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British troops risk their lives to protect the UK and our way of life

but what about the people who should be watching their backs?

Unfortunately, it seems very few are actually doing their jobs...

Full details of the BBC complaint from Paul Warburton

Index of complaint correspondence

Date

Title

13/04/2011

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

04/05/2011

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

10/05/2011

Letter to BBC Complaints

08/06/2011

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

17/06/2011

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

01/07/2011

Letter to the BBC Trustees

07/07/2011

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

16/07/2011

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

13/08/2011

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

30/08/2011

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

12/09/2011

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

07/11/2011

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

13/12/2011

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

03/01/2012

Letter to the BBC Trust

04/02/2012

Letter to the BBC Trust

08/02/2012

Letter to trustees on the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

16/02/2012

Letter to the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit

02/04/2012

Letter to the BBC Trust

16/06/2012

Letter to the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

13/06/2012

Reply from BBC - Conspiracy Files Warburton (PDF)

13/06/2012

Reply from BBC - Conspiracy Files Annex 2 (PDF)


02/04/2012 - Letter to the BBC Trust

Alison Hastings
Chair of the Editorial Standards Committee
BBC Trust
180 Great Portland Street
London
W1W 5QZ

BBC Ref: CT/1200078

2nd April 2012

The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 Ten Years On

"The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible"
Oscar Wilde

Dear Miss Hastings,

I have received my first full substantive reply dated 14th March from Mr Tregear to my long running complaint against the BBC over its biased 9/11 coverage. Considering the programme was aired on 29th August 2011 I think the delay was bad. I now want to formally lodge an appeal to the BBC Trust from that reply on all the points I have raised.

I reject the idea the Trust has basically dealt with this complaint in 2007. The nature of the 2011 broadcasts were significantly different to your 2007 material. New material has emerged since, some of which the BBC has still not shown. It is true you gave airtime to Messrs Fetzer, Jones and Avery but these are all advocates for 9/11 Truth. When Mr Tregear refers to a time limitation on documentary makers they have in this case chosen three people of the same type (advocates) at the expense of the eye witnesses I named, all of whom your film makers chose to exclude. Few people can fail to be struck by the straightforwardness of people like April Gallop, William Rodriguez and the firemen who heard explosions. Few can fail to be struck by the horrific implications of their testimonies. These people are primary sources of information. The advocates are secondary sources. The BBC excluded those seemingly convincing witnesses for three advocates. I believe that was for a reason. It would have been editorially fairer and better to hear from the horse’s mouth in each case if the BBC were being impartial. Rather than let your narrator say "explosions were heard" let’s hear and see the fireman say "it was like boom, boom, boom, all the way down." Instead of Jim Fetzer describing the golf like nature of the Pentagon lawn let April Gallop describe it as she stepped through the hole with her child moments after impact, later saying she saw no aircraft. To end the 10th anniversary programme in an emotive way and not also include opposing voices like Bob Mcllvane’s was very dishonest of the programme makers. Further, for Mr Tregear to deal with each of my points individually also misses the greater whole, in that when taken cumulatively all the omissions pointed out by me do amount to a profoundly biased broadcast. This is before we even get to the parallel complaints of my friends referenced below.

Mr Tregear has sought to limit his investigation to the issue of impartiality. I say not only has that been breached but that the BBC has also breached its guidelines on accuracy. The programme makers have knowingly misled the audience (3.2.3 of your guidelines).

The BBC has also breached its guidelines under section 11: War and terror. “At such times, when there may be conflicting information and opinions and with reliable information hard to come by, we need to be scrupulous in applying our principles of accuracy and impartiality.” I would also draw your attention to section 19 of the guidelines on Accountability. Considering Mr Tregear is well versed in the guidelines one wonders why he just restricted his investigation to impartiality.

What further concerns me about your 9/11 coverage is that in the months I have been waiting for a full reply to arrive I have come across material which gives me further cause for concern over the BBC's stated stance on impartiality. Amid all the copious documentation surrounding the BBC I found this in the 215 page BBC Editorial Guidelines;

“The public expect the information they receive from the BBC to be authoritative and the Guidelines accordingly place great stress on standards of fairness, accuracy and impartiality. Without these, the key role of the BBC in supporting an informed democracy cannot be achieved." Sir Michael Lyons BBC Chairman.

That has to be the starting point of an Independent media giant largely funded by the public itself. However is it truly Independent?

I also found within the 70 page document entitled “the BBC Agreement" with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport paragraph 4 which says

4. The Independence of the BBC

“The parties to this Agreement affirm their commitment to the independence of the BBC as stated in Article 6 of the Charter. By entering into this Agreement, the BBC has voluntarily assumed obligations which restrict, to some extent, its future freedom of action."

Further at paragraph 81 I discovered;

Some General Obligations of the BBC

81. Defence and Emergency Arrangement

(1) Any Government Minister-

(a) may request that the BBC broadcast or otherwise distribute any announcement

(3) A request under paragraph (1) or (2) must be made in writing and the BBC

(a) must comply with the request.

the "may" of the following subsection (c) indicates the BBC do not have to tell the British public it is doing so on behalf of the Govt. From this it cannot be said the BBC is Independent. Considering also it gets a grant of £293 million from the Govt it cannot truthfully claim Independence by what many ordinary people would say is Independence. I understand the BBC is now receiving money from the US State Dept. Why would you find that necessary? How can the BBC continue to claim independence? The above words "restrict" and "must" do not conjure up a media organisation necessarily committed to keeping the public fully informed especially when it comes to going to war. It is the BBC Chairman's use of the word "informed" that disturbs me most in this correspondence. Is the BBC truly keeping the British public informed of both sides of the case? Going to war is the most serious thing a country can do. We have had three in the past 10 years with catastrophic loss of life in each case. Of paramount importance to a Govt waging a war is that it must carry public opinion. This was crystallised by the following comment;

“To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11th."
Tony Blair - Guardian July 17th 2002.

Sep 11th was the premise for the war. What worries many apart from the anomalies of the day of 9/11 itself is the following reporting made by one of your own journalists.

BBC's George Arney said on 18th Sep 2001 that a former Pakistani foreign secretary had told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks. The former foreign sec was told in mid July 2001 by senior American officials the attacks would go ahead by the middle of October.

Is there any way that the British public were deceived or misled in their understanding of the 9/11 attacks? Did the BBC, as the biggest and most trusted news presenter in the UK, knowingly keep the public misinformed? Was there any precedent that "Americans", whether NATO/CIA or otherwise, were potentially capable of being implicated in such acts of evil and wickedness? Yes there is.

Your BBC documentary " Timewatch - Operation Gladio" excellently reported upon by the BBC in the 1990s clearly showed in interview after interview that "Americans" were very close to the Red Brigade and Bader Meinhof groups. Colonel Winter of the CIA said in your programme they had penetrated and co-opted those groups. Others on the same programme seemed to corroborate that view including the founder of the Berne Club. How then can the BBC just 9 years later not remind the public of that? It does not prove guilt but it is a highly relevant and suspicious circumstance. Strangely your documentary made by the acclaimed Allan Francovich as director and your own respected Roy Davies as series editor has been removed from your archives.

I am not blaming the BBC for 9/11. I am not asking it to tell the British Public it was an inside job. What I do criticise the BBC for is not laying out the full facts as above, especially the Gladio issue. Once those issues/facts are plainly laid out it is for the British public to make its own mind up. I wager if you had presented the Gladio documentary around 9/11 the public would not have been supportive of any war helping the Americans. Likewise you should have made more of the Gladio point in your 9/11 Conspiracy Files documentary coverage in 2007 and 2011. Not to do so is grossly misleading. Some "Americans" had a dark history in post war Europe. That's what your programme Timewatch clearly pointed to. Now it is no longer available from you. If you as a Trust retract any of the Timewatch Gladio statements please tell me which ones and for what reason.

As I said to you in the Spring of last year please activate a thorough investigation in your Editorial Standards Committee as to whether the BBC has committed a serious breach of its Editorial Guidelines. I say it has and as a result this country has been misled into an immoral war. Our troops rely on its media and politicians to lead it honestly. If not some have died in vain. Many veterans will be emotionally scarred for life.

In view of the serious allegations I am making with many powerful observations in this letter and my previous 15 letters if you resist an honest inquiry into your impartiality, accuracy and independence over the coverage of 9/11 events you will only confirm mine and many others suspicions of knowing complicity at the highest levels within the BBC. In the context of ongoing revelations within the printed media, the Met, other Govt depts. and of course in the world of finance the revelation of any cover up of the truth behind 9/11 will have dire consequences for the BBC. It will destroy public trust in you. I do invite you again at this late stage to cooperate with us and not against us. I have asked the two MPs who wrote letters of support for me to write to you again and this time for a number of key supporters, activists, and experts to write to you to ask you to investigate this thoroughly.

In conclusion I say in reference to Sir Michael Lyons opening remarks; the BBC has not been fair, accurate or impartial in its presentation of 9/11 material. As a consequence the BBC has misinformed the British public and partly as a result of this the UK has been dragged into an immoral war. If you fail to rigorously and fairly deal with this you only compound the problem.

I invite you to link my complaint with those of my colleagues Peter Drew and Adrian Mallett who have had similar long standing complaints lodged with the BBC over its 9/11 coverage on different points and who consent to having our appeals heard together. They, amongst other things, have raised the serious issue of your lack of reporting on NIST’s about face on the issue of WTC7. We also wish to meet you in person which I know you permit under your rules. There is a way out of this impasse but it will require the BBC and the Govt to be honest with the British public.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Warburton


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