WORLD VIEW:The common feature of some celebrated cases of politics-related perjury? Jail terms, writes PATRICK SMYTH
An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven: Shall I lay perjury upon my soul? No, not for Venice.
– Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice
THERE WAS the minister in office, a newspaper, a libel writ, and a denunciation by the minister of “the cancer of bitter and twisted journalism”.
Then there was a dramatic exposing by the paper of the minister’s lies . . . oh, yes, and seven months in jail for perjury.
But then, elsewhere, they take perjury a tad more seriously. The story of British Conservative minister Jonathan Aitken’s descent into ignominy is worth recalling, as are a few other celebrated cases of politics- related perjury.
In 1993, Aitken, chief secretary to the treasury, was accused of lobbying while minister for arms procurement for arms sales to Saudi Arabia, on which shadowy Saudi partners made millions in commissions. The Dublin-born old Etonian, a great-nephew of newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook, armed with what he called "the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play", resigned from the government to sue the Guardianand Granada's World in Actionfor libel.
The action collapsed in 1997 when evidence emerged countering his claim that his wife, Lolicia Aitken, not the Saudi businessmen, paid for his stay at the Ritz hotel in Paris, in breach of ministerial rules. He served seven months of an 18-month term in prison for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
Then there was Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare, known as Prisoner FF8282 when serving two years of a 4½-year sentence on two counts of perverting the course of justice and two of perjury. But perhaps he is better known as Jeffrey Archer, potboiler author worth an alleged £60 million, disgraced MP and former chairman of the Conservative Party who was made a life peer in 1992 for his services to the party.
Archer had in 1987 successfully sued the Daily Starand the News of the World, winning £500,000 and £50,000 respectively from them, over claims that he had paid £2,000 through an intermediary to prostitute Monica Coghlan to go abroad.
The jury awarded the then-record amount following a summation from Mr Justice Caulfield, in which he contrasted Coghlan to the “fragrant” Mary Archer and memorably asked: “Is he [Archer] in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel round about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning after an evening at the Caprice?”
Following revelations in the News of the Worldby Archer's friend Ted Francis that he had provided a false alibi for him, an Old Bailey perjury trial was subsequently told Archer had also used a faked diary to win the case.
He was eventually forced to repay the awards in full, in addition to what are believed to have been legal and recovery costs of £1 million.
An attempt to discredit a political opponent led to the downfall of the US’s most senior political perjurer, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, then the chief of staff of US vice-president Dick Cheney.
Anxious to rubbish criticism by former diplomat Joseph Wilson of the Iraq war, Libby leaked to journalists the fact that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a secret CIA operative. New York Timesjournalist Judith Miller would spend some time in jail protecting her source before Libby waived her obligations to him and she then testified that he had indeed spoken to her about Plame.
In June 2007 Libby was convicted of one count of obstruction of justice; two counts of perjury and one count of making false statements to federal investigators arising from his own testimony to a grand jury and to FBI investigators.
He got 30 months in jail, a fine of $250,000 and two years of supervised release, including 400 hours of community service. When his appeal failed, then US president George Bush controversially commuted the prison term but, despite considerable pressure from Cheney, he never gave Libby a full pardon.
And then to Paris, where an attempted political smear of none other than Nicolas Sarkozy during the presidential campaign of 2007 resulted in the sensational Clearstream trial on charges including conspiracy to slander and other offences akin to perjury.
It concluded last month with the conviction of three of five co-defendants, two earning jail terms of 15 months and fines of €40,000. The court did, however, acquit former prime minister Dominique de Villepin, a bitter party rival of Sarkozy and probable challenger in 2012, although the fact that the matter ended before the court reflects how seriously a different political culture takes such matters.
In 2004 an investigating judge received anonymously a list purporting to contain the names of politicians, businessmen and journalists who held secret bank accounts at the Luxembourg bank Clearstream, said to have been used for laundering kickbacks from the sale of French frigates to Taiwan.
Sarkozy’s name was on the list which made its way into the press – although the judge established quickly the allegations were false and the accounts did not exist.
Prosecutors claimed it was Villepin who prompted the informant, later identified as Jean-Louis Gergorin, a former executive of aerospace group Eads with links to intelligence services, to pass on the list to the judge, even though he knew it to be false.
The common feature of these cases? Jail terms, though not all served. I could go on . . .