We’re hearing suggestions that the severe embarrassment currently being suffered by Defence Secretary, Dr Liam Fox, is result of a payback exercise by the MoD.
Dr Fox has been responsible for swingeing cuts to the Defence budget – and for insisting on Lord Philip’s review of the evidence surrounding the 1994 Chinook Mk2 crash on the Mull of Kintyre.
This concluded that the MoD was wrong to have found the two dead pilots guilty of culpable negligence in the fatal accident that saw all 29 dead – the four crew and 25 high ranking intelligence and security experts being flown from Northern Ireland to Fort George, east of Inverness.
The Philip findings delicately highlighted failings at the MoD to the extent that we cannot be sure that the report was not a Trojan Horse, laying the foundations for further investigation and analysis (which we intend to pursue.) There are longstanding concerns about alleged failures in the Mod’s airworthiness validation procedures over a prolonged period of time. This is thought, arguably, to have led to a series of fatal accidents and needs to be in the public domain for general consideration.
With the MoD’s determined efforts, frustrated by the current Defence Secretary, to bury the Chinook Mk2 case with the pilots, fearing it might be the key that might unlock this possible wider matter, there is little love there for Dr Fox.
Dr Fox has been very foolish in the access granted to Adam Werritty to the MoD and to his own official business – but whoever has fuelled the leaks, which may well bring him down, is unlikely to have been motivated by an altruistic care for proper process. It may be the dish eaten cold.
