book which had not been included in the published version. Foot successfully sued for libel, winning "substantial" damages. In 1997–98, the paper ran a series of exclusive stories based on revelations from Richard Tomlinson, a former MI6 spy, about life inside MI6 and secret MI6 operations around the world. During the siege of the United Nations compound in East Timor in 1999, the paper's foreign reporter, Marie Colvin, was one of only three journalists (all women) who remained to the end with the 1,500 people trapped there. She reported their plight both in The Sunday Times and in interviews on radio and television and was widely credited with saving their lives. In 2003, The Sunday Times published confidential Whitehall documents revealing the names of more than 300 people who had declined New Year's, Queen's Birthday and Dissolution honours (i.e. knighthoods, OBEs, etc.) In 2006, in an investigation that became known as "cash for honours", The Sunday Times revealed how several prominent figures nominated for life peerages by the then prime minister, Tony Blair, had loaned large amounts of money to the Labour Party at the suggestion of Lord Levy, a Labour Party fundraiser. In mid-2009, the newspaper ran a series of articles revealing how politicians were abusing the expenses system. Between 2004 and 2010, the newspaper ran an award-winning investigation by Brian Deer which revealed that research by Andrew Wakefield into the MMR vaccine was fraudulent. The investigation led to Wakefield being banned from medicine, and the retraction of his research from The Lancet. In March 2010, undercover reporters from The Sunday Times Insight team filmed members of parliament agreeing to work for a fictitious lobbying firm for fees of £3,000–£5,000 a day. One of those implicated, Stephen Byers, described himself as "sort of like a cab for hire". In October 2010, an investigation by the newspaper exposed corruption within FIFA after a member of the association's committee which grants the World Cup guaranteed his vote to an undercover reporter after requesting £500,000 for a "personal project". In 2011, the paper broke what became known as the cash for influence scandal: it revealed that Adrian Severin, Ernst Strasser, Pablo Zalba Bidegain and Zoran Thaler tried to influence EU legislation in exchange for promised money. Both Strasser and Thaler resigned in March 2011. In March 2012, the paper filmed Peter Cruddas, the co-treasurer of the Conservative Party, offering access to David