MEDIA STUDIES
All right, the Guardian already had the phone record, but who gave it to them?
STEPHEN GLOVER
When several months ago three Guardian journalists produced a book about the Jonathan Aitken affair I held my peace. The Liar was ill-written, illiberal and vindictive. It seemed odd that such a thing could have emanated from a famous quali- ty newspaper. On the other hand, it might have been churlish to complain about the book when its central theme — that Mr Aitken had misled a court of law — was correct. So I left it alone.
Perhaps I was wrong. Last week the authors of the book, Luke Harding, David Leigh and David Pallister, sent a letter to this magazine complaining about something I had written about them in a teasing way the previous week. So I prepared myself for the ordeal of reading The Liar all over again. It does not reveal the people who nailed Mr Aitken in a very flattering light.
I suppose one should not complain about the authors' literary style, which resembles that of a Mills & Boon novelist in a rush.
Their ability to hit on the most obvious, and therefore most empty, adjective is remarkable. Evenings are 'balmy', sur- roundings are 'sumptuous' and homes are `lavish'. When Messrs Harding, Leigh and Pallister come across a large country house, they naturally describe it as a 'baronial pile'. Mr Aitken himself is 'staggeringly wealthy'. Being a sort of sub-Georgette Heyer bounder, he never actually speaks, he 'snarls' or 'barks'.
The authors sometimes give the impres- sion of having arrived in this country for the first time a few weeks ago before dash- ing off their observations for readers even less acquainted with the place than they are. Park Lane is a 'now shabby quarter overlooking Hyde Park'. Naturally, they accept class stereotypes. Eton, which Mr Aitken attended, is described as 'a world of male arrogance, fetishistic floggings by both prefects and masters'. A bit simplistic? Later we are told that `Aitken's enthusiasm for beatings was an unsurprising legacy from his days at Britain's finest public school'. These newcomers are prim to the point of illiberality. 'Gambling, blondes and fast cars' are referred to as 'vices'. Mr Aitken's alleged sexual preferences, though perfectly legal and consensual, are condemned as 'sexual misbehaviour' and generally described in a cluck-clucking way. And as the authors do not much like public school boys, particular- ly those who are having a good time, so they recoil at Mr Aitken's Arab friends. After reading about the grotesque Prince Mohammed bin Fand or Said Ayas, readers might be tempted to lock away their milk- white-skinned English daughters.
All this is by way of introduction. Two weeks ago, as I say, I made a teasing refer- ence to Luke Harding, David Leigh and David Pallister in this column. I suggested that as Mohamed Al Fayed had produced a vital telephone log from the Paris Ritz vital, that is, to the Guardian in its action against Mr Aitken —these three journalists might like to share with the Egyptian mag- nate the press award they had recently received. I also suggested that Geraldine Proudler, the newspaper's lawyer, deserved some recognition for her sleuthing abilities. Back came a slightly galumphing reply from our three friends, in which I was accused of conducting a 'vendetta' against the Guardian.
According to Leigh, Pallister and Hard- ing, I was 'completely wrong' to suggest that Mr Al Fayed had produced the crucial telephone log of the Paris Ritz at the '11th hour'. It 'had been in the Guardian's pos- session for at least three years'. Moreover, I was either stupid or malicious to suggest that the telephone logs were vital. The information that established that Mr Aitken's wife Lolicia was at the Hotel Bris- tol near Geneva on the morning of Sunday, 19 September 1993 — and thus physically incapable of paying Mr Aitken's bill at the Paris Ritz as he had maintained — came from old British Airways flight coupons.
With one exception, this version of events is inaccurate. The Guardian had indeed had the Paris telephone log for three years. I was wrong about that. But it had not made much use of it. Last June I was told by a very senior executive at the Guardian, whom I cannot name since we were speaking off the record, that a few days before the Aitken libel action came to court Geraldine Proudler had had the idea of dispatching a reporter to the Hotel Bris-
`We're helping Mr Blair to rebrand Britain.'
tol to see what evidence could be found to show that Mrs Aitken had been in Switzer- land, not Paris, and that it was she who had taken a call from her husband's room at the Paris Ritz on the morning of 19 September. The reporter found this evidence. The paper then acquired BA coupons that proved Mrs Aitken had not flown to Paris.
So the Ritz telephone log was vital because it led the Guardian to the final conclusive proof of the coupons. And who supplied this log? Mr Al Fayed. He may have done so earlier, and not when I sug- gested, but it was him nonetheless, or someone acting on his authority. When Leigh, Harding and Pallister write in their letter that 'the telephone record . . . far from being flourished by Fayed at the 11th hour had been in the Guardian's possession for three years', they omit to say how it got there. It could not have arrived as a result of a subpoena, since that legal device does not extend to France. My belief that it was supplied by Mr Al Fayed does not rely on mere deduction. It is also what I was told by my exalted Guardian source last year.
My Oxford English Dictionary defines a vendetta as 'a blood feud in which the fami- ly of a murdered person seeks vengeance on the murderer or the murderer's family'. I do not think this accurately describes my relationship towards the Guardian newspa- per. It has done me no injustice. I have sometimes come to its defence. When the Aitken libel trial collapsed last June, I wrote in praise of the newspaper in this col- umn. I defended its editor, Alan Rus- bridger, in a recent article in the Daily Tele- graph against charges that he and others had been involved in a cover-up over the Neil Hamilton affair. So I do not think I am malicious, though it is for others to decide whether I am stupid.
I do still think that Jonathan Aitken lied about who paid the hotel bill, for reasons that are unclear. But I also observe that David Leigh, David Pallister and Luke Harding do not tell the entire truth either in their letter or in their book. The reason is that the entire truth illuminates their cru- cial dependence on one man, Mohamed Al Fayed, whose reputation for probity is low- ered almost by the day. I have said before that Mr Al Fayed's inconsistent evidence, against Mr Hamilton may be suspect. The Guardian is bound hand and foot to the wily Egyptian, and as he sinks it is terrified that it will sink with him.
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