Bridgegate… you couldn’t make it up. A story that has a premise so daft it sounds like a bad conspiracy theory: A local politician fails to support a powerful governor and so, the latter’s staff closes down a busy bridge to extract political retribution. Too far-fetched, eh?

Apparently not.

Just as I returned from a freezing trip to the NE USA and finished reading the masterful ‘Double Down: Game Change 2012′ book by Mark Halperin and John Heileman about the 2012 Presidential Race the scandal involving NJ Governor Chris ‘Big Boy’ Christie breaks. The book itself is simply brilliant and a worthy follow-up to their superb ‘Game Change’ tome on the 2008 election that also became an HBO movie. Lots of the material deals with Christie’s ‘in/out/shake-it-all-about’ shenanigans as he tried to make his mind up about running for the Oval Office – one minute a larger-than-life GOP poster boy and the next lavishing praise on President Obama so effusive it almost gave Romney a heart-attack. He comes across as a calculating and bull-headed New Jersey ‘player’ fully aware of his status and impact whilst presenting himself as an ordinary man in the street.

The blow-up of the Birdgegate scandal and its fall-out in the past few days is fascinating, especially set against the character portrait the authors reveal in ‘Double Down. I am intrigued because I love covering the non-stop rough-and-tumble spectacle of US politics and I also enjoy the journalism that emerges from it. It’s not always great but it’s always compelling. This is a classic example of both. Anyone in the UK who thinks none of this has anything to do with us should remember that any one of these characters might end up in the White House.

I suspect Christie’s career is damaged badly in the short and medium-term as more federal investigations begin delving into the whole mess and as lawsuits start piling up too. Whether is means he’s fatally wounded for a future Oval Office bid – especially given the US’ political world’s ability to forgive and forget – is anyone’s guess.

Final point on how the story of Bridgegate broke is worth noting: It came the old fashioned way, through whistleblowers and hard-work from print-press journalists locally and nationally. The main publication that did the early heavy-lifting was The Record – based in Bergen New Jersey – who got the story through word of mouth, hard-digging and obtaining records before anyone else. In recent days there’s been a race – well, a scramble really – by the other outlets in the press, broadcast and online – to catch up. Too late. The little guys grabbed the big story first and did it through sheer hard-work and traditional journalism grit.

Lots has been written about the shift in journalism investigations because of technological changes (e.g. Wikileaks; Snowden etc). That’s all well and good. But it’s always nice to see a solid and important story emerge because of classic and tough reporting too. It might be a brave new world, but sometimes the right questions, contacts and a bit of shoe-leather does the trick just as well, if not better, than peering into the screen.

I hope – and predict – The Record’s team will win a Pulitzer this year.

The murder of Martha Moxley in Connecticut, USA on October 30th 1975 was shocking and brutal. The fact a cousin of the Kennedy family – Michael Skakel – was convicted in 2002, only added to the drama.

In 1999, I visited Martha’s mother Dorthy who was then living in New Jersey and interviewed her about the case. She was a dignified and proud woman, someone who gave much of herself during the interview and was an example of love and courage in her slain child’s name. I also spent time in Greenwich, Connecticut, the wealthy community where the crime happened. I spoke to sources and various parties connected to the case. The result was the article I am posting here: Link –  MARTHA MOXLEY MURDER

The reason for me doing this is because it’s been announced this week that convicted murderer Michael Skakel is due a retrial since, essentially, the judge reckons his original defence lawyer didn’t do a good enough job for his client. For his part, the convicted man Michael Skakel has always maintained his innocence.

One of the main advocates for the case against the Skakels was the the author Dominick Dunne. I always found Dunne’s work in Vanity Fair compulsive and very readable. We were in communication in the late 1990s following my coverage of a murder in Ireland of a French socialite for GQ magazine and we met afterwards for a lunch he organised for my wife and I at his home in Hadlyme, Connecticut. I liked him and, like many, found his life and career fascinating. He was generous with his time and advice.

Coincidentally, I also interviewed, in 2006 in Stockholm, his main opponent in the public media battle about the Moxley case and first cousin of the convicted Michael Skakel – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who I interviewed about a separate subject – and I also found him an interesting and formidable man.

Like other murders I have investigated, the Moxley case had its own peculiarities. The connection to one of the most written-about families in history – the Kennedys through marriage – was bizarre. The fact Dominick Dunne knew the family in his early ‘successful’ phase in Hollywood, was also weird and the coincidence that his own beautiful daughter Dominique Dunne was strangled seven years to the day after Martha Moxley was murdered was inexplicably painful. The fact I knew both sides of the legal debate, only added to the oddness of it for me personally.

However one specific issue that remained unsolved, was the murder weapon. It’s known a golf club was used. But one piece was missing – the handle. That was crucial, since it might have yielded a fingerprint or, in later years/decades, some DNA from the murderer. Speculation ensued about whether it had been stolen by the killer or even ‘disappeared’ by someone to protect the murderer.

Some years after this article was published I found myself talking to an individual at a gathering. He sought me out after learning I had investigated the case and proceeded to tell me in convincing detail, that he knew something about this crime and might even know something about that missing piece of the puzzle – the golf club handle. I smiled, listened and then filed the information away. The significance of the story was a bit lost on me since I had long since allowed the finer details of this story – one of many down the years – to slip off the edge of my mind. Moreover, I was involved in other investigations, academic research work and, most distracting of all, hoping/planning to become a father.

Later, Dominick Dunne passed away and I heard nothing more on this side of the Atlantic at least, about the Skakel case.

Then this week I learned that the case is being reopened. Once again it has already generated much heated debate in the media, including significant comment against the judgement from legal journalists I admire enormously. So I sat down and revisited my article and the original investigation. It’s still a shocking case. I am sure the retrial will be equally controversial.

And I find myself afresh wondering whether that anecdote I was told years ago might, after all, have been of some value. Time will tell.

The news in The Irish Times last week that the Irish media sector is facing a looming ‘crisis’ is a shame but not a shock.

Last year I was headhunted to become Managing Editor of Current Affairs at the state broadcaster RTE. After a thorough and enjoyable process stretching across months, including two trips to Ireland and meeting the station’s executive team, the appointment didn’t transpire for reasons I won’t bore you with.

Suffice to say, I enjoyed the process enormously and retain great respect for the executives I met from start to finish. I was left with a compelling feeling of overwhelming potential about where RTE might go if all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. However, research clearly indicated the Irish media as a whole was in trouble. RTE was particularly wounded in its investigations after the Fr Reynolds debacle. I have my fingers crossed it innovates, experiments and re-imagines its way back to its former Gold standard status in this kind of journalism.

A year on, I sense some stagnation across the board in the Irish media, including RTE, which is alarming. It doesn’t take a genius to see audiences are fragmenting at light speed, advertisers are looking elsewhere and journalism delivering ‘as usual’ is actually dying on its feet.

Some bold thinking and fresh ideas might still harness the talent pool that already exists. But the window of opportunity is closing fast.

I hope change is embraced for everyone’s sakes, but especially for the young person wondering whether to go into journalism as a career or not, looking for passion, inspiration and proof that RTE’s investigative journalism can still move, inspire and lead in covering and breaking news that matters.

Like many journalists I was sorry to learn of Sir David Frost’s death. He was a complete one-off and leaves behind an astonishing legacy. His output was colossal. Typically, he went with his boots on, still working whilst on a cruise – odd as that sounds  -  and I suspect he’d have wanted it no other way.

I was fortunate to have had the briefest of personal dealings with him two decades ago. I had just returned from working in the US for Channel 4, when I was dragooned into attending a farewell party in a London TV company’s HQ for – typical TV predicament – someone I didn’t even know. My job was turn up, enjoy the party and make sure everyone knew I was STV’s man. The whole thing was as flat as the lukewarm champagne being served and I was ready to skulk off early when suddenly David Frost materialised in our presence. Things perked up and the atmosphere lifted immediately. I managed to get into his orbit and chat about seeing him on US TV a week earlier interviewing one of my heroes, Ben Bradlee of Washington Post and Watergate fame. I gushed about how good the interview was and asked about seeing it again. He smiled, nodded and told some anecdotes in the way media people do. He asked for my card and contact details, I assumed out of old-fashioned good manners.  A few days later I got a call from his PA at Paradine Productions – his company – saying she’d been instructed to send along a VHS copy of the Bradlee interview to me by her boss. The tapes arrived a few days later with a hand-signed card wishing me all the best and signing off ‘I hope you enjoy them as much the second time around!’

I am not in the least bit surprised most Obituaries are noting that no one had a bad word to say about him.

RIP Sir David Frost.

And Thanks.

I was as shocked and horrified as anyone else this week by the appalling attack by two young men on the soldier in Woolwich, London. The image of the victim lying in the street dying as one of the suspects talked into a lens, with blood on his hands and still holding meat cleavers, was genuinely disturbing at the most primal of levels to anyone watching,

For me however, it’s been particularly unsettling.

Let me explain why.

In the 48hrs since the attacks I have been distracted by the face, voice and build of that man. He seemed familiar and I have spent hours trying to work out why.

I knew he reminded me of someone I once met and have never forgotten, but when I started digging through my notes, I more or less dismissed the imagined link. But I kept searching anyway. New information however, stopped me in my tracks.

The suspect’s name, according to reports, is Michael Adebolajo, a 29 year-old British man of Nigerian origin. Initially that didn’t help me. Moreover, when I discovered he’d changed his name to Mujahid, that confused me even more since I have no recollection or memory reference of having met anyone called that either.

However, the more I looked at the terrible video of him speaking into the camera, waving his blood splattered hands around, the more certain I became I’d met him during one of my investigations in 2004.

After more research, I discovered that this man was a follower of radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed. And it was then I realised that my connection might be actually correct.

You see in March 2004, I met the radical cleric – calling himself ‘Sheik’ Omar – in London (in a Burger King rather bizarrely) for an investigation I was doing for Esquire magazine into two UK suicide bombers who’d committed an atrocity in Israel. Some people regarded the radical Sheik who led the extremist group  al-Muhajiroun as a buffoon but I felt different. A source told me the two suicide bombers had been influenced heavily by the cleric, so I wanted to meet him and ask him about his knowledge of them. I came away utterly convinced the cleric knew far more about the suicide bombing operation than he was letting on. He scared me and I tried to convey that in the final paragraph of the article. You can read the investigation here.

Now throughout that memorable meeting Bakri Mohammed was accompanied to the meeting by a very intense, well-built and glowering young black man. Before I’d started taping the encounter, I discovered the pair of them – quite thoughtfully – had already bought me some fast food from the Burger King we were sitting in: I gently declined their kind offer and so the cleric shrugged, then happily tucked into a second Chicken Royale and also helped himself to another large strawberry milkshake. I heard the large young man speak and realised he was a local Londoner and asked him what his name was – he looked at the cleric clearly seeking permission – and then told me in a quiet voice that I could refer to him as ‘Abdul’. He sat silent throughout the entire meeting literally staring at me non-stop, something I found unsettling and a little annoying. I tried to engage him in conversation and he refused to say much. Only after the tape-recorder was switched off did he briefly discuss religion, referring to Jesus using the Hebrew name of Yeshua, and bemoaning the country’s lack of belief in proper religions. 

That name he referred to himself with – ‘Abdul’ – didn’t help me much as I tried to join the dots.

Until today when I read an article in The Independent newspaper.

It connects the cleric to the Woolwich attacker and there, halfway down, it also states he did indeed have a third name – one he used in between ‘ Michael Adebolajo’ and the more recent ‘Mujahid’. That name – according to Bakri Mohammed himself – was… ‘Abdullah’. The article also lays out his closeness to the cleric, how he became radicalised post-2003 and his movements in that whole timeframe. Everything fits with my recollections.

To triple-check my memory however, I pulled out from my archives this morning the actual 11-page transcript of my interview on March 16th, 2004 with the cleric and this man. As I said, he sat silently throughout the actual recording so I didn’t expect to find much, but after a couple of searches I found, on Page 3 of the 4,409 word transcript, a single reference to me asking the staring black ‘minder’ of the the Sheik a simple question – and I used the name he’d given me when we first met minutes before – ‘Abdul’.

I would therefore state, with perhaps an 85-90% certainty, that the 29year-old man with the meat cleaver and bloodied hands who jointly carried out the Woolwich murder of 25 year-old soldier Lee Rigby, and the 20 year-old minder to the radical preacher I met in North London in March 2004, were the same person.

This photo was taken in London 2007, some three years after I met the man who called himself ‘Abdul’. The same man – as far as I can tell – is circled in this image. He bears a very strong resemblance to the man who accompanied Omar Bakri Mohammed when I interviewed him. The expression in this image was identical to the sullen one he wore throughout our meeting, leading me to strongly believe he was, as I described him in the investigation, the radical cleric’s ‘minder’. He is pictured here with another well-known radical preacher Anjem Choudary.

My final recollection of the encounter – an anecdote I have mentioned frequently in lectures to students because I never forgot it – was when we wrapped up the interview, the pair muttered to each other and then invited me back to a local flat. They said they had some interesting ‘martyr’ videos I might find interesting and could assist me with my investigation.

I politely declined.

I am delighted to announce that a new BBC Radio 4 documentary I have been working on recently will air on Saturday May 11th at 8pm,

‘Heroes and Hacks’ examines Watergate on its 40th anniversary and evaluates its legacy for journalism and society. I interviewed all the legendary ‘greats’ – including quite a few of my own heroes – including: Bob Woodward, Len Downie, John Pilger, Heather Brooke and Nick Davies. There’s even a short clip of me interviewing Ben Bradlee over 20 years ago (which indicates how long I have been studying the topic!). I am planning a new academic/trade book and multi-platform digital project on this in the next 12-18 months.

It was great fun to do and the production company who produced it for BBC Radio 4 – Whistledown Productions – were superb. Special thanks to producer Colin McNulty for all his hard work and help.

I was invited recently to give expert evidence in the Scottish Parliament on the future of investigative journalism in Scotland in the wake of press regulation proposals. The Education and Culture Committee were were well-briefed on the thorny topic and its members asked some very engaging questions. I was delighted to follow on from Lord McLuskey who wrote the recent report for the Government and also deliver my evidence alongside Pete Murray from the National Union of Journalist who is not only a widely respected colleague but a great pal.

Of course the most surreal part of all was realising halfway through my evidence that one of the committee members was none other than an old school friend who I hadn’t seen since the Physics class nearly 30 years before. What a way to meet the lovely Clare Adamson MSP again.

The whole morning was filmed and is available here.

On the 200th anniversary of Scottish explorer David Livingstone’s birth, I was very proud to be one of the architects of a new scholars programme for journalists from Malawi. He attended the university where I work – the University of Strathclyde – when it was a mere college. Fittingly, until recently when I moved offices, I also worked for a decade in the Livingstone Tower which was named after him, walking past a statue of him every morning.

It took 6 months working with the Deputy Editor of Scotland on Sunday newspaper Kenny Farquharson, my colleague Dr Jane Andrews from the university’s David Livingstone Centre for Sustainability and staff from the office of Cabinet Secretary for Education Michael Russell – who personally supported this – from Scottish Government to make this happen. We’re all very proud and look forward to it coming to fruition later this year.

Meantime here are two fantastic articles in Scotland on Sunday announcing the new plans.

A new BBC Radio Scotland series of programmes begins soon as part of a ‘Crime and Punishment’ season.

The first 30 minute broadcast is entirely devoted to covering my professional investigative work over the last 24 years, in particular the 13 years I devoted to the Robert Brown miscarriage of justice case – reckoned to be one of the longest in the UK and certainly the worst involving a Scottish prisoner.

It was flattering to be asked to participate and discuss my work. The questions from host Neil Mackay were interesting and wide-ranging. It’s the first time in my career I’ve really been asked to examine my personal motives for doing investigative work and to be recorded over 90+ mins for a 30 mins broadcast was a new experience. It’ll be interesting to see what’s included and what gets cut out…

You can find the programme here and listen to it live on the day or afterwards via the iPlayer: BBC Radio Scotland – Covering Crime with Eamonn O’Neill Thursday 14th March 2013 2.05pm.

I am delighted to announce the publication of new academic book called ‘After Leveson? The Future for British Journalism’. I contributed a chapter on the possible ‘Chilling Effect’ of the Leveson Report on investigative journalism in the UK. My analysis took into account research I’ve carried out on the complex and unpredictable aftermath of the Watergate scandal in the 1974-2000 timeframe in the USA. I connected this to the thought-provoking ‘Cultural Chaos’ theory introduced in his book of the same name by my former Univ of Strathclyde colleague Prof. Brian McNair now on the faculty of Queensland University of Technology. I found much to commend in his analysis and believe his progressive conclusions tie-in with my examination of what happened after the so-called high-point of the genre in the USA. It’s available here: ‘After Leveson? The Future for British Journalism’.