22 August 2006

Related:

http://cryptome.org/smith-summary.htm
http://cryptome.org/michael-smith.htm
http://cryptome.org/johnsmith.htm

John Michael Smith writes:

Please find attached a very important document from my case for Cryptome. It shows how the judge decided which evidence would be admissible at the trial, and it reveals how the end result of a trial can be determined by the decisions at these pre-trial hearings. The main point that emerges is how the judge firmly comes down on the side of the prosecution, and he allows in a lot of highly prejudicial evidence - evidence which at best could only be described as speculative. It is apparent from the way these legal arguments developed that both the judge and the prosecution were following the directions of MI5, because the evidence which was ruled admissible followed the story that MI5 had focused on.

The effect of the judge's rulings was to ensure that there was a strong bias in the trial towards the prosecution case, and this caused the defence team problems because most of the evidence was circumstantial. This imbalance in the trial towards the prosecution also placed pressure on the jury to convict, which is what they did.

Reading through the arguments the prosecution presented to the judge, it can be seen that there was little or no evidence to support the link to Viktor Oshchenko, which was the crux of the prosecution case. All the defence objections were dismissed by judge Blofeld, who allowed the prosecution to run a case based on assertions for which no evidence existed. Even the MI5 witness Stella Rimington made it clear at the trial: there was no evidence of a link between Oshchenko and Smith.

The judge can be seen to play down the significance of Smith's holiday in Portugal in 1977, as though this was a side issue. However, this was done to disguise the fact that Portugal was indeed to become the main argument made to connect Smith to KGB tradecraft. It was an innocent tourist map from this holiday that enabled the prosecution to call evidence from a US citizen, referred to as Mr E. Mr E was recruited by Oshchenko in December 1978, while he worked as a salesman in a Hi-Fi shop in Tottenham Court Road, London. Mr E was run by two KGB controllers: Viktor Oshchenko and Yuriy Gennadyevich Pokrovskiy (who was later expelled from Britain).

Mr E was born in Yorkshire (England) and he was groomed by Oshchenko due to his background in the US Navy and his electronics expertise, he left as a Petty Officer (electronics technician (radar) III class). The KGB were also interested in Mr E's relatives: his father was a retired US Army 0-6, his mother an English nurse, and his father-in-law worked with one of the US House of Representatives subcommittees. The prosecution went to great lengths to conceal the identity of Mr E, and to present him as some kind of friend of the US and British Security Services, but in actual fact it was clear from the evidence that Mr E had accepted significant amounts of money from the KGB, equivalent to the monthly mortgage payments on his home, and he allowed himself to be groomed as an agent for about 15 months or more.

While working for the KGB, Mr E attempted to procure some sensitive integrated circuits, which were proscribed to the Russians under COCOM. He also undertook KGB training methods and sought to improve his professional position, so he might gain access to information useful to the Russians. One of Mr E's training mission's was a trip to Lisbon (Portugal) on the weekend of 21/22 July 1979, to deliver a package to a KGB contact.

A major part of the prosecution argument was that Mr E had behaved in the same way as Smith, but on careful study of the history of the 2 people, this is far from being an honest argument by the prosecution.

http://cryptome.org/smith-rulings.doc (483KB)

John Michael Smith writes:

I am now sending you three important documents that were given to me on the first 2 days of my appeal against my conviction of spying for the KGB..

The first document shows the MoD's damage assessment report from my case, which was produced on 7 March 1994, but it was not released to my defence lawyers until the first day of my appeal on 15 May 1995. This shows that the prosecution were withholding this evidence because it actually would have assisted the defence case. The conclusions from this report were that no serious damage was caused to the UK by my case.

The very next day, 16 May 1995 (the second day of my appeal), the prosecution released a second MoD report which reversed the conclusions of the first report. Now the MoD are claiming that "serious damage" was caused by my case. This reversal of the assessment conclusions was due to the Solicitor General realising that the MoD's first damage assessment report did not agree with the evidence given at my trial.

The other document given to the defence, on the first day of  my appeal, was the admission that Oleg Gordievsky's claims in his book "Next Stop Execution" were not correct. He had claimed in his book that he had given information that led to my arrest, but this was not true. The other admission by the prosecution was that Gordievsky's claim that George Robertson (then Secretary of State for Defence) was a KGB agent - this was also not correct. The prosecution admit that there may be other "errors" (or lies) in Gordievsky's book, but they chose not to investigate them. However, the prosecution judge that Gordievsky remained "a witness of truth".

These documents reveal how underhanded the prosecution case against me became. The MoD's original investigation of the damage caused by my case was that it was "not serious", but the prosecution had to modify that honest opinion to bolster their position that there was sensitive material involved. On the issue of Gordievsky, he was a key prosecution witness, and so the prosecution had to conclude that he could not be undermined by the errors in his book.

I hope you can see this indicates the amount of conspiracy that was necessary to cause my appeal against conviction to fail, but I can provide more details if you are still in doubt.

http://cryptome.org/smith-appeal.pdf (1.3MB)