The Crown and the CIA cables

[On this date in 2000, members of the prosecution team at the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist were given access at the United States embassy in the Netherlands to the unredacted cables sent by Abdul Majid Giaka’s CIA handlers to headquarters in Langley, Virginia. What follows is taken from an account of the trial by David Morrison which was published in March 2001:]

On 1 June last year [2000] after the trial in Camp Zeist had started the prosecution at last saw uncensored versions of CIA cables about Giaka and became aware of the awful truth of Giaka’s history, which if revealed to the defence would mean that his credibility as a prosecution witness would be undermined.  When the defence applied to the Court for the same access to the cables, desperate to protect their key witness, the prosecution lied to the Court that the censored material would [not] be useful to the defence (see below). The person who told this enormous whopper was the Lord Advocate, the chief law officer of Scotland, who led for the prosecution at Camp Zeist.

As we have said, the key prosecution witness at the trial in Camp Zeist was Abdul Majid Giaka.  Without him, the two Libyans, Megrahi and Fhimah, would never have been indicted.  Whenever, in the intervening years, journalists and others questioned the soundness of the case against them, the prosecuting authorities in Edinburgh and Washington always responded by boasting that they had a witness who could connect the accused directly with the Lockerbie bomb.  The witness in question was Giaka.

Giaka was a member of the Libyan intelligence service, the JSO, who in August 1988 a few months before the Lockerbie bombing offered his services to the CIA.  In July 1991 he gave the CIA startling eyewitness evidence connecting Megrahi and Fhimah with the Lockerbie bomb (whereupon he was taken to the US and put on a witness protection programme, where he has remained ever since).  A few months later in November 1991, they were charged with the bombing in Scotland and the US.  Without Giaka’s evidence, they would never have been charged.

The credibility of any witness should be of concern to prosecuting authorities.  The more so when he is the key witness in the biggest murder trial in British history with profound geopolitical implications.  Even more so when he is a former member of Libyan intelligence who has defected to the CIA and who stood to receive $4 million of reward money from the US government if his evidence was instrumental in securing a conviction for the Lockerbie bombing.

Plainly, it was incumbent upon the Scottish prosecuting authorities to look upon Giaka’s evidence with a very sceptical eye and to assess his credibility as a witness thoroughly before charging the two Libyans.  This they failed to do.  Crucially, they failed to get sight of uncensored versions of the regular cables about him sent by his CIA handlers in Malta to CIA headquarters in Langley in the period from August 1988 onwards, which contained the CIA’s own assessment of his credibility.  It seems that prior to the charges being laid in November 1991 the CIA had allowed them to see censored versions of the cables with large parts blacked out.  But it wasn’t until 1 June 2000, after the trial in Camp Zeist had begun, that they saw uncensored versions of these cables.

It was, unsurprisingly, the blacked out parts which were relevant to an assessment of Giaka’s credibility.  They revealed that, as of 1 September 1989 when he had been working for the CIA for over a year (and months after the destruction of Pan Am 103), Giaka’s CIA handlers were highly critical of him and of the lack of important information supplied by him.  He is described as a man in the business of selling information for his own benefit; as someone who will never have the penetration of Libyan intelligence services that had been anticipated; as someone who had never been a true member of Libyan intelligence; and as someone whose CIA salary of $1000 per month should be cut off if he supplied no significant information.  The clear inference from this is that by 1 September 1989 Giaka had still not given his CIA masters the crucial eyewitness “evidence” incriminating Megrahi and Fhimah, otherwise these criticisms of his value and of the worth of the information supplied by him could not have been made.

Had the Scottish prosecuting authorities done their job in 1991 and made it their business to acquaint themselves with the CIA’s experience of Giaka then Megrahi and Fhimah would never have been charged – and Libya would not have had economic sanctions imposed on it for most of the 90s for refusing to extradite them.  Clearly, the CIA deliberately kept vital information about Giaka’s lack of credibility as a witness from the Scottish prosecuting authorities.  But it was their job to make sure their key witness was credible, to demand a full account of Giaka’s history with the CIA and to bring charges against the two Libyans only if that history revealed him to be credible. (...)

The prosecution saw the uncensored versions of the CIA cables about Giaka on 1 June last year at the US embassy in The Hague, having promised to keep the censored parts confidential.  How this came about is not clear.  Presumably, the prosecution made a request to the CIA.  If so, it was not obviously a sensible thing to do from their point of view.  There is a clear obligation in Scottish law that the prosecution has a duty to disclose to the defence any information which supports the defence case or casts doubt upon the prosecution case.  In principle, therefore, information from the uncensored cables which undermined Giaka’s credibility would have to be disclosed to the defence, and a confidentiality agreement with the CIA could not override that principle.  So, on the face of it, from the prosecution point of view it would have been far better if they had remained in ignorance.

(Why the CIA consented to the prosecution seeing the uncensored cables is also a puzzle, since they must have known that there was a grave danger that as a result Giaka would be discredited and the trial would collapse.  At the time there was some public controversy about the CIA failing to make information available for the trial and at one point the Director of the CIA, George Tenet, made a statement to the victims’ families saying that the CIA was committed to making every relevant piece of evidence available to the Court.  Perhaps that’s why the CIA felt obliged to give the prosecution unrestricted access of the cables for the first time.)

When the prosecution saw uncensored versions of the cables on 1 June 2000, they must have been panic stricken since their key witness had being revealed to be utterly unreliable.  They kept quiet about their sight of the uncensored cables for three months until 21 August, the day before the trial was due to resume after its summer recess.  When the defence applied to the Court next day for access to the uncensored cables, the prosecution objected strenuously and simply lied to the Court that the censored material would be useful to the defence.

The Lord Advocate of Scotland, who led for the Crown at the trial, told the Court that the members of the prosecution team who saw the uncensored CIA cables were fully aware of the obligation upon them to make available to the defence teams material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, considered the contents of those cables with certain principles in mind.

He said:

“First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions [the censored material] which would undermine the Crown case in any way.  Secondly, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Mr Majid [Giaka]. They also considered whether there was anything which might bear upon the special defences which had been lodged and intimated in this case. On all of these matters, … [they] reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made on may be made, having regard to the special defence... I emphasise that the redactions have been made on the basis of what is in the interests of the security of a friendly power... Crown counsel was satisfied that there was nothing within the documents which bore upon the defence case in any way.”

One of the trial judges, Lord Coulsfield, then intervened:

“Does that include, Lord Advocate ... that Crown counsel, having considered the documents, can say to the Court that there is nothing concealed which could possibly bear on the credibility of this witness?”

To which the Lord Advocate replied:

“… there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid [Giaka] on these matters”.

That is a barefaced lie by the chief law officer of the Crown in Scotland.  The uncensored cables revealed, amongst other things, that the CIA believed Giaka to be in the business of selling information for his own benefit.  One doesn’t have to be a lawyer, let alone the chief law officer in Scotland, to recognise that this “impinges upon the credibility” of Giaka as a witness, as did other matters from the uncensored cables.  A witness in court who is caught out lying can be charged with perjury and even gaoled, but the chief law officer of the Crown in Scotland can apparently lie with impunity.

However, the Lord Advocate’s lies were in vain.  The Court did not accept that the defence should be denied access to the uncensored cables and he was instructed by the Court “to use his best endeavours to ensure that the information in the unedited cables was disclosed to the defence”.  The CIA conceded that the defence could see the unedited cables – they had to, otherwise the case would most likely have collapsed – and for the first time in history CIA internal documents were made available to foreign court.

With the aid of the unedited cables, the defence destroyed Giaka’s credibility as a witness when he gave evidence on 26-28 September.

The disgraceful CIA Giaka cables saga recalled

[Fourteen years ago on this date the Scottish Court in the Netherlands was considering the implications of the CIA cables relating to Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka, which had just been made available to the defence, over the Crown’s vigorous objections. Here is how the proceedings were recorded at the time on TheLockerbieTrial.com website:]

Richard Keen QC for Fhimah described the CIA cables, which were made available to the defence today, as "highly relevant" to the defence case.

Keen told the court that the idea that they were not relevant is inconceivable.

[The] Lord Advocate told the court on Tuesday that the redacted passages in the CIA cables were irrelevant to the defence case. He [Richard Keen] said some of the disclosed material goes beyond issue of reliability and credibility to the heart of this case and the defence may now have to consider their position with respect to the trial.

William Taylor QC for Megrahi said that if Giaka is to give evidence on Monday the defence would require more time to review the information contained in the cables. Mr Keen said that a preliminary glance at the cables indicate that at least one additional witness required to be precognosced and this witness is outside Holland and Scotland. He sought confirmation from the Lord Advocate that what has been produced is what the Crown have seen.

The Lord Advocate indicated that there were deletions, which he understood were names but that he would require to speak to Mr Turnbull [Advocate Depute Alan Turnbull QC] and address the court on Monday in respect of whether the deletions are the same.

Analysis

The Crown appears to be on the defensive again regarding the issue of the CIA cables.

It seems clear that Giaka will not now testify on Monday and if the defence are granted a week long adjournment to examine the issue further then the earliest that Giaka will testify is Tuesday, 5 September.

The case does appear now to be totally disjointed with different chapters of evidence interweaving with the Giaka cables.

Several relatives of those who died on Pan Am 103 are also concerned at what might be contained in the CIA cables.

One made the point to me [Ian Ferguson, website co-editor] that they are concerned that Giaka was a paid informer for the CIA before the bombing. "Some family members," he said "shudder at the possibility, that if Giaka did tell the CIA about the planning of the bombing, then why was nothing done about it."

[My account of the CIA cables saga, as published in The Scotsman on 23 July 2007, reads as follows:]

The behaviour of the Crown in the Lockerbie trial was certainly not beyond criticism - and indeed it casts grave doubt on the extent to which the Lord Advocate and Crown Office staff can be relied on always to place the interest of securing a fair trial for the accused above any perceived institutional imperative to obtain a conviction.

To illustrate this in the context of the Lockerbie trial, it is enough to refer to the saga of CIA cables relating to the star Crown witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, who had been a long-standing CIA asset in Libya and, by the time of the trial, was living in the US in a witness protection programme. Giaka's evidence was ultimately found by the court to be utterly untrustworthy. This was largely due to the devastating effectiveness of the cross-examination by defence counsel. Their ability to destroy completely the credibility of the witness stemmed from the contents of cables in which his CIA handlers communicated to headquarters the information that Giaka had provided to them in the course of their secret meetings. Discrepancies between Giaka's evidence-in-chief to the Advocate Depute and the contents of these contemporaneous cables enabled the defence to mount a formidable challenge to the truthfulness and accuracy, or credibility and reliability, of Giaka's testimony. Had the information contained in these cables not been available to them, the task of attempting to demonstrate to the court that Giaka was an incredible or unreliable witness would have been more difficult, and perhaps impossible.

Yet the Crown strove valiantly to prevent the defence obtaining access to these cables. At the trial, on 22 August 2000, when he was seeking to persuade the Court to deny the defence access to those cables in their unedited or uncensored form, the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, stated that the members of the prosecution team who were given access to the uncensored CIA cables on 1 June 2000 [Advocate Depute Alan Turnbull QC and Procurator Fiscal Norman McFadyen] were fully aware of the obligation incumbent upon them as prosecutors to make available to the defence material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, approached the contents of those cables with certain considerations in mind.

Boyd said: "First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions which would undermine the Crown case in any way. Second, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Majid... On all of these matters, the learned Advocate Depute reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special defence... I emphasise that the redactions have been made on the basis of what is in the interests of the security of a friendly power... Crown counsel was satisfied that there was nothing within the documents which bore upon the defence case in any way."

One judge, Lord Coulsfield, then intervened: "Does that include, Lord Advocate... that Crown counsel, having considered the documents, can say to the Court that there is nothing concealed which could possibly bear on the credibility of this witness?"

The Lord Advocate replied: "Well, I'm just checking with the counsel who made that... there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Majid on these matters."

Notwithstanding the opposition of the Lord Advocate, the court ordered the unedited cables to be made available to the defence, who went on to use their contents to such devastating effect in questioning Giaka that the court held that his evidence had to be disregarded in its entirety. Yet, strangely enough, the judges did not see fit publicly to censure the Crown for its inaccurate assurances that the cables contained nothing that could assist the defence.

Trial examines 'secret' CIA papers

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2000. It reads in part:]

The Lockerbie trial has been shown the CIA documents at the centre of a dispute between prosecution and defence lawyers.

Scotland's senior law official, Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, said the papers - which contain details of cable communications - featured new information.

He said the documents included remarks made by Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka, who worked as a CIA agent at Malta Airport and whom the prosecution wants to call as a witness at the trial.

Mr Boyd said: "This is the first time the CIA has produced evidence for a foreign court.

"It may also be the first time that cables themselves have been used in any court either in the US or outwith.

"It's been emphasised to me that the amount of information now in the public domain far exceeds that ever put in the public domain before by the CIA in relation to these events."

Mr Boyd said he watched last week at the US Embassy in The Hague as a CIA records custodian identified as William McNair undid deletions in the cables from Giaka, whom crown prosecutors refer to as "Mr Majid".

He said: "I can tell the court that everything Mr Majid is reported to have said in these cables is revealed except for three matters."

These refer to the identities of CIA informants and methods of operation.

Newly revealed information included references to CIA payments to Giaka and his request for "sham surgery" to secure a waiver from military service in Libya.

There is also mention of payments from the CIA he could receive in return for giving evidence.

Giaka has been living for the last 10 years under a witness protection scheme in the US and is regarded as a crucial witness against the accused men. He is expected to take the stand later this week. (...)

Arguments over the CIA papers have dominated the last few days of the trial of the two Libyans who are said to have bombed Pan AM flight 103 over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie.

The special court in the Netherlands was adjourned on Monday to give the defence time to consider the new information.

[RB: What follows is part of an account of the CIA cables saga written by me for The Scotsman  some ten years ago:]

The behaviour of the Crown in the Lockerbie trial was certainly not beyond criticism - and indeed it casts grave doubt on the extent to which the Lord Advocate and Crown Office staff can be relied on always to place the interest of securing a fair trial for the accused above any perceived institutional imperative to obtain a conviction.

To illustrate this in the context of the Lockerbie trial, it is enough to refer to the saga of CIA cables relating to the star Crown witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, who had been a long-standing CIA asset in Libya and, by the time of the trial, was living in the US in a witness protection programme. Giaka's evidence was ultimately found by the court to be utterly untrustworthy. This was largely due to the devastating effectiveness of the cross-examination by defence counsel. Their ability to destroy completely the credibility of the witness stemmed from the contents of cables in which his CIA handlers communicated to headquarters the information that Giaka had provided to them in the course of their secret meetings. Discrepancies between Giaka's evidence-in-chief to the Advocate Depute and the contents of these contemporaneous cables enabled the defence to mount a formidable challenge to the truthfulness and accuracy, or credibility and reliability, of Giaka's testimony. Had the information contained in these cables not been available to them, the task of attempting to demonstrate to the court that Giaka was an incredible or unreliable witness would have been more difficult, and perhaps impossible.

Yet the Crown strove valiantly to prevent the defence obtaining access to these cables. At the trial, on 22 August 2000, when he was seeking to persuade the Court to deny the defence access to those cables in their unedited or uncensored form, the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, stated that the members of the prosecution team who were given access to the uncensored CIA cables on 1 June 2000 were fully aware of the obligation incumbent upon them as prosecutors to make available to the defence material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, approached the contents of those cables with certain considerations in mind.

Boyd said: "First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions which would undermine the Crown case in any way. Second, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Majid... On all of these matters, the learned Advocate Depute reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special defence... I emphasise that the redactions have been made on the basis of what is in the interests of the security of a friendly power... Crown counsel was satisfied that there was nothing within the documents which bore upon the defence case in any way."

One judge, Lord Coulsfield, then intervened: "Does that include, Lord Advocate... that Crown counsel, having considered the documents, can say to the Court that there is nothing concealed which could possibly bear on the credibility of this witness?"

The Lord Advocate replied: "Well, I'm just checking with the counsel who made that... there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Majid on these matters."

Notwithstanding the opposition of the Lord Advocate, the court ordered the unedited cables to be made available to the defence, who went on to use their contents to such devastating effect in questioning Giaka that the court held that his evidence had to be disregarded in its entirety. Yet, strangely enough, the judges did not see fit publicly to censure the Crown for its inaccurate assurances that the cables contained nothing that could assist the defence.

CIA Giaka cables and perverting the course of justice

[It was on this date in 2000 that two members of the Camp Zeist prosecution team viewed, at the United States embassy in the Netherlands, CIA cables relating to Abdul Majid Giaka. What follows is an excerpt from an article published in The Herald in March 2012:]

A key witness against Megrahi was a former Libyan Arab Airlines colleague, Majid Giaka, who was also a junior intelligence officer and CIA informant. At trial the defence were provided with partially redacted CIA cables about him.

After two of the Crown team had viewed almost complete cables on 1 June 2000, the Lord Advocate assured the court that the blanked out sections were of no relevance.

However, when less redacted versions were eventually released they cast further doubt on Giaka’s credibility. In their application to the SCCRC, Megrahi’s lawyers, who were not those who represented him at trial, argued that the failure to release the full, unredacted cables breached Megrahi’s right to a fair trial.

Remarkably, the SCCRC was not allowed to view the full cables, but having read the partially redacted ones, it commented:

It is difficult to understand the Lord Advocate’s assurances to the court on 22 August 2000 that there was “nothing within these documents which relate to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid on these matters”. The matter is all the more serious given that part of the reason for viewing the cables on 1 June 2000 was precisely in order to assess whether information behind the redacted sections reflected upon Majid’s credibility.

[RB: These events form the basis of one of the nine allegations of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial made by Justice for Megrahi and which are currently under investigation by Police Scotland. What follows is an excerpt from the section in JfM’s press outline relating to this allegation:]

The witness who testified to having seen Mr al-Megrahi and Mr Fhimah with the suspicious-looking suitcase [at Malta’s Luqa Airport] was one Majid Giaka, a Libyan national who had worked for the Libyan security services and who was a CIA informer. Giaka was originally the Crown’s star witness, and without his evidence it is likely that the indictments would not have been issued against the Libyan suspects in the first place.

Giaka’s testimony was originally contained in contemporaneous cables sent by his CIA handlers to Washington when he provided the crucial evidence - mainly in 1991. These cables were presented in court in a severely redacted form, raising the question of whether the redacted passages might contain information damaging to the Crown case. In June 2000 members of the prosecution team were for the first time allowed by the American lawyers present to see the cables in an unredacted form. The defence applied to the Bench to have similar sight of the cables, however this request was strenuously opposed by the prosecution.

During the course of the discussion of this matter, Lord Coulsfield specifically asked the Lord Advocate Colin Boyd whether the redacted passages contained anything which might possibly bear on the credibility of the witness Majid Giaka. The Lord Advocate then consulted a colleague on the prosecution team who had had personal sight of the unredacted cables. After receiving his reply, the Lord Advocate informed the Bench that “.... there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Majid on these matters.”

Despite this assurance the Bench did in fact order the unredacted cables to be provided to the defence team. The contents of the redacted passages demonstrated Giaka to be entirely untrustworthy, and by referring to these passages Mr Taylor for the defence was able to mount a successful challenge to the credibility and reliability of Giaka’s testimony. It is abundantly clear that the reassurance given to the Lord Advocate and passed on by him to the Court was wholly false. It was accepted by the court that there was no evidence at all to connect either accused to a brown hardshell suitcase, at Luqa or anywhere else.

This provides prima facie evidence of an attempt to pervert the course of justice on the part of those members of the prosecution team who were aware of the contents of the redacted cables, and gave the Lord Advocate information they knew to be false, knowing that he in his turn would communicate this false information to the Court.

These facts have been in the public domain since June 2000, and it is unclear why no action has ever been taken against those members of the legal profession responsible.

Giaka's second day in witness box

[On this date in 2000, Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka spent his second day in the witness box at the Lockerbie trial. What follows is the contemporaneous report published on TheLockerbieTrial.com:]

The Crown's star witness returned to the witness box today for a continuation of the defence counsel's attacks started yesterday by William Taylor QC for Megrahi. Today he was branded a "liar" and as a desperate man who made "incredible" claims to his CIA paymasters.

Giaka was accused by both Richard Keen QC for Fhimah and Taylor of fabricating crucial evidence to stay on with the CIA when it became clear that they were about to ditch him.

William Taylor said that two years after the Lockerbie bombing, CIA telegrams revealed Giaka was a "shattered" man who desperately needed to come up with new information for his CIA handlers.

He suggested Giaka offered new information within hours of a make-or-break meeting with the CIA and US Department of Justice officials.

The Americans, he suggested were saying "come up with something and the future is rosy, come up with nothing and you're cut off without a penny."

The court heard, that only then did Giaka say he saw one of the defendants with a suitcase like the one which contained the bomb, a "fact" that he had failed to mention in his previous two years as a CIA informer.

The defence team also highlighted the bizarre claims Giaka made to the CIA about Libyan leader Colonel Qadafi being a freemason. In one episode, more reminiscent of a farce than a Scottish murder trial, Richard Keen QC asked Giaka about some of the "incredible" claims he had made to the CIA.

Keen said Giaka had told his CIA handlers and the US Grand Jury that he was a relative of King Idris of Libya and that Colonel Qadafi was involved in an international Masonic conspiracy.

The question: "How did you discover that Colonel Gadaffi is a mason?" was put to Giaka six times.

Giaka repeatedly asked Keen for the source of his question before Lord Sutherland intervened and ordered Giaka to answer the question.

"The person is in Libya and for security considerations I can't mention the name of that person" replied Giaka.

Mr Keen asked how Giaka knew the president of Malta and the Libyan foreign minister were also masons, and Giaka said he did not remember.

"Do you remember suggesting that they were somehow conspiring together as masons over a political matter," said Mr Keen.

"I don't recall," replied Giaka.

"It's such a strange accusation to make that it would surely stick in your memory," responded Keen.

Later in his testimony responding to more awkward cross-examination, Giaka said, "I was not given any offer to act as a witness or any other offer. They did not try to buy me off."

"You also told the Americans that you were a relative of King Idris, the last king of Libya."

Giaka said he had never made this claim, suggesting the comment might have arisen from a translation error during an interview with CIA agents.

Keen pressed on, "Mr Giaka, you are a liar, aren't you? You tell big lies and you tell small lies, but you lie, do you not?"

Giaka said, "I do not lie about anything."

Secret cables revealed the CIA were disappointed with the information Giaka had given them into the Libyan intelligence service, said Taylor.

American agents reported Giaka was pressing them to boost his $1,000 per month CIA pay by $500 and was becoming "desperate" as he struggled to find himself a new role in life after leaving the Libyan secret service.

He even asked the CIA to give him $2,000 so he could import bananas from Malta to Libya and make a large profit, said one CIA telegram.

William Taylor said none of the scores of CIA documents about Giaka in the two years after the bombing mentioned his account of seeing defendant Fhimah collect a brown Samsonite suitcase from the luggage carousel at Malta airport and walking out without it being checked by Customs.

Taylor went on: "There's no mention of any incident like the one you described involving a brown Samsonite suitcase in the CIA cables at all. There is a deafening silence on this."

Taylor said Giaka requested an emergency meeting with the Americans on July 13, 1991, and met them on a US warship off Malta, when the CIA was going to decide whether to retain his services.

"Lo and behold, the deafening silence ends the very next day when you come up with a brown Samsonite suitcase and this rubbish about Customs," said Taylor.

"The very next day is the first mention by you, Giaka, of these matters."

Giaka replied that the American officials were very good investigators who could distinguish between truth and lies.

Comment

After day two of the testimony of the Libyan informer, Abdul Giaka, the Crown must be breathing a sigh of relief that tomorrow will be his last day in the witness box.

The court was once again treated to the "evidence" of the crown star witness and it plumbed new depths in terms of Giaka's bizarre statements of high level Masonic conspiracy.

The very mention of Freemasonry in court today must have set several hearts fluttering as it is a well known fact that Freemasonry can count many lawyers amongst its brethren.

It was clear from Giaka's demeanour that he was ill prepared for the cross-examination he is undergoing. Although it is common practice to coach witnesses with mock cross-examination, a number of questions put to Giaka seemed to throw him. This suggests either that his coaching by the Department of Justice was not as thorough it might have been or that they were completely outmanoeuvred by Taylor and Keen.

It now appears that the US Department of Justice is downplaying the importance of Giaka as a witness, as they told one American relative today that the Crown had "done enough to secure convictions, without Giaka." This of course is a complete reversal of the mantra coming from Washington and Edinburgh for years.

Many relatives have been putting very awkward questions to the DOJ today regarding what they see as evidence from Giaka which has been very unhelpful to the Crown's case.

[A verbatim transcript of Giaka’s evidence can be found here.]

A date which will live in infamy

[What follows is excerpted from items contributed by me in 2000 to TheLockerbieTrial.com (and now accessible here and here):]

When the trial resumed on Tuesday 22 August [2000], the defence teams complained to the Court that they had just learned the previous day that certain CIA cables relating to the Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka, which they had thought had been made available to both the prosecution and the defence only in a censored or redacted form, had in fact been seen by members of the prosecution team on 1 June 2000 in uncensored or unredacted form.  The defence contended that the principle of equality of arms enshrined in article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights required that the defence should have similar access to this material.  The Crown opposed the defence's application.  They conceded that it is the duty of a Scottish prosecutor to supply to the defence any material available to the prosecution which advances the defence case or is relevant to a defence attack on the credibility of a prosecution witness. However, in the course of the Crown's lengthy submissions, it was stated by the Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, that the deletions from the versions of the cables supplied to the defence related only to matters which were (a) irrelevant both to the facts in issue in the Lockerbie trial and to the credibility of the witness Majid Giaka or (b) related to sensitive matters of United States national security.  Indeed, it was for the purpose of ensuring that the Crown were in a position to fulfil their disclosure obligations that members of the Crown team inspected the unredacted cables on 1 June.  To quote the Lord Advocate:

"First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions which would undermine the Crown case in any way.  Secondly, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Mr Majid.  They also considered whether was anything which might bear upon the special defences which had been lodged and intimated in this case.

"On all of these matters, the learned at Advocate Depute reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the Defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special defence...

"There is nothing within these documents which relate to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid on these matters."

The Court was unimpressed by the arguments of the Lord Advocate and instructed him to use his best endeavours to secure the release by the CIA to the defence of the unredacted or uncensored cables.

These cables were in due course made available to the defence, and on Tuesday 29 August various excerpts from them were read out in open court by defence counsel in an attempt to convince the judges that further CIA cables relating to Giaka should be made available to the defence, if necessary by means of a request by the Scottish Court at Camp Zeist to the appropriate Federal Court in the United States of America for an order compelling the CIA to disgorge the relevant material. (...)

The previously blacked-out passages read out to the Court from the cables now in the hands of the defence indicated that, as at 1 September 1989 (more than eight months after the destruction of Pan Am 103), Giaka's CIA handlers were highly critical of him and of the lack of important information supplied by him.  He is described in the now-revealed portions of the cables as a man in the business of selling information for his own benefit; as someone who will never have the penetration of Libyan intelligence services that had been anticipated; as someone who had never been a true member of Libyan intelligence; and as someone whose CIA salary of $1000 per month should be cut off if he supplied no significant information.  It seems to be the natural inference from this that, by 1 September 1989, Giaka had still not informed his CIA masters that his Libyan colleagues in Malta had been responsible for the Lockerbie bombing: if he had done so, it is difficult to see how these criticisms of his value and of the worth of the information supplied by him could conceivably been made.

But apart altogether from that, if the excerpts read out in court on Tuesday 29 August and summarised in the preceding paragraph accurately reflect passages from the cables which had been blacked out from the versions originally supplied to the defence, it is somewhat difficult to appreciate how it could possibly have been accurate or justifiable for the Crown to state to the Court on Tuesday 22 August that the redacted or censored portions within the documents contained nothing "which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid."

...

In the light of the use actually, and entirely properly, made by the defence of material from those CIA cables in attacking, in the course of cross-examination [on 26, 27 and 28 September 2000], the credibility and reliability of Giaka’s evidence on matters relevant to the responsibility of the two accused men for the bombing of Pan Am 103, it may be that the Lord Advocate will (or at least should) feel that he owes an explanation of the statements made by him on 22 August 2000 which are quoted above.