WHO? WHERE? WHEN?

ABOVE ALL, WHY?

Nicholas Farrell provides the questions

about Jonathan Aitken's ruin, and some of the answers

Whatever it is that Mr Aitken is hiding, he has so far, despite the best efforts of the Guardian and other newspa- pers, done a pretty good job of it. We are all, the Guardian included, still in the dark. The truth will emerge in the end, no doubt. It is said Mr Aitken is in talks with publishers about a book and his estranged wife Lolicia is prepared to sell her story to the tabloids and 'take him to the cleaners' in a divorce settlement.

It was a convulsive 48-hour sequence of events which brought about the end. It was only on Wednesday that Mr Aitken decided to put his daughter in the witness box as well as his wife, in an attempt to try the 'fra- grant woman' defence used to such effect in the Lord Archer libel trial. Why? Apparent- ly because he sensed that the judge was beginning to doubt his story about the Ritz bill. But later on Wednesday, the Guardian got its crucial evidence: the British Airways flight details showing that Mrs Aitken and her 17-year-old daughter Victoria had not travelled by ferry and car to France, then Switzerland, where she was starting a new school, as they had said, but flown to Switzerland direct. Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, says, 'We knew the wife would corroborate his story but the bombshell was that he was going to put his daughter in the box. On Wednesday his legal team went round say- ing, tomorrow is Ladies' Day [a reference to Ascot]. George Carman [the Guardian's barrister] said it would have been very diffi- cult to cross-examine Victoria. When I say cross-examine I mean tear apart somebody in the way they do. You just can't flay a 17- year-old girl.'

But there are also unanswered questions about the Guardian. Why did it take the newspaper until well into the trial to find the crucial evidence which caused Mr Aitken to drop his libel action? On the face of it, it looks like not prize-winning but sloppy journalism, given that the reputation of the newspaper and millions of pounds were at stake. It also makes it look as if the newspaper came within a whisker of defeat. The judge had already ruled in Mr Aitken's favour on the first of the four issues — his knowledge of the illegal supply of arms to Iraq by a firm of which he was a non-execu- tive director. The judge — sitting without a jury — had agreed with Mr Aitken that the Guardian article meant that he knew. The newspaper had argued it had merely meant he should have known. Things were looking good for Mr Aitken. But then came issue number two — the Ritz.

So much for the trial. But what of the motive for bringing it? I have established that Mr Aitken shared his bed with another woman who was not his wife at the Ritz that weekend in September 1993. But surely a desire to conceal this infidelity was not enough — not with the Aitkens — to prompt such a perilous libel action, given the lying that became necessary. He and his wife, from whom he announced his separation last Thursday after 18 years of marriage, are known to have lived separate lives for years. Anyway, she knew about his infidelities, if we are to believe the Aitkens' former house- keeper, quoted in Monday's Mirror, and she was philosoph- ical about them. She also knew about his sado-masochistic sex. She must have read earlier revelations in another tabloid of a former Islington prosti- tute who had dined with him at Porto Fino, a rather dingy Italian restaurant in Camden Passage. So, what difference would a bit of infidelity in the Ritz make?

There must have been some bigger motive, surely — something much more damaging going on at Mohamed Al Fayed's hotel in the Place Vendome. One suggestion, a favourite with conspiracy the- orists, not necessarily including the Guar- dian, is that as defence procurement minister — the government's arms dealer effectively — he was in the hotel to do a secret illegal deal with his Saudi Arabian chums on behalf of the British government — selling arms to some wicked country such as Iraq. There was a conference of Arabs in Paris that weekend and every

expensive hotel was full of them.

Mr Al Fayed, who in 1994 first tipped off then Guardian editor, Peter Preston, about Mr Aitken's stay, says he saw him having drinks and dinner with several Middle Eastern men including Said Ayas, the busi- ness manager of Prince Mohamed bin Fand, son of the Saudi king. But if the secret illegal deal theory is correct, why not come clean and land everyone else in it? Answer: he had to take the rap alone for the sake of Queen and country.

Another suggestion is that he was doing a private deal — something forbidden for a minister and something which, though allowed for a backbench MP, should be declared. Before he became a government minister Mr Aitken had received large sums of money in commission from the Saudis for brokering arms deals. Some of his friends speculate that perhaps he had come to the Ritz now that he was a mem- ber of the Cabinet to tie up loose ends related to these and tell the Saudis that he could no longer continue. He says it was simply a family occasion. Others say that he was seeing his Saudi friends, including Mr Ayas, for social reasons. But why then did he write down his profession on the hotel register as government minister? Because he felt he had nothing to hide, perhaps? Or was it sheer blase arrogance?

Mysteriously, Mr Ayas, the Guardian this week reported, was placed under house arrest in Saudi Arabia one week before the trial began, although it is unclear why. One theory doing the rounds is that he was hav- ing second thoughts over having to lie about the Ritz bill in the witness box. Two Saudis were therefore dispatched to Lon- don and virtually kidnapped him to keep him out of harm's way.

Mr Aitken's reputation and 18-year mar- riage may be in tatters and he has disap- peared. But he has not, say friends, done a Lucan. He is in America, Lady Aitken says. But, as his former secretary said in Mon- day's World in Action programme, The Dag- ger of Deceit, this used to be the euphemism for being in the Middle East. He left, I understand, by private jet. But most private jets cannot cross the Atlantic. Wherever he is, he is lying low for a while and preparing to get a book off the ground telling his side of the story, say friends, and intends to return to Britain in a fortnight or so. He has been in regular contact with friends such as Lord Pearson of Rannoch and he speaks to his legal team every day. His decision to abandon the case after the Guardian found the crucial evidence that his wife could not have paid the Ritz bill because she was in Switzerland had come as a shock to his lawyers. They had advised him to continue, still thinking he would win. 'But', says Mr Rusbridger, 'we would've won the Ritz any- way. It would have been 3-1 — at worst a two-all draw — and what damages would he get for that? 5p. What reputation would he have left?' On the pimping, for example, they had two new witnesses.

It is human nature to search for big sins in such cases. It is also human nature that the big sins are those committed to cover up smaller ones. This was the case with President Nixon (about whom Mr Aitken wrote a well-received biography) over Wa- tergate. As a result, much of the specula- tion about Mr Aitken's motive for concealment is about what exactly the less- er sins might be. This is where his wife comes into the picture. He was covering up for her, one theory runs — not vice versa.

According to this view, after Mr Aitken had checked out of the Ritz he realised that he had made a mistake allowing the Saudis to pay his hotel bill. So he tele- phoned his wife in Switzerland and asked her to come to Paris to pay it, as he had to return to Britain in a hurry. But she failed to do so. 'Oh darling, whatever you say,' is the sort of thing she might have said. This could explain why, in his correspondence on the matter with Mr Preston, then editor of the Guardian, in the autumn of 1994 which started the whole thing off, he said his wife had paid the bill. Only afterwards did he ask her and discover that she had not paid it. But he had committed himself, so he had to stick to his guns. And out of this grew the ever more elaborate and tor- tured explanations of Mrs Aitken's actions on the crucial weekend — which included both her and the couple's daughter signing statements in which they both said that they had come to Paris. Was it Lolicia who was trying to cover up an affair, then?

Mr Rusbridger says he has no idea what Mr Aitken was up to in the Ritz. But of one thing he is certain. Mrs Aitken did not go there. To say she came from Switzerland to pay the bill is just 'bonkers'. The reason it took so long to get the crucial evidence is that there was so much paperwork being exchanged between the two sides.

It was not a journalist either who first set foot on the trail leading to Switzerland, but the Guardian's solicitor, Geraldine Proud- ler. The ever helpful Ritz supplied her with a telephone record showing that Mr Aitken had called the Hotel Bristol in Villars, an hour's drive from Geneva on the morning the bill was paid. But Mr Aitken had been cleverly vague about this in the witness box. He had been speaking on the phone to his mother-in-law. His lawyers had a sworn affi- davit from her to boot. 'Again, we thought we were sunk,' says Mr Rusbridger. So in mid-trial, the weekend before last, it sent a reporter on the off-chance to see if the hotel would provide copies of any relevant bills.

The hotel was boarded up. A friendly caretaker allowed the reporter to look at the files in the basement. Three days later he found Mrs Aitken's bill. It showed that she was there not in Paris and that she had paid by American Express. Mr Aitken had previ- ously failed, when required by subpoena to hand over bank and credit card details, to produce this. The Amex statement had details of a car hired at Geneva airport, the

Guardian sought flight details, and Mr Aitken was sunk. It was the janitor at the Watergate building who did for Nixon. The one at the Hotel Bristol did for Aitken.