My take is that Officer X was just one person giving evidence to an inquiry. He also said the excavations were not justified 3.10.17. His opinions do not seem to have been unequivocally upheld by the inquiries conclusions. If one is going to use an official inquiry as the basis for an argument then one would have thought the conclusions of that inquiry would be the better base rather than selective choices from witness opinions.
snip>>>>
Conclusion
3.10.18
There are two significant issues in relation to the search of Haut de la Garenne. Firstly, whether the search was justified and secondly, whether CO POWER supervised the decision-making process, given the significance of the search and what it implied about Operation Rectangle.
3.1019
Operation Haven concludes that the decision to dig at Haut de la Garenne was questionable. DCO HARPER was not trained to an acceptable level and, in the case of CO POWER, we note his own admission that he had no current training ‘in the oversight of such investigations’.
Nevertheless, this Inquiry can conceive why, in all circumstances, it may have been considered reasonable to do so. We do not raise formal criticism of DCO HARPER or CO POWER for their decision to do so. We do point out however, that the decision to search having been made, the risks in terms of public and media speculation about police activity, if reported, should have been predicted and carefully planned for. <<<<< snip
I suppose one could also point out that this particular "fiasco" did wind up with a result at a cost of only £7MM.
"If one is going to use an official inquiry as the basis for an argument then one would have thought the conclusions of that inquiry would be the better base rather than selective choices from witness opinions."
Perhaps that is an admonition which should be borne in mind when considering the Attorney General's Report in Madeleine McCann's case.
Unfortunately sceptics tend to get stuck either at the beginning or the middle perhaps because the conclusions do not fit theirs or Mr Amaral's or their unfounded belief in the capabilities of the dogs.
Unqualified reliance on what they had been told the dogs' would bring to the case in Praia da Luz and Haute de la Garenne had an undue influence on the conduct of both cases by the lead investigators.
Both cases were unqualified disasters and the dogs, through no fault of theirs, were the catalyst for that.