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That clearly is not hearsay and no-one could suggest it because they were employed by the very
people running the disorderly house. Therefore it was direct evidence. Certainly our case in my
submission bears no relationship at all to that. There is no connection of any kind between Mr. E
and the defendant.
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: Yes, I see that. I see what you say anyway.
RULING
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: Mr. Tansey, has asked the Court to reconsider the ruling given before
the trial commenced in relation to the admissibility of the statement served by the Crown on the
defence of a man who goes under the nomenclature of Mr. E. It is the statement dated 21st June
1993 with some blacked out deletions so that his identity cannot be known.
That statement briefly describes how in the late 1970s Mr. E was in London, was approached by a
man who he identifies from a photograph to be Viktor Oshchenko, and was then seen on a number
of occasions by Oshchenko who was anxious to recruit him to act as an agent for the KGB. In the
course of that attempted recruitment, Mr. E was required to go to Portugal and did so go.
The Crown wish to call that evidence for a number of reasons. They wish further to substantiate that
Viktor Oshchenko was at that time a KGB agent while stationed in England. We have already heard
evidence that he was stationed in England from 1972-79, and it was thought by the British
Intelligence Service that he was indeed an agent and he was treated as such. We have also heard
from Mr. Gordievsky, a defected Russian agent, that he considered (Mr. Gordievsky) Mr.
Oshchenko to be a Russian agent. I think that is right.
THE SOLICITOR GENERAL: No, that is not right, just Mrs. C.
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: Just Mrs. C, in which case I delete.
THE SOLICITOR GENERAL: Gordievsky never mentioned Oshchenko.
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: In which case I correct that: there is no mention by Mr. Gordievsky of
Mr. Oshchenko in his evidence. They further submit that the evidence that Mr. E could give deals
with Oshchenko’s activities as an agent and with the expertise that he used in order to recruit Mr. E
to act as an agent for the KGB. They therefore say that this evidence relates to the way that Russian
agents worked in England at that time which they put under the generic heading of tradecraft, and
they further say that the evidence of Mr. E being sent to Portugal as a test is also evidence of
tradecraft.
There is no suggestion in Mr. E’s statement that, at any time when he was conversing with
Oshchenko, the name of this accused person Mr. Smith was ever mentioned, either directly or
impliedly.
The Crown submit that they are entitled to adduce the bones of the conversation between E and Mr.
Oshchenko as facts of the way that a specific Russian agent attempted to persuade somebody in the
United Kingdom to work as his agent and as the background to explain the actions that that
purported recruit then took. They therefore say that they are wishing to put forward that evidence
purely as evidence of fact and not as direct evidence of proof against Mr. Smith.
However, I now turn to the state of the evidence against Mr. Smith which I summarise briefly. The
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