A former police informant says he never mentioned the name Colin Winchester to cannabis growers who believed they were under some kind of protection, the David Eastman trial heard Monday.
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The cannabis growers later known as the Bungendore 11 and linked to the Italian mafia started two crops in NSW in the 1980s under the supervision of the police informant.
The informant was in turn under the supervision of Mr Winchester, then a senior officer in the Australian Federal Police.
Mr Eastman, 72, is on trial in the ACT Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to the January 1989 murder of Mr Winchester, who was by then an assistant commissioner.
But his defence say it's possible someone linked to the Italian mafia murdered Mr Winchester, after the Bungendore 11 were arrested and the plantations failed.
At the opening of the defence case on Monday, they called as their first witness the former informant, who cannot legally be identified.
The man was grilled about what protections the Bungendore 11 believed they were operating under when growing the crops.
He told the court, at times assisted by an Italian interpreter, that the plan with Mr Winchester involved him acting as agent provocateur to encourage people to participate in an illegal scheme.
He said he was made an unofficial constable and given a gun during the operation but told not to kill anybody with it.
Pressed on the scheme, the witness said he could not answer, because it might incriminate him.
The witness frequently refused to answer questions saying they would incriminate him, or denied recollection of the matters defence barrister George Georgiou SC asked him about on Monday.
When it was suggested it was a significant matter in his life, the witness said not really, and that he had an axe to grind and wanted to hurt the people involved as much as possible.
While the witness said he had told the growers he had protection over what they were doing at the two plantations, he denied ever mentioning the federal police or the name Colin Winchester.
He said he "never in my life mention the name of Colin Winchester to any person involved".
He denied ever telling the group they had the protection of a senior police officer.
Asked if he told one of the growers that he had to pay the people providing protection, the witness denied having any recollection of the conversation.
Asked further how he could protect the group while growing cannabis, the witness said he could have told them any story and that he knew a lot of politicians.
The witness also denied recollection of the immunity from prosecution he had been granted from his involvement in the operation.
Presented by Mr Georgiou with one document in relation to that indemnity, the witness called it a piece of scrap paper and denied that it was his signature on one of the documents.
In reference to his possible misspelling of an associate's name, he said: "I'm not Sophocles".
Eleven people were eventually charged over the two Bungendore operations.
The Bungendore 11 were due to appear at a committal hearing at the Queanbeyan Magistrates Court in February 1989, about one month after Mr Winchester was killed.
The trial continues.
