LONDON, 28 February 2004 — The revelations of Katharine Gun should not have come as too big a surprise. After all, we have come to expect the worst of our security services when they are guided by men and women of little principle. Yet when we bug our allies to undermine them at the UN, we are plumbing new depths. Our security agencies begin by being selective and they degenerate into being subversive. It should be of no surprise that Prime Minister Tony Blair reacted to the dropping of the case against Katharine Gun — and former Cabinet minister Clare Short’s allegations — by attacking them.
Answering a question that he was not actually asked in his press conference on Thursday, he said those who “attack the work they (the intelligence services) are doing, undermine the security of the country”. This is a breathtaking sidestep from the real issue of whether we spied on our allies and on the UN. Have we been acting illegally yet again? The prime minister’s charge that Ms. Gun and Ms. Short are “irresponsible” will not wash.
The public wants a full account of what our intelligence services have been up to. The national interest demands a full account too, not further evasions and duplicity. There are two Congressional inquiries into the rationale for the Iraq war under way in Washington. They will unearth more in a week than a dozen Butler commissions will manage in a lifetime. Unlike our system, US inquiries are designed to illuminate rather than obfuscate. It is perhaps why the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace — in its report, WMD in Iraq — drew upon official National Intelligence Estimates, which had been declassified up to July 2003, for its conclusions and recommendations.
From the earliest days, it was dissidents within the US intelligence community who were conducting a debate with the administration on the pro-war strategy. Can we imagine the British intelligence community dropping its supine posture toward the political establishment in such a frank way?
The recent revelations concern attempts to subvert the decision-making of the UN’s Security Council. At such a critical time the UK was party to illegal spying at the behest of the US. Such a role for our country would be consistent with our peculiar notion of a special relationship, our reward for which is access to American intelligence. The existing cosy intelligence relationship has been complemented by a close alliance between Bush and Blair. The president, failing to get unqualified CIA support for his wilder claims on Iraq, relied on Donald Rumsfeld’s Office of Special Plans for other intelligence.
Blair had a more compliant joint intelligence committee and a tame parliamentary intelligence select committee. Under pressure, he still had to accede to an inquiry of sorts into intelligence on WMD. This takes the form of the Butler Commission — chaired by former Cabinet secretary and packed with dependable establishment figures. Its terms of reference would make a Mississippi gambler blush, so stacked is its deck. Few will be satisfied by its conclusions — whatever they might be.
The aborted case against Katharine Gun, and Clare Short’s allegations, simply underline the inadequacy of the Butler Commission. Let us recall the calamitous interaction between the intelligence services and the British government on Iraq. There was Scott Ritter’s account of M16’s Operation Mass Appeal in the 1990s, designed to “shake up public opinion” against Iraq, using dubious intelligence material. There were the dodgy dossiers, using a plagiarized 10-year-old thesis, and forged evidence on alleged uranium purchases. There was the alleged failure to tell the prime minister that the doubtful 45 minutes claim related only to battlefield munitions, and the subsequent failure to find the allegedly ubiquitous WMD.
What a catalogue of failure. Blair’s response to this situation, and to the evidence of Gun and Short, is wholly unsatisfactory. His imputations against the two women’s integrity is woefully inadequate. Until we have a full, public and independent inquiry into the case for going to war against Iraq, there will remain a dark cloud over the prime minister. When that cloud breaks, the umbrella of the intelligence service will be of no protection to him.
— Peter Kilfoyle is Labour MP for Liverpool Walton and a former defense minister.
