Epstein: a prediction

I have read that Jeffrey Epstein used to document everything about his activities and clients, presumably as a form of insurance. Now that he is dead - rather mysteriously - his properties can be searched without hindrance.

I predict that nothing will be found that would prove any of the allegations or rumours made against some of the rich, powerful and famous people with whom he had been associated. Not at his homes, offices or lodged with his lawyers past and present.

For I'm confident that America is just as good at losing information as we are.

You may remember that in 1984 Conservative MP for Huddersfield, Geoffrey Dickens passed a file about paedophiles and child pornography to the then Home Secretary Leon Brittan. Dickens had been campaigning on this issue for some years and had even used Parliamentary privilege to name a former British High Commissioner. He claimed there was a paedophile network involving "big, big names – people in positions of power, influence and responsibility" and threatened to name them in the Commons also.

Brittan had told Dickens that the file would be passed to the police; Scotland Yard later said that they had no record of any such investigation. And in the same week that the dossier was given to Brittan, both Dickens' London flat and consituency home were broken into and ransacked - without any ordinary valuables being taken.

Also in the 1980s, it is said that former Labour Cabinet Minister and then MEP Barbara Castle gave investigative journalist Don Hale a dossier alleging the involvement of MPs and peers in the Paedophile Information Exchange. Hale was then visited by police and Special Branch and ordered to hand it over.

That file seems to have been lost, too.

Here's a challenge for a brave and tech-savvy blogger to take up: install one of those programs that identifies your readers' computer addresses and geographical locations, then run a piece titled something like "British VIP paedophile network: notarised copy of Geoffrey Dickens' 1984 file found among deceased lawyer's papers" - and see who looks in.

Or - and I guess this is best - let sleeping dogs lie. As Stalin liked to say, "A man, a problem; no man, no problem."