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Neal Sher   Letter 09   29-Aug-1999   Did Dougherty confess his affidavit was false?
"When Canadian Minister of Justice, Anne McLellan, was hiring you as an advisor to Canada's war crimes prosecutors, did you disclose to her that you stood under a public accusation of having connived at the use of false evidence in the Demjanjuk trial?" � Lubomyr Prytulak
  August 29, 1999
Neal M. Sher
Schmeltzer, Aptaker & Shepard, P.C.
Suite 1000
The Watergate
2600 Virginia Avenue, NW
Washington, DC
USA         20037-1905


Neil Sher:

I bring to your attention Yoram Sheftel's description of a Michael Wolf memo that was suppressed by your Office of Special Investigations (OSI), but that was reportedly fished out of the OSI garbage by the Demjanjuk defense:

It was an internal memo written by Michael Wolf, Deputy Director of the OSI.  It was undated, but referred to a meeting held on 2 July 1986 at the American Embassy in Beirut between Wolf, OSI Director Neil Sher and Bernard Dougherty.  Wolf writes that Dougherty had confessed to him that when he signed his affidavit in May 1986 he had no recall of the photo spread conducted with Horn in November 1979.  Dougherty claimed he had signed the affidavit at the request of attorney Gavriel Finder, one of the many members of the Israeli prosecution team.  He had explained to Finder that he had no memory of what had happened at the photo spread seven years previously.  The affidavits, of course, did not mention Finder, nor the fact that Dougherty had no memory of the events he described.  In other words, the three affidavits that Dougherty and Garand had sworn were true in 1986 were actually fabrications, meant to create a false picture of Demjanjuk's identification as Ivan the Terrible by Otto Horn.  And this had been done in consultation and co-operation with the Israeli prosecution team.  The false affidavits were submitted to an Israeli court with the purpose of deceiving it into finding that Otto Horn had identified Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible.  The manufacture of deceptive evidence by officers of the law in both countries makes one's blood run cold.  I read the documents over and over again.  At first I was afraid I must be misconstruing them, but their content was totally clear.
Yoram Sheftel, The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show-Trial, Victor Gollancz, London, 1994, pp. 275-276.

From Sheftel's description, it would appear that the people who knew that Bernard Dougherty had sworn a false affidavit in May 1986 were at least the following: (1) Bernard Dougherty himself, (2) Israeli prosecutor Gavriel Finder, (3) OSI Deputy Director Michael Wolf, and (4) yourself, OSI Director Neil Sher.

In connection with Yoram Sheftel's account, Canadians who continue to question your appointment as advisor to Canada's war crimes prosecutors might want to hear your answers to the following six questions:

(1) Were you aware of Sheftel's accusation?

Were you aware that Yoram Sheftel had publicly accused you of knowing that an affidavit presented by the prosecution in the Jerusalem trial of John Demjanjuk was false?

(2) Did you demand a retraction?

In the five years since Yoram Sheftel's accusation against you was published, have you objected to it, or requested any retraction or correction?

(3) Does Anne McLellan know?

When Canadian Minister of Justice, Anne McLellan, was hiring you as an advisor to Canada's war crimes prosecutors, did you disclose to her that you stood under a public accusation of having connived at the use of false evidence in the Demjanjuk trial?

(4) What excuse did you give Anne McLellan?

If Anne McLellan was aware of Yoram Sheftel's accusation against you and did ask for your comment, what were you able to say to her in your own defense?

(5) Do you believe Dougherty?

Do you believe Bernard Dougherty when he told Israeli prosecutor Gavriel Finder in May 1986 that he couldn't remember the Otto Horn interview?  More likely, Dougherty remembered very well his 15Nov79 memo describing how Horn was able to pick out the Demjanjuk photo only after strong hints from the OSI personnel interviewing him, namely Norman Moscowitz, George Garand, and yourself.  Lacking the courage to tell Gavriel Finder that he knew that the OSI story of a positive identification of the Demjanjuk photo by Otto Horn was false, Dougherty instead tried to squirm out of any further involvement in the OSI deception by pleading amnesia.  To Gavriel Finder, apparently, amnesia was insufficient reason to escape signing the affidavit.  For Dougherty to have stood up to the anti-Demjanjuk conspirators in May 1986 by telling the truth would have brought to the fore his obligation to disclose this truth to the public, but which in turn threatened to ultimately lead to the exposure of his own role in the OSI conspiracy.  That is why Dougherty � when Gavriel Finder brushed aside his feeble protest of amnesia � felt he had no choice but to buckle under the pressure and sign the Israeli-prepared affidavit.  I think that's a plausible interpretation of Dougherty's claim of amnesia.  What do you think?

(6) How frail is memory?

If we accept the frailty of human memory which can be inferred from Bernard Dougherty's experiencing an event on 14Nov79 and writing a description of it the following day, but by May 1986 no longer having any recollection of it, how can we credit the memories of Treblinka survivors recollecting events over a time span some six times as long?



Lubomyr Prytulak

cc: Anne McLellan


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