IT was the Sunday Independents case that Mr Sean Garland, the general secretary of the Workers' Party, probably wrote the Moscow letter, the High Court was told yesterday.
Mr Kevin Feeney SC, for Independent Newspapers, in his closing speech to the jury, said that they could be absolutely satisfied that it was a WP letter and could not be a bogus letter.
They had heard two views by handwriting experts. The evidence called by Independent Newspapers was presented in a more professional manner by someone who checked the paper.
The defence case was that the signatures on the Moscow letter were the true signatures of Mr De Rossa and Mr Garland. The newspaper and Mr Dunphy accepted that Mr De Rossa's signature, while genuine, was not knowingly obtained but it was saying that it was Mr Garland's signature. And it was likely that Mr Garland wrote this letter.
It was an incredible suggestion that this was a bogus letter. It was written on WP notepaper. It would have to have been written by somebody who knew that Mr De Rossa and Mr Garland were in Moscow on September 15th, 1986.
Now they knew that Mr James Nash, the handwriting expert, found a follow-up letter of September 18th, 1986, from Mr Garland referring to the letter of September 15th.
At the time Mr Dunphy wrote his article The Irish Times formed the view that the signature was correct. It was a very important matter which was borne out by the evidence.
Turning to the Dunphy article, he said that it was Mr De Rossa's reference to "special activities" in the Armstrong interview in The Irish Times in December 1992 that changed the agenda.
Was it not proper for Mr Dunphy to make the reference to Mr De Rossa's reference to special activities as it was he (Mr De Rossa) who defined what they were?
The article said that the special activities were criminal activities. It was Mr De Rossa who identified special activities as illegal activities in the Irish Times interview.
When Mr Dunphy said they were criminal activities he was identifying what Mr De Rossa had said.
The second question to be put to the jury asked if the words complained of were without genuine belief in their truth. Mr Feeney referred to the Irish Times interview in which, he said, Mr De Rossa said that the Moscow letter could well have originated from somebody within the WP.
Mr Feeney referred to Mr De Rossa's comment in the Armstrong interview that it "loomed large in his mind, that his signature might have been acquired by deception".
Counsel pointed out that Mr De Rossa had told The Irish Times that perhaps the person concerned wanted to lock him into circumstances that he would have "no truck with whatsoever" if he knew about them. Mr Feeney said this was not just a theory. Mr De Rossa considered that someone in the WP was trying to get his name on a document that would compromise him.
This was a significant variation and charge in the story, which first began with the publication of the Moscow letter. Mr Dunphy identified it as something which needed to be commented on six days later.