Joe McCrea

Joe McCrea was the former Special Adviser to Frank Dobson from 1997-9 (he also worked for Dobson in opposition for 4 years). He is now the Project Manager of the Knowledge Network Project (KNP) at the Cabinet Office. He is said to have ordered the playing of New Labour's favourite song "Things can only get better" at his wedding reception in 1999!

The KNP is a computer system that provides the correct 'line' across Government departments on any subject, and as a result McCrea has been accused of attempting to use the (supposedly 'neutral') Civil Service to create a powerful propaganda tool for Governtment Ministers. The idea is very similar to one that McCrea used when he worked for Frank Dobson at the Department of Health. The KNP system was provided by a consortium that included IBM and Lotus UK, who were awarded a £10 million contract in September 2000. Lotus, a wholly-owned subsidiary of IBM, provided a software system for the Labour Party HQ at Millbank in 1999 (Lord Mitchell revealed in February 2001 that "Lotus has worked for the party for some time and I persuaded them to do a lot of work at Millbank for next to nothing."). Joe McCrea was a speaker at the 2000 Lotus Global Government Forum in Washington. Along with his boss, Nicky Oppenheimer, his speech was followed shortly by speeches from representatives of the CIA, the German Defence Department and the CBI. Keynote speaker of the day was General Colin Powell.

One of the KNP's other applications will be to provide regionally presented statistics on the internet (which are already available on the Government's Secure Intranet) to back up Government campaigns. McCrea is said to have masterminded the production of similar regional figures in the Government's 2000 'Annual Report'. As with all statistics used in this way, you get what the Government wants you to get and there's never quite the same effort to present 'off-message' facts and figures. This control of access to information has been described as a "knowledge hierarchy" with the Labour Government at the top.

At the 1999 Labour Party Conference, Joe McCrea confronted a reporter who had used information he didn't like in a news report on the NHS, yelling 'You fucking lying bitch, you stitched me up!' and smashing a mobile phone.