A former British Prime Minister may have operated a secret alias during his time in power to prevent communications from being released later under the Freedom of Information process, reports concerning the released Epstein emails suggest.
Erstwhile Labour power broker, government minister, and British ambassador to Washington D.C. Peter Mandelson is facing a police investigation over allegations based on newly released emails that he leaked government secrets to Jeffrey Epstein. But those emails may have also revealed a simple Whitehall dodge to confound public scrutiny of the government.
In email chains between top Sir Keir Starmer ally Lord Mandelson and now-deceased paedophile financier Epstein, an anonymised British government email address belonging to a “John Pond” has gained attention. There was no high-profile member of the British government or civil service called John Pond at the time, but there was an Astronomer Royal by that name in the early 19th century.
Now, publications including the Financial Times, The Guardian, and the BBC cite government sources who say that John Pond was chosen as a secret pseudonymous email address for Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Leading Westminster gossip blog Guido Fawkes challenges the alleged spin put on this alias by those briefing The Guardian, who described it as being used “by advisers when forwarding to Brown’s secure email account”, noting Brown frequently used his real, official email address, suggesting a special purpose for the claimed backup.
Citing their own sources, Fawkes states that the Labour Prime Minister had a second, secret email address to avoid his correspondence being released to the public years later under the Freedom of Information Act, ironically, a then-new system introduced by Brown’s Labour predecessor, Tony Blair. According to the alleged scheme, no one would request the release of emails sent to an account belonging to a nonexistent person.
Like many claims emerging from the latest tranche of over three million Epstein emails, these suggestions have not been proven in court or outside it, and despite claims to the press, John Pond has not yet been formally linked to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Nevertheless, Brown has leapt into action this week to distance himself from his former colleague and rival Mandelson, who, despite their widely known personal animosity, Brown elevated to a permanent seat in the Houses of Parliament.
Mandelson resigned that seat today and will lose his life membership of the House of Lords at midnight tonight.
Beyond claimed aliases at the top of government and leaked market-sensitive and government secrets, Epstein emails also appear to show Mandelson making tantalising references to the network of “secret tunnels” beneath the heart of government. Built during the Second World and Cold Wars, the tunnels are realistically more of an open secret and linked government ministries to deep bunkers, including PINDAR and Marsham Street, a pair of colossal converted gas storage bunkers hastily given a huge concrete roof in the 1940s.
There is little officially known about the tunnels and bunkers, but small details have become public from time to time. New Statesman journalist Duncan Campbell managed to sneak underground in the 1980s by lifting a manhole cover, and by photographer David Moore, who was permitted to visit the inside of certain areas of the Ministry of Defence bunker under Whitehall in 2007 for an art project.