On 27 March I emailed Damian McBride informing him I was putting in a Freedom of Information & Data Protection request to find out the contents of emails he had been sending to Derek Draper relating to me, over the Carol Thatcher Today programme interview. I was told that he had given advice to Derek Draper on how he should smear me over the issue as a racist. Having never put in an FOI request before I frankly didn't expect much back. On Friday I received a letter from the Cabinet Office, which you can read in full HERE. It demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt that such correspondence took place, although the detail is still lacking in some areas and I shall be following it up. For instance, the first email extract starts...
If you want to wind up the other aspects of Dale's Today interview
This clearly indicates that there was a previous email, otherwise the word "other" would not have been used. And it is that email which I suspect is the really damaging one. I'm asking the Cabinet Office for details of that today.
I am intrigued by the line in the letter which says...
Some of the information we hold identifies another individual. We have not disclosed information about another individual unless we had their explicit or implicit consent or we considered it was reasonable in all the circumstances to disclose it without their consent.
I wonder who this could refer to. Draper? Is that the reason they won't release details of the initial email? Or could it be someone else, like Charlie Whelan or Kevin Maguire?
So to those leftist bloggers who accused me of making the whole thing up, presumably you will now be good enough to admit you were wrong. No, thought not.
