WHO IS THE CHATTY RAT?
Dominic Cummings NOT cleared from leaking lockdown secrets, top civil servant says – and culprit may NEVER be found
DOMINIC Cummings' boast to have been cleared from leaking lockdown secrets was not backed up by Britain’s top civil servant - and spies hunting the "chatty rat" may never get their man.
Cabinet Secretary Simon Case also tore up Cummings' incendiary blog claims Boris had suppressed a probe into last year’s leak to protect a pal of his fiancee Carrie Symonds.
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Hauled before MPs to explain why no one has been caught five months after the planned November lockdown was leaked early, the newbie mandarin insisted that one had yet been found guilty or cleared.
But the head of the civil service was forced to admit the "source or sources" may never be found, despite top secret intelligence agency work trying to track them down for months.
However Case all but confirmed the security services had been brought into probe the leak, but he admitted no criminal activity or breach of the Official Secrets Act had taken place.
However he hinted the methods used to try to snare the ‘Chatty Rat’ were top secret spy craft, telling MPs he was “under restraints related to classification.”
Case infuriated the MPs during a sometimes painful evidence session, hiding behind classified secrets and ongoing investigations to avoid giving straight answers.
The youngest ever Whitehall boss, 42, was compared to a “badly scripted version” of hit BBC satire “Yes, Minister” after the 130 minute sleaze roasting.
Sacked Downing Street aide Mr Cummings claimed in his incendiary “Nuclear Dom” blogpost last week that Mr Case had told him last year that he was not a suspect for the leak.
But speaking before the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee Mr Case declined to back up that version of events.
Mr Cummings also accused Mr Johnson of wanting to shelve the probe as one of the suspects was Henry Newman, an aide who is a close pal of Ms Symonds.
But Mr Case insisted "at no point has this investigation been in any way de-prioritised, it is in the hands of professional investigators who have a range of tools and techniques at their disposal".
Asked if he accepted what was said in Mr Cummings' blog, Mr Case would only say: "I am constrained in what I can say because it's in the context of an ongoing investigation."
Probed by Tory MP David Jones if he had authorised Downing Street to tell the media that neither Mr Cummings nor then communications director Lee Cain were the leakers, Mr Case said: "I am not trying to frustrate, but this is drawing me into details of an ongoing investigation which - for reasons I have set out - I can't go into in this setting."
He said Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle was being updated on the investigation in secret, under Privy Council terms.
Committee chairman William Wragg suggested that "relatively few" people would have known the information leaked in October "so it's a rather small pool in which to fish" in order to find the culprit behind the leak of the lockdown.
Mr Case said: "I'm not trying to frustrate you or other members of the committee on this but we are going here into the details of the investigation and who knew what and this is an area where I am constrained because if I go further on this it will start to reveal the details of the investigation."
But angry MPs on the Committee accused Case of stonewalling, comparing it to satire.
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Labour’s John McDonnell said: "I don't want to be rude Mr Case but this is coming across as a badly scripted version of 'Yes, Minister'."
And Tory Mr Wragg hit out: “Mr Case you have known you are coming to this committee for a number of weeks now and there are a number of topical issues… I am surprised you have not been better furnished with the answers to give to the committee.”
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