The Madeleine Foundation letter to Gordon Brown in support of a

government and is commonly used by them following disasters. It is possible
that the British government may have paid for these counsellors - we need to
know if they did, and, if so, why.
An enquiry needs to establish who exactly co-ordinated and organised this
overwhelming level of assistance to support the McCanns’ claim of abduction,
when, as it turned out, within a few months there was significant, some would
say overwhelming, evidence pointing to Madeleine having died in her parents’
apartment.
iii) The despatch of a Cabinet-level official to oversee public relations in the
case
One of the British government’s most highly-paid ‘spinners’ of information,
Mr Clarence Mitchell, was despatched almost immediately to Portugal to
conduct and oversee public relations for the McCanns. His job at the time was
the high-level position of Head of the Media Monitoring Unit for the Central
Office of Information - a post established primarily to ensure that the
government’s line on any particular issue was promoted in the media.
Indeed, on one occasion Mr Mitchell openly boasted that his role at the MMU
was ‘to control what comes out in the media’. In May 2007, he was seconded
to the Foreign Office for the special assignment of proactively handling press
relations about the ‘disappearance’ of Madeleine McCann. He was apparently
later allowed to retire prematurely from the civil service - in September 2007 -
in order to become employed exclusively by the McCanns to act as their PR
spokesman, at a salary said to be £75,000 a year.
It is noteworthy also that he continues to act as the McCanns’ media adviser
even over two years after Madeleine’s disappearance, and that he now works
for Freud Communications, owned by Matthew Freud, who is married to
Rupert Murdoch’s daughter. Freud Communications is known to have strong
links with your government at the very highest levels. An independent enquiry
needs to establish what role Mr Mitchell has played in connection with the
‘disappearance’ of Madeleine McCann and why the British government felt it
necessary to despatch such a senior public relations figure and civil servant to
work with the McCanns full-time.
It should be added that a video exists of Mr Mitchell, in a TV interview, openly
boasting that it was he who, though his contacts, arranged for the McCanns to
meet the Pope on 28 May 2007. Once again, it is clear that it was the British
government that arranged this unprecedently high-profile event to assist the
McCanns. Similarly, the British government appears also to have facilitated Dr
Gerald McCann’s visit to the White House where he met U.S. Attorney-
General Alberto Gonzales.
iv) The despatch of another top government official, Sheree Dodd, to help with
the McCanns’ PR
The former Daily Mirror journalist and long-serving senior government
spokeswoman, Ms Sheree Dodd, was also deployed in the early days as an
additional ‘media liaison officer’ for the McCann family in addition to Mr
Mitchell (see also next point). This appointment added to the already truly
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