Met chief: I knew calling Nick ‘credible and true’ was a mistake
(So why didn’t she do anything?)
‘Horrific impact on suspects’
A POLICE chief yesterday admitted she knew straightaway that a senior officer blundered by calling VIP abuse fantasist ‘Nick’ a ‘credible and true’ witness.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said she realised the officer had made ‘a mistake’ and she ‘felt for him’.
The highly-controversial statement to journalists by Detective Superintendent Kenny McDonald in 2014 undermined the presumption of innocence for VIPs Nick accused of being paedophiles – but Scotland Yard failed to correct it for nine months.
Last week Dame Cressida, 58, declined to answer key questions from the Daily Mail about her role in the Operation Midland inquiry. She was yesterday challenged in a radio interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari about Midland and the ‘credible and true’ description.
She told LBC: ‘I think everybody thinks that that was just a mistake. It shouldn’t have been said. I’m sure the officer himself who said that regrets it. I can actually remember where I was when I heard that and I was very surprised, and I just felt for him immediately.
‘I remember thinking, “Oh no, I know he didn’t mean to say that”. What he will have meant to say was “This person appears credible” and unfortunately when pressed, pressed, pressed, he said “credible and true” and that of course was a mistake. It was unfortunate and it dented people’s confidence in the investigation from thereon in.’
Her comments deepen the scandal surrounding the case as the Met prepares to release an unredacted bombshell report into the running of the £2.5million 16-month investigation.
A censored summary of exHigh Court judge’s Sir Richard Henriques’ report, which identified 43 major blunders by Scotland Yard officers, was released three years ago.
But a fuller version – due to be published in the next few weeks – will expose ‘staggering’ new details of police incompetence, sources say. Convicted paedophile ‘Nick’, real name Carl Beech, 51, was jailed for 18 years in July for his VIP abuse lies and other offences.
Operation Midland was wound up without any arrests or charges in 2016. Dame Cressida, who became Commissioner in April 2017, was an Assistant Commissioner during the operation. She received briefings on Beech’s allegations of an Establishment paedophile ring and murders involving former PM Sir Ted Heath, ex-Home Secretary Lord Brittan, Britain’s greatest living soldier Lord Bramall and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor. Attempting to distance herself from the shambles yesterday, she told LBC her involvement with the inquiry ‘was short and at the very beginning’.
Dame Cressida said: ‘I was the Assistant Commissioner... so I was given some briefings about the start of Operation Midland.
‘I was the line manager for the DAC (Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Rodhouse), who set up Operation Midland.’
She stressed: ‘My job as Commissioner is not to comment and go on about what happened in the past. I wasn’t there, I was not in policing for the vast majority of the time that Midland took place.
‘My job is to make sure that the Met has learned the lessons...and we look forward.’
Dame Cressida said Operation Midland had a ‘horrific impact’ on those investigated and the case had ‘damaged’ the Metropolitan Police’s reputation.
The full Henriques review is expected to criticise a police watchdog report which cleared five officers of misconduct – two without even being interviewed. A senior source with knowledge of the investigation has described it as an ‘appalling inquiry’ and ‘disgraceful whitewash’.