Background
On 28 September 2003, The Sunday Times published an article alleging that between 1995 and (at least) 1997, British Aerospace had paid a firm directed by Evelyn LeChene to infiltrate CAAT and collect information about its workings and activities. In an attempt to discover who provided LeChene with this information, CAAT staff checked the office email log and discovered a record of suspicious activity in Martin Hogbin’s email account.
Martin was an active volunteer with CAAT from spring 1997 before joining CAAT’s staff in November 2001. Except for the period between November 2001 and September 2002 when a computer crash deleted the record, CAAT’s email software has records of unusual activity in Martin’s account throughout his time as a staff member. Between October 2002 and September 2003, Martin sent a large volume of email to a single email address, [email protected] (‘the jofa address’)*, about CAAT activities and internal information.
On legal advice, Martin was suspended on full pay on 3 October 2003 pending an investigation, however he resigned on 5 October before the investigation could begin. A meeting of CAAT Steering Committee on 11 October wished nonetheless to investigate and charged a team of four to carry this out.
Note: The name of the person @jofa.demon.co.uk has been changed in this published version of the report to protect the anonymity of the person alleged by Martin to have been the recipient.
