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Christopher Shale received warning of leaked memo before Glastonbury death
Christopher Shale, the close ally of David Cameron's whose body was discovered in a toilet at Glastonbury on Sunday morning, may have died as early as the previous afternoon, according to a family friend who said he was briefed by medical staff.
It emerged that Downing Street had contacted the senior Conservative on Saturday to warn him that a controversial note he had written describing parts of his party as crass and grasping had been leaked to a Sunday newspaper.
One official contacted him by text just after 12.30pm to advise him not to speak to reporters; another suggested he get in touch with Conservative headquarters.
Shale, chairman of West Oxfordshire Conservative Association and a prominent Eurosceptic, appears to have suffered a massive heart attack as early as lunchtime on Saturday.
The prime minister said the death had left him and his wife, Samantha, "devastated", adding "a big rock in my life has suddenly been rolled away".
Cameron had been aware of the note's existence and there is deep concern inside Downing Street that its contents, known only to a small number of people, had been disclosed.
The paper was essentially a strategy document setting out how to recruit members. It said the local party appeared "graceless, voracious, crass, always on the take" and needed to radically change.
Judging by its blunt language, the memo was clearly not written for wide circulation in his local party.
Shale's family is said to have a history of heart failure. Earlier reports, including one from the Glastonbury festival organiser, Michael Eavis, suggesting Shale had killed himself, were dismissed.
...
Shale - a finely , stratified sedimentary rock that formed from consolidated mud or clay and can be split easily into fragile slabs.
What caught my eye was that the Duchess of York [ recently financially-aided by convicted pedo Jeffrey Epstein ] , David Cameron and Councillor Barry Norton all , spontaneously and simultaneously, referred to Mr. Shale as a 'rock'.
He died at the biggest ROCK festival in the world, in the toilets [ symbolic of the Eqyptian Underworld , the Duat] next to an enormous pyramid while awaiting various soulless performers to drum out their rock and roll. Perhaps some of the performers were getting a little low on energy and required an offering. Perhaps I'm just cynical.
8bitagent wrote:I think "targeted hit made to look like part of a robbery or series of seemingly random hits" counts in this thread right?
Let's compile a comprehensive list of people who very well may have been eliminated via staged suicide, accident, or through hits disguised as "random" crimes.
In other words, I'm looking for people who may have been murdered in ways that were specifically designed to NOT look like murder.
8bitagent wrote:I'm curious what you guys thought of both the FBI woman who was killed by the Beltway snipers in 2002 and the 1997 Star Bucks shooting in a DC suburb that killed Caty Mahoney(the Clinton intern who was to blow the lid off monica lewinski allegedly)
Stephen Morgan wrote:That pretty much says everything you need to know about the gentrification of modern music festivals: a 56 year old Tory dying on a bog.
AhabsOtherLeg wrote:...Harold MacMillan actually carked it on the shitter in Hyde Park back in '69...
...straining to take a dump is the most strenuous activity that most Tory's hearts are ever subjected to.
Dark rumours surround Chinook crash
Conspiracy theories abound about the crash which killed 25 top security personnel says Observer Northern Ireland correspondent John O'Farrell
www.guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 14 June 2000
<snip>
Another candidate for the conspiracy industry is the Chinook helicopter crash into the Mull of Kintyre in June 1994. The Ministry of Defence inquiry into the crash, which killed 25 top security personnel and four RAF crew, blamed the pilots for "breaching safe flying rules".
This line was reiterated this morning by the armed forces minister John Spellar, after the most senior Scottish law officer questioned the MoD verdict.
Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC said in a letter to an MSP that evidence about the reliability of the Chinook's computerised control system, FADEC, "reinforced" concerns about the crash. Lord Boyd did not, however, propose reopening the inquiry.
The calls for a new inquiry have mainly come from the families of the two blamed pilots, who had unblemished records before the crash. They believe that "the government would rather protect the elite within the MoD than to protect natural justice".
The allegation is that the MoD spent a fortune on a bad system, were warned against it in advance by colleagues in the USAF, but went ahead with the deal anyway. Any alleged cover-up is to save face, rather than anything darker.
But dark rumours abound. The loss of ten senior RUC intelligence officers, nine army intelligence officers and six MI5 officers on the eve of the 1994 IRA cessation was, for some, propitious.
"The loss of such senior intelligence personalities probably ensured the political case for a peace process to go ahead despite the recent successes against PIRA [Provisional IRA] and loyalist paramilitaries," wrote academic Sydney Elliott in the most recent edition of the Northern Ireland Political Directory.
The diaries on one of the RUC officers killed in the crash, Ian Phoenix, were published in 1996, and showed the mindset of a dedicated anti-terrorist operator who believed that the IRA could be militarily defeated, if the authorities let them "do their job".
Some of those killed were certainly involved in contentious episodes, such as the "Shoot to Kill" operations on the early 80s, in which six alleged republicans were shot dead in circumstances which themselves have been the subject of call for a new inquiry.
Some loyalists believe that the intelligence officers were deliberately "taken out" for "knowing too much" about the people the government would have to deal with in a post-conflict Ulster.
Men such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, the current Education Minister who once was at the top of the list as IRA supremo, as far as Ian Phoenix was concerned.
The truth, alas, is probably less prosaic and more mundane.
Pilots 'cleared' over Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash
The pilots of a Chinook helicopter which crashed in Scotland killing all 29 people on board were not to blame for the tragedy, an official review is expected to conclude.
By David Harrison
3:57PM BST 09 Jul 2011
www.telegraph.co.uk
The pilots were accused of gross negligence after 29 people died on the flight from Belfast to Inverness when it crashed on the Mull of Kintyre 17 years ago.
Campaigners fought for nearly two decades for Flt Lt Jonathan Tapper and Flt Lt Richard Cook to be cleared of blame.
Liam Fox, the defence secretary, ordered a review into the cause of the 1994 crash in September last year,
The independent report, chaired by Lord Philip, a retired judge, is understood to say that the pilots should not have been accused of gross negligence.
The Chinook, carrying 25 of Britain’s most senior intelligence experts and four special forces crew, crashed in thick fog on 2 June 1994, in what was the RAF’s worst peacetime accident.
In April this year, newly discovered Ministry of Defence documents cast doubt on the original explanation for the Chinook crash, suggesting that official concerns had been expressed over the airworthiness of the RAF’s fleet of Chinooks two years earlier.
norton ash wrote:We want IanEye and the Manatee on this Mull of Kintyre thing, stat!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/ju ... oare/print
News of the World phone-hacking whistleblower found dead
Death of Sean Hoare – who was first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson knew of hacking – not being treated as suspicious
Amelia Hill, James Robinson, Caroline Davies
guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 July 2011 18.04 BST
Former News of the World reporter Sean Hoare has been found dead. Photograph: BBC
Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbiz reporter who was the first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead, the Guardian has learned.
Hoare, who worked on the Sun and the News of the World with Coulson before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems, is said to have been found dead at his Watford home.
Hertfordshire police would not confirm his identity, but the force said in a statement: "At 10.40am today [Monday 18 July] police were called to Langley Road, Watford, following the concerns for the welfare of a man who lives at an address on the street. Upon police and ambulance arrival at a property, the body of a man was found. The man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after.
"The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing."
Hoare first made his claims in a New York Times investigation into the phone-hacking allegations at the News of the World.
He told the newspaper that not only did Coulson know of the phone hacking, but that he actively encouraged his staff to intercept the phone calls of celebrities in the pursuit of exclusives.
In a subsequent interview with the BBC he alleged that he was personally asked by his then-editor, Coulson, to tap into phones. In an interview with the PM programme he said Coulson's insistence that he didn't know about the practice was "a lie, it is simply a lie".
At the time a Downing Street spokeswoman said Coulson totally and utterly denied the allegations and said he had "never condoned the use of phone hacking and nor do I have any recollection of incidences where phone hacking took place".
Sean Hoare, a one-time close friend of Coulson's, told the New York Times the two men first worked together at the Sun, where, Hoare said, he played tape recordings of hacked messages for Coulson. At the News of the World, Hoare said he continued to inform Coulson of his activities. Coulson "actively encouraged me to do it", Hoare said.
In September last year, he was interviewed under caution by police over his claims that the former Tory communications chief asked him to hack into phones when he was editor of the paper, but declined to make any comment.
Hoare returned to the spotlight last week, after he told the New York Times that reporters at the News of the World were able to use police technology to locate people using their mobile phone signals in exchange for payments to police officers.
He said journalists were able to use a technique called "pinging" which measured the distance between mobile handsets and a number of phone masts to pinpoint its location.
Hoare gave further details about the use of "pinging" to the Guardian last week. He described how reporters would ask a news desk executive to obtain the location of a target: "Within 15 to 30 minutes someone on the news desk would come back and say 'right that's where they are.'"
He said: "You'd just go to the news desk and they'd just come back to you. You don't ask any questions. You'd consider it a job done. The chain of command is one of absolute discipline and that's why I never bought into it, like with Andy saying he wasn't aware of it and all that. That's bollocks."
He said he would stand by everything he had told the New York Times about "pinging". "I don't know how often it happened. That would be wrong of me. But if I had access as a humble reporter … "
He admitted he had had problems with drink and drugs and had been in rehab. "But that's irrelevant," he said. "There's more to come. This is not going to go away."
Hoare named a private investigator who he said had links with the News of the World, adding: "He may want to talk now because I think what you'll find now is a lot of people are going to want to cover their arse."
Speaking to another Guardian journalist last week, Hoare repeatedly expressed the hope that the hacking scandal would lead to journalism in general being cleaned up and said he had decided to blow the whistle on the activities of some of his former News of the World colleagues with that aim in mind.
He also said he had been injured the previous weekend while taking down a marquee erected for a children's party. He said he had broken his nose and badly injured his foot when a relative accidentally struck him with a heavy pole from the marquee.
Hoare also emphasised that he was not making any money from telling his story. Hoare, who has been treated for drug and alcohol problems, reminisced about partying with former pop stars and said he missed the days when he was able to go out on the town.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
Harvey wrote:It's front page news across the globe already. You know, it would be even more ironic if he did die of natural causes. Whistleblower in death... and, because either way, Murdoch is now finished, much as it surprises me to type that.
Ended by the very weapon he understood best.
Public opinion.
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