Order No. 94 / 898 / S1

IN THE CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT
Old Bailey,
London E.C.4

Monday, 15th November 1993



BEFORE:
THE HONOURABLE MR.  JUSTICE BLOFELD



REGINA

- v -

MICHAEL SMITH

_____________

MR D. SPENCER Q.C. (Solicitor General)
MR J. NUTTING and MR J. KELSEY-FRY
appeared on behalf of the prosecution.

MR R. TANSEY Q.C. and MR G. SUMMERS
appeared on behalf of the defendant.


_____________


Transcript of the palantype notes of D.L. Sellers
(Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
10 High Street, Leatherhead, Surrey KT22 8AN


SUMMING-UP  I
 
Monday, 15th November 1993

SUMMING-UP

MR JUSTICE BLOFELD: Members of the jury, we are now coming to the last lap of this case, but this particular lap is going to be quite a long one, and I am afraid you may find it a little tedious, because hearing the voice of one person for quite a long time becomes quite a strain. So I will try and have breaks. I will go into camera when I turn to deal with the tradecraft and when I turn to deal with the scientific matters, but the rest of my summing-up will be in open court.

Let me start by telling you what our respective functions are. I have had to control the trial as it went along day by day. I now have two functions left. I have to give you directions on the law, and you must abide by my directions and apply the law to the facts. My province is to deal with the law. I have a further duty which is to remind you of such issues of fact as I think will be helpful to you in doing that. I do not have the duty slavishly to repeat every word of the evidence. If that were the case we would be here for a very long time indeed.

In reminding you of such issues of fact as I think will help you, there is a process of selection going on in my mind. By that very process of selection it means that you may come to the conclusion that I am forming a view about either the whole of this case or about certain issues in this case. I am fully entitled to form a view about anything to do with the facts in this case. I am fully entitled to let you know what my view is, but please bear in mind that your task is to decide the facts. That is your task and yours alone. It is not my task. It consequently follows that, if you think I am expressing a view about any of the facts, if your view happens to agree with what you consider mine is, no harm has been done. If your view is different from what you think mine is, please remember at all times that it is not only your right but it is actually your duty to disagree, because I do not decide this case on the facts; you do.

I should say this, that obviously in dealing with the issues of facts I will try and encapsulate them. It may well be that I am not actually expressing a view of my own in any event. I am simply trying to encapsulate the facts as I see them so as to present them for you to consider. So be very cautious of, at a later stage when you are discussing it, saying “The judge seemed to think this or that”, because it may well be that I have no view whatever on the particular facts; I am simply trying to help you concentrate on what seem to me to be the issues. Let me make it absolutely clear that it is not my task to express strong views about the facts on one side or the other, and I do not intend to do so. You have heard two excellent speeches, and I am not saying that as a matter if rote. They were both excellent speeches from the Crown and the defence. They have both set out their arguments as they see them from their standpoint.

My task now is to stand back. I am not here either to support the prosecution or to support the defence. My task is to stand back and effectively take you down the road in the middle between the two outsides, the two extremes, because that seems to me much more likely to help you than to be argumentative about it. But obviously there may be points I shall stress, which I think are pointers, that seem to help the Crown case or seem to help the defence case, or that I think you should consider because you may think that they help either the Crown or the defence. If I say the Crown or the prosecution they are one and the same thing; they are two simple words. So do not think that I am saying anything other than the Crown or the prosecution; it means nothing. Equally the defence -- I shall sometimes call Mr Smith “Mr Smith”. He will have to forgive me if I sometimes just call him “Smith”. It is not trying to be discourteous. I shall also refer to him as the defendant.

Now let me tell you next this: the Crown bring this case; the Crown have the burden of proving the guilt of this defendant. That burden never shifts. The defence at no stage in this case have to prove anything whatever to you. Before you can convict the defendant on any of the counts, the Crown have to satisfy you so that you are sure that he is guilty of that count. If you are sure you convict him; if you are not you acquit him. That is all there is to it.

In the course of my summing-up, I may well say to you, “Are you satisfied about this?” That is shorthand for the phrase “satisfied so that you are sure”. That is the standard and remains the standard throughout.

There are four counts in this indictment. It is open to you to return different verdicts on each. There are counts 1, 2, 3, and 4. So that is a matter entirely for you, because there are different evidential considerations in relation to each count. Whether at the end of the day in common sense you think that in fact you are likely to return different verdicts on each of the four counts is a matter for you, bearing in mind that the crux of this case -- and I will come to the law in a moment, although there are other factors as well -- the crux of this case is: have the Crown satisfied you that the defendant in fact was dealing with a Russian, whom he knew to be a Russian, or somebody acting on behalf of the Russians? That is the crux of the case.

Would you like to get your copy of the indictment out please, and turn at once to count 4. The Crown must prove that this defendant obtained or collected sketches, plans, models, articles or notes or other documents or information - the relevant words here are “articles”, that is the devices that are shown in your photograph page 1 (and that I am calling folder 1, so it is 1,1) and notes and sketches and plans.

It is accepted by the defence that this defendant took all these with him from HRC, so there is no issue about whether he obtained them; he did obtain them.

Next the Crown have to satisfy you that at least some of them were calculated to be or might have been or were intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy. That is set out in very wide words. The Crown do not have to satisfy you that all the sketches, plans, notes, articles were in this category.

You have heard from a number of Crown witnesses, including particularly Dr Cundy who runs the HRC establishment and Dr Weatherley who was at the material time senior scientific advisor at the Ministry of Defence. They have given evidence that some of this information in their view was clearly useful to an enemy. You have heard from other witnesses to the same effect. You have also heard from Dr Maher, who has said that some of the information, but a very small amount, was useful to an enemy.

I turn now to the meaning of the word “enemy”. We are not of course at war. We have not been at war at any time during the relevant period, with either the Soviet Union or its successor body Russia; and I propose from now on throughout to refer to that land mass as Russia. We are all well aware that it has gone through all sorts of vicissitudes, and it was the Soviet Union, but I am not going to specify, because it means a cut-off date. So I am going to call it Russia; it is simpler.

I am equally, while dealing with it, not going to go into the successor bodies of the KGB, the RIS and the other matters. I am going to call them KGB throughout. It is shorthand for Russian Intelligence Services as far as I am concerned in this summing-up.

Turning back to the definition of “enemy”, as we have never been at war with them, in that sense Russia is not and has never been an enemy. The word “enemy” in this indictment and in the Act is directed to the supplying of information to anyone who, whether friendly or hostile at the moment, if they should become an enemy, would find the information of use. In other words “enemy” means “potential enemy”.  This is clearly common sense because otherwise it would mean that nobody could commit this offence except at the time of war, and that is not the law.

Thirdly, the Crown have to satisfy you that this defendant obtained or collected these articles and/or documents for a purpose: for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state. “Purpose” is an ordinary English word; give it its ordinary natural meaning. The word “prejudicial” simply means harmful or damaging. So the phrase can be expressed: for a purpose harmful or damaging to the safety or interests of the state. The word “state” means this country, the United Kingdom. Another word is the “realm”, the realm of the United Kingdom. It does not mean the Government for the time being, nor the executive.

No defendant charged under this Act is entitled to be acquitted because the safety or interests of the state in fact were not actually prejudiced, that is harmed or damaged. The point that you have to concentrate on is whether this defendant had any of these items for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state.

The Official Secrets Act with which we are concerned gives you guidance as to how you should approach this task of considering whether a particular defendant had this purpose. At one point it says it shall not be necessary to show that the accused person was guilty of any particular act tending to show a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state and, notwithstanding that no such act is proved against him, he may be convicted if, from the circumstances of the case or his conduct or his known character as proved, it appears that his purpose was a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state.

Consequently, in deciding whether the defendant had this purpose, you must take into account all the matters, drawing all these matters that I have referred to -- drawing such inferences from them as you think proper, that is the circumstances of the case, the relevant conduct and character of this defendant. These include, turning to his conduct and character, his early membership of the Communist Party and the fact that he severed his links with them as he did with the Young Communist League in the 1970s; all that ceased some months before he was employed on secret work by EMI in July 1976.

You will also have to consider the defence contentions that, at that time, he was a man of perfectly good character. The defence say that many people dabble in politics while young but grow out of it. You will also consider the defence case, which is that he was never in contact with a member of the Russian Intelligence Services but with a man called Harry Williams, whom he understood to be either a commercial rival or acting for a commercial competitor. In other words his case is that he was involved in industrial espionage only.

I should make it clear to you that, unless you are satisfied in respect of each and every one of the four counts that you are considering that the person to whom the defendant either handed over the information, that is counts 1 and 2, or intended to hand over information or make sketches or notes for the purpose of handing over, either handing them over themselves or handing over the information contained in them, was a member of the Russian Intelligence to his, the defendant’s knowledge, you should acquit.

The case for the Crown is not about industrial espionage, but about espionage that is prejudicial to the safety and interests of the state. If the person with whom the defendant was dealing in your view was or might have been merely a commercial competitor, or if the defendant may have thought the person was a commercial competitor or obtaining information on behalf of a commercial competitor, then the Crown would not have satisfied you that the defendant had a purpose prejudicing the interests or safety of the state.

I turn back to count 3, although some of what I have said applies clearly to count 3 already. Count 3 relates to the notes at pages 176-187. All my references are going to be to the blue bundle unless I specifically say so. Again the Crown have to prove that this defendant made these notes; that is not in dispute. He did make them; he said so. Then the Crown have to prove that some parts, not necessarily all of them but some parts of these notes were -- some of them there are sketches, graphs on the notes -- some parts of these sketches or notes were calculated to be or might be or were intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy. The same direction that I have just given you on count 4 applies to these notes, in precisely similar words.

Finally the Crown on count 3 have to satisfy you that the defendant made these sketches or notes for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state. Again the direction I have just given you about that on count 4 applies to count 3.

Turning to counts 1 and 2, here we have no documentation before us at all. They are two specimen counts relating to the period when the defendant was receiving payment from somebody. It is the Crown case that this defendant communicated to another information calculated to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state.

The wording is identical in each of the two counts save for the dates. The dates are specimen dates. They are simply to break it up so that there is no question, if you should convict him of one or other, that you convict him of the same offence twice over. But they are specimens relating to any two payments, one really in the year 1990, which effectively on the Crown case starts after 24th September, the date of the Williams letter.

The remaining words mean precisely the same in these two counts as in the other two counts about enemy, usefulness, purpose and prejudicial. I do not propose therefore to repeat what I have just said about them. Again it is, on counts 1 and 2 as it is in counts 3 and 4, the defence contention that this defendant handed over information to a commercial competitor, and he never had the purpose of prejudicing the safety or interests of the state. The Crown’s contention is that he handed them over to a Russian for precisely that purpose. They say that is evidenced by the payment he received and by the fact that the Russian came back time and again, and they say was still coming back and prepared to come back on the date of his arrest. So much for the indictment.

You have heard some evidence about the classification of documents in this case. In the red bundle at page 553 is a document which gives guidance to civil servants who have the difficult exercise of deciding what documents to classify. That is helpful, but that document is not part of the law of this country. It is guidance to civil servants. You can make such use of it as you wish; you are not bound by them. Classification is done by civil servants acting on guidelines issued by the relevant ministry, like page 553. You do not decide this case on those guidelines. They are not part of our law; they are only guidelines. You have to concentrate on the words in the indictment which you have just been looking at. You can however pay attention and give weight to the markings on the individual documents in our blue bundle, and you can give weight to the evidence you have heard about classification if you wish to, if you consider that it helps you.

The defendant’s case is that he never considered that anything he gave or intended to give to another, namely to Harry -- and he had nothing in his possession that he intended to give at the time of his arrest because he was not giving him any more after April 1992 -- he says that none of that could possibly be prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state. None of the material he gave Harry had any military significance, only commercial significance. Unless a document was classified, that is bore the word “Restricted” or “Secret” or “Confidential”, he never considered that it could by itself, or in combination with other non-classified documents, be prejudicial to the interests of the state. The documents that he handed over to Harry might have been commercially sensitive, but they were not prejudicial to the interests of the state.

The Crown says that it must have been obvious to the defendant that the documents on a particular subject were together -- that is altogether -- clearly prejudicial, and that the defendant handed them over; and, in relation to the documents in his car, intended to hand them over for the purpose of prejudicing the interests of the state.

Again the Crown say in a nutshell that, if you are satisfied that the defendant was dealing with the Russians, as they say you should be on the evidence, then it is straightforward and obvious that -- if this defendant was handing over and intending to hand over further documents to the Russians knowing they were Russians, it is obvious that his purpose in doing so was to prejudice the safety and interests of the state. Why else would the Russians be interested? Why else would he be handing them over? If he knew he was dealing with a Russian, the Crown say it follows as night follows day that he knew perfectly well that they would be interested in documentation that prejudiced the interests and safety of the state, and he had that purpose in handing them over. That is why at the heart of this case the decision for you is: who was he dealing with?

So that it is absolutely clear, in case this case has to be considered elsewhere at any stage, count 3 relates to documents made in the defendant’s handwriting. They are the notes on Rugate filters, micro-machining project, quasi-optical car radio(sic), micron valve project and olfactory research project.

As far as count 4 is concerned, that relates to all the documentation in the blue bundle excepting the tradecraft notes, that is 271-276.

As far as the single page that was in a plastic container underneath the carpet in the well of the car, the Crown case about that is that they are not in the least concerned whether in fact the defendant was actually going to hand that over, or whether in fact these were notes that he made so that he knew what notes he could abstract, if he had the opportunity to do so without being detected, while he was at HRC. They do not mind if it was in fact an aide memoire for his own use or whether he in fact was going to hand it over. So with regard to that note, that particular single document, they say it is immaterial whether he was going to hand that note over, and you concentrate therefore on the documents in the holdall, which are now in the blue bundle from page 1-269 inclusive. 269, as you know, runs to a large number of pages, because we use all the letters of the alphabet and indeed it has got sub-numbers of 269/1 onwards.

One matter to get completely out of the way is this. It has never been part of the evidence in this case that this defendant was to his knowledge dealing with a Russian but was deceiving the Russian by handing over useless information. That is not his defence; there is no evidence to support it. If that thought crosses your mind dismiss it, because there is no evidence about it at all. So I mention it simply to get it out of way.

You will consider the Official Secrets Act. You will bear in mind that the defendant signed the Official Secrets Act twice: he signed it for EMI and he signed it more recently on 15th July 1986, a few months after he started work at HRC. It is at the red bundle, page 277. I do not propose to read it; it has been read and you can look at it if you want to.

It is perfectly clear, by looking at the second page of that document, that all the evidence points to HRC being a prohibited place. A prohibited place simply, in the circumstances of this case, is a place which takes part in Government/Defence contracts directly or indirectly. The unchallenged evidence is that some of the contract work that HRC did was directly with the Government and directly connected with Defence. That does not go to the heart of this case. The defendant, insofar as he gave evidence about it, indicated that he was not aware that HRC was a prohibited place. Members of the jury, you do not decide his guilt or innocence on whether HRC was a prohibited place; you decide it on the wording of the indictment following the directions in law I have just given you.

I turn now to another matter of law. The defendant has never been convicted of a criminal offence. When you consider his interviews with the police and the evidence he has given in this court, bear this in mind in his favour when considering the question of his credibility. But you will obviously remember that he disclosed according to him, in his later interviews and in his evidence, that he has regularly been stealing documents from HRC since 1990 and selling them for money to a man called Harry. You will obviously wish to take this into account when you consider how much weight to give to his good character, because you may come to the conclusion that, on his own admissions, the effect of his good character has been somewhat tarnished. You take that into account and give it such weight as you think fit.

Further, a person of good character is always entitled to put forward the argument that their previous history of good character does not indicate a propensity to commit crimes of the nature of which he is now charged. So the defendant can come here and say, “Well, I am not likely to be guilty of spying because I have never been convicted of any offence in the past, let alone one of spying.” Take that into account in his favour, but once again bear in mind that he has admitted selling his company’s secrets to a commercial rival. If you think that tarnishes the effect of his good character to some extent, you are entitled to say you will not give quite such weight to his good character when considering the question of propensity as you otherwise would.

The defendant has admitted that he lied to the police. You must consider why he lied. The mere fact that a defendant tells a lie is not in itself evidence of guilt. A defendant may lie for many reasons: for example, to bolster a true defence; to protect someone else; to conceal disgraceful conduct of his short of the commission of these offences; or out of panic or confusion. If you think that there is or may be some innocent explanation for his lies, then you should take no notice of them. But if you are sure that this defendant did not lie for some such or other innocent reason, then his lies in his interviews can be evidence going to prove his guilt.

The Crown case is that he initially lied during the first part of his lengthy interviews because he did not want to disclose his dealings with the Russians. The defence say he initially lied because he did not want to disclose his dealings with Harry. The Crown say, be that as it may; once he had mentioned Harry there was no need for him to tell any more lies.

The fact that he still told lies: not giving Harry’s surname of Williams; not saying that it was Harry’s letter at page 271, the Williams letter; describing the meeting places where he met Harry falsely; saying that the tradecraft notes 273-276 had nothing to do with Harry, effectively, or indeed anything to do with tradecraft, are significant lies and are important in this case.

They say they are important because there was no good reason for him to tell these lies, except that he had been passing information and was intending to pass more information to the Russians. The defence case is that, by the time he mentioned Harry in these interviews, he had been interviewed for a long time; he was under stress; he thought that if Harry was found it might make more trouble for him, although at one stage he indicated he wanted Harry found, but in the stress he was ambivalent about it. He therefore says that his lies to the police are wholly understandable and they are in no way indicative of his guilt. You have to consider them on the basis I have just directed you.

You have heard in this case from a variety of experts. Some experts have dealt with tradecraft, some with handwriting, some with military matters, but the majority have dealt with the scientific matters. In this country we do not have trial by experts but trial by jury. That is yourselves. This means that you are entirely free to accept or reject expert evidence as you feel inclined. You will of course pay attention to the qualifications of the experts, and every one of the experts had excellent qualifications. You will not of course decide the case on numbers, saying that, because the Crown have called far more experts than the defence, that is a good reason for accepting the Crown evidence and rejecting the defence evidence.

You will consider in the case of each expert how they gave their evidence. You will have to decide for yourselves whether you found them to be doing their best to help you. You will have to decide whether you thought they were being objective. You will have to decide if you thought they were doing their best to make themselves clear to you.

You have to reach a decision on the evidence you have heard. Do not let yourself be frightened by the technicalities of the evidence. You must not approach the expert and technical evidence on the basis of, “Well, I don't fully understand what was happening so I can't make up my mind about this”. You may think that an expert who is really an expert will take great pains to make himself clear. Obviously, if you come to the conclusion that any expert in your view was deliberately trying to mislead you, you will reject his evidence out of hand. If you should do that, do not let the fact that you consider his evidence is tainted rub over and say that, because his evidence is tainted, any other evidence called by whichever side it is also tainted; that would be wrong. You have to decide on all the evidence, drawing such inferences from it as you think appropriate. So much for the law.

The rest of what I have to say to you is dealing with fact. I propose to deal with it by giving you a short synopsis, that is a precis effectively, of both the prosecution case and the defence case. By reason of its being a precis, it is going to leave out bits. I then propose after that to deal with the various different aspects. I shall deal with the defendant’s evidence as a whole at the conclusion, right at the end of my summing-up. I am going to weave in his evidence into the other bits but, when I am dealing with the witnesses called by the defence, I am going to weave them in with the prosecution witnesses, because I think it will help you more if, when I deal with the tradecraft evidence for example, in fact I deal with Mr P’s evidence immediately after dealing with Mrs C’s and Mr Gordievsky’s evidence.

Equally again, when I deal with the scientific evidence, I think it is going to help you more if I deal with Dr Maher’s evidence again immediately after the scientific evidence called by the prosecution. What I am going to do with the scientific evidence is I shall give you a general overview of the generalities both from the scientific evidence called by the Crown and Dr Maher, general scientific background; and then, when we deal with the individual subjects, I will deal with Dr Maher at the conclusion of each subject. I am going to deal with the scientific evidence at the very end of my summing-up, apart from the defendant’s evidence, which I will take as I say in one and in full.

The precis for the prosecution is approximately this. The prosecution say that the background of communism is the initial reason why this defendant should spy. They say that the coincidence of the presence of Viktor Oshchenko in London in the mid to late 1970’s as a KGB controller indicates that he was concerned with recruiting the defendant. They say that you have to work backwards with Viktor Oshchenko. They say that you have to consider the telephone conversation of 8th August where Viktor’s name was mentioned, and you have then to link back what is known of Viktor Oshchenko’s movements, because their case is that it is likely that this defendant was recruited by Viktor Oshchenko.

Members of the jury, whether he was or not is not the main issue in this case. The main issue is: was he supplying or intending to supply to a Russian? So whether it is Viktor Oshchenko in the background, as the Crown contend, may be a strong plank in their case -- it may be not such a strong plank -- but it is not at the heart of their case.

They say that he went to EMI, was engaged in secret work. They do not express any view, the Crown, as to whether or not he was spying for EMI. There is not a shred of evidence to show that he was. They say that some time in the 1970’s -- 1977 is the date his passport shows he went -- he went to Portugal, and that what he did there was a test to see whether he would work for the KGB. They say that for some reason or other he was put on ice. He then received in September 1990 the Williams letter, and that activated him, and they concentrate their case on what happened after the Williams letter.

They say that the tradecraft notes and the defendant’s forced admissions, which they say are half lies because he was doing his best to get out of an impossible situation but never did tell the complete truth, demonstrate that there were regular meetings from September/October 1990; substantial sums of money were passed over and from those sums you can easily draw the inference that the information handed over by the defendant to the Russians was both useful to them, and that the defendant knew it was useful or might be useful, intended it to be useful and had the purpose of prejudicing the interests or safety of the state.

The Crown say that the tradecraft documents are at the very heart of this case. They say the detailed fall-back arrangements shown in these documents strongly indicate that the defendant was passing information to somebody on whom the British Intelligence Services would be trying to keep a close eye. That could only be a potential enemy. In all the circumstances, it would only be somebody from behind the Iron Curtain but, as tension had relaxed because of the political upheaval in Russia and behind the Iron Curtain, and as the other countries had withdrawn from spying, in reality it could only have been the Russians.

They say that it simply is nonsense to suggest that those tradecraft notes, with their detailed fall-back arrangements and detailed provisions for meeting, could relate to an industrial spy, because the Intelligence Services of this country would have no reason to keep any eye on anybody who was concerned with industrial espionage. It is not their remit; they have no duty to catch people who may be indulging in industrial espionage. Consequently there is absolutely no reason that somebody who wants to commit industrial espionage cannot ask somebody to his house. He is not going to have the Intelligence Services observing him. He is not going to have somebody from HRC -- they are not going to have teams of people looking out for industrial spies. They could meet at a pub; they could meet at a restaurant; they could ring each other up.

Then you come, say the Crown, to the final few days before the defendant’s arrest. They say that in fact, on 25th July, Viktor Oshchenko defects. He has been a KGB controller for many years in France, running a network of agents in France. He comes to England and, on 31st July, the Russians, having made enquiries of the French, make enquiries of the English and discover that he is in England. That would alert the Russians, so the Crown say, that he would be giving or had already given information to the English about his contacts in England. They dare not contact this defendant, the Crown say, because it would be too risky.

They say that Smith goes to a meeting on 6th August, a meeting set up well before Oshchenko’s defection. He is not met by a Russian. The next day there should be a fall-back arrangement. He is anxious, and he does have a row with his wife because he is anxious to keep that fall-back meeting. He dare not disclose to his wife the reason, and he goes with his wife reluctantly for a jaunt to the seaside because he cannot get out of it.

Then as chance would have it -- because you must bear in mind that the British Intelligence Services on the evidence had not the faintest idea that the defendant had arranged a meeting on 6th August at which no-one had turned up, and had no idea that on 7th August, because of his wife’s plans, he could not keep a fall-back plan -- on 8th August the telephone call, by the sheerest chance, comes at a moment when this defendant would be anxious because he has not been able to be in touch with his Russian controllers, they say. Consequently the telephone call with the bait on it, like the worm on the fisherman’s hook, might have been rejected but, as it happened, because of that particular background, they say that the defendant swallowed it, left the house and went to the telephone box because he was anxious to get in touch, for all that he may have had some suspicions because it may have been a somewhat odd scenario for him. But they say his movements point irresistibly to his guilt.

They say that his remark in the car and then his lies in the interview confirm that he knows that he is guilty but he is wriggling, trying to find a way out and trying to explain the evidence as it is presented to him. They say that he knew perfectly well the papers he took from HRC would be useful to the Russians and prejudicial to our interests. They may not all of them have been of the greatest importance; he may not have fully appreciated the importance of all of them, but he took them quite deliberately and his purpose was to give them to the Russians.

He took them, and he took as many as he did, because those were the subjects that the Russians wanted to know about. He knew perfectly well, they say, that they particularly related to Rapier, the Rapier documents, the delay lines, and he could infer clearly that the SAW documents also were of military significance.

They say that his answers on 8th August telephone call indicate he knew quite sufficient to know what was happening, as his movements show, as I have already said. So that in a nutshell is their case.

The defence say that this is nonsense. They say that many young people get involved with politics or for that matter extreme religions, sects, cults; it is experimentation; it is part of growing up; you grow out of it. It does not mean once a communist always a communist. People are perfectly entitled to have a brush with communism and then grow out of it.

They say that there is no evidence whatever to suggest that that map of Portugal suggests he was there with the KGB. They say that is so far-fetched as to be ridiculous. They say that his attempts to get his classification renewed to do secret work is an indication that points to him being in no way connected with the Russians.

Members of the jury, may I say straight away that you want to consider that because that seems something you should consider. Whether of course at that stage [1979-82] he was in contact with the Russians we do not know, because the defence case is that he has never been in contact with the Russians. The Crown case is that he was reactivated in 1990 or activated. When he ceased, as it were, when he was put on ice, the Crown are not able to say.

They say that it may be unfortunate that Harry rang him up, and it may be unfortunate that he was prepared to hand over documentation from HRC to Harry but that, when you stand back and look at it, his movements are consistent with his dealing with Harry and not with the Russians. It is entirely consistent that he should have a meeting in March, a meeting in April, not hand over any documents, and then get a letter from Williams in September as a result of which he starts to hand over documentation. They say that the evidence of his severing a relationship with Harry in April 1992 is entirely credible, and indeed there is no evidence called by the Crown to refute it.

Then he got his notice of redundancy in May. It was perfectly understandable for him to make lecture notes because he was interested and he was working for HRC. As to the notes, the other notes from pages 176-187 which were not lecture notes, he made those to help his successor, Mr Nott, who then did not take over so, when he was bundling up his notes, he took them with him. But he had a very busy last day; he took most of the documents in a hurry, although he took two of them -- that is pages 1-49 and the two documents at page 269, the flow chart -- because he thought they would be of use to him when he got a job next as a quality assurance engineer, because they were useful blue prints which he could use if he had to do work in the future.

He says that his movements on 6th August were entirely explicable; that he did indeed go to buy Keyboard magazine and furthermore that, because of Harry, it was not unreasonable for him to go out of curiosity to the bench by the church and sit down. He was not really expecting to meet Harry but, as it had been a fall-back arrangement, he went just on the off chance. They say that to receive a telephone call on 8th August out of the blue, when it is relatively early in the morning -- it is nine o’clock; you have been having a private domestic life -- he had been in bed with his wife; he had brought her a cup of tea; she is a nervy woman -- his movements and his answers are entirely explicable and, if he is a bit more curious than the next man about the telephone call, well there is nothing sinister about that.

But when he was interviewed he did not like the superintendent’s manner. He lied because he thought there was nothing in it; and then he was under stress, as I have already indicated, in the latter half of the interview. He says that the vast majority of the information that is contained in the papers that he took on his last day is of no importance whatever; it is old; it is out of date; it would not help any enemy; it would not help any competitor. It ties in with his explanation that he was not going to hand it over to anybody. It was pure chance it was in the car.

He says that Dr Maher was a cogent and expert witness, who explained it in great detail clearly to you, and you should accept his evidence. He says that Mr P, the American tradecraft man, was entirely convincing, and he effectively pooh-poohs the fact that those tradecraft notes are Russian tradecraft notes. So he says those two experts bolster his defence and effectively, with his account, they in fact demolish the prosecution case.

You have a chronology, do you not, in front of you? Can we pick it up at 1990. You need not bother to find it unless you can find it easily. That is one of the few documents I am going to refer you to. You see it starts with September and the Williams letter. It is in fact September 24th that it is dated, arriving the next day, he said, September 25th. In May 1992 he gets informal notice of redundancy, on May 14th, and formal notice on 28th. The other notes deal with the final concluding dates. I do not propose to refer to it, because I have referred virtually to all the dates already, but you may find when you are carrying on your discussions that this is quite a useful document to have, because it is quite easy to get muddled about dates. So I can pass over that quickly.

I am now going to go straight away to Saturday 8th May [August] 1992, because I am to a large extent going to deal with this case in the way that it developed. So we start on Saturday, 8th May [August] with the telephone call.

The defendant and his wife are in his house in the bedroom. At 9.02 the telephone call is made. You have listened to the tape on a number of occasions. If you want to, you can listen to it again. I am not going to ask for it to be played during my summing-up. You have a transcript of it at page 553 [552] of the red bundle. It mentions Viktor; it makes a plan to go to a telephone box. The caller is a member of the British Intelligence Services. He, the defendant, in fact leaves the house about 17 or 18 minutes after the telephone call. He gets to the phone box about 9.18 or 9.19. I beg your pardon; he gets to the telephone box about 9.23. He leaves at 9.20. Mr B, who is pretending to be George, after ringing the defendant’s home telephone number, rang the phone box at 9.19, but that was before the defendant got there.

The photographs show that the defendant goes partly inside the box. You have now got the new sequence because some photographs, the ones that he the defendant was shown in his interviews, were not in your original bundle; they are now. He walks away a few yards. He returns to the phone box. He then walks away and goes up the road away from home. He comes back at 9.25. He returns to the phone box and he says that he sits on the wall beside it for a short time.

There were two police officers who said he sat on the wall. Woman Police Constable Plummer initially said -- and I say initially; she was not recalled -- that he sat there for seven minutes. She is obviously totally wrong. The photographs which had a time on them show that. He sat there just for a short time, half a minute or so. There is not in fact a photograph of him sitting on the wall; there does not seem to be anything particularly sinister about that: he went back; he sat on the wall. You will have to consider whether there is anything sinister about the whole of that operation.

You have now seen the photographs. The defence contention is that it may be the prosecution were trying to bolster up their case initially. Against that is the fact that two of the photographs that they did not put in show him rather more inside the phone box than the ones you already had. If it is just a mistake, well then there is nothing in it from one side or the other, but if it is sinister that is a factor on the defendant’s side.

He then though goes back towards his home. He buys a paper in his local newsagent, and he is arrested. He struggles. He is put into an unmarked police car and he is driven off towards Kingston. He got to a road where there is a fork -- one road goes to Kingston the other road goes to central London -- and they do not go down the Kingston road. The defendant, who has been struggling, is handcuffed and says it is very uncomfortable. He shouts out, “You are not the police. I know who you are. I am being kidnapped. Help me; I am being kidnapped”.

The Crown say that “I know who you are” is a curious remark to make. Does it mean that he thought he was being kidnapped by the KGB, or taken to a meeting, or does it mean something else, or is there nothing in it at all? The defence say there is nothing in it at all.

He started to struggle. The Special Branch ring for uniform police; uniform police turn up. Once he sees that there are uniform police, he is taken off and he goes to Paddington Green Police Station; and there we will leave him for the moment while we go back to his house.

Over the next few days his house and his car were searched. So was his wife’s car. His wife’s car was found but nothing of any interest whatever was found in it. In his car, a Datsun, was found a blue sports bag. You have a photograph of it but we do not want to look at it again. We have seen it once, and a blue sports bag looks like a blue sports bag. Inside the blue sports bag were plastic bags and inside those plastic bags were some documentation, the documentation we have -- it is in our blue bundle. The plastic bags are shown outside the blue holdall in the photographs we have. They are ordinary plastic shopping bags. In the Datsun, in the well on the driver’s side, in a plastic bag, was the document 270, the list.

His house was searched. When the bedroom was searched, in a drawer in a table by the window was found a brown envelope. In it were the tradecraft documents and the Williams letter, all together. The fact that they were all together the Crown say is significant: in the same drawer but not in the same envelope. Although it was wrongly put by Superintendent McLeod, who obviously misunderstood the situation when he was interviewing him, that the money and the tradecraft notes were in the same envelope, they were not; they were in the same drawer but not in the same envelope.

Also was found a map of Portugal -- you have got that -- and also other documents showing a sketch map of the camp site. But it is the map of the centre of Oporto which is the only one of significance. His computer was seized. Nothing that came out of the computer is in the slightest bit relevant except for one letter, again in the red bundle. There is a letter that he wrote in May 1992, suggesting that he would like to change his job, because there was a query about whether in fact he might change his job and remain on in HRC.

On him was found three ?50 notes. The ?2,000 in ?50 notes was found in the drawer. Now, let us turn to money. Detective Constable Say went through the defendant’s financial affairs with a fine tooth comb. He has produced a detailed schedule. Would you mind getting this one out, because it has not been looked at very much, and I would like to point out one or two things to you for your consideration. Detective Constable Say listed the defendant’s bank accounts and his Abbey National Building Society account. He also lists certain purchases which he has been able to list from receipts found in the defendant’s flat. From all these documents he has prepared this lengthy schedule. He in fact analysed it and I can take it quite shortly.

There are unexplained cash purchases -- that is in the middle of page -- which total ?10,653.70. Dates may or may not be of interest. The defendant says that, after Harry’s telephone call in January, possibly early February 1990, he had a meet in March and was paid ?500. He did not hand over any information. They had another meet in April and he was paid over another ?500. He did not hand over any information. This schedule shows no unexplained cash purchase before 17th October 1990.

The Williams letter is dated 24th September. The Crown say that it is significant that all unexplained cash purchases and all unexplained variations of his normal way of living come after the receipt of the Williams letter. So they say that that confirms their contention that the Williams letter is not a letter from Harry but it is a letter from the Russians, because there is no sign of the two payments of ?500.

Cash was also deposited into the Abbey National, total ?1,925. The first time cash was put into the Abbey National was on 19th February 1991. The last time was 8th June 1992, that date being after April 1992 when the defendant said he had his last meeting with Harry.

He paid for his groceries, as the first page shows, regularly, by going to Sainsbury’s, but the last cheque that he paid in such a way is 7th November 1990, shortly after the Harry letter but quite a few months after the two payments of ?500. But of course the two payments of ?500, you could say, were not in themselves sufficiently large necessarily to show up on this schedule.

There were automatic cash withdrawals, but they ceased in August 1991. So if in fact you add to the amount of ?10,653 and the ?1,925 the amount that he was not spending on groceries, which comes to ?3,370; and the fact that he was not having automatic cash withdrawals for his own petty cash at ?44 a week, that is another ?2,640; with the cash found in his home of ?2,000 it all adds up to ?20,588.70.

The defendant said in evidence that he got about ?20,000 from Harry, so the total that Detective Constable Say analyses in this document ties up with what is now the defendant’s account. But of course, when Detective Constable Say was doing this analysis, the only evidence that the Crown at that stage had was the evidence in the interviews, when the top figure was approximately ?12,000. Detective Constable Say’s analysis, without knowing what the defendant was going to say in evidence in this case, has turned out to be spot on.

Do you draw an inference from the fact that there are no cash payments before the Williams letter? Is that significant or are they too small? Is the cash being paid in up to June 1992 of significance, or is that just the fact that somebody might not have paid it in until later? Just like the ?2,000; might he have had it several months or does the ?2,000 there -- is it a pointer that in fact the defendant is not telling you the truth, when he says he has not been in touch with the person to whom he has been supplying information since April 1992? That is for you to consider. So much for that document.

Now I am going to turn to tradecraft and so I am going to ask if the gentlemen of the press would mind leaving. While that is happening, let us have a break.

(Short Adjournment)
(In Camera)
(SUMMING-UP continued)

MR JUSTICE BLOFELD: The Crown called really two witnesses who dealt with tradecraft in general and other witnesses who dealt with specific matters. Mrs C, who has a lifetime in the United Kingdom Intelligence Services, and Mr Gordievsky who started life in the KGB and is a defector, both gave you information broadly about tradecraft and then specific evidence. When I said “information” I meant evidence about the tradecraft documents.

Both told you that a controller should always make sure that an agent does not make notes or at any rate destroys them after he has memorised them. Mrs C, who of course has mainly seen the evidence of KGB in this country directly, not overseas, although she has no doubt been in touch with people in America and elsewhere, told you that in her experience agents do not always destroy notes. That is really saying no more than, if we talk about criminals in general, if criminals were sensible they would never leave any evidence that would convict them. The experience of these courts shows that people who commit crimes do make mistakes; they should not, but they do.

Mr Gordievsky points out that KGB controllers are sometimes hesitant to insist that agents destroy notes because, by harping on that subject, it implants into the agent’s mind that there is a serious risk that their activities may be discovered and, if their activities are discovered by the country whose citizen they are, the results will be disastrous for them; and that, by harping on the disastrous side of it, it might deter them from taking the risks that the KGB would like them to take.

A word at this stage about agents: If you like to just think about it -- but this is just common sense -- no intelligence service can pick its agents. You do not advertise in the paper: “Agent wanted for KGB controller; preferably with direct information about X, Y and Z”. You pick your agents where you find them. If you are lucky enough to find someone, you have to take him warts and all.

Some may be amenable to discipline; some may be eccentrics. It may be that those who are prepared to spy against their own country tend to be a bit of an oddity by the very fact that they are prepared to do it. They may be opinionated; they may not be amenable to total control by their Russian controller; they may have a mind of their own; they may think that they are clever; they may think that they will never be found out. But, if they are in a position to supply useful information, unless the risks are too great, obviously a foreign intelligence service will consider closely whether the pluses for them outweigh the minuses. If they happen to have the necessary qualifications, which might mean then or in the future they will actually give good information, it may be that the intelligence service will say, “Well, we do not actually really much like his approach; he does not really listen to us; he does not actually necessarily bring us the documentation we want. But he is the only man we happen to have, and we cannot get anybody who actually knows exactly what goes on in this or that crucial research establishment or government office or whatever it may be.”

Turning to the pages 273-276, both Mrs C and Mr Gordievsky were confident that the majority of the wording related to tradecraft. Members of the jury, pause and consider this at the moment. As far as both those witnesses are concerned, when they came to look at those documents, they had no way of knowing that it would be this defendant’s case, now in court, that there are matters in these documents that relate to tradecraft, relating to the transfer of information from HRC to somebody, Harry as the defendant says. At any rate Mrs C and Mr Gordievsky were right about that: they do relate to tradecraft. They could not know what the defendant was going to say because in his interview he denied that these related to anything to do with Harry.

Mr Gordievsky says that the letter at page 272 looks like a letter written by a KGB case officer to activate an agent who has been put on ice and not been contacted for some time. Curiously enough, the defendant says he was activated not by the KGB but by Harry after a gap from April. So the broad contention that Mr Gordievsky gave in evidence turns out to be accurate. Mr Gordievsky, looking at pages 272 the letter, described the wording as being familiar to him and similar in its slightly enigmatic language to the language that KGB case officers are taught to use.

There is now, as I said, no dispute that these notes relate to tradecraft. However, it is still strongly denied that the map of Oporto has anything whatever to do with tradecraft. The defence case now is that these pages do not in any way indicate that the tradecraft is specifically orientated towards Russia.

As far as the map of Oporto is concerned, both Mrs C and Mr Gordievsky said it could relate to tradecraft but they both were at pains to say they do not regard it in any way as conclusive. It might; it might not.

Mrs C joined the service in 1969. She is head of her section. She has studied methods and techniques of hostile powers particularly Russia. She has met a number of defectors. She said the tradecraft is an indication of an intelligence gathering service. She agreed that other intelligence gathering services use tradecraft. She said that these notes have the hallmarks of the KGB working in this country. She said that as far as she was aware in the United Kingdom only Russia and the Warsaw Pact countries use this type of tradecraft. The security services, she said, do not deal with industrial espionage.

Dealing with the map of Oporto, she said the marks could be interpreted as tradecraft but they could be innocent. She was criticised for not knowing about buses and bus stops, but you must remember that the defendant when he gave his explanation said they related to places of tourist interest, so when she went to Oporto she was not looked [looking] out for bus stops. We have heard that part of the interview and you have the index of the interview and we will deal with that in its proper place.

She said that Russia regards the United Kingdom as a hostile environment in which to operate and she pointed out -- I think it was she; it may have been Mr Gordievsky -- that there is a limitation from the embassy; they can only can only go within I think it is 25 miles of the Russian Embassy so they cannot go all over the country.

Portugal was nothing like such a hostile environment. It was a good place to meet an agent because obviously you could meet an agent without somebody seeing you were meeting an agent so you could have long confidential chats with him. You could go through what he had to do. You could debrief him. I think he had been giving you information that you could assess him, get to know him, make suggestions to him, all the things that somebody might want to do if they were running an agent. You could equally put him through a test to see if he was reliable. Well, you will have to consider her evidence.

She was recalled in fact and she said, turning to the letter at page 272, that, if the KGB wished to write a letter, they would not do it themselves, because they would suspect that their handwriting was known, and they would suspect that their fingerprints might well be known too because they would have signed visas and documentation on coming into the country and, in order to do that, their fingerprints might have been on the paper when they were signing the documents and so this document might be traceable. So what they do is get a clerk in the office to write it.

She said that it was not her experience, in this country at any rate, for the KGB to give an English agent an escape plan. If they were dealing with illegals, they would give them an escape plan. An illegal is, in a Russian case, a Russian who is masquerading as an Englishman, so he is not betraying his own country; he is doing a job of work for what is actually his own country Russia. He is pretending to be an Englishman and he is passing information to his own mother country; and of course, as he wants in due course to end up back at his home which would be Russia, there is an escape plan for an illegal but not for an Englishman who is not a Russian at all.

She said that she had been involved in certain cases and said yes, it is quite right that Blake, who was an Englishman spying for Russia, did escape, but he did in fact escape after he had been convicted; after he had been in prison he in fact escaped from prison. She said there was no escape plan. Another one she mentioned was a man called Vassall, the Admiralty spy.

She gave us the dates relating to Mr Oshchenko’s defection, which are in the chronology so I need not refer to those.

Let us turn now to Mr Gordievsky. Bear in mind that Mr Gordievsky has been strongly criticised. The defence say that you should not believe anything he says for a number of different reasons. They say first of all he has been paid by this Government after his defection, and so he is quite prepared to say something to continue being paid. They say that, by reason of being a KGB controller, he has been practising lying for many years; it is part of his make-up, in order to be a successful KGB controller. So it would be remarkably difficult for you to decide whether he is lying or not, and there is a real risk that once a liar always a liar. They say he quite clearly is also exaggerating, in order to boost his own self-importance, what he discovered in these documents.

They say he is to be criticised because he did not appear to take any part to help dissidents get rid of communism, to which his reply was, “Well, I was busy supplying information in fact to the allied countries at that stage. To draw attention to myself as a member of the KGB by helping dissidents would have been a crazy thing to do.

Then it is said he mentioned in the final bit of his cross-examination a number 6 bus stop, and said that he mentioned number 6 because it went past his house. It is said that he must have talked effectively to Mrs C about it, and you must make what you will of that matter. So it is said that he is not in fact here to tell you the truth; he has exaggerated and he is ingratiating himself. So when you are dealing with him as an expert, as well as examining his actual expertise -- after all those years in the KGB probably no-one is criticising that he has the experience to be an expert -- but they are not saying he has got it wrong, because he is an expert; they are saying he has got it wrong because by his very character he is an untrustworthy witness. That is the defence contention.

Now let us consider what he actually said. He said he joined the KGB in 1962. I am not going to go through all his early history. He was trained in the usual way. He said that sadly in Russia you have to lie in order to survive, because otherwise you just cannot survive. He told you about those matters. He worked in Denmark. In 1974 he contacted British Intelligence, and he was acting as a double agent effectively until the KGB found out 11 years later in 1985. He was in the United Kingdom from 1982 to 1985, and was acting head of the KGB in this country for a period in 1985. He had active operating experience of running agents while in Britain and while he was with the KGB in Denmark. In May 1985 he was recalled at short notice to Moscow, and he was there rigorously interrogated on suspicion that he was passing information to British Intelligence. He was given some sort of truth drug, but he said that he did not in fact admit he had been disclosing information, which seems abundantly clear because he would never have been released if he had, and he was released and he made his way by an undisclosed route and succeeded in making his way out of Russia and coming back to the West. In his absence the death sentence has been passed upon him and, if he ever sets foot on Russian soil, then, as that sentence has not been revoked, it still stands.

He described what he knew and was relevant to this case about the workings of the KGB in England. Their two main buildings are in Kensington Palace Gardens, where the diplomatic service work, and the trade delegation which has its headquarters in Highgate Hill.

The Russians meet their agents mainly in the North and the West of Greater London, frequently in park areas. Roxeth and Horsenden are known to him as places where they meet. Elaborate arrangements are required for a meet, first of all because it is known that British Security Services follow known KGB officials, and so all KGB officials have to work on the basis they are being followed, and have to shake off any follower whether they have got one or not. This has been referred to as laundering or dry-cleaning. They have to be certain they are not being followed. This may involve other agents who are watching their backs to see if they are being followed. They listen to short wave radio. They have got a big transmitter so they can hear if the security forces -- in this country, the police and such like -- are running any operation which might be targeted on them.

He said that a number of KGB officials live, when they are in England, in a house in Edith Road. We will come back to that. He looked at the letter at page 272 and he said it was similar in formulation to the way that KGB officials are taught to phrase a letter, in its slightly enigmatic language. It looked to him like a letter written by a KGB case officer. He then dealt with page 275. You can look at it if you want -- it is entirely up to you -- but I am not going to get it out and go through it in detail, although I shall refer you to one or two documents in a moment or two. He said there are indications that are indicative of Soviet tradecraft: the mention of, as it were, the Saturday of every month; the visual signals; meeting place and fall-back meeting place, Horsenden Hill, well known and used by KGB agents for contact break; is classical KGB behaviour.

Document 274 he found extremely interesting. He said that KGB case officers are trained not to be too blunt with their agents but to use a phrase like “I suggest”. He said that the area of Harrow/Perivale/Sudbury is an area used by the KGB technological branch. They are interested in getting technological and scientific information. He emphasised that the KGB is always asking about access as they want further information from the agent.

Then he turned to 276 and said that was a note that he, when he was working for the KGB would like to have had, and he would have put it into a handbook for training potential KGB controllers; that this one, he said, in his view contained a shopping list for information for delivery, that is biosensors and that list running down to HTSC, high temperature semi-conductors.

MR KELSEY-FRY: Superconductivity.

MR JUSTICE BLOFELD: Thank you very much. It indicates the agent is being asked to be a talent spotter -- that is part of the KGB’s way of working -- Karl Gehring. Then the KGB, if he was mentioned by a talent spotter as somebody who possibly might be approached for various different reasons, or might have access to important information -- well worth knowing his name -- he would be asked his address and telephone number; and, he says, there is “Get Karl’s address and telephone number”.

It has the vertical and horizontal signs. It has the reference to Abbotsbury Road/Melbury Road, and he considered that important, and it is something you will have to consider very carefully. It is well-known to him because that is an area very close to Edith Road where KGB officers live, and an agent who wishes to contact his case officer can leave a sign like an empty coca cola can so that the case officer can see it as he drives past.

I want to stress that it is not the case officer leaving a sign for the agent; it is the agent who can then indicate that he wants the case officer to get in touch with him.

He regarded that, as I say, of considerable importance. He says that his experience with the British Intelligence Services indicates that, with the best will in the world, they simply do not have enough personnel to follow every KGB case officer all the time.

He said that the map of Oporto may have a tradecraft significance. He is struck by where the crosses are placed. The circle drawn on the map round the crosses, you will remember, may indicate the route to be taken. You will note these are all ‘mays’ and ‘coulds’; he is not being positive about it. He looked at the photographs of the area and he said they are all parts (where the crosses are) which are suitable for an agent to be watched so that, unbeknown to the agent, it could be seen whether he could be relied on to carry out instructions -- to see if he is going to prove competent and useful -- because one of the difficulties if you have an agent who is a maverick, who will not obey instructions, not only will he not give you any information but he could disclose to the Intelligence Services the identity of the KGB officers, and that is the last thing they would want.

He described the last meeting(sic), that is the one where there is the museum and the restaurant, as a nice place for a meeting place, but he said that this map is what he called a “fragmentary piece of evidence”.

He said at the start of his cross-examination that he was trying to be fair and impartial. He said he had not exaggerated his evidence. He gave details of his pension, which he wrote down on paper; you saw it. He said, when pressed, that he did feel, as a former KGB officer, that he had not the slightest doubt that these notes 273-276 were dictated by a KGB case officer. He said individually they had weight but they had more weight when you looked at them in combination. He said he saw no reason why he should lie to a British court of law. He said he took no part in supporting liberal demonstrations; I have dealt with that. He said KGB tradecraft essentials were founded some 70 years ago and were found to be extremely efficient.

He was not impressed by the children’s book, even though he did not know it had the name Viktor in it at the time, because it was not put to him; and not impressed by descriptions of tradecraft in novels. He agreed that tradecraft and many details of tradecraft are known in the public: they are in books; they are in novels; indeed you have got a document which has been prepared by the defence listing various novels by John Le Carre, Ted Allbeury and others, drawing attention to the fact that they are in many books. I am not going to refer to it again but it is there and you can read it and make of it what you will.

He agreed that it is perfectly possible for another country to set up a false flag, in other words for another country to use KGB tradecraft so that it looks as though it is the KGB having an operation when it is not. Members of the jury, is that what we are talking about in this case? It looks as though -- though it is a matter for you -- it is either an English trade competitor or it is the Russians. It is not another foreign country.

He agreed that industrial espionage is a major activity worldwide. He had heard of some of the examples that were put to him and not of others. He said however that there was one important difference between industrial espionage and espionage for a foreign country: the British Intelligence Services do not follow those who are searching for industrial secrets, so elaborate plans for meeting and avoiding being traced are wholly unnecessary.

He said he had never seen the combination of elements that he found in all the documents 273-276 in other intelligence services. He was asked about French Intelligence and said he had experience of it, and gave us details of one operation about French Intelligence.

He said he had read a large number of factual books about the matter but did not seem to have much time for, or to be very impressed by spy novels.

He said the vertical and horizontal marks were common pieces of tradecraft used worldwide by all sorts of different intelligence agencies or by individuals. They could vary from country to country.

He stressed on many occasions that he was looking at the whole picture. He was taken through each page by the defence and he agreed that each individual element in isolation could well relate to another country or to an ex-agent from the KGB or another source who was trying to obtain information for industrial espionage, but he still maintained that the picture taken as a whole pointed to the KGB. He emphasised strongly the importance of Abbotsbury Road/Melbury Road being near Edith Road, and he said that the shopping list on page 276 was something that he relied on as a pointer. He said about notes that agents should get rid of them but they sometimes do not.

Members of the jury, you also heard from Mr E. Mr E, you may think, is on the fringes of this case. He was a U.S. citizen. He served back in the -- well, prior to 1975, in the U.S. Navy, in the ranks, as a petty officer. He came to this country some time in the 1970s. He was working, after 1975 that is, in a hi-fi shop in Tottenham Court Road. A man came in. He identified him from photographs as Viktor Oshchenko. He talked about hi-fi. He was going to go back to Russia and wanted to take a good hi-fi system back to Russia. They talked about hi-fi. He came twice at least to the shop.

They had several meetings in restaurants. Viktor paid him money from time to time. Viktor was trying to persuade him to give information to him. He told Viktor that he had been a radar technician while in the U. S. Navy. After a length of time Viktor called a man who was called George, so at any rate those two Russian controllers that Mr E was seeing actually called themselves by their first names, Viktor and George, according to him. Then, after George came on the scene, there were one or two meetings with Viktor and George and Mr E. Then Viktor returned to Russia and George continued to take him out.

In July 1979, Mr E went for two days to Portugal. George gave him an envelope sealed to hand over to a contact. He stayed in a hotel, got a phone call and handed over the envelope. He saw George on his return to this country and reported. Later he saw George and George accused him of opening the envelope that he handed over. Mr E said he had not opened it. There were still meetings after that with George, but they tailed off and he never saw him much more. In the end he never gave him any information.

He said he was uncertain about dates it was also long ago. The two dates that are hard, because they are not in dispute, are the date of his trip to Portugal, which we can get from stamps in his passport July 1979; and the other recorded fact is that he went and reported on this to the U.S. Intelligence in May 1980.

In his evidence to start with he said he first met Viktor in 1977. He was shown a statement that he made to the police about this last year. In it he wrote, “I wish to indicate that, about three months after meeting Viktor, my suspicions were aroused. Next day I went to the U.S. embassy.” The defence say that the way that is phrased means that he went to the U.S. embassy three months after his meeting with Viktor. That clearly cannot be accurate because his passport shows that he went to Portugal in May [July] 1979. Mr E says that was at the Russians’ request, and he did not report, as we know, to the U.S. Intelligence till 1980. He said that, when he made his original statement – which actually is not the one that he was referred to, because that was a longer one and the one he was referred to was a short statement amplifying it -- he had not actually got his passport there in front of him and so he could not remember the precise date of his visit to Portugal, and so he got confused about it, because we are now in 1993 and this is back in 1979. The defence say that that confusion of dates makes Mr E unreliable.

They say that in evidence he said he got about a hundred pounds a time from Viktor or George, and he did say that. In his statement he said he could not remember the amounts of money, but on one occasion he got ?35. So they say there again he is inaccurate and unreliable.

He also in his statement said that it was George who arranged for him to go to Portugal. In his evidence he was not certain whether it was Viktor or George, so whether it is because his memory is playing him up, whether it is because he wishes to be unreliable or whether it is just that he is by nature unreliable, the defence say that you cannot pay much attention to Mr E.

Well, in the circumstances, whether the defence contentions are right, as I have indicated to you, here is a rare occasion where I do express my own view: I cannot see that Mr E takes the case a great deal further one way or the other. You can place reliance on him if you want. The furthest it goes to is that the Russians do use Portugal to train their agents, but we have heard that from other sources as well. So consider it if you think it helps you, either for the Crown or the defendant.

As to Oporto, well again I am going to take that quite shortly. There are 4 crosses. The only one that could be a tourist area is the one near the river at the bottom. Site 1 is on a street; site 2 is the main square; site 3 is near a grassy bank and there are shops and an area in which you can have a meal, which we cannot see in the photograph, behind the grassy bank; and then there is the museum in site 4.

We had Mr Moreira, a Portuguese who knows all about the buses in Oporto, and he agrees that site 1 is where a bus among other buses would come to from the camp site where the defendant was staying. It does not go back to site 1 on its return journey because of the one-way system, or because it is routed differently. Of the other two buses that go from the site, one goes from near site 3 and near site 2, so they could all relate to buses. Certainly there is a correlation between the camp site and buses going to and from the camp.

The defendant however in interview said two things. He first of all said they used their car in Oporto, and then he gave a more detailed description and said that these crosses were points of interest. He was being asked in 1992, after his arrest, about matters that took place in 1977, 15 years ago. You all of you can use your common sense. You have all of you I am sure had holidays 15 years and more ago. It is not surprising, you may think, that anyone cannot remember the details of what he did 15 years ago on holiday, unless something particularly remarkable stood out, and whether in fact you went by car or by bus to see some sights, whether it was in Oporto or somewhere else, may not strike you as being the most distinctive thing. If you had an absolutely major row with your wife or your girlfriend, which ended with one of you going home, that is the sort of thing that might stand out in your mind.

What the Crown say is significant is the defendant’s now apparent recollection that they relate to bus signs. It is extraordinary after 15 years, if he first of all thought it related to tourist places that, after thinking about it, he could suddenly remember they relate to bus signs. They say that is absolute nonsense; he in fact has made that up because he realises that the prosecution evidence demonstrates they are not places of tourist interest.

So they say, although on its own it is only a straw in the wind, if you come to the conclusion that the defendant’s evidence on this is simply not credible, then it does fortify the Oporto incident; and if it does fortify the Oporto incident and if you say he is lying about it, why is he lying? Is it because he is just lying compulsively about it, or is it because in fact he knows there is something that connects him with the Russians? If and only if that is the case would Oporto be of help to you.

We heard from Mr Avery, who looked at pages 271 and 272. Mr Avery and Dr Johnson both know and respect each another. Mr Avery specialises in teaching Russian and in training interpreters. He did not consider that either the envelope or the letter was written by an Englishman. He noticed the use of capital R’s and capital N’s as lower case letters. Upper case are capitals; lower case are ordinary writing. That might be an indication that this was a letter not written by an Englishman. It might be an Englishman who was pretending to be a foreigner, but that did not seem to him likely because you would then have expected him to maintain the capitals R’s and N’s throughout the letter as well as on the envelope because, if he were trying to deceive somebody, you would have thought he would have kept the deception up. After all it is not a very long letter.

He said that the phrase “in the nearest future” is a direct translation of the Russian equivalent. He said the Spanish is another language which would be a direct translation of the equivalent. He said the word “recreation” by itself was of some interest because there is no precisely comparable word in Russian.

He said the signature of plain Williams was, as he put it, worth pointing out, because Russians do sometimes write their name like that; he has seen it. Dr Johnson had not ever seen it, and it was not the strongest point Mr Avery was making.

He said these documents could be written by a Russian; they could be written by an Englishman; they could be written by a person of another nationality.

Dr Johnson is director of language studies at the London School of Economics, fluent in Russian, properly an expert in the interpretation of documents relating to the Russian language. He found it extremely difficult to make any categorical pronouncement. He considered the capital Ns and capital Rs. He could not say they were necessarily characteristic of a Russian writer. He agreed that the phrase “in the nearest future” complied with Russian and Spanish grammar. The words “after our latest appointment” did not. But then of course if the “latest” was indeed a precise word to alert the recipient that it was in fact the word that showed it was written from his source, it would be put in whether it was good grammar or not.

He said that normally the Russians spell the month with a lower case letter so, if they are writing January/February through to October, they would not write it with a capital as we are all taught to do, and the fact that it is written with a capital is a contrary indication to its being a Russian writer.

He said a lot of Russians write their D in a particular way, and produced a page of Ds. He said that, because he is now so used to Russians, he writes with Russian Ds, and he said the D in these two documents is a straight D. He agreed that it would appear that the mother tongue of the writer of this letter was not English, unless of course he was masquerading and pretending he was not an Englishman. It could be written by a foreigner, but he could not say particularly which nationality. There does not seem to be much difference between him and Mr Avery really.

Mrs Marsh was called by the defence. She is a handwriting expert; she is not an expert in interpreting the Russian language. She could not call herself an expert in Russian writing. You will remember there was a mildly amusing exchange between Mr Tansey and me, because there was part of an objection that she should not be asked whether it was written by a Russian. Mr Tansey got his way eventually and she said it was not. She was not really qualified to give the answer but nevertheless, as there is no other evidence that it is definitely by a Russian, take her evidence into account. She is obviously extremely expert in handwriting. She has obviously dealt with the Russian language and, if you think it helps, by all means put that into the scales on the side of the defence, because it is a little bit of evidence and perfectly understandable. She really said that she could not say who wrote this letter. There is no indication of who it is written by at all.

We heard about the Irish R. Apparently some of the Irish write a capital R and it is known, if you happen to be in handwriting circles, as the Irish R. But she could not say really very much about it at all. So really the evidence from her and from Dr Johnson and Mr Avery seems to be really rather negative evidence. No-one can really say one way or another what it is.

Just dealing with one other matter while we are on it, we never did hear anything about the money so it does not look as though there was any possibility of the money being traced as to where it came from, even though some of the notes were in sequence.

As it arises out of page 276, I deal with Dr Gehring. Dr Gehring’s name is on the top and then “Ask Karl” for his name and address. Dr Gehring said he did not know the defendant socially. He thought he had last met him at his work in 1991. He has never given the defendant his home address or his telephone number. He was in charge of the high temperature superconductivity department with that superconductivity HTSC.

It is possible to make an extremely technical magnetic detector which can be used to detect submarines. HRC had eight scientists working on this project but by the spring of 1993 that number had declined. It is at the leading edge of that highly technical form of technology. He left in May 1992 because of ill health; he had the misfortune to have hepatitis and clearly was not capable of being able to do his work, or the stamina to do his work.

We heard from Mr Ball who keeps W.H. Smith’s at Harrow. He does stock Keyboard. He did have Keyboard in, in August. He thought it was likely to be on sale. Whether it was displayed or whether somebody picked up a magazine, as I think I suggested, and tucked it in front because they decided they did not want it, because it could not be readily seen, he simply does not know. Certainly, the only point about Keyboard -- it may be that the defendant did indeed kill two birds with one stone: he went to Harrow to get Keyboard as well as do other things.

Then we come to Mr P. He has served for many years with the CIA, rising to be chief of a geographical division with that intelligence agency. He has served mainly in Africa and Asia but from time to time he has been involved in individual short missions in various European countries.

He took his bar exams in 1986, after his retirement, and is now a consultant. He is assisting one branch of the CIA by going through papers relating to the assassination of President John F Kennedy. Apparently after so many years the United States then releases these documents into the public domain, in exactly the same way as happens in this country; documents are released into the public domain unless they are particularly sensitive after a certain number of years. He is going through that exercise in relation to the assassination which is now many many years ago.

His overall view is that, looking at the tradecraft documents and having read what he has of the case -- which includes a summary of the defendant’s interviews and the cross-examination of Mr Gordievsky and Mrs C, and a note of their evidence in chief, and some other documentation -- he says that his view is that, while it is possible that the documents in this case indicate that the defendant was being run by a KGB controller, it is unlikely. He considered that the tradecraft shown in the tradecraft notes 273-276 could have come from many foreign intelligence agencies.

He was unable to help about industrial espionage because he said he knew nothing whatever about it, so he was unable to give you any assistance as to why an industrial spy should take such elaborate precautions. He said that he personally has come across virtually all the different aspects of tradecraft mentioned in these documents. Some, like the vertical and horizontal marks, he has used himself, with chalk marks. He has seen others use some of them. Some he has read about in the literature. He said the one rule in all intelligence agencies is that there are no rules. But, although there are no rules, he says that his view from his experience is that these documents do not indicate to him that they are KGB inspired documents.

He listed 14 points. He said he considered it unlikely that the KGB would recruit somebody from a communist past. He quoted from one of Mr Gordievsky’s own books, saying they would only do so in exceptional circumstances. Well, we did not have the advantage of hearing Mr Gordievsky say what exceptional circumstances he had in mind, because that passage was not pointed out to him when he was in the witness box.

He said that the tradecraft in these documents in his view was very basic. If there had been more sophisticated tradecraft he would expect the notes to have shown it because, if the tradecraft was written down as it was, it showed that Mr Smith wanted to remember it, even though in his view it was basic tradecraft; so, if it had been more sophisticated, it would follow that he would also want to write that down, for fear that he would forget that too.

He placed reliance on the fact that no paraphernalia was found. No spy camera was found. He said there was a roll-over camera which you roll over a document, and it makes a sort of photostat of the document; or a minox camera, which is minute in itself and takes minute photographs, and can take up to 150 different exposures. He said that he knew that other spy cases in this country had involved the use of cameras some years ago.

He did not know anything at all about the degree of security at HRC, as to whether therefore it would be practicable for somebody who wished to spy to take documents out. Well, we know from the defendant’s own account that not only was it practicable to take documents out without being discovered but he did so. On his own case he did so; he supplied Harry for 18 months or so, on his own account, from October 1990 to April 1992.

He would have expected not only to have found a spy camera but he would have expected to find some hiding place in Mr Smith’s house or a false bottom to some container like a suitcase. He would not have expected an agent to keep notes. He would have expected him to have been instructed to destroy them.

He did not like the letter shown at page 271. He would not have expected such a letter to be written by a KGB controller. It should not have been necessary. You do not write one paragraph like that. He would have expected it to have an address and a date. He would have expected, if they wanted to recall an agent, for the information to be put either in a business letter or in a bill. He said that the KGB are extremely professional. He said, referring to the envelope which uses Street then Road, that indicates a degree of amateurism which is totally contrary to what he knows about the KGB.

He dealt with the coke can, but he dealt with that first of all saying that the Russians would not place a coke can. It was only in cross-examination that he appreciated that it was in fact Mr Gordievsky’s contention that it would be the agent who placed the coke can to alert his control. Members of the jury, whether that means that he did not read Mr Gordievsky’s notes of his examination-in-chief and cross-examination in quite the detail he should have done, or whether it was just a mistake anybody can make, is a matter entirely for you. He still did not consider it professional because he thought the British Intelligence Services would get on to it.

He referred to the time of 12.45, mentioned in Mr Gordievsky’s evidence as a good time for meeting. He said that was unprofessional; you would not make a meeting to meet an agent at the same time on a regular basis. So there he is criticising Mr Gordievsky’s expertise. Whether it is a material point or not again you must consider.

He said that no intelligence controller in his experience would use such a loose word as “suggest”; an agent wants clear directions. Again Mr Gordievsky says that the word “suggest” was a word that would be used by the KGB. Again whether that is right or not, the defendant said in evidence that the word “suggest” was the word that was mentioned to him by Harry.

He said that Mr Gordievsky’s tradecraft was the tradecraft used till he defected in 1985. He would not expect the same tradecraft to continue into the 1990s. He said that in his experience, when an agent ceased to be an agent or be involved in the intelligence services, his usefulness went down at the rate of two per cent per month. On that basis both Mr Gordievsky and Mr P have long passed their “sell by date”!

He said he would only expect the KGB to use a telephone in an emergency. He would expect the KGB to organise an escape route for an agent. He said no sensible intelligence agency would pay substantial quantities of large denomination notes as in his view they might be traced. Well, I have dealt with that.

He said that, as the times show a coming together of minds between the East and the West, it would be unlikely the KGB would be running agents at this time. He did not consider that Smith would be in the category of those who would be productive enough to continue running him in such times, but he was not of course a scientific expert.

He said that, even if an escape plan were not in operation (which he expected) he would at the very least have expected him to be warned so that he could destroy all incriminating evidence. He did not like the use of the letter to re-contact agents in any event.

I have gone through the 14 points. I hope you think I have covered them. Also you heard him, you saw him and you will take his evidence into consideration, and give it careful consideration.

I turn now to the background of Soviet Union and Russia. Mrs C gave evidence about the recent history of Russia, and you will find it in the red bundle at page 548. I am going to look it up because I have not made a note of it in my notes. There is no need for you to unless you want to. She told you that she prepared that list which is in the document.

She agreed that in October 1989 the Warsaw Pact abandoned the Brezhnev Doctrine by which the USSR had the right to interfere with the government of other Warsaw Pact countries. In November 1989 the Berlin Wall came down, a highly important development. In March 1990, the USSR agreed with Hungary and Czechoslovakia to remove their troops by the end of July 1991.

She agreed that, in June 1990, Mrs Thatcher said of the Warsaw Pact countries, “Communism has crumbled and we no longer think of them as potential enemies and as a wider threat to our way of life.” That was said by Mrs Thatcher at a NATO Council when she was prime minister. She agreed that, on 5th August 1990, Mrs Thatcher said, “We do not now see the Soviet Union as an enemy but as a country groping its way towards freedom. The Cold War is over.” Those quotations you heard in full when Mr Tansey addressed you.

The Crown do not say that Russia is an enemy at the moment. They say that life is uncertain, and an analogy which they do not use but which springs to mind could be Mr Chamberlain and Munich before the last war. Mr Chamberlain came back from meeting Mr Hitler and said, “There's no possibility of war”. We all know how wrong he was. The Crown say, “You cannot look into a crystal ball. Mrs Thatcher may be saying that. Can we say that Russia is not a potential enemy?”

Mr Primakov says they are still getting information from agents. Mrs C says that, whereas the other ex-Warsaw Pact countries have already reformed their intelligence and security services, and given information to the West that they would no longer spy against them and are not spying against them, the USSR are carrying on in the same way.

She described how the Russians had divided their intelligence services now into three parts. You have got the diagram on page 550. She says there is an espionage threat. What is the point of an espionage threat for military information, if they are not still a military threat or perceive themselves to be a military threat, or that some of them who might come to power might be a military threat?

Mr Primakov is head of the MBR, the successor body of the KGB. She says Russia is now more careful in its operations. It has now reduced its number of KGB officers, after a good deal of pressure by western countries, but they are still working to gain political, military and scientific advantages. The money available for use by their intelligence service was not reduced early on, after the failed coup, but has now been reduced. That is the Gorbachev coup.

Her view was that the threat presented by the Russian intelligence gathering services is prejudicial to this country’s interests. It is not necessarily limited to classified material.

She said that intelligence gathering is like doing a jigsaw. You never know how valuable one piece of information is until you get the whole picture. One small piece of information may help to complete a jigsaw, even though in itself it may be of little importance, and only the Russians know what pieces of their own jigsaw in relation to a particular subject they already have; the agent does not know the full picture. By receiving information, it may help the Russians to use that information. It may also enable the Russians to know the lines along which the United Kingdom is itself progressing in a particular field, and that may give them clues which they otherwise would not have, either to assess how far ahead or how far behind their own scientific and military research that of the United Kingdom is.

The defence say that Mrs Thatcher’s remarks, from the prime minister, demonstrate that it could not possibly be said that the USSR or its successor body Russia could be considered to be potential enemies. Well, members of the jury, that is so much for that matter.

As it is nearly one o’clock, I am not going to start on the next subject but, if it is any comfort to you, we are getting through reasonably well, but we have got a long way to go yet.

(Luncheon Adjournment)
SUMMING-UP continued

MR JUSTICE BLOFELD: Mr Tansey, I am sitting in open court again.

(In open court)

I turn now to deal with Mr Smith and communism. You know that he had been involved because I have dealt with it. He was a member of the Young Communist League and the Communist Party in the early 1970s. This is now dealing with the defendant and how he tried to get his security clearance back again, so I pick up the story in 1978.

He had been working from July 1976 till April 1978 at EMI on defence work, he having given up his contacts with the Communist Party at about the very end of 1975, possibly just into 1976. In April 1978 he moved to work at EMI Medical. That was in fact called a promotion. He did earn a bit more money, he told us in his evidence, but it was not the job he wanted to do.

He approached Mr McMichael, who is the security officer for EMI, about his security clearance on 12th November 1979, as he had by then heard rumours that his security had been cancelled. Mr McMichael had had a lengthy interview with him, which unbeknown to the defendant he taped at the time. That interview is in the red bundle at page 350. In it the defendant said at page 354 that he had never subscribed to a political party. That was clearly untrue, and accepted to be untrue.

Shortly after that he was in touch with a Mr Taylor of the Ministry of Defence. Mr Taylor asked him to fill in a detailed questionnaire about his background so that he could consider whether to give him security clearance. That document starts at 281. He was asked if he was a member of a political party at 285. He said he was not, again a lie. He then added some further notes of explanation at the end of that document, which is page 287, which at any rate if not direct lies were certainly not the whole truth.

He signed the document at page 288. It was under the superscription saying that he understood that, if there was any false statement, he was unlikely to get his security clearance back. Having done that he went for an interview with a man who gave evidence before us in court using the letter of the alphabet D. When he was seen by the defendant, he was in fact calling himself Mr Malony, but that is not his real name.

He had a lengthy interview with the defendant and after that he prepared a report for his superiors. In it the defendant totally denied any involvement with the Communist Party. This is a document I want to refer to briefly and it is going to take me a moment to get it. Members of the jury, needless to say it is the one document out of all the papers I thought I set out. It is not. It does not matter. I can get on perfectly well without it because I can remember it.

In it eventually it was disclosed by Mr D to him that he knew he had been in the Communist Party. The defendant admitted it but not until it was put to him direct.

At the end of that document(sic), Mr D passed on his comments for his superiors to consider whether it was appropriate to grant him his security clearance back. He said that he considered that the defendant’s account was plausible and not untypical of many young men who join the Communist Party and then give it up as they mature. He said that he doubted if Mr Smith was of the stuff of which long term communists were made. He also formed the view that it might be that Mr Smith was telling him the truth now because the information he gave largely tallied with the information they knew. They did not know all the details but he certainly told them nothing that clashed with what they already knew.

He also however formed the view, as he wrote in the note, that when he lied Mr Smith showed no embarrassment or shame at having to lie. It was therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion that lying came easily to him when his own interests were affected. So that was his view about it.

Now we come back to his police interviews because, after his arrest, we then went to his house and his car which was searched, and I have now commented on everything that came from those searches, which is why I dealt with tradecraft because they came from the documents that were found in his house; and, as the witnesses who dealt with tradecraft also found the money, I dealt with the money; and, as Mrs C who dealt with tradecraft dealt with the background of Russia and Soviet Union, I dealt with that. It then seemed logical to go on to communism, which seemed to come logically after one was dealing with the background of Russia. So all this time as it were, metaphorically, the defendant has been languishing in the Paddington Green Police Station.

So I am now going with you to the interviews. You have now the index, and I am not going to refer you in great detail to the interviews, because we heard all of them for many hours and you have them and, as you have the index, if you wish to you can look up the relevant parts.

I am going to go through it really very briefly. The important thing from the defence point of view to emphasise to you is that, whatever else he may have said at all times during his interviews he denied ever having handed over any information to the Russians, or intending to do so. He never had any contact with the Russians at all. He has never come across Viktor Oshchenko. The only Victor he knows is a small child, a 14-year old now, of a friend of his who has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the Viktor the Crown are suggesting. He has never been to Oporto to lie(sic). He did however, as he said in evidence, tell a large number of lies during the interviews.

After his arrest and in his interview -- and it is for the first 31 pages -- he was interviewed without a solicitor. After that, at the end of that first interview, he was pressed by the interviewing officers that he should have a solicitor to look after his interests, and he agreed. For all the rest of the hours of interviews his own solicitor sat in with him.

So you can at least consider this. It may well be that Superintendent McLeod in asking him questions was being forceful, assertive, and may not have seemed particularly pleasant to the defendant. After all, he was trying to do his job to try and discover if the criminal offences had been committed. The defendant was denying that anything had been committed and throughout he was not telling what he considered to be the complete truth. The defendant said he did not like his manner and that accounts to some extent for the answers he gave. Certain it is that at no time did his solicitor intervene on his behalf to say there was anything actually unfair about the questioning, but whether the defendant in his mind thought there might have been something unfair is something you consider.

He was asked first of all in his first interview -- that is pages 1-31 -- about the events of 8th August. He said, “This has taken me by surprise. I have just been down the shop to get a newspaper. I thought you were kidnapping me.” He was asked what he meant by his comment in the car and he said, “God knows who you were.” He said he had seen people looking at his house and he thought they were suspicious. He refused to discuss his jobs because he did not think those interviewing him had the necessary clearance. He said that, when he lied about being a member of the Communist Party back in the 1970s, “That is the last time I have been untruthful”.

In the next interview he repeated, “I was going to get a newspaper. I can’t describe the route I took”. Well, it is perfectly clear that was a lie. “I didn’t take a direct route, if that is what you mean. I’d better not comment on (the route I took(sic)). It’s your turn to give me some information before I co-operate with you. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t talk to anybody.”

Then he was asked about the telephone call and he said it was the wrong number. “I told (my wife) a cock and bull story” -- about a phone call from a man called George at the lab. “I didn't think the phone call important; that is why I didn’t mention it. I can’t remember details of phone conversations.”

Then he talked about the Victor he knew, the son of the friend of his. “On the phone call I wasn’t asked to do anything. I can’t remember much about the call.” Well, I am not going to make comments as to whether they are true or not because you know enough of the background of the evidence now to decide for yourselves whether they are truthful or not.

He said the man on the telephone “sounded like he was in trouble. Could I meet him or something like that.”

He said, “It wasn’t a conversation, for fuck’s sake.” “Was the name Viktor mentioned?” “It might have been. I don’t remember.” Asked about the walk, “I do not remember anything happening on that walk; absolutely nothing happened on that walk.”

Then we go on, and I am by now on the fourth interview, because I do not propose to take you through it all. There were quite a number of places in these interviews when it could really reasonably be described that both were jockeying for position. Detective Superintendent McLeod was trying to get the defendant to answer questions; the defendant was saying he did not want to answer questions unless more information was put on the cards(sic) [table] by Detective Superintendent McLeod. There is no point in going over that because it does not get you anywhere.

At page 119 he said that he listened to the tape. He said after listening to it that he did not think he had lied about what he had said. He said, “I didn't act on (George’s) instructions. I didn’t go anywhere near Durlston Road.” He was asked if he had. He said, “I am saying that it didn’t happen.”

He said he was never recruited by the KGB as an agent. Then he agreed he had been to Russia, when he was shown the pass -- I beg your pardon, he had been to Russia in the 1970s. He said, “I was disillusioned with what was being presented to me.”

He agreed he had signed the Official Secrets Act. He said he never passed any information classified or unclassified while working at EMI. He then returned to the telephone call and said he was quite used to receiving calls from foreigners. “We have an Indian friend. It’s not unusual.” He mentioned some other nationalities.

He then was asked about when he was in the Communist Party. He said he had met a Russian in Surbiton but did not know who he was. He said that he did in fact work with the Russians in the Young Communist League and the Communist Party, but it was all a very long time ago and it was fairly small beer.

He said at page 296, that about his time at EMI he has never passed any information to anybody outside the workplace. There was no suggestion that he ever has. He was asked then more generally at page 276, and said he had never passed information except possibly a pub conversation, not knowingly. This was all of course before he mentioned the presence of Harry. He repeated -- and we have got up to page 324 -- that he had never carried out any work for the Russian Intelligence Services.

Then he was asked about the computer. That is the first major expense that we see on the schedule showing his finances. He said he paid about ?4,000 for the computer. By then they had received documents from his flat showing he had spent over ?10,000, and he said first of all he never received that document and then he said that ?4,800 “is money I had saved up. I collected it over a period of a couple of years. I’d been saving up over a period of years. I’ve done some evening work.”

Then they went back to the phone call, and he said at 377, “When you were asking me questions about it before, it wasn’t the right time to discuss the phone call. George asked for me by name. I do not know if there is a road called Cardinal Avenue”.

He was then asked about the money in his house. He said, “I usually keep about ?1,000 pounds there.” The ?2,000 that had then been found “is usually withdrawn from my account”. He was asked if it was on the same occasion or on separate occasions, and he said it was on separate occasions. On one occasion he said it was on one occasion but he then reverted to saying it was on separate occasions.

He was asked about the Williams letter 272. “I don’t know who Williams is.” He was asked about the list that was found under the rug in the well of his car and he said, “I do not know why I kept this. I find it hard to believe it was under the mat in front of my car. It could have been there for five years for all I know.”

He was asked about the money again and he said, “I think you are trying to make too much of it.” He said he had earned money playing the guitar in a school in Lillie Road; that was his explanation. Then he said, “It’s my money. It was received as part of my employment; indirectly it all came from GEC. You will come to the point where you are prying into my private financial affairs.” He said about the money that he had personally counted it out to make sure it came to around ?2,000.

He was asked about his movements for the week up to 8th August. He was taken through day by day. This was to some extent a device so that he was not alerted as to which particular day no doubt that they were really interested in, which was Thursday, 6th August. So I will not trouble you with what happened on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, save to say that on Monday he went to try and find the magazine Keyboard but could not get it because they had not got it in Kingston, which is an agreed fact.

On Thursday he went to Basingstoke for an induction course for his new temporary job. “On the way back I decided to go to Harrow town centre. I parked my car on the edge of Harrow. The reason I went to Harrow was nostalgia”, and he later added “to get Keyboard”, and possibly to go to this place where he thought Harry might turn up. “After buying some newspapers, I went back to my car. I spent about ten minutes looking through the job adverts in The Telegraph.”

“I may have sat near the phone kiosk at the corner of this” -- I am going back to 8th August because Mr McLeod went on dodging backwards and forwards which makes it a little confusing. He said, “I may have sat near the phone box at the corner of Durlston Road/Cardinal Avenue. I really didn’t have a clue this was the particular location. I think I did enter the phone box, yes.” Then he said a little later, “I went to the phone box to try to sort out what I felt was part of a continuing plan of surveillance of my house.”

He was shown the Portugal map and he said, “The crosses on the map are restaurants and places of interest.”

Then at 553 which is quite a long way into the interviews, he for the first time mentioned Harry and he gave details of the telephone call: how Harry telephoned him at work; they met in the pub; how he demurred, and how he then agreed that he would supply Harry with information. “He never on any occasion gave me any real information about who he was.” He said that his relationship with Harry ended in April 1992.

Then he said where he had met, and said they met at Sudbury Station; they met in the Harrow shopping area; they met near Honeypot Lane for reasons which I do not think we ever really discovered; he never said in the interviews. They would meet at Roxeth or Horsenden.

He was asked about the Friday, that is the day after the day he went to Harrow-on-the-Hill, 7th August. “Pam” -- that is his wife, Pam - “and I had arranged to go down to the South coast on Wednesday or Friday. We arranged it on the Tuesday. I was quite happy to go on the Friday. My wife and I had a disagreement on the Friday morning.”

He was taken back to the day before. He said about Harrow, “I think I sat on the bench and took in the sunshine for about ten minutes.”

One of the questions you might just want to ask yourselves is: were there certain times, reading it, where you may have got the impression that he thought that Mr McLeod and his team knew more than Mr McLeod was letting on, and one of the subjects he might have known more about was that he actually had photographs? Of course he had got photographs of him going to the phone box and, when he is dealing with Harrow, it may have crossed your mind as to whether the defendant was thinking, “Well, I wonder whether he’s got photographs of me going to Harrow. So I have got to disclose a bit more or I am going to get caught out in a downright lie.” The defendant said that was not the case, but it is something you ought to ask yourselves at any rate.

He was asked, “Were you expecting to meet anyone there?” There was an admirable position for saying, “Yes, I was going to meet Harry”, but the answer was, “No, why should I? I mean, I don’t have anything to hide on that front. There’s a bench in the church and it’s exposed to the sun. I didn’t particularly choose that bench, I might add.” Well, you will have to consider all that because, having mentioned Harry, why not go on to tell rather more about Harry? Because, although it might be trouble for Harry if he was found, it would give him a complete let out on any accusation of spying with the Russians.

Then he was shown the document 270 and the tradecraft documents and, when he looked at page 273, which has the words, “Copy John’s contract list”, he said “I am trying my pen out.” He then gave more details about Harry and said, “Harry got in touch with me January/February 1990. I was in touch with Harry till April 1992. We mutually agreed there was no further point continuing our relationship. I took the papers, that is the papers found in my car, on the day I left because I hadn’t had time to sort everything out. Harry definitely had an English accent. Harry only asked for commercial information -- specifically interested in micro-electronics, silicon chip type of activity. The documents I gave him were all in the public domain. Harry was becoming increasingly frustrated with me for not giving him more useful information. That is what terminated our relationship. I wasn’t under any pressure from him. I never saw any documentation on trident.”

When it was pointed out that the documents relating to delay lines were Rapier documents, he said, “I have never heard of Rapier. Harry and I”, he said, “on one of these meetings met at Greenford. Harry always turned up. I gave him information concerning obsolete projects. There’s not much I can give him. I think that is why he ended the relationship. It was money for old rope.” The meetings stopped about April 1992. He said, “I do not believe any of the documentation I gave him had any classification on it except for Company Confidentiality”; this is page 570.

He said he took the documents out in his briefcase. “I have had a lot of documents in my drawer which I have had for some years since I started at Hirst.”

So he said that that ended. He thought it was a good time to stop. “I didn’t give him any military classified documents. I gave him commercially confidential documents. No contingency plans to see him again.”

Then he said, “I thought maybe you may have found some of these scraps of paper” -- that is a reference to the tradecraft notes, which he said he had bundled up in a hurry on the day he left his work and put into a manilla envelope with the Williams letter. So it was chance they were all there together. “I took some devices home with me. I gave no samples of these to Harry. I was not working for the KGB.”

Then he was referred to his handwritten notes, that is 176-187, and he said, “I would not give those to Harry. I didn’t consider that that is appropriate to give to Harry.” He said that they were sensitive; they could have been restricted. So that you will have to consider.

He was asked about one of the tradecraft pages, 273. He said, “it does not mean anything. I do not know what I have written there.” Of 276, he said, “Harry didn’t ask me about these matters.” That is the list of biosensors and the other matters. “I wasn’t aware that any of the material that I gave to Harry falls within the Official Secrets Act. The documents that were recovered from my car were not intended for Harry.”

Well, that is very much a bird’s eye view, members of the jury, of nearly 12 hours of interview. I do it that way because it does not seem to me that you are really going to be helped by going through it in greater detail than that.

So we come on from that to the scientific evidence. The scientific evidence is going to take a bit of time but I cannot help that, because it occupied us for a long time. But in the end may I just remind you that it is not your task to evaluate the minute details of the scientific evidence. Do not forget all the time that you are not having to decide whether any of this information was in fact damaging, prejudicial, capable of damaging the safety or interests of the state in a military sense. You are having to consider first of all whether it was calculated to be or might have been or was intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy; as I have already told you, wide words. Secondly, are you sure that this defendant handed them over to a Russian for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state? So it is immaterial whether they were actually prejudicial.

Can I in fact explain by way of illustration: somebody who is spying for a potential enemy has no defence because in fact the documents he is handing over turn out to be of no value because the Russians have got them all already. So are not looking at the contents. You are deciding what was in his mind. Did he have the purpose of damaging the safety or interests of the state? Were the documents calculated to be or might have been or intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy? That is why in the end the details, you may think, are not of such great importance.

It was for that reason that I think Mr Tansey, as he said in his speech, felt that I had been trying to stop Dr Maher. Well, if I did, blame me; do not let it rub off on the defence, because that would be quite wrong. But it is the purpose that you have to keep your eye on, not the precise details.

It may well be that among the 11 of you that now remain there are not very many scientists who knew very much about any of the subjects we are dealing with before you came into the jury box. So I think we have all been working on the basis that probably these subjects were ones you left behind at school, with a certain amount of relief, many years ago.

With that background, let me come to the scientific evidence, and let me stress that you consider each of the expert witnesses separately, and you bear in mind they are all extraordinarily well qualified. If you think that any of them have a purpose to serve of their own which affects their probity, that is effectively their objectivity, obviously you would downgrade that particular scientist, because scientists and experts come here in order to be dispassionate -- they are meant to be above the fray -- to give you their independent views. So with any scientist, any expert, from whichever side he comes, if at any stage you think he is trying to bat for his side and not been independent, that in fact may well in your view be a black mark against him. But it would not prevent you saying, despite that, there are aspects of his evidence that you accept.

But the independence is always a useful test. It is for you to say whether it is the only test or not. Obviously accuracy is another test. I have been through the other matters when dealing with how you should approach expert witnesses.

I start with Dr Weatherley. Dr Weatherley was the scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence for all matters relating to land warfare, until December 1992 when he retired. He told us that much modern warfare is based on electronics. He explained ----

MR NUTTING: Your Lordship did indicate there were two matters upon which you were going to go into camera.

MR JUSTICE BLOFELD: You are absolutely right. I do not know if there is anybody from the public, or are we effectively in camera? If not we ought to go into camera.

(In camera)

MR JUSTICE BLOFELD: He explained to us that much modern warfare was based on electronics. He explained that electro-optics play a substantial part. Electro-optics are a mechanical means of seeing, so that mechanically you reproduce the human eye and then effectively attach it to a telescope and that transcribes what it sees.

In the period 1990 to May 1992, which this case is concerned about, information relating to “Smart” weapons and directed energy weapons would be prejudicial to United Kingdom interests if it had been given to the Russians. A “smart” weapon is a weapon which as well as carrying a warhead has a detective device and a sealed computer that can bring it onto its target and then destroy it. The directed energy weapon is effectively a laser or radio frequency weapon with a very high energy beam. He put it a different way: he said it was a volume effect device which aims to fill a volume of atmosphere with a high energy field so that when it hits its target it disrupts, interferes with or even destroys its targets.

The most significant area deals with space based systems. They are weapon systems going into the upper atmosphere before descending to earth again. These weapons are particularly susceptible to radiation disruption by directed energy weapons. Because if in fact one can disrupt the pulses by which the warhead latches onto its target, it does not hit its target. So on the one hand you have the warheads which are accurately pinpointed to fix on a target and blow it up, and then you have the others that fix onto the platforms which carry the warheads -- that is probably the aeroplanes carrying the missiles -- and they in fact muck up their signals, to put it crudely, so that they cannot travel down and hit their target. In the best possible scenario they actually blow up the platform but, if they cannot do that, they distort the waves so that they cannot work properly; so that effectively the warhead, if you compare it with the a wireless, never actually hears a station; it never latches onto a station. All it gets is a lot of atmospherics and then it cannot hit the place the warhead is going to.

He explained, did Dr Weatherley, as did others, that the control of information is done by classification into various degrees of secrecy. You have seen that government document because I have referred to it. In addition to this there is the Co-ordinating Committee in Paris, shortly called COCOM, and that committee decides what defence-based information can properly be released to other countries which are not friendly powers. It takes into account the fact that, if such information is released, some other countries might use that information against western powers, and that the COCOM committee does not necessarily release documentation that is not bearing a classified marker on it.

Dr Weatherley dealt, as I shall deal when we come to the individual subjects, with all the matters that are contained in our blue bundle, all the different aspects. He had general scientific expertise. He had no precise detailed expertise about any one of them; that is not his job. His job, as I reminded you a moment or two ago, is that he was scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence for all matters relating to land warfare.

The thrust of the defence questioning of Dr Weatherley is that, in respect of each of the scientific areas that these documents cover, there is information published in various different papers and in various different journals which are in the public domain. Broadly Dr Weatherley agreed that some information is indeed available on all these subjects in these journals, but he considered that, either by reason of the number of documents on any one subject or in certain cases by the specific document themselves, these documents would not have been shown to a potential enemy, because it would be contrary to western interests to do so and therefore contrary to our country's interests to do so.

He further maintained when he went through each of them how far he regarded each of them as being potentially useful to an enemy and potentially damaging to our interests. I will come to that as I go through them one at a time, but I am dealing with it in general at the moment.

We heard general evidence also from Dr Cundy. Dr Cundy runs HRC. He has an impressive academic and administrative record. GEC has three research centres of which HRC is one. HRC has a high international reputation. About 75 per cent of its work comes from other GEC companies. They do some direct contract research for the Ministry of Defence and some indirect work for the Ministry of Defence. It is on that evidence that I informed you that it appears that HRC is a prohibited place, because that evidence was not challenged; and one definition of prohibited place is a place that does government work for munitions of war, and some of these are fitted into munitions of war, which means any weapon effectively.

He told us that the defendant was cleared to the lowest grade of security, which is to Confidential. I think it goes Restricted, Confidential, so it is the second grade. Then it goes Secret, then Top Secret. Each person at HRC has access to documentation only on a need-to-know basis. Just because you may have top security, you cannot go wandering around looking at anything that does not concern you. Nobody at HRC is allowed unlimited access. It is only if you need to know the information because of the particular project or projects on which you are working.

He told us that the HRC annual or biannual report is Company Confidential. It is supplied widely inside HRC and to all the subsidiary companies of GEC, and you have a list now which is before you showing that, as there are many subsidiary companies, so it has quite wide circulation. But it may be of interest that, at no time, however wide its circulation, certainly Dr Maher, who clearly from his research bundles was indefatigable in running to earth a lot of information, could only get these reports by applying to the prosecution for them. That is how he got them, so obviously they are not all that easy to obtain, though it may be that others could obtain them; one does not know.

Tech Briefs of course, as they are issued by GEC, are in the public domain, although they are supplied of course to potential customers on the general matters of science.

You should also consider Dr Maher. He has two scientific degrees and is a Doctor of Philosophy. He worked at Plesseys as senior scientist, and then as a principle scientist and, from 1985 to 1990 at Malvern as group leader and project leader. He has taken out nine patent applications, published a number of articles in learned magazines -- I call them magazines. I hope that is not being denigrating; I do not mean it that way -- journals. He has worked on projects in conjunction with the Ministry of Defence.

He told you that you can find out a mass of scientific information from various sources. There is a wealth of scientific articles published in the western world and other countries. There is a computer base for these articles which can be tapped into. There are also other ways of discovering who has written about what subjects. You can look up the authors and see what they have written about. You can look up the subject in the same way as you can with any other information in any other technology. You can also refer to the patent offices in the different countries. Patents are filed. These patents can be inspected by a member of the public once they have been granted, and patent applications are public knowledge in this country six months after they have been filed. All patents that are in fact granted have to disclose how the project or process is carried out, so you can glean information from that.

Turning to specific publications, he confirmed that the GEC Journal -- that is the GEC Journal which is not to be confused with the HRC annual or biannual report -- is in the public domain, and there is no dispute about that. Dr Cundy told us the same, I think. Then the Tech Briefs he agreed were in the public domain, and the HRC annual reports he agreed are Company Commercial(sic). But he made the point that it was a very large organisation.

He said commercial competitors in the West have access to all literature in the public domain, and he said Eastern Bloc countries have access to all published articles, because all they have to do through their trade delegations is to go to libraries and look at them and then they have got the information. So, even if it is not sent to Russia, they can find it out. They may find it, he says, slightly more difficult to get hold of Tech Briefs because, if in fact they are writing off under their own name, it might be HRC might be hesitant to give Tech Briefs if in fact they received a letter headed Russian Embassy. But, as it is unlikely that they would receive it that way -- they would probably use an anonymous name, as it were, that looked all right -- they would be able to get them without really any difficulty.

Dr Maher went on to say that there was some information in his view which could be useful to a potential enemy. He had in mind information which had an association with weapon systems.

He also agreed that there are some matters relating to leading edge technology which might be useful to an enemy. He agreed that these matters could be useful because they might provide a piece of a jigsaw which would either complete it or make the jigsaw more complete. Further the information would amount to authoritative confirmation, because that information came from HRC, rather than from a publication. This would indicate that that particular subject was specifically being investigated at or by HRC.

He agreed, referring to the documents in the case, that there were two specific instances in the