Supposed Examination

On February 28 at a press conference hosted by UNIAN secretary of the Temporary Investigative Commission on Gongadze’s case of the Verkhovna Rada Serhiy Holovaty presented to public a letter from Prof. Johann P. Fritz, Vienna’s International Press Institute director, on facilitating an independent expert analysis of Mykola Melnychenko’s audio tapes, which the commission requested from IPI on December 22, 2000.

As it can be seen from the letter, to conduct the examination making it possible to find out whether the recordings were genuine or doctored, IPI and Freedom House found “an internationally renowned company, a leader in forensic accounting and expert in electronic evidence” (however, the letter does not name the company). Prof. Fritz also stresses that in terms of technical examination “both copies are as good as any other ‘original’; they differ only in sound quality.” Simultaneously, as it follows from the letter, it is much more difficult to detect crude splices if digital, not analog, recording techniques have been used. The letter also notes that the evaluation of a possible doctoring or manipulation of the text, as well as the probability of its detection, were described by the research laboratory as “rather slim, if digital processing was to have been employed at a professional level.” The letter also says that “even if the test would have included subjective auditory phonetics of the content... the degree of uncertainty of the result of the test would still remain.” Keeping in mind the se arguments, and also the fact that the IOCE (International Organization of Computer Evidence) principles, related to the security of digital evidence, could not be fulfilled, the IPI director stated that pursuing the requested task by the Investigative Commission was impossible. As it results from the letter, “the problem must be referred back to the political level and to the level of independent political investigation.” At the same time, the IPI and Freedom House stress that the “notion of uncertainty in the technical examination does not imply that the tapes are inauthentic” (though, following to Mr. Holovaty’s logic, this means that the tapes are authentic). However, the letter continues, taking into consideration that “the total volume of recordings available to the Investigative Commission covers hundreds of hours of conversations, it seems hard to believe that such a huge amount of documentary evidence may have been doctored or manipulated.”

In the IPI’s opinion, “there is a duty on the part of the Ukrainian authorities to investigate the matter further.” Prof. Fritz also notes in his letter that “The comparison between violations of law and the criminal acts suggested in the recordings and the actual happenings in Ukraine may be a proper method in achieving a solution.” According to Serhiy Holovaty, the Verkhovna Rada investigative commission will scrutinize the letter at its meeting on March 7.

The Day called Oleksandr LAVRYNOVYCH, the head of the Verkhovna Rada Ad Hoc Investigative Commission on the Gongadze case, to ascertain why he did not participate in the press conference while the letter annonced by Mr. Holovaty was addressed to both of them. It appeared that the head of the commission received the English original of the IPI letter, faxed from Vienna only at noon the day before. (Serhiy Holovaty, according to Mr. Lavrynovych, did not give him the document which he had got the night before, promising to do so only during the press conference). The press release the letter was called “IPI releases open letter setting out reasons why authenticity of the Kuchma tapescannot be determined for certain.” In addition, it was specified in the release that the text of the letter attached to it should be considered as an original in case if Ukrainian version distributed by Serhiy Holovaty differed from the English one. When questioned who financed the expert analysis, Oleksandr Lavrynovych named Freedom House, and stressed that in addition the expenses were large since analyzing the thirty minutes of conversations had cost $30,000 .