The reason for the visit was because McGinley was certain he had met al-Megrahi◦— a year before the bombing.
The encounter took place in Amsterdam at a meeting of a group called WISE, a small but influential anti-nuclear group based in the Dutch capital. McGinley had been invited to one of the group’s regular get-togethers and found he was rubbing shoulders with a vociferous cross-section of left-wing intellectuals, environmentalists and nuclear dissidents.
Present also was the renegade CIA spy Norman Stockwell who enlivened the meeting by talking about US covert operations in Africa and Asia. It was during a break in the proceedings that McGinley met al-Megrahi.
He was standing outside the conference hall smoking a cigarette when a mustard-coloured Volvo pulled up alongside. There were two men in the car, and the passenger leant out of the window and gestured him over. McGinley recognised him as one of the spectators who had earlier attended the meeting.
He was a Middle-Eastern man and spoke impeccable English and addressed the Scot as ‘Dr McGinley.’ He oozed friendliness and asked McGinley if they could meet up again at the next seminar, scheduled for Germany the following month. He was obviously under the delusion that McGinley was some kind of scientist and said he would like to introduce him to some of his scientific friends.
McGinley was quick to disavow him about his academic status, but the man insisted he would still like to see him in Germany. As the man climbed back into the car, McGinley never forgot his parting words: ‘We can talk about bombs!’
That was a full year before the Lockerbie bombing and almost four years to the day since the meeting took place. But McGinley recognised al-Megrahi as soon as he saw his picture in the newspapers and on the news bulletins. It shook him so much he phoned the police unit in charge of the Lockerbie investigation.
He recalled: “I was one hundred per cent certain that the man who accosted me in Amsterdam was al-Megrahi. It horrified me to think that this man had mistaken me for a scientist, and that he had wanted to talk about bombs. The fact that he obviously thought I was a nuclear scientist made my blood run cold. I thought it was something the authorities should know about.”
The authorities were indeed interested: 24 hours after making the call the two “spies” presented themselves at his door. McGinley recalled how one of them took notes while the other asked the questions. After about an hour they surprised the McGinleys by inviting them for a drink at a local hotel.
During the course of the conversation, the elder of the two men warned McGinley of the need for silence. He said McGinley could probably make a lot of money by going to the newspapers, but that if he did it could “jeopardise everything.” McGinley assured the man that he had no intention of going to the press.
The men relaxed and asked McGinley about his campaign and the sort of circles he was moving in. They said they knew all about the WISE conference and its aims. Throughout the conversations, McGinley had the clear impression the pair were building up to something, but never quite got round to saying what it was.
They were particularly interested in the contacts he made abroad and how often he spoke to other nuclear groups. They made some flattering remarks about how he was considered to be very influential among anti-nuclear circles. They asked him how he felt about nuclear power, whether he thought it was a good thing or bad.
After a couple of drinks, the men thanked McGinley and dropped him and his wife back at their home. McGinley speculated on the reason for the visit: “The al-Megrahi incident was certainly of interest to them, but I got the impression they were more interested in the people I was meeting in the course of the campaign. They were definitely on a fact-finding mission to find out who I was in contact with and what we were discussing. They were very friendly and seemed to be sizing me up; I was half expecting them to ask me to keep them informed of future meetings.”
McGinley was amused at the idea that Her Majesty’s Government might be trying to recruit him as a spy, but the incident unnerved Alice who felt they were becoming increasingly out of their depth. Alice yearned to get away from it all.
They sold Pitcairlie House and moved back to Johnstone where, Alice insisted, they would make a fresh start. It was a forlorn hope. No sooner were they settled than her husband was embroiled in another entanglement with officialdom, this time with an even more formidable opponent than ‘James Bond’: the Treasury Solicitor.
THE CORONER’S CLERK
The Treasury Solicitor sounds innocent enough. The title conjures up an image of a fusty lawyer armed with a pen and wig, beavering away in a back office concerned only with the collection and disposition of ownerless properties on behalf of the Exchequer.
In actual fact he is a little-known attack dog of government whose primary function is to cling on to governmental purse strings with Rottwieler determination. The Treasury Solicitor’s Office encompasses a 600-strong highly professional legal team that was officially defined in 1661 as “the solicitor for negotiating and looking after the affairs of the Treasury.”
It has sweeping, some say Draconian, powers, enabling it to delve into every aspect of a case with impunity, and is accountable only to the Attorney General. In the early 1990s this formidable force was suddenly turned on the nuclear veterans who were enjoying considerable success in persuading War Pension Tribunals to find in their favour.
Some of these tribunals had caused considerable embarrassment to the government by awarding pensions to nuclear veterans whom they deemed to have been ‘affected by radiation.’
Some mandarin in the Civil Service clearly decided that enough was enough: The Treasury Solicitor was unleashed and set about hi-jacking inquests and pension tribunals. Their mission was to take control of the evidence and present it in a way favourable to the Government line. And it seems they didn’t care how they did it.
McGinley obtained first-hand experience of their methods when he got a call from a very frightened coroner’s clerk. The man said he had been carrying out inquiries into the case of a former sailor who had been on board HMS Diana, the ship that sailed through the mushroom cloud of an atomic explosion off the Australian coast in 1956.
This was potentially a very embarrassing case for the Government after a pathologist found traces of a radioactive substance lodged in the sailor’s body which was being confidently blamed for the man’s death from a rare form of bone cancer.
During the course of his enquiries the coroner’s clerk, a punctilious police constable, was carrying out interviews of doctors and other officials involved in the case when out of the blue he received a telephone call from a Treasury Solicitor who briskly informed him “the Crown” was taking over the handling of the case.
When the clerk protested he was brusquely told by the lawyer to “step aside and forget about the case.” The clerk was troubled and eventually complained to the coroner. Nothing was heard for several days, but then came another phone call – this time in the middle of the night.
The call was made as the bleary-eyed PC lay in bed with his mistress. The caller simply told the man, who was married with two children, the affair was ‘known about’ and that he was damaging his future job prospects.
The flabbergasted constable didn’t recognise the voice, but he was understandably rattled. He was certain his wife knew nothing about his affair, ands his girlfriend was equally certain that none of her circle were in the know.
The constable concluded he was being shadowed and that it had something to do with his run-in with the Treasury Solicitor. He decided to tip McGinley off because he was convinced the forthcoming inquest was being nobbled.