Attorney Pushes to Reopen CIA Murder Case in Georgia

Details surrounding the August 8, 1993, murder of Fred Woodruff have long been shrouded in mystery. At the time of his death, Woodruff was reportedly a senior CIA employee in Tbilisi, working as an instructor attached to former Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze's security detail. According to the official sequence of events, Woodruff was shot in the head while returning one evening to Tbilisi in a car driven by the head of Shevardnadze's security. Anzor Sharmaidze, a 20-year-old Interior Ministry soldier who had been manning a checkpoint near the reputed murder scene, was eventually convicted of the shooting and sentenced to a 15-year prison term. Prosecutors argued that Sharmaidze had fired his gun at Woodruff¹s car when the vehicle refused to stop or turn on its headlights.

But now, arguing that fresh evidence has come to light that could clear Sharmaidze, Woodruff's family has demanded that the Georgian State Prosecutor's Office reopen its investigation into the American's murder.

"[Sharmaidze's conviction]...was an expedient and perhaps necessary political decision needed to protect the integrity of the Republic of Georgia [in 1993]," said Michael Pullara, a Houston-based lawyer who is representing both Sharmaidze and the Woodruffs. "[P]erhaps now the time is ripe for Georgia to deal with these questions in a more direct fashion, to assure its citizens and interested outsiders in the primacy of the rule of law."

So far, Georgian officials have demonstrated little interest in reopening the case. Arguing that there were insufficient grounds to reexamine the case, the State Prosecutor's Office turned down petitions in late May from Pullara, the Woodruff family, and the Ombudsman of the Office of the Georgian Public Defender for a fresh investigation into Woodruff's death.

In response, Pullara, a corporate litigation attorney by background, is planning an appeal. "We are optimistic," he said.

Pullara's evidence hinges on documents culled from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Security Agency and the State Department. The FBI has never deemed the case officially closed, and has twice reopened its investigations in the years since Sharmaidze's conviction.

That apparent lack of confidence in the case's official findings has fueled Pullara's belief that evidence in the murder case could have been manipulated, or even contrived. Central to this belief is Sharmaidze's formal retraction of his confession to murder. Pullara claims that Sharmaidze was tortured in custody, asserting that the original confession was thus coerced.

Physical evidence used to link Sharmaidze to the crime has also proven misleading, according to Pullara. The FBI was unable to find any trace of a bullet hole in the vehicle in which Woodruff was riding. Georgian prosecutors and ballistic experts had argued that the bullet had left a hole "obvious" to the naked eye. A brass shell casing allegedly linked to the fatal bullet was later revealed to have been planted at the crime scene by police.

Pullara also disputes the official time of Woodruff's death. Though Georgian prosecutors argued that Sharmaidze fired his gun because the Woodruff car was driving without its headlights on, Pullara said that at the official time of the shooting, roughly 9 pm, the sun would not have yet set in Tbilisi. One FBI special agent working on the case reported that Woodruff's body was in a state of advanced rigor mortis when he was delivered to a Tbilisi hospital at approximately 10 pm on August 8, 1993, and pronounced dead. Such a condition would have been impossible if Woodruff, as prosecutors claimed, had been alive less than an hour earlier, Pullara contends.

Doubts also surround the slow response to Woodruff's shooting. Though Eldar Gogoladze, the car's driver, was a trained homicide investigator and the head of Shevardnadze¹s security force, he did not instruct police stationed near the alleged shooting scene to respond, nor did he surrender his weapon for ballistic testing or his clothing for forensic analysis. Only after delivering Woodruff to the hospital did Gogoladze call for security troops to return to the crime scene, where they arrested Sharmaidze for the shooting. Gogoladze cited shock as the reason for his delayed response.

So far, the US government has not issued a response to Pullara's initiative, and the CIA has declined any involvement in his efforts. In keeping with the agency's standard procedure, CIA officials have never officially acknowledged that Woodruff was employed by the CIA. Pullara has had only limited contact with agency officials.

The lack of support from Washington for a fresh probe, however, has done little to dim Pullara's confidence. "We are confident in [the] promises made during the Rose Revolution. We are confident that the people of Georgia are committed to due process and the rule of law," he said. "Because of this, we are confident that the court will declare Anzor Sharmaidze to be innocent and will release him from prison."