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Section Three Index:
The Guardian's liars and their lies

The evidence discussed here is explained within the comprehensive introduction to "Guardian Lie No. 6". 
    (Like Guardian Lies Nos. 6 & 8, Guardian Lie No.7 deals with the plethora of anomalies surrounding the mysterious late emergence of Mohamed Al Fayed's three close employees, whose eleventh-hour testimony - that they had processed corrupt payments to Neil Hamilton - Sir Gordon Downey described as 'compelling evidence'*, and which later sank Hamilton's (second) libel action, against Fayed, of Nov-Dec 1999.)
    
*[Bizarrely, despite evaluating the three Fayed employees' last minute evidence-free testimony against Neil Hamilton as 'compelling evidence', Downey nevertheless dismissed their exactly similar, belated testimony against the lobbyist Ian Greer.]
    

'In September 1996, I was in London working.. and, in that process, learned that Mr Al-Fayed was scheduled to appear as a witness in Mr Hamilton's case against The Guardian.  Mr Stuart Benson [Fayed's legal adviser] and I therefore met with Geraldine Proudler.. and Mr Geoffrey Robertson QC who were acting for The Guardian, to learn more about the status of the case... 
    During the course of the meeting with Ms Proudler and Mr Robertson, Ms Proudler told Mr Benson and me about certain diary entries that had been produced to The Guardian lawyers by Mr Al-Fayed, one of which referred to a woman named Iris..  I told Ms Proudler that the name Iris probably referred to one of the secretaries in Mr Al-Fayed's Park Lane office and, as I was staying in a flat adjacent to the Park Lane offices, I would ask Iris about it.
    Subsequently, I met with Iris Bond..  I reported to Ms Proudler what I had learned from Ms Bond and told her that there might be other witnesses with relevant information…  The decision to meet with each of the witnesses.. was.. made by Mr Benson and me, at the suggestion of Ms Proudler.

Extract taken from the witness statement of Mohamed Al Fayed's American lawyer, Doug Marvin, dated 22 January 1997, which Geraldine Proudler presented to Sir Gordon Downey’s parliamentary inquiry.

      Marvin explains how, ten days before the first day of Greer & Hamilton's libel trial, he came to take an interest in the case, which led to him ‘discovering’ the involvement of Fayed's three employees in processing bribes to the lobbyist and the MP.  Marvin made clear that his supposed interest in the case had been prompted not by Mohamed Al Fayed, but that he had become involved entirely on his own initiative.  Marvin also made no mention of having to overcome Fayed's supposed 'reluctance' to grant The Guardian's lawyers access to his secretaries.

      This was only the second time that Marvin's supposed involvement had been aired — the first time being just a few days earlier on 16 January when David Leigh's book 'Sleaze' was published, in which Leigh described Marvin's role quite differently [see 'Guardian lies No.6'].  

[Note: Doug Marvin subsequently left leading Washington DC law firm Williams and Connolly to set himself up in his own law practice with Mohamed Al Fayed as his only client.]

I refer to our telephone conversation last night and I enclose a file containing extracts from the telephone message books used by Mr Al-Fayed's staff from 1985 to 1989. There is a full index at the front..
      You will find particularly interesting the messages on 29 March 1989 and 28 September 1988 which I mentioned on the telephone…

Taken from a letter sent by Laurence Harris (of Fayed's solicitors D J Freeman) to Geraldine Proudler, accompanying a telephone message pad from Fayed's office.  Harris sent Proudler this letter and the pad on 29 June 1995, following a discussion on the telephone the previous night about two specific entries that Harris believed could be useful.  These were the same two entries that Doug Marvin claims Proudler showed him just before the trial fifteen months later, and which, supposedly, had led to his timely discovery of the involvement of Mohamed Al Fayed's three employees.

The QC went to Harrods..  to seek help with evidence…  Robertson's pitch was clear.  He knew there were smoking guns somewhere at Harrods -- on bits of paper, letters, notes scrawled by secretaries, on the message pads.  He wanted Fayed to make a systematic search and help convict Hamilton…

Taken from 'Sleaze', by David Leigh.  Leigh describes how, with the trial barely weeks away, The Guardian's barrister, Geoffrey Robertson QC, went to see Fayed in order to obtain evidence such as the telephone message pad - though Fayed's lawyer, Laurence Harris, had actually delivered this to Robertson's colleague, Geraldine Proudler, the previous year.

At Doughty Street, Robertson's chambers, the new haul of names and payments was being entered into a vast chronology.  Fayed's office message pads and diaries were emerging from Knightsbridge [Harrods].

Another extract from 'Sleaze', taken from a few pages on.  David Leigh describes how, following Robertson's mission to Harrods for evidence, the (supposedly) incriminating telephone message pad emerged - though this had actually been in Proudler's possession for fifteen months.

(Comment: Doug Marvin presents a story explaining the three Fayed employees' late emergence, which is not only incompatible with each of the two different explanations given by David Leigh (discussed in "Guardian lie No. 6"), but which relies on Guardian solicitor Geraldine Proudler supposedly -
     a) having assessed the evidential value of the telephone message pad so highly that she dug it out from her cupboard and took it to the speculatively-arranged meeting with Marvin a few days before the trial to see what he could make of it, despite - 
    b) Proudler having previously valued the message pad so poorly that she did not bother asking Fayed solicitor Laurence Harris to find out who 'Iris' was when Harris telephoned her and wrote to her specifically to point out the 'Iris' entry fifteen months earlier.
    The fact that Proudler had the telephone message pad delivered into her possession fifteen months prior to the trial also disproves David Leigh's tale that the message pad had emerged as a consequence of Geoffrey Robertson's visit to Fayed immediately before the trial; proving further that the various stories explaining away the late emergence of Fayed's three employees are false, and that, logically, their belated claims to have been involved in processing bribes to Greer & Hamilton are false too.)

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