Thread by @MarkWatts_1

2. Former Met inspector Paul Holmes told #CSAinquiry of surveillance operation in 1978 on a flat in Cricklewood used by Roddam Twiss, son of Sir Frank, who was Black Rod.

An MP was a suspect: “Cyril Smith was allegedly all over it.”

Bg @FOIACentre: foiacentre.com/news-Playland-…

3. “We were starting from a mind-set that we would need to proceed as cautiously as possible, covertly as possible, because of the risk of cover-up, because obviously… that was a risk we expected.”

Paul Holmes to #CSAinquiry on Twiss probe in which Cyril Smith was a suspect.

4. Roddam Twiss was jailed in 1967 for indecently assaulting and beating five boys – one as young as 11.

He was also a convicted fraudster.

Paul Holmes, then an officer in Met’s clubs office in West End central, found Twiss’s records had been “sanitised”, he told #CSAinquiry.

5. “He’d been cleansed from the system,” said former Met inspector Paul Holmes to #CSAinquiry on Roddam Twiss.

Q: Who by?

“You’d need to be a very, very senior police officer.”

6. “Our surveillance had sufficiently corroborated the initial intelligence to justify not only continuing the investigation, but to enlarging it with extra resources.” Met inspector Paul Holmes to #CSAinquiry.

Instead, he was told, it was “stopping”…

#VIPaedophile cover-up.

7. “We were going to be reallocated to another enquiry… It was risible… a West End nightclub, a hostess club, where there were no suggestions whatsoever that there were any children being exploited.”

Paul Holmes to #CSAinquiry on being diverted from suspected #VIPaedophiles.

8. “We had a very, very Anglo Saxon row over it… he quite rightly told me that, if I continued, then I was history.”

“And I couldn’t afford to be history because I had a young family and a mortgage. But I still failed.”

Paul Holmes to #CSAinquiry on #VIPaedophile cover-up.

9. “If you were a very ambitious senior officer trying to reach the very top echelons of the service, this was about as unwelcome a news as could possibly be brought by a supervisor… It is career stopping.”

Paul Holmes to #CSAinquiry on investigating #VIPaedophiles.

10. “The whole thing is based here upon an inquiry into a cover-up by Westminster, suggesting that, if a cover-up took place – and I suggest it did – then it was all based around the Palace of Westminster... It was wider than that.”

Paul Holmes, ex-Met inspector to #CSAinquiry.

11. “I used to give it the label of either ‘higher echelon’ or ‘establishment’… I’m talking about establishment figures: aristocratic families, senior, long-established families. It wasn't all just politicos.”

Ex-inspector Paul Holmes to #CSAinquiry on #VIPaedophile cover-ups.

12. Paul Holmes explained to #CSAinquiry that Playland 2, and conviction of Charles Hornby, demonstrated how establishment figures were guilty of sexual offences against boys.

Some background @FOIACentre: foiacentre.com/news-Playland-…

13. “Up until the Playland 2 convictions, it wasn’t an uncommon event for – how can I put it – people that would be probably publicly known would appear in the environs of the meat-rack and Playland Arcade.”

Ex-inspector Paul Holmes to #CSAinquiry.

14. “The proposal that, whether you call it higher-echelon people, establishment, Westminster, were involved in exploiting vulnerable prostitutes on the meat-rack, as far as we were concerned, was a given.”

Paul Holmes, ex-Met inspector to #CSAinquiry.

15. “It wasn’t whether it existed. It was a given. The issue was, the extent to which it was networked, how high it went, and how on earth could you prove it.

“That was the issue; it was not the issue of whether it existed.”

Paul Holmes to #CSAinquiry on #VIPaedophiles.

16. Paul Holmes told #CSAinquiry that he and many colleagues in the field “came to hold the view that too many people were saying the same thing for there not to be at least some truth in the assertion that establishment figures were engaged in the sexual abuse of young males.”

17. “So many triangulated sources were saying it was happening, it was almost beyond logic that it couldn’t have been. The issue was to what extent.”

“As far as I was concerned, it was being covered up.”

Paul Holmes, ex-Met inspector, to #CSAinquiry on #VIPaedophile cover-ups.

18. “As far as I can recall, the issue for colleagues working in the West End (as I did almost constantly from 1971 to 2002), the question was not whether it was occurring, but why it was not being exposed.”

Paul Holmes, ex-Met insp to #CSAinquiry on #VIPaedophile cover-ups.

19. Paul Holmes made a “very full statement” to #CSAinquiry.

However, counsel to the inquiry has NOT asked for any statements from police whistleblowers to be adduced.

Yet the inquiry has adduced all the IOPC and Met statements that dismiss claims of #VIPaedophile cover-ups.

20. On Monday, Geoffrey Robertson, for Harvey Proctor, demanded that #CSAinquiry adduce a statement that they (and not inquiry) have taken from Met’s former DCI Paul Settle, who dismisses host of claims that surround Elm Guest House.

And today, the inquiry did as it was told.

21. Malcolm Sinclair, another former Met inspector, told CSAinquiry that a surveillance operation for a paedophile investigation caught four politicians at a suspect property:

Cyril Smith

Jeremy Thorpe

Leon Brittan

Edward Heath

22. Malcolm Sinclair thought that this operation was in Cricklewood, but Paul Holmes said that Cyril Smith, but not Jeremy Thorpe, Leon Brittan or Edward Heath were suspects.

So, some confusion here.

Different ops?

Again, #CSAinquiry did not adduce Sinclair’s statement.

23. I highlighted yesterday how, when questioning Howard Groves, counsel to #CSAinquiry, Brian Altman, referred to boys as young as 11 or 12 as having “prostituted themselves”. He also often used term “rent-boy” inappropriately (although he sometimes read it from evidence)...

24. Counsel to #CSAinquiry, Brian Altman, ended today’s hearing with a pseudo-apology:

“Can I simply say this, that, for the avoidance of any doubt, the inquiry does not endorse or adopt terms such as ‘rent boy’ or ‘male prostitution’ or any other derivative terminology…”

25. “… but those terms have only been used during the course of the evidence because they are relevant to the evidence that we have heard and the times in which they were used, and for no other reason.”

Brian Altman, counsel to #CSAinquiry.

Hmm.