Of all the speeches, of all the statements, of all the tweets – and there were many, all critical of our government’s conduct since the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia – one stood out above all others.
The remarks by the US embassy were, quite frankly, staggering.
The thing with embassies is they are as careful as they come.
Not that the UN agency experts who spoke yesterday are habitually flippant or that the visit and speech by the Mayor of Palermo do not have profound political significance.
But the intervention of the US government yesterday starves the room of air.
‘If the Maltese government wishes it, we will help it find who killed Daphne Caruana Galizia.’
We must break that down because it means a lot and it suggests a lot more.
It means the Maltese government has been lying about leaving no stone unturned in finding the perpetrators. On the contrary it is denying local investigators resources that are freely available to it. The government ‘has not asked’ for the help of US expertise and for the US to have felt the need to say that expertise is on offer in open view of the public means that their efforts to say it in private have been frustrated.
It means the Maltese government has been lying about unhindered cooperation with FBI resources in determining who killed Daphne Caruana Galizia. On the contrary, as long suspected, FBI cooperation was limited to finding the three alleged executioners, clearly merely the start of a murder case of this nature. But a lid was put on international police cooperation probably already since December 2017.
It means the former Director General of Europol was not alone in being frustrated about the reluctance of Maltese enforcement to get to the bottom of this murder. That statement is now corroborated by the Americans.
It means the Americans think that they are confident this crime can be solved, not merely that it should.
But it suggests something else. To have made a categorical statement it is unlikely the United States would have allowed themselves to draw a blank after the government of Malta takes up their offer.
To my mind yesterday’s statement suggests the Americans know who did it. What is more yesterday’s statement suggests the Americans know our government knows who did it. To my mind at least yesterday’s statement by the US government is a public message – which must therefore have followed several private messages the Maltese authorities pretended not to pick up – that the Americans know our government knows who did it.
This is where we are.