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Summary of Part Five
After escaping lobbyist Ian Greer's and Neil
Hamilton's libel actions by default before any evidence had been given in court,
The Guardian faces up to the problem of devising an explanation as to how, just
three days before the trial was due to start, its lawyers had supposedly
'discovered' that three of Mohamed 'Al' Fayed's office staff had been involved
in processing cash payments to the lobbyist and the former minister.
However, suffused in overconfidence from the collapse of the trial,
instead of deciding on an agreed story, over the following three months The
Guardian's lawyers and journalists concoct in ad hoc fashion several conflicting
stories explaining how the three employees' supposed involvement had been
'discovered' at the eleventh hour.
During the subsequent Parliamentary inquiry
conducted by Sir Gordon Downey The Guardian takes a gamble and reveals the
unspoken basis of its ‘cash for questions’ article. For the first time The Guardian alleges openly and repeatedly
its contention that Ian Greer's introductory commission payments were really
bribes to reward MPs for supporting his clients in Parliament.
But despite The Guardian's efforts, Sir Gordon
Downey finds against these, the paper's longstanding allegations.
Downey also declines to accept Fayed's office staff’s eleventh-hour
claims that had processed cash payments for the lobbyist Ian Greer.
However, and bizarrely, Downey deems that these three employees' exactly
similar eleventh-hour allegations against Neil Hamilton amounts to 'compelling
evidence'.
Three months after Downey's strange verdict —
which the British media accepts uncritically — two provincial freelance
journalists release an interim report of their five-month investigation into the
controversy. Sensationally, their investigation supports Neil Hamilton's
claims of innocence and accuses The Guardian's journalists and lawyers of
conspiring with Mohammed Al Fayed and his staff in an audacious cover-up.
The British
media conducts a complete news blackout of the two freelances' work, caused in
part by a smear campaign against the journalists enacted by The Guardian in
cahoots with Left-wing journalists working for Granada Television's factual
programmes department.
Nevertheless, as a consequence of reading their
report, two Conservative Members of the Standards Committee, to whom Downey is
answerable, refuse to accept his 'compelling evidence' verdict. This
encourages Hamilton to sue Fayed for libel in another attempt to clear his name.
A year later one of the freelances publishes a
book telling the story of his investigation, but the news blackout continues.
Meanwhile, Fayed continues to use every legal means possible to try and block
Hamilton's new libel action from coming to court.
After a titanic legal battle Hamilton succeeds in
securing the right to take Fayed to court. However, when the case comes to
trial a year later in November 1999 Hamilton fails to obtain the verdict he
sought, largely as a consequence of 'highly convincing' testimony given by
Fayed's office staff and five years of Guardian-orchestrated negative press
coverage.
Three months after the trial it transpires that
confidential cross examination papers had been stolen from outside the chambers
of Hamilton's barristers and passed to Fayed.
Later still it is revealed that The Guardian’s comment editor had
instigated the theft.
Hamilton
appeals to the Court of Appeal, but despite the confidence with which the three
Fayed employees gave their evidence having been bolstered by foreknowledge of
the questions that they were asked during the trial, the three Appeal Court
judges reject Hamilton’s submission that the course of his trial had been
perverted by the theft and sale of the papers.
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