Premier Ewart Brown is being urged by advisors to refuse to answer detailed questions about his BHC involvement because it would open the floodgates to further probing.

That was the conclusion to an internal document given to The Royal Gazette by the Premier’s Press Secretary Glenn Jones in a damage limitation exercise after it was accidentally released.

The document also surfaced on Facebook.com and blog politics.bm yesterday.

Mr. Jones did not divulge the author, but said: “It was intended as an internal document but I accidentally sent it to some people in my address book and instead of trying to recall it I thought why not send it to everybody. In my view, it’s better out there in the public domain than in my desk drawer.”

The memo claims the BHC probe had exonerated targeted members of the PLP Government but had then been leaked to the press to scupper a summer election.

The document reads: “ "Five years later, as predictions for a July election by UBP spokespersons, newspaper editorial writers and columnists had hit high decibel levels, and precisely when the passing of Dame Lois Browne Evans had ignited black consciousness and PLP solidarity to an unprecedented level, two adversaries of the PLP Administration conspired with ZBM and The Royal Gazette/Mid Ocean News to use stolen Police files to sensationalise allegations of illegality in a calculated hatchet job against PLP targets.”

The Premier’s simulcast statement on the publication of the stolen material elicited immediate and requested action by the Governor, who promptly invited Scotland Yard to investigate the theft of the Police files.

FACT: The prompt Police intervention immediately flushed out two perpetrators who have been arrested for suspected possession of the stolen documents.

FACT:Had this not been the case, and had their motive been anything but flagrantly malicious, those two persons would have, before the investigation even began, declared themselves as the disseminators and immediately stated their reasons for collaborating. Instead the propagation of the stolen files and the ensuing slant for emphasis leaves a trail of guesses: what is their motivation, what is their promised reward, who’s making the promise?

FACT:There are calls from various PLP sources for response/rebuttal by the Premier/Party to the Anthrax Email and to the specifics it contains.

FACT: Those issues/allegations have already been exhaustively investigated; findings have been evaluated, assessed, and dismissed by the BHC investigation as being of no evidentiary value such as to warrant prosecution.

ITEM: Any response to any of the email specifics will trigger calls for responses to all allegations; an invitation for cameras to Gombey House to look for wooden beams, although beneficial in the short term, would be writing a blank cheque for further UBP-directed media invasion of privacy; would give the matter new oxygen; and would be the start of a zero sum game for the Premier and the government.

ITEM: PLP voices should be coordinated and massed like thunder in dissecting/condemning the conspiracy and the conspirators guilty of stealing the police files and releasing them to rain on the celebration of Dame Lois’ life, and to sabotage an expected election call; all because of political self interest, with a level of political nastiness that approaches evil.

ITEM: All of this could, as well, be scripted, produced, documentary style, by acknowledged talent which is immediately available to the Premier, and presented as a government report. The Opposition would make an issue out of that, would mount their own TV production attacking the government, and would thus make it a nakedly political issue.