MEDIA STUDIES
Knowing all it does about Fayed now, would the Guardian collaborate with him again?
STEPHEN GLOVER
So what do we think of the Neil Hamil- ton trial? I ask the question three weeks late because I have been on holiday. But before going I heard Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, give his verdict on radio. His line was that he couldn't see what the fuss was about. It had always been clear that Hamil- ton was guilty of taking brown envelopes stuffed full of cash from Mohamed Fayed, and the outcome was utterly predictable. It was a wonderfully Olympian reaction that would have done credit to Hugo Young himself, chairman of the Scott Trust which controls the Guardian. There was no consid- eration of this fact — that until the five-and- a-half-week libel trial the allegations against Hamilton had not been tested in any court of law. Due process had not been applied and witnesses had not been cross-examined. In fact I suspect that Mr Rusbridger's insou- ciance was a little studied. He must have had his doubts about the outcome. I person- ally thought that the jury would find against Hamilton, having been present in court dur- ing the early stages. But some who watched the final ten days thought it would go the other way.
Three weeks after the judgment it seems to me that the outcome was for the best. Unlike Mr Rusbridger, whose paper first condemned Hamilton, I still have small doubts as to whether Hamilton took those brown envelopes in exactly the way described. This is because the allegation that he did so comes only from Fayed and his three former employees, and Fayed is an established liar and fantasist. Even during the trial his estimate of the amount he gave Hamilton soared from £25,000 to ,E110,000. And yet despite these doubts it is difficult to feel that Hamilton has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. He did not come well out of the trial. There was the familiar litany of his and his wife, Christine's, aberrational greed as guests of Fayed at the Paris Ritz. There was his misleading statement to Michael Heseltine — or shall we call it a lie? — which we already knew about. Above all, there was new evidence, brilliantly con- jured up by George Carman, Fayed's QC, about Hamilton's relationship with Mobil Oil. Hamilton asked for £10,000 from Mobil for little more than tabling an amendment to a Bill in 1989 and writing a letter. This is not quite so cut-and-dried as the Guardian and others would have us believe. Hamilton produced a contemporaneous letter from a Mr Peter Whiteman, QC. Whiteman had written that he had 'strongly recommended' to Mobil 'that they should retain' Hamilton. Such retainers are legitimate and common- place for MPs. Nevertheless, it still seemed that Hamilton had asked for, and pocketed, £10,000 for little more than tabling an amendment. The jury evidently thought that such a man could equally well take cash for asking questions.
We shouldn't grieve for Hamilton. And in his downfall there is also this silver lining. Fayed was revealed more clearly then ever as a bad man. He was by his own admission the corrupter of not one but several MPs. He made wild and untruthful allegations in court. Hamilton was, he asserted, a homo- sexual prostitute. More seriously, he alleged that the Duke of Edinburgh had master- minded the murder of Diana, Princess of Wales and his son Dodi. During the pro- ceedings some of the media treated Fayed as though he were a comedy turn. But after the verdict almost the entire press united against him. There were two exceptions. The Daily Mirror disgracefully — and crazily — portrayed Fayed as a hero in a leader headlined 'Debt we all owe this brave man'. Piers Morgan, the paper's editor, must have taken leave of his senses. More circum- spectly, the Guardian concentrated its fire on Hamilton and left Fayed alone.
The relationship between this high-minded paper and this scoundrel remains utterly fascinating. Fayed was the mainspring of the Guardian's stories about Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken. Peter Preston, editor of the Guardian until 1995, seems to have had a soft spot for him, whereas his successor, Mr Rusbridger, has prudently avoided all contact with the man. Mr Preston had 14 meetings with Fayed before the Guardian published its first Hamilton story in October 1994, and Fayed is alleged to have put in a good word on behalf of the newspaper in a libel dispute it had with the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington. If Fayed's char- acter appears even more unsavoury now than it did then, Mr Preston did have as a guide the 1990 Department of Trade report into the takeover of Harrods which branded Fayed as an inveterate liar. Even now Mr Preston is unwilling to concede the scope of his friend's villainy. In an article for his old paper after the end of the libel trial, he wrote plaintively that 'Mohamed Al Fayed blew another whistle and was subsequently denied a British passport by Jack Straw'. The Guardian's defence of its conduct must be that the end justifies the means: you have to deal with men like Fayed to expose men like Hamilton and Aitken. But I wonder whether, knowing all it does about Fayed now, the paper would collaborate with him again in the same way.
The irony of this story is that the ordinary rogue, Hamilton, is ruined while the super rogue, Fayed, is not. And yet some sort of salvation is open to Neil Hamilton. There is talk of an appeal, but it is difficult to imag- ine the grounds. Hamilton's best hope is that by his words and actions he may make some sort of amends for what he did. I hope he will. Certainly he has shown dignity since the trial. As for Mohamed Fayed, he may think himself triumphant, but he has black- ened his name. Without realising it, he con- tinues headlong towards his own ruin.
The Attorney-General, Lord Williams, has dropped charges against Tony Geraghty which the government had brought under the Official Secrets Act. Mr Geraghty, a respected author, has written a book called The Irish War. A passage concerning com- puter surveillance in Northern Ireland alarmed the authorities. Ministry of Defence police raided Mr Geraghty's house in Herefordshire in December 1998 (remov- ing files and a computer which they have still not returned) and arrested him Subse- quently the MoD virtually instructed HarperCollins, publishers of The Irish War, not to publish a paperback of the book.
Mr Geraghty has been grievously harassed. but at least the government has come to its senses. Unfortunately it has not done so in the case of his former co-defen- dant, Nigel Wylde. Mr Wylde, a retired lieutenant-colonel and intelligence expert, still faces charges under section two of the Official Secrets Act. He is alleged to be the source of the information about computer surveillance. But if Mr Geraghty has no case to answer, why does Mr Wylde? The Ministry of Defence may want to make an example of him However, section two falls foul of the European Convention, to be incorporated into English law from Octo- ber. If Lord Williams wishes to avoid mak- ing the government look silly and vindic- tive, he should drop the charges against Mr Wylde now.
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