For some time, we’ve commented on the unbelievably obtusely untrue “finding” of the Muir Russell “inquiry” that Jones’ request that Briffa and Wahl delete any records of their 2006 correspondence – correspondence described by Fred Pearce as a “subversion” of IPCC procedures – had not been preceded by an FOI request, even though David Holland had issued an FOI request only two days earlier and FOI was mentioned in the heading of the email. As Fred Pearce observed,
Sir Muir seems to have been about the only person studying the affair not to have known about it. This is all, we may hope, cock-up rather than conspiracy.
Even though the Muir Russell finding was blatantly and obtusely at odds with facts known to the University, they repeated the canard that there had been no requests to delete emails subject to prior FOI inquiries, even though members of their own administration knew the “finding” to be untrue.
I pointed out that one of the inaccuracies of the Boulton-Muir Russell Report was its omission of FOI request 08-31 (David Holland) from the list of FOI requests – even though this was the FOI request underlying Jones’ request to delete emails.
I had notified David Palmer of UEA of this omission and of the corresponding error in the Muir Russell report. On October 26, 2010, later in the day of Muir Russell’s appearance before the Parliamentary Committee, I noticed that Muir Russell had coopered up his website, presuming at the time that he had coopered up the website finally reporting the error in preparation for his evidence to the SciTech Committee. They added the following untrue editorial comment:
Readers should note the addition of the 08-31 FOI request which was previously omitted due to an administrative error. The revision does not affect the conclusions or recommendations of the final report.
Documents obtained by David Holland this week (see Bishop Hill here) show that the University of East Anglia “urgently” requested the correction after Muir Russell’s testimony and asked that the supposedly “independent” Muir Russell add this language to the website – Muir Russell following UEA instructions on this point to the letter.
The documents show that the University notified Muir Russell of the error within an hour of my original notification to them of the error. (They didn’t mention that I’d been the one who had notified them of the error.)
On Sep 14, 2010, after a CA post on the matter on Sep 11, Lisa Williams of UEA wrote Muir Russell, observing that the Muir Russell website had still not corrected the error and that the “University had been criticised for the CCER website still failing to show the important FOI request 08-31.”
In fact, no such criticism had been leveled at the University. In my post, I’d criticized them for their unsavory satisfaction in the obtusely incorrect Muir Russell finding on email deletion, a finding that their own FOI officers knew to be untrue, concluding my post as follows:
But, under the circumstances, it is exceedingly inappropriate for the University to take any satisfaction whatever in the finding that “there was no attempt to delete information with respect to a request already made” since the finding was incorrect, the FOI officers of the University know that it was incorrect and the University contributed at least in part to the untrue finding by filing an incorrect list of FOI requests with Muir Russell.
The indolent Muir Russell continued to do nothing.
Muir Russell appeared before the Parliamentary Committee on Oct 26 at 9.20 am (UK time) – see link here.
[UPDATE Nov 29,2010]; Subsequent to this post (and perhaps in response to it), UEA reported an Oct 25, 2010 email from Lisa Williams to Muir Russell on the eve of his appearance as follows:
Sir Muir
I didn’t receive anything else from you on this but I see that the updated list is now up on your website, thank you.
http://www.cce-review.org/Evidence.php
Whilst it doesn’t indicate that the revised list was received by the Review team some months ago, I trust that can be explained if need be.
Best,
Lisa
The next day, shortly after the Muir Russell testimony (October 26 at 11:43 am), Lisa Williams sent an “URGENT” email to Muir Russell asking him to cooper up the website, saying that it would be “helpful” to include the following language “alongside the document”:
Please note the addition of the 08-31 FOI request which was previously omitted due to an administrative error. The revision does not affect the conclusions or recommendations of the final report.
Muir Russell implemented the change later that day – it was noted up at CA in a post at 12.02 pm (blogtime) here . In my post, I had presumed that Muir Russell had coopered up the website prior to his appearance at the SciTech Committe. I introduced the post “in preparation for his appearance at the SciTech Committee, Muir Russell has, at the last possible minute…”
The new documents show that Muir Russell made the changes to the website after his testimony to the SciTech Committee, adopting the untrue language suggested by the University itself, apparently without doing any independent due diligence. As Fred Pearce said:
Sir Muir seems to have been about the only person studying the affair not to have known about it. This is all, we may hope, cock-up rather than conspiracy.
“Small inaccuracies” have a long history in British inquiries. Im documents released in 2003 (for example here), Kim Philby’s report on the Gouzenko revelations of Soviet espionage in Canada were noticed at the time to contain “small inaccuracies”. Roger Hollis of MI5, whose indolence later resulted in himself being suspected of being the Fifth Man, commented to Philby:
Perhaps you hedged on this, so as to avoid giving the Directors of Intelligence too much detailed information.
“Detailed information” — an item conspicuously lacking from the (Boulton)-Muir Russell and Oxburgh reports.
Climate Audit 
54 Comments
Steve, what you’ve delicately omitted, or refrained from saying, is that acknowledging the actual sequence of events and timeline detonates the foundations of everything MR said. And that’s why he was ‘indolent’.
Not indolence, of course. Self-preserving concealment. It’s an interesting observation, by the way, that someone hoping to conceal something becomes particularly vituperative towards anyone he suspects might have seen through the deceptions employed. Sort of a pre-emptive attempt to discredit. See any signs of that? 😉
P.S. Just wondering what would have qualified as a “large inaccuracy” wrt the FOIA request sequence …
Fred Pearce had misplaced hope.
To True Phillip!
Remember the “Zedsdedbed” the other day, over at Bishops Hill asking for evidence of who Jones gave the data to? I notice he has never been here to be dissected! The glove has been thrown down and as has been proved time and again, the two M’s., David Holland etc with their analytical minds would be the guys to ask.
You have evidence the full data was sent to the recipient? Then as I said at the time why not FOI him.
The answer I would suggest is that there would be no points scoring against the UEA!
There seems to be a missing link in paragraph 5: “see Bishop Hill here”.
There are a number of interesting things to come out of David Holland’s latest request. See Bishop Hill for all the links to the response letter and a zip file containing documents.
In the response letter we learn that the review team was paid £147,255 for their ‘independent’ review, and that £22,641 was spent on legal advice (presumably including the advice that they should not publish Holland’s submission – reasons still not explained).
Appendix A in the zip file is the letter from former UEA man Geoffrey Boulton to Osborn and Briffa, where he mangles Holland’s submission, deleting sections so that it makes little sense and allowing O & B to pretend that Holland makes a mistake, by omitting para 44. Although Boulton does not mention Holland’s name, and removes David’s paragraph numbering, the name and the paragraph numbers magically re-appear in the B&O response, suggesting that in fact they had the full version. In his letter Boulton writes “The allegation is not whether or not detailed IPCC procedures were followed…” – well, I thought that was one of the allegations.
Appendix E claims that to comply with David’s requests would harm international relations,
and that there is public interest in non-disclosure of this information (err, Mr Palmer, I think you’ve got that the wrong way round).
Any legal investigation cannot rely on illegally obtained material (unless of course you can prove the Emails were legally obtained?)
Acccpet that so far there have no no ‘legal’ investigations , but reviews carried very badly by CRU .
Not sure that a ban on such evidence applies in Britain. However we are not dealing with a trial here – just an investigation where such a ban, if present would not necessarily apply. One other factor would be the admission by UEA that the emails are genuine.
Holland’s FOI requests are legal attempts to obtain information.
It is worth noting in this lastest Holland FOI request UEA stated, “The University never received ‘directly’ a copy of your submission to the Russell Review. We only had ‘access’ to the information included with Prof. Boulton’s letter to Keith Briffa.”
It is clear that B&O response refers directly to contents in the full Holland submission. How is this possible?
I would treat UEA’s use of the words ‘directly’ and ‘access’ with caution. There intent is to mislead.
“Their intent is to mislead”
This may be a little strong. […or it could be correct… (?)]
Based upon the Bishop Hill post, it appears that after it was demonstrated that Briffa had access to the original submission by Holland, UEA admitted that it had access to the original submission.
This is a consequence of the law of agency.
Knowledge of an employee / agent is imputed to the employer / master. In this case, Briffa – an employee of UEA – received the original submission from a third party.
As a matter of law, that means UEA had access to the original.
It’s conceivable that UEA spokesmen weren’t privy to the backdoor receipt of Holland’s original by Briffa. It’s a university; it’s fairly clear that the administration had no clue what the CRU guys are doing or who they communicate with.
I do think that Russell, Boulton, UEA officials and CRU scientists are now in serious difficulty on this matter. It highlights that while they were saying one thing they were doing the exact opposite. Unfortunately for them they didn’t realise how badly Briffa and Osborne would play their parts in this growing scandal – they mucked up big style.
All parties realised how serious the charge of scientific malpractice by CRU scientists was on this issue. It wasn’t the act of deliberatly breaching IPCC rules on submission that did for them it was the attempted cover-up that followed. All Russell did was to try to add another layer, a final gloss, on this cover-up.
The belated admission from UEA that CRU scientists had received a third-party copy of David Holland’s submission shows that UES’s previous correspondence on this matter was intended to mislead.
What we have here is both a cock-up AND a conspiracy.
There is much more to come I would think.
“Any legal investigation cannot rely on illegally obtained material”
Your authority for that blanket proposition? It is certainly not true in the context of Canadian criminal prosecutions, and I doubt that it is generally true at the level of civil litigation in England or the United States. Your evidence which proves that the climategate emails were “illegally obtained”? Since no-one seems to know who caused them to become public, it follows that no-one knows whether that person was lawfully possessed of them in the first place.
The ban in the US applies only to teh government. They are restricted constitutionally from obtaining some information. However if a private citizen obtains information then there is not restriction.
For example, if a private citizen asks someone if they have committed a crime without giving the Miranda warning there is no restriction on the use of any answer given as evidence.
If Smith testifies that Jones was the getaway driver in a bank slobbery and Smith knows that because he and Jones were part of the gang that robbed the bank, the knowledge came from an illegal action. However there is no restriction on his testimony because of that.
“bank slobbery”?
Sounds like the legal issues could get messy.
When will evidence obtained illegally or improperly be excluded?
Due to the fact that real evidence is by its nature reliable, it is generally included unless its admission would adversely affect trial fairness. Although the accused usually cannot establish that the admission of the improperly obtained evidence would endanger trial fairness and therefore prevent it being used against them, often other remedies are available for the breach of rights, namely compensation. When real evidence has been excluded, this is usually a result of a breach of a suspect’s right against self incrimination, another fundamental right of the accused, or due to gross and deliberate police misconduct. On the other hand, confession evidence will generally be excluded under the Police and Evidence Act 1984 as it is unreliable and is likely to affect the fairness of the proceedings.
http://www.inbrief.co.uk/court-proceedings/illegally-obtained-evidence.htm
Not black and white admittedly
How was the evidence illegally obtained. The Emails are visible to the public. They are then evidence that could be sued in some hypothetical court proceeding. The Crown or any other interested party would not have obtained them illegally. They could access them from any of a number of well known web sites. They would use a simple web search to find these sites.
This not even germane. The process under discussion is patently not a court proceeding. To continue to use that as a touchstone does not say much about your analytical ability.
There is no such ban in the UK, the Public Interest can overule such senibilities eg in the MP’s expenses row the leak was from the personnel editing the expenses prior to offical publication. They were so disgusted by what they saw it was all leaked including the bits that were supposed to be left out. No-one was ever chased for the leak as it was ruled any prosecution would fail as no jury would convict.
missed this bit, and 3 MP’s are currently being prosecuted for Fraud related to false expense claims with custodial sentances a strong possibility. All sparked off by a leak and the same info is being used for the prosecutions.
Someone relying on that advice in the US would be sorely mistaken. US law excludes evidence illegally obtained by, or at the direction of, the authorities. If a police officer conducts an illegal search, you walk. If a thief jacks your car and a body is found in the trunk with your DNA all over it, you ride (downtown, do not collect $200, etc.).
I think perhaps you’re confusing matters.
If the authorities take steps to secure information illegally, they will be barred from using it in a court of law.
On the other hand, there’s no evidence that the ‘climategate’ release was in any way facilitated by an agency of US, state, or local government.
However it was disclosed, it is now public record.
Yes, that was my point. thefordprefect stated:
Any legal investigation cannot rely on illegally obtained material (unless of course you can prove the Emails were legally obtained?)
and I corrected that the exclusionary rule only applies when evidence is illegally obtained by or at the direction of the authorities – which there is no evidence of.
Agreed.
FordPrefect, Gene, JEM:
“Any legal investigation cannot rely on illegally obtained material…”
“If a police officer conducts an illegal search, you walk.”
“If the authorities take steps to secure information illegally, they will be barred from using it in a court of law.”
etc.
I wish the law protected defendants as well as you guys seem to believe. The law is more subtle than laymen generally believe.
Take the Fourth Amendment, protecting persons from unreasonable searches. [This the basis of the protections quoted above – in the US.]
The protection is only for owners of the property.
So, for example, the police can bust into A’s house without a warrant and seize evidence of a felony. Such evidence is inadmissable against A, but can be admissable against B.
A cannot stop the state from using “illegally” obtained evidence against B. All A can do is sue the police for trespass.
A lacks standing to intervene in B’s prosecution. B lacks standing to protest the violation of A’s property rights.
This post by fordprefect is a red herring. There is no formal investigation by authorities going on of which I am aware. And there likely will not be. Which means there will be no charges and no formal trial in which evidence is presented.
But the emails ARE evidence and there is reams of it. They are evidence in the court of public opinion and no one has contested their authenticity. Whether they would be admissible in a trial is irrelevant.
As evidence, they also suggest the Muir Russell inquiry was either corrupt or grossly inept.
Your use of the term “legal” is misleading. Steve Mc is conducting a “legal” investigation of his own into the whole affair. What you mean is an “official investigation,”–one that would, presumably, result in a trial, which is unlikely.
The emails are damning evidence that illegal acts may have occurred and that certainly unethical behavior was commonplace. That’s my verdict as a juror in the court of public opinion, which is the only court that counts at this point. The problem Jones et al and the UEA now have is that a lot of people agree with me.
1. If you say they were obtained illegally, prove it.
2. This was not a “court-ruled” investigation, where legal rules of evidence would govern. Where is your authority for the assertion that these were not admissible?
3. The inquiry report itself did not rely on the asertion you have made. If they had, there would have been no investigation at all.
Im documents released in 2003
Should be “In documents released in 2003”
“The revision does not affect the conclusions or recommendations of the final report.”
I’m inclined to agree. I don’t think that relevant facts would have affected the conclusions of the report. If the Muir Russell website is going to repeat blindly UEA’s assurance that its innocent mistake doesn’t affect anything, there’s absolutely no reason to believe that it would diverge from the UEA view of the entire matter.
Steve lives in a rational world where the order of events and precision are important. Some others live in a universe where the appearance of things and the feelings about it are what are real, and facts are dust that gets on your jacket, to be brushed off if they get annoying.
What a tangled web they weave when first they practice to deceive! Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Incompetents should never endeavor to deceive. It’s too hard to pull off.
My anti-virus app (nod32) has flagged the linked Philby document as containing a virus (JS/TrojanDownloader.HackLoad.AD trojan).
My AVG antivirus found nothing wrong.
“The revision does not affect the conclusions or recommendations of the final report.”
It’s clear now that the conclusions were reached before the inquiry even began and that nothing that would be found later would alter those conclusions.
The university has investigated itself and absolved itself of wrongdoing. Is anyone surprised?
Now, can we have a REAL inquiry?
The Bishop has further correspondence from UEA to David Holland.
In the same bulletin: Pope revealed as Catholic, bears prefer proximity of treemometers when defecating.
Horse. Dead. Flogging.
Hand. Cookie jar. Caught.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/11/24/holland-what-was-redacted.html
The deconvolution of the Boultonization of the David Holland submission continues at The Bishop’s http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/11/23/uea-a-new-story.html. The UEA position has become quite complex on this point. It involves working with the original David Holland submission, but responding to the Boultonized version. This complexity must have been very taxing for the CRU data handlers, though it does appear to have held the truth back for a few months.
Great post Steve (and kudos to Mr Holland for his persistence and effectiveness). UEA are slowing digging themselves deeper and deeper into the mire.
Perhaps this was supposed to be called the Mire Report !
I noticed in the first page of the FIO documents that you linked to one of the “excuses” for refusal:
Reg. 12(5)(a), Adverse effect on
international relations
Release of some of the requested
information would adversely effect relations
with the IPCC
I’d be pretty sure that does not stand up legally. International relations means relations between nations , not me getting cross with someone in Germany nor UEA information officer upsetting Dr. Patchuri in India.
They’re definitely running scared on this now , keep pushing.
best regards.
Just also noted on page 8 of the Holland documents for UEA:
Finally, it is also common practice in public and parliamentary life for the
subjects of reports to be given embargoed copies of the documents shortly before
publication.
More playing with words.
Getting an embargoed copy of the FINAL report just before public release is not the same as getting a copy of a DRAFT report. Getting a draft implies that there is still possibility of change and amounts to an invitation for input or consent.
The more they wriggle , the deeper they sink into the muir.
The title of Sir does not change the spots on a politician.
Apologies if this has already been stated, but P Jones appears to have confirmed the authenticity of the emails early in the piece.
“(Headline) HadleyCRU says leaked data is real
“The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine.
In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, “It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”
“Have you alerted police”
“Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken.”
Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.
“Real Climate were given information, but took it down off their site and told me they would send it across to me. They didn’t do that. I only found out it had been released five minutes ago.”
TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing “hiding the decline”, and Jones explained what he was trying to say….
More on this breaking story in TGIF Edition tonight…
UPDATE: to save any further emails from the eager as our deadline looms…TGIF will be out in about two hours…midnight NZDT
UPDATE: Just burning PDF and Flash documents, moments away
UPDATE FINAL: The link is now live at the TGIF Edition link above, underneath the Breaking News heading
Posted by iwishart on November 20, 2009 at 09:30 PM “
And what TGIF Edition link would that be? Where “above”?
Curious minds want to know …
@PSolar
I seem to remember that Muir Russell’s team were asked not to show their report to UEA beforehand but they did anyway.
I edited one paragraph of this post to more accurately reflect the timeline. When I started writing the post, I had presumed that Muir Russell would not have engaged in the trick of altering his website after his testimony to the House Sci Tech Committee – particularly without dating the change. As I wrote the chronology in the post, it emerged that amazingly Muir Russell did in fact do so. I edited a sentence to remove an inconsistency between an opening paragraph and the conclusion.
How McIntyre mistakes are made, by presuming some upper bound to tricks in climate science and its supporting infrastructure of inquiry. The complaint that sceptics are too suspicious is unfounded – it turns out we’re too credulous, the reality is worse than anyone expected.
Henceforth to be referred to as “Muir’s trick.”
i.e. “Muir’s trick, to hide the define.” (as proposed by Richard Drake at Bishop Hills).
Lurve it! Definitional plasticity is SO useful!
😉
There are a couple of points as I see from my perspective:
– This is a written document and proof, that the university under investigation not only advised Muir Russel in this inquiry against their staff but even provided very important wording.
– This particular incidence is of special interest in its IPCC context but moreover because there is prima face evidence of breaking a UK law.
– Making untrue statements about an unlawful act may be unlawful in itself. I also do not see how this and the 1st point above would be compatible with codes of conduct at Universities such as Edinburgh, Heidelberg or other scientific communities such as the Royal Society.
I’m waiting for a post entitled “The Ghost and Mr. Muir-Russel”…
Subsequent to this post (and perhaps in response to it), UEA reported an Oct 25, 2010 email from Lisa Williams to Muir Russell on the eve of his appearance as follows: