How good is Mike Silverstone's memory?

Why did Silverstone have false testimony charges laid where the exact detail of a lawful conversation could not be recalled accurately?

Michael Greenberg of the New York Review of Books in a very enlightening review of Sue Halpern's Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research - shows just how dangerous the Corruption and Crime Commission charges of false testimony can be.

When the Desert Rat read the various media accounts of Julian Grill's false testimony charge and trial before a Magistrate, it sounded like Grill denied or thought he never spoke to Mike Allen at the Department of Planning and Infrastructure, which was not the case. In fact Julian Grill admitted under oath that he had a number of conversations with Mike Allen about a variety of planning matters - which were all intercepted and taped by the CCC, but did not recall a conversation which apparently touched briefly on Smith's Beach which was a matter being dealt with by Brian Burke.

What is both strange and malicious is that it was subsequently determined (when some crucial evidence, known to, but deliberately left out by the CCC), that Julian Grill had not done anything unlawful nor had Mike Allen a senior public servant. Yet the CCC supremos Silverstone and Roberts-Smith still pursued an expensive prosecution of alleged false testimony against Grill. A case where they have to prove intent to give false testimony - even though the whole process was lawful. Mind boggling?

The point of all this vindictive prosecution escapes the Desert Rat. Halpin's account of recent memory research shows how dangerous charges like this can be, even where very serious matters that involve unlawful conduct are dealt with.

Giving evidence on matters at the CCC public hearings circus would be incredibly stressful, because the CCC does not advise the victim about what matters, on which they intend to publicly interrogate them. The CCC have usually seized all the victims files and records so that they cannot refresh your memory on issues they may anticipate could arise. Witnesses can be maliciously set up by this evil and poisonous practice used by the CCC.

Greenberg writes in his review (which can be read here):

In her fascinating book about memory loss and the efforts of scientists to understand it, Sue Halpern reports an experiment in which members of the Cambridge Psychological Society were asked to reconstruct a meeting of the society that had taken place two weeks before. The average person was barely able to recall 8 percent of what had happened, and almost half of this was incorrect, peppered with the recollection of events that had never occurred or that had occurred elsewhere.

Such paltry power of retrieval in an educated, and supposedly attentive, group is not surprising. Memory, Halpern reminds us, "is not an archive," nor does it record in real time. It lives in the brain "in chemical traces. The traces can fade...and they can be augmented," depending on one's experience and observation. The intensity of an experience may sharpen the memory of it, while making it even less accurate. During situations of extreme stress, for example, the body is flooded with damaging amounts of the hormone cortisol, causing communication relayed by neurotransmitters and other chemicals in the brain to break down.