Phipps' reasoning on Lewin's wife is flawed

THE EDITOR, Sir:

I listened to attorney Frank Phipps questioning former chief of staff and commissioner of police, Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin, on the role his wife, who works at the US Embassy, could have played in his being tipped off that an extradition request was on its way for Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.

I wondered why he chose to expose the identity of Mrs Lewin and to publicly question her integrity and confidentiality. Since this happened, a number of persons have been criticising Mr Phipps for this exposure, and he sought to defend his actions by stating that the information was already public knowledge because it was on the embassy's website.

So, I decided to check the embassy website myself because, surely, I would be seeing the identity of Mrs Lewin as well as her relationship with Mr Lewin. Lo and behold, all I saw, under the relevant section, was her name and title. There was no information of her relationship with Mr Lewin (as I expected).

Are all lewins related?

I now need Mr Phipps to tell me how he could say that this information was already public. Is he saying that everybody with the surname Lewin is related to Mr Hardley Lewin? So if I had gone on the embassy's website without knowledge of his exposure, I would have immediately deduced that the Lewin mentioned was the wife of Mr Hardley Lewin?

What Mr Phipps did was just plain wrong. It was callous and was simply being used as a means to an end. His argument about the information already being public knowledge is flawed because the truth is that he is the one who made it public knowledge. I am sure very few persons knew of the relationship between the two Lewins, and those who now know certainly were not informed from visiting the US Embassy's website but from the fact that Mr Phipps, learned counsel, decided to educate the entire nation.

I do trust and hope that there will be no backlash from this unfortunate occurrence and that Mrs Lewin will continue to enjoy her job at the embassy.

I am, etc.,

LANCE EDWARDS

lanceedwards31@hotmail.com

Kingston