Iraq Inquiry Digest

Documents are the key

by Chris Ames

When Tony Blair appears before the Inquiry tomorrow, the key issue is not so much what questions the panel will put to him but whether they will be allowed to quote from documents that contradict his well-rehearsed account of events. The inquiry is being gagged, as the opposition has claimed and as it has itself made clear. If the government continues to suppress discussion of key evidence, tomorrow will be a farce.

Yesterday the row over secrecy between the inquiry and the government broke out into the open. Lord Goldsmith expressed frustration that the government was refusing to allow documents showing his early concerns about the legality of the war to be published. Chairman Sir John Chilcot told Goldsmith that he shared his frustration. This issue was then openly said to be restricting the inquiry’s questioning. Chilcot and his colleagues are right to make an issue of this but they cannot say they were not warned.

I’ll get the “I told you so” out of the way first, not so much to show that I was right but to show that the inquiry has been dead wrong, and utterly complacent,

In this post for Comment is Free in November, I pointed out that the protocol that the inquiry had “agreed” with the Cabinet Office was likely to restrict not only what it could publish but what it could ask witnesses. The inquiry’s spokesman told me “It is completely wrong to suggest that the government has any kind of veto over which questions the inquiry committee members ask.”

Yesterday, Sir Roderick Lyne said he was “confused” about what he was or wasn’t allowed to refer to and had to drop one line of questioning – about Goldsmith’s warnings to Number 10 – altogether. He told Goldsmith:

“The detail of this we can’t go into much further because I think it is in the area of documentation that neither you nor I can quote from at this moment, for reasons which you said were frustrating you earlier on.”

According to this morning’s Daily Mail:

“A spokesman for the inquiry said the panel could ‘talk around’ declassified documents in ‘general terms’, but was unable to quote from them or ask witnesses to discuss them in detail.”

That should, I think, say “classified” documents. So, despite what I was told in November, the inquiry is indeed being gagged. And it is preventing the truth coming out.

I also wrote just before Christmas that Chilcot had left it very late to start asking for documents to be declassified and commented: “If the inquiry is unable to discuss the content of documents because its request is stuck in a protracted dispute, it will only have itself to blame.”

According to the Mail, a Cabinet Office spokesman said, “In some instances, the Government has required further time to consider the inquiry’s requests.”

Entirely predictably, the government is playing for time. Unless it is publicly shamed into yet another climbdown, the inquiry’s questioning of Blair tomorrow will be hampered by the government’s suppression of key evidence, aided by a complete lack of urgency on either side.

This issue goes to the heart of the inquiry’s ability to get to the truth about the war in a transparent way. On Tuesday, for the first time and with government permission, it released a significant batch of documents,. These made a significant impact, including one that showed that Jack Straw talked Goldsmith out of telling the cabinet that “the legal issues were finely balanced”.

You might conclude that the documents that the government really does not want us to see are significant and potentially damaging. But that much is clear from what we already know. I’ll go through some of the documents briefly. Readers may have their own suggestions.

One absolutely crucial document is Sir David Manning’s memo to Blair, recording his talks with Condoleezza Rice in March 2002 – a year before the invasion. According to the leaked version of the memo, Manning told Rice that Blair “would not budge” in his support for regime change. When he gave evidence, Manning gave a detailed account of this conversation without mentioning this key point. He made it look as if Blair was saying “but, but, but…” but omitting that he said “yes”. If he is allowed to, Blair will do the same.

There is also, it has emerged, a formal record of what was agreed at George Bush’s Crawford ranch the following month. Last week the government declassified a diplomatic telegram with the “lines to take” by British ambassadors around the world. It thereby used a tactic of selective publication to put out a document that – unsurprisingly – supported its version of events. We need to know what was actually said.

There are of course the two records relating to the Downing Street meeting of 23 July 2002 – both the memo recording the discussion at the meeting and the Cabinet Office briefing paper for it. The latter lists the conditions that Blair had attached at Crawford to joining the attack on Iraq and – crucially – shows how the UK government planned to “fulfil the conditions set out by the Prime Minister for UK support”. Again, these documents have been leaked but the inquiry is still struggling to pin witnesses down by direct reference to their contents.

Perhaps the most significant partial revelation to come out of the inquiry so far is the existence of a number of letters from Blair to Bush, promising support for the war. In particular, there is one from July 2002 that followed the Downing Street meeting. Lyne has done his best to put on record that Blair’s promise at this point was “without conditions” but with the document suppressed – with Straw’s overt approval – witnesses like Alastair Campbell have been able to put their own spin on it.

Finally in my by no means exhaustive list, there is another memo from Manning, this time recording a meeting between Blair and Bush in January 2003. As the chances of UN inspectors finding a “smoking gun” receded, the two leaders discussed how they would nevertheless justify the planned invasion. It is alleged that Bush floated a plan to trick the Iraqis into firing on a spy plane painted in UN colours.

Those commentators who think that Blair will sail through tomorrow’s hearing underestimate the ability of people like Lyne – and the almost equally tenacious Sir Lawrence Freedman – to pin witnesses down. But as Lyne and others have now made clear, that ability is badly hampered by the suppression of key evidence. If Blair does sail through tomorrow because of this, the inquiry will have become the establishment cover-up that many people feared.

5 Responses to “Documents are the key”

Comment from barb bishop
Time January 28, 2010 at 10:18 pm

Chris, as ( I presume) you know but didn’t point out, all the classified documents are available to the inquiry. Their frustration is to do with not being able to quote publicly from them whih is hampering their line of questioning.

Given your ringing endorsement of Sir Roderic and Sir Lawrence, can we take it that you have confidence that these two at least will grill witnesses, especially Tony Blair, in private session, on any documents that “contradict his well rehearsed account of events”?

Comment from Lee Roberts
Time January 29, 2010 at 4:28 am

“A spokesman for the inquiry said the panel could ‘talk around’ declassified documents in ‘general terms’, but was unable to quote from them or ask witnesses to discuss them in detail.”

But that is exactly how Chilcot has run the entire enquiry. I dont believe that the frustration Chilcot and co may have expressed is anything to do with a thwarted desire to get to the real truth, but rather the constant problem of having to remember what they can say and what they cant. Its frustration with the incompetence of the affair, not the principle of hiding evidence to ensure that Blair can never be indicted.

Comment from Tony Simpson
Time January 29, 2010 at 9:33 am

The Downing Street documents are key to informed inquiry. The Baroness referred directly to the memo of the meeting of 23 July 2002 in her questioning of Goldsmith. Will Blair be asked about the implcations of his incorrect forecast that “it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors”. Blix picks up this point at the beginning of todayGuardian article. Incidentally, most of the above documents are available in THE DODGIEST DOSSIER, which I edited in 2005 (www.spokesmanbooks.com).