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.
|