Irish Independent Saturday July 12, 2003 Key FBI witness denies telling lies in McKevitt trial  by Diarmaid MacDermott and Liz Walsh FBI agent David Rupert denied at the Special Criminal Court yesterday that he has committed perjury in the trial of alleged Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt.  McKevitt's counsel Hugh Hartnett SC put it to Mr Rupert that the account of his first meeting with FBI agent Ed Buckley in Chicago to the court was different to an account he gave to Chicago journalists recently.  Mr Hartnett suggested that Mr Rupert "told lies" about the Chicago meeting and Mr Rupert replied: "That's absolutely false."  Mr Hartnett said: "This is just one aspect of the perjury that you have committed before this court over the last three weeks."  Earlier, the court heard an extract from a taped interview that Mr Rupert gave to two Chicago journalists about his terror links.  Mr Rupert was heard to tell the journalists that when he first met FBI agent Ed Buckley in his office in Chicago, Agent Buckley "threw down" pictures on the desk and these pictures showed Mr Rupert in the company of prominent Irish republicans.  Mr Rupert had earlier told the court that he made a statement to gardai in 2001 in which he said that Agent Buckley had the pictures with him but in March of the same year he corrected the statement and said he was unsure if Agent Buckley had the pictures.  It was the sixteenth day of the trial of Michael McKevitt (53), of Beech Park, Blackrock, Dundalk, Co Louth, who denies membership of an unlawful organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army The trial continues.