, when Hamilton inherited responsibilities for the inspectors' report upon becoming a DTI minister in 1992, he rebuffed Fayed's calls to help his appeal to the ECHR and instead delegated responsibility for the report to another minister.  In other words, Hamilton acted with ministerial propriety.
  But it was the very publication of the DTI inspectors' report, which revealed Fayed's vengeful lying character, that had prevented him from acquiring his craved-for British passport.  Fayed's action in the ECHR to quash the inspectors' report, therefore, was part of his campaign to acquire British citizenship. 

However, one thing puzzled us.  The day after David Hencke's original 'cash for questions' article, the Guardian published an article by the editor, Peter Preston, entitled 'The anatomy of a scandal', discussing Fayed's motivation.  Yet there was no mention of Fayed's failed quest for citizenship.
  In fact, in his witness statement, dated June 1995, for the first libel trial, Preston attached this article and cited its lack of mention of the passport issue as being proof that this had not motivated Fayed to make his allegations out of spite.  In his witness statement Preston asserted:

'He [Fayed] did not strike me as having any particular sinister motive in telling me what he told me and, indeed, he did not seem to think it was much of a story…  I cannot speak for Mr Al-Fayed's motives, although I did muse about them in an article The Guardian published on 21 October 1994'

But in early 1998 I came across a draft of this article from a former employee of Harrods, which the Guardian had withheld from Greer & Hamilton's solicitors in defiance of a court order, which proved that Preston had lied through his teeth.  Preston had sent this draft, bearing his own handwriting 'Article 2 for Friday' to Harrods for Fayed's approval prior to its publication - and it contained a full section detailing Fayed's anger at not being granted British citizenship. 
  It seems clear that the receipt of Greer's and Hamilton's libel writs on 20 Oct. had prompted Preston to excise this passage before sending the article to press.  The omitted section reads:

'Now there's a further indignity.  Ali Fayed, the youngest of the brothers, would like to be a British citizen.  He has a British wife and three British children.  He applied for citizenship more than 18 months ago.  Civil Service clearance came through at the beginning of 1994, but nothing has happened, nothing has moved.  Whitehall, asked the question, says that a ministerial intervention has frozen all progress. 
  "It is quite clear we are being discriminated against", says Mohamed al Fayed, "At a time when the Government is advertising to the world that anyone can have British citizenship as a formality, we are being treated as pariahs.  People in high places are settling old scores". 
  This is not at all implausible.  The regiments of the Lonrho campaigns may have dispersed: but the old warriors are scattered throughout Government and the City and the fury of the fight clearly hasn't died away - even though Mohamed and Tiny have kissed and made up in a theatrical reconciliation that might make them Noble contenders.  A troubling question.  He can own Harrods without let or hindrance.  He can pay his taxes - a personal cheque went to the Revenue for £5 million this week.  But he can't have a British passport.  Something odd here, surely?'

It is serious enough that the Guardian defied a court order and withheld this important draft article.  But for Preston then to go on and attach the censored published article to his statement and cite it in his statement as being proof that Fayed was not angry about his passport, plumbs the very depths of deception. 
  Significantly, Preston had also sent to Fayed the draft of David Hencke's article, but this was surrendered, thereby showing discrimination by the Guardian.  A more stark example of an obstruction of justice would be difficult to find.  The excised section of Preston's article can be found on page 7 of the appendices.

Preston's excising of the 'passport passage' was actually the first move in a major cover-up at the Guardian, involving its political staff and its lawyers.
  Though embarked on initially to pervert the course of Ian Greer's & Neil Hamilton's first libel action against the Guardian, which collapsed on 30 September 1996 (for no fault of Hamilton's with each side paying their own costs), this conspiracy then continued, and deepened, and perverted the course of the Downey inquiry which began (after a three-month delay caused by the Guardian) in January 1997; and continued, and deepened further, and perverted the course of Hamilton's most recent libel action against Fayed, which began in November 1999. 

Other Guardian journalists involved at the highest level include the current Editor Alan Rusbridger; the current Comment Editor David Leigh; lobby correspondent David Hencke; and Northern Ireland correspondent John Mullin - who we are satisfied was uninvolved for five years but eventually coerced by his colleagues prior to Hamilton's most recent action last November. 
  Our allegations against the above named are specific, and are all supported by solid evidence. 

In addition, there are numerous Guardian journalists who are aware of their colleagues' conspiracy, all of whom are demonstrably complicit in varying degrees.  These include Hugo Young; Simon Hoggart; Michael White; John Sweeney; Jamie Wilson; David Pallister; Luke Harding; Ed Vulliamy; and countless others - including probably the majority of those who make up the Scott Trust, which is chaired by Hugo Young, and which owns the Guardian Media Group.

There are two other journalists who, like David Leigh and Alan Rusbridger, have also been employed by Granada's Factual Programmes unit, who also have important roles in this affair.  They are Guardian staff reporter Luke Harding, and former Granada World in Action staff reporter Mark Hollingsworth, both of whom I will discuss later.

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