BY ROHAN PEARCE
Who will pay for the lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) used to justify Britain's participation in the US-led invasion of Iraq? There is now little doubt that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government is prepared to make sacrifices to protect itself from the public backlash against the exposure its WMD lies.
While the political deaths of defence minister Geoffrey Hoon and Blair's director of communications, Alistair Campbell, may prove necessary, the hard question facing the ruling Labour Party is whether Blair himself has to go in order to salvage the government.
The failure of the US, British and Australian occupation forces to find WMD in Uraq, or evidence of active WMD programs, since they invaded on March 20 had already taken its toll on Labour's credibility when the body of David Kelly was discovered on July 18. Kelly was a former UN weapons inspector and at the time of his death, apparently by suicide, he was an adviser on Iraq for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Foreign Office.
Kelly had also worked on the Blair government's infamous dossier, Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, released in September 2002. He was an anonymous source for a report by journalist Andrew Gilligan on BBC Radio 4's May 29 Today program.
Gilligan's report stated: "I have spoken to a British official who was involved in the preparation of the dossier, and he told me that until the week before it was published, the draft dossier produced by the intelligence services, added little to what was already publicly known. He said: 'It was transformed in the week before it was published, to make it sexier. The classic example was the statement that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use within 45 minutes. That information was not in the original draft. It was included in the dossier against our wishes, because it wasn't reliable. Most things in the dossier were double source, but that was single source, and we believed that the source was wrong.'
"Now this official told us that the transformation of the dossier took place at the behest of Downing Street..."
According to Gilligan, the source told him that Campbell had "sexed up the dosser". Gilligan refused to reveal who his source was.
Kelly was also the unnamed source for reports by BBC television's Newsnight reporter Susan Watts on June 2 and June 4. Watts reported that her source had told her that, regarding the "45 minute" claim, "There was a statement that was made and it just got out of all proportion. They [Downing Street] were desperate for information, they were pushing hard for information which could be released.
"That was one that popped up and it was seized on and it's unfortunate that it was. That's why there is the argument between the intelligence services and cabinet office/Number 10 — because they picked up on it and once they'd picked up on it, you can't pull it back from them."
Attempt to discredit BBC
After the BBC reports aired, Blair's office went into overdrive in an attempt to discredit them. On July 15, Kelly appeared before the House of Commons foreign affairs committee (FAC), which was investigating the government's decision to invade Iraq. He denied that he had been Gilligan's source, although acknowledging that he had met with the journalist.
The BBC only confirmed that Kelly was the source on July 21, after his body was found. Kelly's identity as Gilligan's source had been publicly revealed by other media outlets, and there is near-incontrovertible evidence that the "outing" of Kelly was a political decision of the MoD and Downing Street.
Not only did the MoD provide information to the British commercial media about the anonymous source of Gilligan's story, its officials made a decision to confirm the identity of the leak if journalists guessed correctly!
A July 23 article in the Independent newspaper reported that the Financial Times submitted Kelly's name to the MoD and MoD officials confirmed that he was Gilligan's source. The Guardian submitted three names, but the MoD "declined to approve the first two but then agreed Dr Kelly was the right one". The London Times "put more than 20 names to the MoD before it got lucky".
The same article revealed that senior MoD officials "insist Downing Street was closely involved in the naming of Dr Kelly", but aides to Blair claim that only "advice" was offered. "Everyone is blaming someone else", a senior Labour MP told the Independent. "It's a pretty horrible spectacle. It's the survival of the fittest — political Darwinism."
Blair not 'trustworthy'
Blair, Hoon and Campbell have all denied having any role in the exposure of Kelly, however polls of British public opinion indicate they are steadily losing credibility.
The furore over Kelly's death has overshadowed the FAC's whitewash of Blair's deceit. Despite the FAC's conclusion that "ministers did not mislead Parliament", most Britons believe the Blair government lied about Iraqi's WMD.
Polling conducted on July 19-20 by YouGov revealed that 68% of Britons believe that the Labour government has not been "honest and trustworthy", 60% feel the same way about Blair himself. Fifty-four per cent of respondents indicated that, leaving aside the question of Kelly's death, they trust the BBC more than the government in the row over WMD claims (only 18% trusted the government more than the BBC). Almost half of respondents blamed the government for Kelly's death, while only 9% accused the BBC of being responsible.
The Kelly affair was an attempt to discredit the BBC's investigations of pre-war government lies, but it is likely to backfire after the broadcaster's revelation that it has tapes of Kelly's remarks which provided the basis for its Newsnight stories.
The disputed claim in the September dossier was that "Iraq has a useable chemical ... weapons capability ... which has included recent production of chemical ... agents... Iraq's current military planning specifically envisages the use of chemical ... weapons... The Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons within 45 minutes of a decision to do so." The infamous claim was repeated by Blair on September 24 and by foreign secretary Jack Straw on February 21.
One of the conclusions of the FAC report, published on July 7, was that "the 45 minute claim did not warrant the prominence given to it in the dossier, because it was based on intelligence from a single, uncorroborated source. We recommend that the Government explain why the claim was given such prominence." It also concluded that Campbell "did not play any role in the inclusion of the 45 minutes claim in the September dossier. The FAC has been able to deliver a "safe" conclusion for Labour — that Blair and his cabinet didn't mislead parliament.
An amendment to the report moved by Tory MP John Stanley proposed the insertion of a paragraph reading: "The committee notes in relation to the 45 minutes claim that, thus far, there have been no finds of chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of Iraqi delivery systems and no finds of command and control documents, codes or other materials relating to the deployment of chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so." The motion to include the paragraph was lost, with the seven Labour members of the FAC voting against it and the four Tories and the sole Liberal Democrat member voting for it.
The FAC report left many questions unanswered, concluding that "it is too soon to tell whether the government's assertions on Iraq's chemical and biological weapons will be borne out". The FAC was unable to get Blair to testify before it. It stated that "without access to the intelligence or to those who handled it, we cannot know if it was in any respect faulty or misinterpreted".
The FAC's conclusions are in many places misleading. For example, the report states: "We conclude that the accuracy of most of the claims in relation to Iraq's nuclear weapons programme can only be judged once the Survey Group [the US-led WMD search team] has gained access to the relevant scientists and documentation." However, Cambridge University academic Glen Rangwala pointed out in a July 11 article (available from his web site: <http://middleeastreference.org.uk>): "Almost all the scientists have been captured, but there has still been no sign of the weapons."
The question marks over the future of Blair and his government have generated a debate within the Labour Party about how it can salvage its public credibility, with even the possibility being canvassed of Labour dumping Blair as its leader — something almost unthinkable prior to the 1.5 million-strong February 15 anti-war protest in London.
This debate has made its way into the pages of the New Statesman, a weekly journal owned by Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson. A June 21 New Statesman article even argued: "The question of Tony Blair's sanity is one that can no longer be avoided." Other articles in the journal argued that Blair's treasurer, Gordon Brown, could be a "bigger vote winner" if he led the party to the next election.
While Brown backed the invasion of Iraq, noted a July 23 article in the Independent, he "was not among those ministers who tried to convince the public that it was a just war. He did not seek to defend the government over the 'dodgy dossier' and kept out of the ensuing row over claims that Downing Street 'sexed up' intelligence reports". Moreover, added the article, Brown has not directly taken part in Blair's assault on the BBC.
From Green Left Weekly, July 30, 2003.
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