Steve M has already wondered how the Russell panel came up with the three instances of (alleged) subversion of the peer review process that they decided to investigate, a question that was put to the panel by Pamela Nash.
Muir Russell spoke of a footnote in my report that says it was unclear, in one instance, what the particular allegation was. The footnote concerned relates to the McIntyre & McKitrick paper in GRL. Anyone who has read the Hockey Stick Illusion will know the story, but briefly, climate scientists are seen discussing getting rid of the editor in charge of McIntyre's paper. The only slight confusion is over what happened to Saiers - it has been claimed by some that Jones et al were innocent of the charge because Saiers remained at the journal for some time after these events. As I pointed out in the GWPF report, the allegation is that these threats seem to have led to Saiers being removed as editor responsible for the M&M paper, not that he was removed completely from the journal. The central claim is the same either way - namely that the journal was threatened.
In other words the confusion was slight, and should not have led the Russell panel to avoid what was an allegation central to the whole Climategate story rather than the peripheral ones they actually "investigated". (Muir Russell's claim that these were the instances everyone was getting worked up about is not correct.)
The immediate investigation of this aspect of Climategate should have been simple and straightforward: it was simply a matter of finding out what the CRU scientists and their colleagues had said to the journals concerned. It is astonishing that at the end of four investigations in the UK alone, we still have no idea if Jones et al actually followed up on the ideas revealed in the Climategate emails, and issued threats to journals and their editors.