Thread by @DCKennard

Why did then head of the CPS, Keir Starmer, meet then head of MI5, Sir Jonathan Evans, for informal social drinks in April 2013, the year after Starmer decided not to prosecute MI5 for its role in torture.

No record any other CPS head accepting hospitality from an intel chief.

When Starmer decided not to prosecute MI5, its director-general Sir Jonathan Evans said: “I am delighted that after a thorough police investigation the CPS has concluded that [MI5] has no case to answer”.

Sir Jonathan Evans left MI5 a week following his drinks with Starmer. The day after Evans left the service, Starmer announced he would also leave the CPS. Evans is now Baron Evans of Weardale after David Cameron made him a life peer in 2014.

The CPS’ role involved attempting to trace responsibility for the actions of the MI5 officer it was investigating further up MI5's chain of command. It is likely that Sir Jonathan Evans—who joined MI5 in 1980—played a role in the case under investigation.

In September 2001 Sir Jonathan Evans had become director of international counter terrorism at MI5 and was in this position when the British resident—whose treatment the CPS was investigating—was snatched, tortured and rendered by the CIA, with MI5 involvement.

It’s not known if Evans would have been criminally liable if the prosecution had gone ahead, but he later had to defend MI5 from accusations of a cover-up in case after Lord Neuberger, then President of the Court of Appeal, said there was a "culture of suppression" in the agency

The value of the hospitality Starmer received from Evans is listed as “unknown” and MI5 is not mentioned, indicating this was a social meeting. Formal meetings for the head of the CPS are registered separately under “meetings with external organisations”, which would include MI5

Such social drinks appear to be unusual for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). The three years hospitality records for the period after Starmer left the CPS show his successor as DPP received no hospitality from a sitting intelligence chief—or met them formally.

At the time of Starmer's social drinks with Sir Jonathan Evans the CPS was still investigating the role of MI5’s sister organisation MI6 in the rendition of two families to Libya when it was ruled by Muammar Gaddafi.

In 2012—the year before Starmer met Evans for drinks—Conservative MP David Davis said it was "essential" for MI5 to be investigated by Scotland Yard for joint operations it conducted with Libyan intelligence against Libyan dissidents living in the UK. That never happened.

TRILATERAL COMMISSION: Sir Keir Starmer is a member of the intelligence-linked Trilateral Commission, an organisation set up in 1973 by American billionaire David Rockefeller who was then chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank.

Starmer is the only British MP who is a member.

Its stated aim is to “foster closer cooperation between Japan, Western Europe and North America”. It includes senior figures from US national security establishment such as former US sec of state Henry Kissinger and former US director of national intelligence, John Negroponte.

Other members include John M. Deutch, former head of the CIA and Jami Miscik, a former deputy head. Declassified docs reveal that David Rockefeller himself had close ties to the CIA. Doc below shows preparations for a meeting between Rockefeller and the head of the CIA in 1980.

Starmer is listed as only serving British MP who is a member. The same list, however, notes four “former members now in public service”, one of whom is also British: Tory MP, Rory Stewart, who a security source told the Telegraph was an MI6 officer before moving into politics.

Trilateral Commission has access to highest level of the British intel establishment. At a Commission meeting in 2017, Eliza Manningham-Buller—Sir Jonathan Evans’ predecessor as head of MI5—chaired discussion with Sir David Omand, former director of GCHQ. Starmer was also there

In 2018, Sir John Scarlett, former head of MI6, spoke at the Trilateral Commission’s plenary meeting in Singapore.

The Commission is, however, a secretive org—it’s meetings are off-the-record. Starmer has not mentioned his membership publicly, despite being only UK MP member.

ASSANGE: Under Starmer's leadership, the CPS’s handling of Assange’s proposed extradition to Sweden for questioning about sexual assault allegations was marred by irregularities. Stefania Maurizi has spent years in a protracted legal process with the CPS to access info on it.

From 2010, as head of CPS, Starmer took three first-class flights to Washington DC for "official meetings" or "conferences". There is no more information about who these meetings were with or what was discussed. In November 2011, Starmer spent £3,783 on a flight to the US capital

US govt documents show that during that 2011 trip to Washington, Starmer met w/ US Attorney General Eric Holder and other DOJ officials.

At end of 2010, Holder had stated he had given go-ahead for a number of unspecified actions as part of a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks

The following year, in November 2012, Starmer spent £6,808 on another flight to Washington for another “official meeting”. It is not known who this meeting was with. Then again, in September 2013—the month before he left the CPS—he spent £4,085 on another flight to Washington.

Also at Holder meeting was Gary Balch, UK Liaison Prosecutor to the US. Three weeks after Starmer's meeting with Holder, the US Attorney General met with then British home secretary, Theresa May, alongside 3 other DOJ personnel, two of whom had been in the meeting w/ Starmer.

The CPS admitted destroying key emails relating to Assange case, mostly covering period when it was run by Starmer.

A CPS lawyer working under Starmer advised Swedish authorities not to visit London in 2010/2011 to interview Assange. This could have prevented embassy standoff

An email from a lawyer in the CPS extradition unit on 25 January 2011 cautioned: “My earlier advice remains, that in my view it would not be prudent for the Swedish authorities to try to interview the defendant in the UK.”

Documents from CPS also show Swedish prosecutors attempted to drop extradition proceedings against Julian Assange as early as 2013 when Starmer was still head of CPS. A CPS lawyer commented on an article suggesting Sweden may drop the case: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”.

In April 2013—the same month Starmer and MI5's Evans went for drinks—the CPS rejected Assange’s request for the personal data it had on him “because of the live matters still pending”.

But even GCHQ, the UK’s largest intelligence agency, had granted Assange’s request for the personal information it held on him; this revealed one of its officers calling the Swedish case a “fit-up”.

THE TIMES NEWSPAPER: During his time at the CPS, Starmer developed a particularly close relationship with the Times and its sister paper the Sunday Times, papers owned by Rupert Murdoch.

In the space of two months in 2011, Starmer accepted hospitality from three Times/Sunday Times journalists, meeting for lunch or interviews with Francis Gibb, Sean O’Neill, and David Leppard. In December of the same year, Starmer attended Christmas drinks at the Times.

There is no record Starmer accepted hospitality from any other newspaper during his time at the CPS. In April 2012, he also met with Times editor James Harding to discuss CPS media prosecution guidelines, and the following month with John Witherow, editor of the Sunday Times.

Starmer met Leppard—the journalist who broke the fraudulent story on former Labour leader Michael Foot being a Soviet agent of influence—for lunch at Le Pain Quotidien on 2 June 2011.

Six months before, in January 2011, Leppard had got the big Sunday Times exclusive that an MI6 officer under investigation by the Metropolitan police for “possible criminal wrongdoing” since September 2009 would not face charges from Starmer's CPS.

While Starmer was in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, the Times played a key role in stopping his attempt to become PM, and was one of the favoured publications used by serving intelligence/military officials to leak info presenting Corbyn as a threat to national security.

Six weeks before lunch with Leppard, on 14 April 2011 Starmer had lunch with another Times journalist, Sean O’Neill, at Biagio.

O’Neill would come to write about the Labour Party when Starmer was in Corbyn's shadow cabinet.

One Times scoop on which Starmer's lunch partner Sean O’Neill was lead reporter came in February 2016 and was titled “How leadership is taking its toll on ‘paranoid’ Corbyn”.

O’Neill used anon briefings from shadow cabinet members to paint picture of Corbyn as out of his depth.

“Shadow cabinet members complain meetings lack structure, discipline and direction,” O'Neill wrote. One shadow cabinet source said: "[Corbyn] just lets people talk, but it often meanders pointlessly. If there's a row it ends up in media but more often discussion just wanders off”

Four months after O'Neill's article appeared in the Times, Starmer resigned from Corbyn’s shadow cabinet citing the “need for a much louder voice on the critical issues” and airing “reservations” about Corbyn’s leadership and the need for a change of leader.

To many people’s surprise Starmer wrote his first national media article after being elected Labour leader in the Sunday Times, which is behind a paywall.

(As an aside, the former head of MI6, Sir John Scarlett, joined board of the Times in 2010, the year after he left the SIS.)

Starmer also seems to have a close relationship with the “Society of Editors”—an organisation with a stated goal of advancing press freedom boasting 400 members—lunching there with unspecified individuals in May 2011 and April 2012.

Starmer also attended their conference in November 2011, and had another formal meeting with them in April 2012. The available records show his successor as head of the CPS, Alison Saunders, never received hospitality from them, or met them formally.

The Society of Editors appears to have unusual access to the British intelligence establishment. Then head of MI5 and Starmer's drinking partner, Sir Jonathan Evans, gave a rare public speech at its 2007 conference, an occurrence even he called “fairly unusual”.

Further to that in 2010, Sir John Sawers gave the first ever public speech by a serving head of MI6 at a meeting of the Society of Editors in London.