A revealing new light was cast yesterday on the maneuverings in Washington and London before the US-led invasion of Iraq. President Bush, clearly against his better judgment, followed the advice of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and sought the approval of the UN Security Council for an attack on Iraq. That the effort failed was not for want of trying by the Americans and their British allies. Besides private lobbying of Security Council representatives from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan, the Americans also spied on them by tapping the officials’ telephones and monitoring their conversations.
This has been confirmed by a female officer working at the GCHQ, British intelligence’s electronic eavesdropping center. The woman leaked an e-mail from GCHQ’s US sister organization, the National Security Agency (NSA), asking for help in putting telephone taps on the UN diplomats. The story was published briefly in the British press. The officer was charged with breaking the British Official Secrets Act. Yesterday, when the case against her was due to begin in open court, the prosecution announced that it was dropping all charges and abandoning the trial. The British government was almost certainly alarmed at news that the defense would be seeking key documents, including the still unpublished advice from the top government law officer on the legality of the Coalition attack on Iraq without a specific UN mandate.
The weapons of mass destruction excuse has now been proven false. In addition, the British Parliament was also assured that there were strong legal grounds for taking military action against Iraq. Incredibly, the legal argument produced by the British solicitor general has never been revealed. By abandoning the prosecution, the Blair administration may be hoping to prevent any further enquiry. This hope seems doomed to disappointment. What made the trial of this intelligence officer all the more difficult for her superiors was her motive for doing what she did. She took no money from journalists. She acted purely out of outrage at the content of the e-mail that she saw. She took the view that what the US spies were proposing to their British colleagues was simply illegal. Had she been convicted at a trial, it is likely that, if necessary, her appeals would have gone all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. This forum has in the past supported employees who blew the whistle on their organizations because they saw that they were being asked to act illegally.
The British and the Americans are now shown to have been prepared to act without principle in order to win UN support. The revelation is all the more damaging because it was made by an individual who placed principles above career and the danger of prosecution to which she exposed herself.
