Ref: A00-300995 Case No. 871626 Macpherson II
Volume IX, Pages 15-37, Monday 26th June, 1989
(In the presence of the jury)
DAVID ARTHUR WIDDOWSON: Sworn
Examined by Mr. Beckman
Q. My Lord, I am sorry this did not come to your Lordship
before. My learned friend had it over the weekend through
fax. (Handed to the Court). (To the witness): Dr. Widdowson,
before I start, can I ask you this: this long statement we
have recently received, then there was prior to that a short
statement which you gave to my solicitors' predecessors. Do
we need to go through both statements or does your second one
cover everything contained in the first? A. The second one
covers everything in the first.
Q. So there is no need for me to go to the first one? A. No.
MR. BECKMAN: I do not know whether your Lordship has the first
one?
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: No, the jury have to follow it without
even having a report so I shall be all right. Thank you
very much.
MR. BECKMAN: What is your full name? A. David Arthur
Widdowson.
Q. Your personal address? A. My personal address is 2 West
Wood Gardens, Barnes, London.
Q. Your occupation? A. I am a university teacher, a
university reader.
Q. In what subject? A. Organic chemistry.
Q. At which university? A. At Imperial College, London.
Q. Presumably in the Department of Chemistry? A. Indeed.
Q. Your qualifications - and can you, unlike the man whose
writings we are examining, avoid the use of mnemonics?
A. Yes, I have a Doctorate of Science, Doctorate of
Philosophy, a Bachelor of Science and a Diploma of Imperial
College. These are all awarded - except the Bachelor they
are all awarded for researches in organic chemistry.
Q. Would it be not too conceited of you to say you are
reasonably well qualified in the subject? A. I think so,
yes.
Q. Can you tell us of your experience - you told us your
academic qualifications; can you tell us of your experience?
A. Yes, I have carried out research in organic synthesis.
That is the making of organic compounds.
Q. Can you be so kind enough as to listen to my questions - I
am sure you know how to do it - and address the jury.
A. Yes, of course. I have researched in the synthesis of
organic materials for about 28 years and that is the basis of
my experience in this subject.
Q. Have you been given, and had it for some time, what we call
the demand document? A. Yes.
Q. When you were given that demand document what were your
fundamental terms of reference in looking at it? A. I
obviously looked at it as an organic chemist and looking at
the possibility of what was being proposed. That was the
basic approach to interpreting what was written there.
Q. Am I right in saying this - to save everyone going backwards
and forwards and my facing a lack of numbers, if you can
tell us what in that document is the most important page
in order to enable you to enlighten us and draw conclusions.
A. It is page 12 of the document.
Q. Which is 17 at the bottom. You have also, I believe, read
the appraisal document by Dr. Pearson of the Chemical Defence
Establishment at Porton Down? A. I have.
Q. It is right to say, is it not, that you in fact were present
in this court when Dr. Pearson gave his evidence? A. I
was.
Q. Although I shall not ask you specifically to comment on his
evidence personally, if this gentleman chooses to ask you
anything about his evidence are you content to answer?
A. Yes, indeed.
Q. It would seem, would it not, that in Phases I and II of the
document the two toxic substances are what? A. Well, I
believe that Phase I has all the indications of being mustard
gas and Phase II is the compound generally referred to as
Dioxin.
Q. In the document is there a reference to a chemical
neutraliser? A. There is.
Q. In practice would one chemical neutraliser do the job of
producing two toxic substances? A. Not for producing; you
mean neutralising?
Q. Neutralising. A. No, no one substance can do that.
Q. So in practice the two binary liquids, as he refers to them,
would require its own neutraliser and each one different
from the other? A. That is so.
Q. I want to deal with the validation section. I understand
there are some clear statements which I believe you say have
important bearings on the feasibility. A. Yes.
Q. One of the statements by the writer is:
"Binary liquids are very easy to create from
readily obtainable, harmless and innocent raw
materials widely used in industry and the home."
It then sets out a list of the principal ingredients. Have
you taken that into consideration? A. I have indeed, yes.
Q. I will come on to your statement further in a moment. Do
you consider that a valid statement? A. These substances
are certainly available to anyone. We can question and will
question whether they are suitable starting points for making
these compounds that he wishes to do.
Q. The next thing is this: that Di-Tox B7 is made in a pressure
and temperature controlled catalytic reaction chamber. What
do you understand by that? A. Well, that implies that
there is a single reaction chamber involved. However the
liquids are involved into this, that there is just one
chamber there and the problem with that of course is the
mixture involved in making the final compounds. There are
two different compounds going together in this so-called
process. The conditions for making these two compounds are
incompatible with each other. You cannot make both of them
in the same vessel at the same time. They would require to
be in different vessels and produced in different conditions
from each other, so there is no possible way of making both
compounds in one chamber at the same time.
Q. That is pretty fundamental to the whole scheme? A. Yes.
Q. Incompatibility to do so; does that make nonsense of the
scheme? A. Let's say they make half nonsense. If it was
biased to one product one could be made, the other could not,
assuming the chemistry was right.
Q. To make two compounds at the same time in the same chamber or
the same PIG? A. These two, no.
Q. "Rapidly accelerates to maximum temperature." What did you
take that to mean? A. I took it to mean in a matter of
seconds or minutes the whole thing would become very hot and
(inaudible) and they would get faster as they get hotter and
would finally burst out of the vessel, out of - bursting the
valve and would scatter the toxins around the countryside.
That infers very rapid pressure indeed.
Q. What is the way of producing Dioxin? A. A chemist would
react a couple of substances together (inaudible), and the
way it is done is heating as high as 200øC in a suitable
solvent, and it takes 24 hours for this process to be
complete.
Q. The idea that it could be produced in a small little chamber
easily hidden and could immediately disperse both lots of
things is ---? A. Is a nonsense.
Q. You are talking about 24 hours at 200øC. Does that mean all
these PIGs over the island, if they had any possibility of
existing, would require a large and continuous heat supply?
A. It does. I may say that the document says this heat
will be supplied by a secondary chemical reaction, but you
could not supply such a quantity of heat over such a long
period by a second chemical reaction except by having some
huge secondary chamber around in the vicinity, so it is
totally unrealistic to chemically supply with heat. You
have to supply it from an external source of heat up to 200ø.
Q. So the chamber itself would then have to have a huge item
which would supply it with heat to make it practical. How
huge are we talking about? A. It is not possible to say
that precisely because it depends what your reaction - if
you are using reaction to supply heat it has got to be a
reaction that goes a long time and gives out a lot of heat
and I maintain that there is no reaction suitable for that.
What I am saying is you have to have electrical external
heating to achieve the process.
Q. What would that involve in terms of size and so on?
A. You would have to have a heater capable of supplying any
vessel of that size, something like 300 kilowatts of heat to
raise that temperature up and maintain it, and that is a
minimum calculation, something like 300 kilowatts, and that
is just for heating up the contents. I am ignoring, in
calculating that figure, the very large weight of the
container it is all in, so quite a very large power supply
would be required in fact.
Q. What are we actually talking about, just one alone, 300 kilo-
watts on one big plug? What are we talking about in terms
of supply? What sort of machinery, how big? A. It would
be a heater like a giant sized electrical kettle, about 100
times the size of an electrical kettle. It is 300 kilowatts.
Q. Would it work on computers or would it have to be connected
to the Cyprus electricity supply? A. I think it would have
to be connected to the Cyprus electricity supply.
Q. It might be difficult to obtain permission for that.
A. Yes, indeed.
Q. Can you tell me this by the way: there is also a statement
here that anyone in the vicinity is instantly killed; has
that any validity? A. No, in fact chemical toxicity is
usually quite lengthy. It is very rare for, in my under-
standing, for a person to be killed, certainly not instantly
and within a very short time very rare.
Q. Right. The things we are talking about fairly basic to a
good chemist? A. Yes.
Q. So in other words, though we are happy to have your
particular expertise, any reasonable chemist would be able to
confirm the calculations we are dealing with; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. Dr. Pearson's report comes midway - I am going to the subject
of scale - gives you some reasonable idea of dispersion. Can
you just help us about that; let us have your views on that.
A. I am using Dr. Pearson's figures here because they are
experts on dispersion of toxic substances and the report
suggests to reach a toxic level in Dioxin - and of course a
great deal of work has been done on this as a result of past
incidents - to reach a toxic level or achieve a toxic level
of Dioxin three kilometres downstream from the point of
release in five metres per second - this is the sort of
standard for dispersion of substances - would require 500
milligrammes of Dioxin to be released at the point. The
consequences of that are that in a place the size of Cyprus
you would need something like 7,800 tons of Dioxin to be
produced by these PIGs that we have heard about a few minutes
ago, would require a minimum of 10,000 tons of chlorine.
That is the chemical starting point ---
Q. Starting with that 10,000 tons of chlorine; give us some idea
of how many large lorries would have to be flowing through
the streets of Cyprus to do that. A. Well, in terms of
bleach - if I may expand that slightly further, chlorine of
course would cost and is not so readily obtainable, certainly
not in these quantities. What the statement says is that
bleach will be the source of chlorine. Bleach is 4 per cent
of a solution. That means a quarter of a million tons of
bleach would be required. A quarter of a million tons would
be many lorry loads, shall we say?
Q. Give us some idea how many lorries flowing through the
streets of Cyprus to supply these PIGs. A. Well, something
like 6,000.
Q. Six thousand lorries? A. Yes, large containers, very large
containers.
Q. Each of them would have to go and come back and someone would
have to work it out and get it in and so on? A. Yes.
Q. Would you carry on dealing with this? A. Yes, that is a
huge quantity. Now that was just for the Dioxin, which was
one half of this mixture. Of course, the other half also
uses chlorine in its production. The mustard gas, if we take
a similar estimate there - it is a rough estimate - gives the
right sort of figure for quantities. You have to double
again, so we are left with half a million tons of bleach
required to set up the threat as it is presented.
Q. Would that have to be brought in by lorry? A. It would
have to be transported by lorry. Presumably you would need
a container ship to bring it in to Cyprus.
Q. So we now have a container ship to make it work plus 12,000
lorries going through Nicosia. Can we turn to the chemistry,
starting with mustard gas. The list of primary materials on
page 12 which the jury have in front of them, does that allow
for synthesis of mustard gas? A. In my estimate no.
Q. Would you please explain that? A. Mustard gas requires
certain carbon fragments which has two carbons joined
together in it (inaudible) with a fragment built in, but the
trouble is there is no chemistry available from these
substances to convert that through to mustard gas so that
looks (inaudible) the element of one compound being
transposed to another, but there is nothing in between; the
chemistry in between is not available, it has not been
(inaudible).
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: You must understand that not only has it
to be written down, but we must understand. A. I will take
it more slowly. An alternative source of this carbon
fragment has been suggested to come from polythene, which is
made of polymaniazine(?). Such a carbon fragment - in
practice you cannot add polymaniazine, polythene, in this
way. If you just heat it until you reach 400 [degrees] C (which is
very hot indeed) there will be no difference. At about 400 [degrees]
the polythene will start to break down, but mostly it doesn't
give rise to this example, the two carbon fragments that we
required. All the breakdown products are of such fragments
but at 400 [degrees] temperature required, any mustard gas, had it
been formed, would be destroyed anyway because that
temperature is so much, so high that the mustard gas, which
is a sensitive substance, would be completely broken apart
itself. So there is no way in which these temperatures are
compatible with each other. You cannot on the one hand heat
polythene and then create mustard gas at the same time. The
very fact it breaks down polythene would break down mustard
gas.
Q. To heat up - we were talking about heating up to 200 [degrees], we are
now talking about heating to 400. A. Indeed, this is
double your power required.
Q. Through your power supply you would be making quite a hiccup
in the power supply in Cyprus. A. I think the Cypriot
national grid would be groaning at this stage.
Q. Alternatively, you would have to have a mountain of
batteries? A. Yes, indeed.
Q. Larger than Troodos. I think we can move straight to the
conclusion from that. In your view, would what is envisaged
in this document produce any significant quantities of
mustard gas? A. No.
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: That is no different from Dr. Pearson's
conclusion, is it, that there is no factual basis for
suggesting how the ingredients might be used for generating a
mustard agent. A. Can I say he said - the document says
that too. He in fact in the witness box said he thought
mustard gas would be produced but his document said it would
not.
Q. He obviously agrees with you about quantity. He was saying
some mustard gas only, he never suggested the necessary
quantity. A. No.
MR. BECKMAN: Might I deal with that head on? Dr. Pearson said
"some". Let us deal with this in so far as you are said to
agree with him. You say no significant quantities of
mustard gas could be produced. Can mustard gas of any
quantity of any concern, of any worry whatsoever be made by
this process? A. I think mustard gas to worry about
couldn't be made by this method.
Q. In other words, even though you allow the theoretical
possibility of a minute particle escaping, the reality is no
need to worry about it at all? A. No.
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: May I suggest that it is better not to
ask leading questions; in fact it is prohibited. I am sure
you will watch it.
MR. BECKMAN: I will do it another way. (To the witness): Is
it possible that any amount of mustard gas, enough to cause
any degree of concern, could be produced by this method?
A. No.
Q. If a government said to you, "Dr. Widdowson, do we need to
worry about this at all?" what would your answer be?
A. No.
Q. I now want to turn to Dioxin. I think the easist way is for
you to tell us about it in your own words. A. Well, I
think that one has probably heard of Dioxin because, I am
afraid, of an incident in the past in Italy, at Sevesio,
where a certain quantity of it was released as a result of an
accident in a chemical factory, and it is - it can be
produced by either heating the chemical that is used in
(inaudible) synthesis, and that is what happened and
subsequently a quantity was released at that stage.
If you wanted to make it efficiently, for real if you
like, then you wouldn't do it by quite that method, you would
use some slightly different chemistry and the problem is the
precursor for Dioxin that you require is not that readily
available. If you look at the list on page 12, to the
possible source of that precursor, the ones that stand out
are disinfectant; No. 4, disinfectant as used in hospital.
So what we are looking at can be phenol, carbolic acid or
TCP, which is in disinfectant. Unfortunately, if you react
phenol with chlorine you do get a chlorinated phenol compound
but that is not the right precursor for Dioxin and Dioxin is
what we are talking. At best only a few per cent of the
right compound could be made by this method; most of it would
be a different compound, the wrong compound as far as Dioxin
is concerned. So when you heated this in a PIG you would
get many by-products but in fact very little of Dioxin, and
we say it had to be heated - that it at least had (inaudible)
it had to be heated to 200 [degrees] for 24 hours in order to get a
significant amount from this reaction. That of course is
incompatible with the idea of a pump that you trigger and set
off the gas in the atmosphere a few minutes later.
The true precursor of Dioxin is obtained from a
different compound which, it has been said in Dr. Pearson's
evidence, might be a component of industrial solvents. It
is certainly not a component of any industrial solvent and it
is a relatively expensive compound indeed. So that this list
here almost certainly excludes the appropriate precursor from
availability.
Q. That being so, in your view could sufficient Dioxin to be of
any concern be produced by this method? A. I think that on
a national scale absolutely not. It has to be said that very
small quantities could be produced. As I said, the wrong
approach could give you a very small quantity of the right
precursor for Dioxin and so there is an outside possibility
that a very small quantity of Dioxin could be produced by
this procedure if it were set in motion.
Q. "Small" being how much? A. That of course one cannot say
exactly without experimentation, but I think we are talking
about very, very small. In terms - if we are working on a
one ton scale you may be talking about less than grammes.
Q. Could enough quantity be produced to cause concern? A. No.
Q. Can I now turn to the chemical engineering? I think we have
anticipated this in the earlier part. The chemical processes
to be carried out in the PIGs, are they possible? A. Well,
in principle, yes, they are possible, but the complexity of
the PIG that would have to be built into a PIG so it could
perform all the different movement of materials to bring them
together to react, of control temperature, timing, different
solvents come in and that will require electrical heating,
electrical pneumatic valving inside the system. It will
require many compartments, lots of piping, precise control of
electronic control and all the operations going on. An
immensely complicated piece of design would be involved to
achieve what he sets out to achieve.
Q. How big would the PIGs have to be? A. The stated capacity
is one ton for that and with all these components that I
said and chambers, metal chambers presumably, inside the
pressure vessel which means the PIG will have a steel casing,
in practice it means it would have to be probably two or
three metres across and the weight may be 10 to 20 tons, that
sort of level.
Q. And that, as we said, would have to be put into the
electrical grid in Cyprus and in addition to that, that is
the smallest PIG you are referring to? A. That is the
largest PIG he describes.
Q. In order to get the effect envisaged by the plan, how many
PIGs would you have to have on the island? A. If he had
set them up so he would efficiently produce Dioxin instead of
inefficiently producing it - let us look at the dark side in
that respect - then to disperse the quantities required on
the basis of the dispersion figures supplied would mean you
would need 50,000 of these large PIGs to cover the island.
Q. Transported in the way we have suggested, electrical
equipment built in over a period of time and so on?
A. Yes.
Q. How long would it take to build in the electrical equipment
of 50,000? A. You have to design it and test it and get
the PIG working in the first place, and that is a major
engineering problem and it is one any chemical engineer would
do. I think, except in extreme circumstances, normally you
engineer reaction vessels to do one reaction not many
reactions, so to design such a complex piece of apparatus and
test it and build it would probably take several years and
cost a very large amount of money.
Q. I want to come back to that in a moment, but first of all can
I ask you this: assuming that the electrical authority in
Cyprus refused Mr. Koupparis permission to put in the PIGs to
blow up their own island, what power supply would he have to
have to make it work, if he were not allowed to put it on the
national grid? A. As a rough estimate - and my estimate
excludes heating up the whole vessel - then I work it out as
something like 15,000 megawatts for the whole show.
Q. Does that or does it not require a whole power station?
A. It would require a power station.
Q. A large one like Battersea or a small one? A. A medium
sized one.
Q. Half the size of Battersea. What about the cost to produce
all this; how much are we talking about? A. I mean, if we
are talking on this scale, the contents alone, all these
components - even household bleach may be cheap when you buy
a litre but we are talking about half a million tons, and
although the rate would be cheaper the contents alone would
cost more than Mr. Koupparis is asking the Government of
Cyprus for.
Q. When you are talking about the whole scheme - give the jury
an idea; presuming the whole scheme were to be put into
operation, what is the cost, including the supply of
electrics, transport - can you give us a very rough idea
with enormous parameters? A. With enormous parameters
somewhere between 10 and $100 million I would think.
Q. I want to talk about skill and credibility; what is your
reaction to the skill and credibility of the document?
A. Well, the document reads to me like science fiction. In
other words, you have certain jargon, words, typical words
that you pick up from the popular science press if you read
this sort of thing, the popular press, and so certain base
words, if you like, are present and these give it superficial
credibility, but when you look at the detail then it starts
drifting off from the credible. It is like science fiction
in that it gives that initial credibility then it goes into -
it gets deliberately vague when details are required. It
goes off into vagueness. It is not quite explained how it
achieves these objectives and leaves it to the imagination
from that point, so my description would be like science
fiction.
Q. Is there any conceivable manner in which the threat could
have been carried out? A. That threat in total of
poisoning the Island of Cyprus, I would say no.
Q. If again you were asked by the Cypriot authorities and not
Dr. Pearson and put the same amount of care into it and they
said, "Need we worry about this or shall we get on with
arresting this man?" what would your reply be? A. I think
you would have to have - you cannot say there is no threat.
There is no threat to the whole of Cyprus, but he could mount
some sort of operation possibly so one has to take it
seriously, but not in terms of the whole of Cyprus.
Q. In terms of the manner stated, would you say this is a
genuine danger or not? A. No.
Q. It is not a genuine danger so if they said, "Shall we ignore
what the man says and get on with finding and arresting him?"
would you agree that is nonsense or not? A. Yes.
CROSS-EXAMINED BY MR. TEMPLE
Q. Just remind me of those last few sentences you spoke: you
could not say there was not any threat; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. And that one has to take it seriously? A. Yes.
Q. Now let me ask you about a few background matters. Do you
accept that there is universal agreement that the substance
spoken of in Phase I is mustard gas? A. Yes.
Q. Do you accept that there is universal agreement that the
substance spoken of in Phase II is Dioxin? A. Yes.
Q. As a fact and as indeed you have pointed out to this jury,
you came to the conclusion that at points this document
became deliberately vague? A. Yes.
Q. Do you further accept that mustard gas is not particularly
difficult to make? A. It depends upon your experience and
what facilities you have available. If you had a scientific
laboratory available you could make it with relevant ease.
Q. I have asked you that because on any view the writer of this
document is on the right track to producing mustard gas.
A. No.
Q. Your own conclusion is that there are no significant
quantities of mustard gas but he could produce mustard gas,
could he not? A. I said "significant" because of course if
heating polythene can produce some volition, even though
mustard gas would be destroyed who can say some miniscules
could not escape, but it is not significant.
Q. Exactly, but he is on the right track; there is a danger in
this, is there not? A. Not from mustard gas.
Q. Is there not a danger from Dioxin? A. I think there is a
slight danger from Dioxin.
Q. It would be a foolish scientist, would it not, who, receiving
this and any other documentation, was to say without care,
"You can ignore it"? A. It would indeed.
RE-EXAMINED BY MR. BECKMAN
Q. When my learned friend says "cannot ignore", are we talking
about the stage at which we first look at the document or
after we have done our analysis? A. I think it is after we
have done our analysis. One doesn't say a statement like
that without first analysing it and as I said, my reaction
was one has to take Dioxin seriously but not on the national
scale, but it cannot be denied that he could produce minute
quantities at some point.
Q. "Minute" being - you used the word "miniscule". A. That
was for mustard gas. For Dioxin I said if you are working
on a ton scale perhaps a gramme. Remember that in dispersion
it requires 500 milligrammes, that is 500,000 times that, to
produce a toxic level. There is no such thing as a lethal
level here as it is not known to be a killer toxic level
three metres away. The toxic level would be a metre or two
away.
Q. If by some fluke a gramme was produced, the maximum effect
would be a metre away from the item? A. Yes. If we are
pessimistic we should say four metres around the vessel.
That is why I said it isn't a threat to Cyprus.
Q. So is this right or wrong: what you are saying is it could
be a possible threat to someone in the immediate vicinity?
A. Yes, it could be.
Q. If someone happened to be there at the time, but would it be
dispersed immediately or no? A. On release it would
disperse and drop to earth. It is a solid of course.
Q. Is that the end of it? A. No, it is persistent in the
soil. That is because it is a very stable substance; the
earth would have to be removed.
Q. So assuming that this could happen; in other words that you
could keep a metre away, we then come back to the engineering
parts that would all have to there, do we not?
A. Yes.
Q. In other words, to produce this one drop, which might
possibly injure someone a metre or so away, we would still
have to have our 6,000 lorries, our power station and so on?
A. We are talking about what would come out of one maximum
sized PIG.
Q. Bearing that in mind, the overall picture, not just one
gramme, is this threat in your view a realistic threat which
should have caused concern? A. It is not. I have to
repeat, it is not a threat to the state of Cyprus. It is of
concern to anyone in the immediate vicinity of a PIG should
they prove to be producible.
Q. To produce them you would require all the things we were
discussing earlier? A. Yes, and I don't believe you would
be able to produce a PIG in the terms that was implied in the
statement.
Q. Assuming you can produce a PIG, you would still require - to
get your one gramme still require this fleet of lorries, this
container, this enormous electrical supply, this enormous
expenditure of money in excess of what the man asked for?
A. Yes, even to produce that.
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: Dr. Widdowson, you have given us a great
deal of information there and I am quite sure neither any
member of the jury nor I would query a word of it. What I
am anxious to find, because I have to sort out the evidence
in this case, is where you differ from Dr. Pearson. A. In
terms of the chemistry I honestly don't think we do. It is
in terms of the scale of what is required.
Q. Even as to scale there is not much between you? A. There
is considerable. I have used three figures for disperson; in
fact Dr. Pearson's report did not touch on what would be
required to contaminate the whole of the island.
Q. If that is the difference then I am sure --- A. It is only
an omission on the part of the report.
Q. I have a very careful note of what he said and I have his
answers, and if that is right then I am sure we can accept
what you say on the scale. "Do you agree the document
appeared to be feasible?" "At first flush but when I
examined appeared not to be." A. Exactly.
Q. That is a fair conclusion? A. Yes, it is indeed.
Q. Otherwise, if I may say so, you and Dr. Pearson and all of us
have been wasting untold hours in going into all of this. Do
you understand me? A. Yes.
Q. Is there any other particular matter with which, when you
listened to Dr. Pearson, you can help me in telling the jury
where there is any disagreement between the two of you?
A. Dr. Pearson in the witness box kept re-emphasising that
mustard gas may be made under the conditions described in the
document and to my mind that is not so.
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: I have got that very clearly from him.
MR. BECKMAN: Anything else where you disagree with Dr. Pearson,
either in emphasis or anywhere else? A. No, the only
difference is that I continued on to calculate the skill
required and the cost required; the other stopped short of
that.
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: Yes, between 10 and £100 million is
your very wide - it is a figure out of the air, is it not?
A. Well, certainly the contents, the chemical cost, would
put it up around at least $10 million. I cannot estimate the
cost of engineering a PIG.
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: No, you are very fair about that, I am
not criticising it at all.
(The witness withdrew)
MR. BECKMAN: Your Lordship put one question to my witness about
wasting time or not. May I say the issues are carefully
defined between the prosecution and defence and the minimum
amount of evidence that is dealt with, and the prosecution
very properly were not prepared to give the admission that I
wanted: therefore the matter had to be gone into.
My Lord, I have no further witness this morning. This
afternoon I have two witnesses. I do not know how long they
will be and I am trying to fill in with other witnesses.
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: What is the approximate timetable now?
MR. BECKMAN: My Lord, the approximate timetable will be -
assuming we do not sit on Wednesday, because I am told there
is a full-scale train strike - that we would complete the
evidence by Thursday. Just one witness is coming on
Thursday; my learned friend may spend some time cross-
examining. That is effectively it.
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: Then you address the jury on Friday and
summing-up on Monday.
MR. BECKMAN: We have not anticipated how long we will be and we
suspect we will have finished on Friday.
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: I hope that if any agreement with the
scientific evidence can be reached it will be agreed. It
would be impossible for me to go into all the detail of the
scientific evidence with the jury. I do not think they would
expect me to do so, it is the conclusions which are
important. I will leave it to you because it does strike me
that otherwise my remarks about not wasting time may be
merited.
MR. TEMPLE: May I say in terms that the Crown have never resiled
from the propositions put forward by Dr. Pearson. I am sure
your Lordship will appreciate the initial statements from
Dr. Widdowson were far beyond ---
MR. JUSTICE MACPHERSON: I leave it with you. If anything can be
done I am sure that you will do it.
(The trial was adjourned for a short time)
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