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Apr 30, 2006

Comments

dave

good post. Send it to the Herald editor.

AL

You've made some good points, but mistaken which critical documents the Herald has not examined in depth. The briefs of evidence have been publicly available since mid 2005; both the Act and National parties were distributing them on the Internet.

As for the documents the Herald has not examined in depth.

The two Police reports were supposed to have been released in 2000; at least that is what the memorandum from the Secretary of Cabinet dated Sunday Jan 25 2000 states:

h) noted that the Attorney General will release publicly the following documents:
i the Robinson Report (with deletions to meet privacy legislation agreements);
ii the Police Complaints Authority Report;
iii the following material from Mr John Upton, QC, representing Mr Doone:
A submissions to the Police Complaints Authority of 23 December 1999;
B submission to the Minister of Justice of 3 January 2000;

[also lists other documents - which I do not have]

If those reports had been released on time, it would have been obvious to Oskar Alley and anyone else following the Doone issue that the SST source had spread falsehoods, rather malicious falsehoods in fact.

Under those circumstances the SST may (or may not) have revealed its source to have been Prime Minister Clark, and certainly would have retracted it's central claim (that Doone directly intefered with a Police Constable).

Maybe the SST was eventually shown copies of the two Police reports, leading to their June retraction of the key allegation against Doone. We don't know. Either way, these two reports were apparently not released into the public domain - at least I've seen no mention in the media of critical details contained in them, such as the eyewitness statements regarding Constable Main's conversation with Doone.

I wonder if the NZ Herald had access to these reports in 2000.

The fourth document is the AG's advice to Cabinet, which proves Prime Minister Clark had the two Police reports long before she fibbed to Oskar Alley under the cover of being an anonymous source. It also documents how Clark's Government was negotiating with Doone even while Clark was working against him.

sagenz

yeah AL - you are right. I spent a bit of time looking for the right one. I think I followed up with a link to your critical post with the AG comments. question is, where do we take it from here?

AL

I will continue building my database / commentary site on Doonegate, and attempt to contact the primary players for new information.

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