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that Viktor Oschenko ran Mr. Smith, because it is your case as I understand it that this might help
the jury to show that Viktor Oschenko did run Smith. Mr. Smith will forgive me if I do not now say
Mr. Smith every time; it saves time.
THE SOLICITOR GENERAL: Yes, but it is very similar to Woodhouse v. Hall, just as the Crown
were there having to prove the nature of that agency and the nature of that organisation, namely was
it offering services of a particular kind? It is exactly the same here.
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: Just trying to test it at the moment, Mr. Solicitor, if that is the case, why
mention Oschenko’s name at all? Why not say, “Now we are going to call somebody; we are going
to show you what a Russian agent did. This is all to show how tradecraft and Russian agents work.
THE SOLICITOR GENERAL: Yes, but the important additional factor is not only how it works
but how a particular person operated.
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: I can see how you are entitled -- it may be, if you are right on the
hearsay matters -- to Viktor Oschenko’s name on a different basis. It is your case that Viktor
Oschenko is a KGB agent. You have been told that -- you have been told that by Mrs. C at the
moment and Gordievsky. You are perfectly entitled to call another person to say, not only have you
heard generally he was suspected to be a Russian agent but I worked for him.
THE SOLICITOR GENERAL: Yes, Mrs. C has said he was treated as one. This is evidence that
he was behaving as one. That is all in our submission.
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: I think where my difficulty is it does not seem to me -- it never has
seemed to me -- that it really matters, particularly from the point of view of the Crown case, whether
in fact your theory that Viktor Oschenko was running Mr. Smith is right or whether it was some
other Russian agent. Your case is that he was handing over and had handed over information to the
Russians.
THE SOLICITOR GENERAL: Yes.
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: I follow that. The theory in fact is that you say that the defection, allied
to the 6th August failure to meet, is in fact a pointer that it is Oschenko, but I have never thought it
mattered very much from the Crown point of view.
THE SOLICITOR GENERAL: That is a matter for judgement but it is our submission that it does
matter because it is only if you know the identity of the Viktor to whom the telephone call refers that
you can properly see the events of the 6th August in their true light. Apart from that it is just largely
assertion on our part.
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: I think I am raising an intriguing but irrelevant red herring probably.
THE SOLICITOR GENERAL: That is how I put it.
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: What do you say though; how do you define it? If you say it is original
evidence of how agents are run in general, and it is also an agent, evidence that ----
THE SOLICITOR GENERAL: And that it was Viktor Oschenko who recruited the defendant.
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: Viktor Oschenko is a Russian KGB man.
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