“A Convenient Untruth” maybe.

Yes, that is my best current understanding as well. He knew the Wahl-Briffa interaction was going on. His later email statement that “Keith should deny their existence” tells me he also knew it likely transgressed IPCC standing protocols

In the October Commons braodcast at about 9.58.43 minutes, Russell says I was not going to put the review into a position of making the sort of quasi-judicial, prosecutorial investigative judgements (etc)” Why not?

And at 9.59.19, Russell again (about his committee) – “You are getting to the point where you are alleging that there might be an offence.”

I keep raising this topic because it was Russell before the Commons Committees who raised the suspicion of illegality, several times. The thought of police involvement plausibly crossed his mind, with his use of words like “caution” and “criminal offence”. His reason for inaction was that the Information Commissioner was enabled to act. But the IC had already stated that time had passed and he could not investigate SPECIFIC cases. This is not a defence for Russell to fail to proceed with general questions of illegality.

In my book, Russell was obliged to mention illegality, to ask questions about it, and if evidence existed, contact the appropriate officers. There are many inquiries that recommend taking matters to Public Prosecutors or the like. The possibility of illegality was not denied by either Russell or Acton. Indeed, they raised it. Was Jones guilty? Not for me to judge, but re-read the first para here and compare it with Jones email quoted above under my name at Oct 28, 2010 at 6:04 PM.

You said:
“If UEA loses stature then it also loses the ability to gain funding.”

This is likely true, but the university is required to maintain these FOI officials’ positions, whether the university endowment is large or small. They’re safe, and don’t get bonuses when the endowment increases. In a court of law, I believe the connection between UEA’s ‘stature’ and influence over / benefit to FOI officials would be found to be too attenuated. [again, I don't do criminal law, and certainly not UK law...]

Consider that these officials almost certainly were not privy to the unsavory actions of Jones and company. That’s important. Without a real meeting of the minds, you can’t form a conspiracy.

Not that I mean that they couldn’t form a conspiracy to unlawfully withhold information without bringing them into the CRU ‘web of deceit’. I read Jones’ letter as saying he took more than an hour to demonstrate how Steve M., et Al were bad actors. In effect, he convinced the officials – through presentation of evidence – that CA were inherently “vexatious”, and requests were solely for the purpose of stifling the work of CRU.

If the officials had seen both sides of the coin, they probably wouldn’t have made this decision.

As I recall many of these denials, they were of the form that “this material is already available at the NCDC website”. Not having a technical understanding of the significance of what was being asked for, the FOI officials appear to have allowed Jones and co. to craft the substance of the responses to requests. Why not ? They believed CRU was filled with saints and they were battling a Canadian Anti-Christ. Don’t the good folks at CRU know best what’s publicly available ?

I don’t see that the FOI officials improperly agreed to deny information to Steve M, et Al; I see that FOI officials improperly agreed to improperly defer to CRU judgement about how to respond to requests for information. There’s a big difference between the two. One smells like crime; one smells like negligence.

The FOI officials are like people who run into a wife [Jones] getting divorced from her husband [Steve M.]. The wife is going to say all kinds of things about her husband – and conveniently leave out her own poor qualities. They, naturally, feel sorry for the wife. They may promise to help her move ‘her’ things out of the house. As I said, above, this looks more to me like defamation by the wife, than a true ‘conspiracy’ between the parties to burglarize the husband’s goods.

I expect prosecuting attorneys might disagree with me.

You also said:
“The only way in which Palmer (or whoever) may be legally convinced not to comply is if it the decision was based on a reasonable legal interpretation.”

I would change “be legally convinced not to comply” with “deny requests for information.”

Steve: In the delete-all-emails incident, Jones discussed Briffa making untruthful statements to Palmer about the existence of Wahl-Briffa correspondence. Palmer may not have been properly informed. Palmer’s own correspondence has been unfailingly cordial. This could have been feigned, but I got the impression that he was trying to do his job within the rules.