The nCrypt Emails
These are a series of emails from mid-March to early May 2016, the period of the signing sessions and the ‘Big Reveal’ (including the Sartre blog), in which Dr Wright was sending and receiving messages using his nCrypt email address {see e.g. {L13/67/1}, {L13/78/1} and {L13/123/1}}. As noted above, Dr Wright disclosed these emails, reviewed a number of them for the purposes of his statement (as shown by the CPR PD57AC list) and nominated one as a Primary Reliance Document which he now says he did not send.
However, when confronted with one which he found inconvenient from 2 May 2016, he claimed that it was not genuine and that his nCrypt email address had been taken over. He went on to claim that subsequent emails from him at that address were not genuine, and that emails from his wife at an equivalent address for her were likewise the work of an impostor.
There are two significant problems with Dr Wright’s account:
First, it is highly implausible that Dr Wright would have disclosed these emails and nominated one as a Primary Reliance Document without mentioning that they were all the work of others pretending to be him and his wife.
Second, his account does not make sense on its own terms. It is incredible that the impostor would have been able to go on sending these emails day after day, while the others on the chain were seeing and speaking to each other regularly, without the ruse being discovered.
This was put to Dr Wright, and he gave the following incoherent explanation {the full exchange is at {Day8/23:1} - {Day8/26:25}:
‘Q. Next question. It would be pretty strange, wouldn't it, for Mr MacGregor to deliver a real message, aimed at you, to an email address that wasn't you?
A. No. This is part of what I was explaining before, Mr MacGregor came up with the idea that if he's saying that I'm sending and telling everyone that it's mine, that that's going to be evidence that I'm on board with this and thus I need to follow what he's saying. So, part of the -- the whole thing with Tyche running all of the IT and other systems for nChain was that as soon as I didn't agree, they could cut me off my own email. That was probably one of my stupidest mistakes. By deciding just to be chief science officer, I handed over the control, the CEO or CIO, of all of the IT systems to Robert, and while I wanted just to be the research guy, the problem is, as soon as I did that, other people get to control what I do.
…
Q. Mr Matthews was spending time with you those days, including in your home in Wimbledon, wasn't he?
A. That was after this, not on the 2nd, so –
Q. But on the 3rd and the 4th?
A. He came over on those days, yes. I don't recall much of it, but he did.
Q. And Mr [MacGregor], you say, was simultaneously sending him fake messages about what you were up to even though he was spending time with you?
A. Well, this isn't when Mr Matthews was with me. I'd only just come back from Paris on the 2nd. Next, what Mr Matthews did after that is a different thing.
Q. But it was an incredibly high risk strategy, on your account, wasn't it, Dr Wright, for Mr MacGregor to be sending fake emails about what you were up to to somebody who was going to be spending time with you over the following days?
A. No, he didn't actually realise Stefan would. I talked to Stefan and had him come over. I mean, I called him and said, "Please, I need to talk to you", so I don't think Robert actually wanted him to be there, and I know Rob was incredibly angry later.
In short, Dr Wright’s story is that, at the time when he was in fact taking the position that he would not provide public proof before further steps had been taken, Mr MacGregor was sending emails to Mr Matthews and others in Dr Wright’s name taking the opposite position (i.e. that he would try straight away to provide public proof in various forms). His account is Mr MacGregor was doing this over at least several days in a series of emails while he (Dr Wright) was speaking to and spending time with Mr Matthews, all without anyone finding out. I agree with COPA that the notion is absurd. Again, I am satisfied that Dr Wright was lying about these nCrypt emails.