Aitken to advise Tories - but there is a missing answer

Jonathan Aitken is to advise the Tories on prison policy. While accepting the man's "redemption", Peter Preston in the Observer asks a pertinent question:

But why, years later, do you find just a twist of lemon amid the sweetness of return? Because, to this day, we still don't know why the minister we trusted to oversee our defence procurement was in Paris that long-ago weekend to meet the Saudis.

We know that he lied and was found out, but we don't know why he lied. We're still finding out plenty about the contracts with BAE in the Eighties that Aitken helped put together - because the huge backhanders paid to the Saudis are public knowledge now - but we don't know what happened after he became a minister of the crown.