some of the film's participants. In January 1995, Francovich claimed that new evidence (in the form of a US intelligence document) added further weight to the argument in his film that Iran had paid to have the bombing carried out, a claim promptly dismissed by the State Department, the British Foreign Office, and the Scottish Office. Her Majesty's Government dismissed the document, which it said was highly redacted and based upon second and third-hand sources, as adding no new information, while the Scottish Office argued that it was an old story. The US State Department claimed that it had investigated a possible Iranian connection over the course of three years, but had uncovered no credible evidence along those lines. The televising by Channel 4 of The Maltese Double Cross on 11 May 1995 provoked an even stronger reaction from official US and British agencies. The Guardian reported, for example, that the American Embassy and the Scottish Crown Office had apparently attempted to discredit the film prior to its broadcast. The embassy had sent a letter to The Guardian – and, the newspaper assumed, to other news organisations as well – which attacked the credibility of three of the film's witnesses and argued that The Maltese Double Cross was "Libyan-financed." The film's production company, Hemar Enterprises, was part-owned by the Lonrho affiliate Metropole Hotels which, in turn, was one third-owned by a state-run Libyan investment company. The Guardian noted that the Crown Office had made similar points in an official statement and argued that they had done so "in apparent co-ordination" with the US embassy. The Crown Office refused to comment on the specific allegations in the film because of the pending trial of two Libyan men, but noted "that the criminal charges in this case were brought on the basis of corroborated evidence supporting these charges and therefore inevitably conflicting with much of what is in the film." The Crown Office did publicly accuse one key witness in the film, Oswald LeWinter, of being a "notorious hoaxer" and another, Juval Aviv, of being a mere El Al airline security guard – not a member of the intelligence community as he claimed. Additionally, the FBI investigated the film at the request of the Scottish police and argued that LeWinter was "a major fabricator" and that overall the film was a sham. During the controversy in mid-1994 over whether the film would