Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/266770
maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2014 9 News Caruana's life is a dark chapter in his career. Fenech Adami's reserves his best of judgments for long-serving per- sonal assistant Richard Cachia Caruana: he was struck by his in- telligence and analytical ability, "a stickler for facts", his distance from party politics making him aloof and a more reliable analyst, his loyalty "beyond question" and the person "closer to me than anybody else in my political life". "Hard headed, we clashed regu- larly. On such occasions I often ignored him and he often ignored me… I also pulled him several times over how he dealt with colleagues after I received complaints about what they perceived to be his arro- gance." Fenech Adami says he tried to record his conversation in a personal encounter with Joseph Fenech, aka Zeppi l-Hafi, when he learnt from police that he had been contracted to assassinate Cachia Caruana in 1994. "This was not an attempt by me to take over the role of investi- gator. Zeppi l-Hafi had made it very clear he would only communicate with me, and both George [Grech, Commissioner of Police] and my- self felt this was the only option if we were to stand a chance of solving the crime." "To this day I still believe Zeppi l-Hafi was telling the truth and I did no more than get him to tell the truth. If at any point a judge or the attorney general were of the opinion he was lying, they could have rein- stated all the charges against him because the pardon, granted condi- tionally in relation to three related cases, would have been null and void. The fact that this has not hap- pened shows that, although the jury chose not to believe him, there was no proof that he was telling anything but the truth. Quite the contrary, his statements had been cross-checked by the police and were corroborated by facts." Fenech Adami concedes a lot about his personal shortcomings, lacking sensitivity, warmth or so- ciability amongst them. This ap- parent dryness of emotion (in the last pages he implores readers to understand that he does have feel- ings) was buttressed by his surren- der to life's circumstances: when his newborn of just two days died, he steeled himself to accept the fact that this was something he had to go through – unquestioning of the plan his life had given him to read out. He acquiesced to the duty to serve his country in this same spirit, perhaps mindful that his life plan was to serve the country and little else. "To this day I still believe Zeppi l-Hafi was telling the truth and did no more than get him to tell the truth" – Fenech Adami PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAY ATTARD Eddie, manifest destiny