27 February
The Iraq war cover-up
It is most encouraging when one of my blog followers rings me to ask why I've been silent for some days. So today I will make good. What prompts me is yesterday's news that Jack Straw in his guise as Justice Secretary has vetoed release of the minutes of the two key Cabinet meetings in 2003, March 13 and 17, claiming that democratic decision-making demands that Cabinet discussions are kept confidential. It just so happens (what a coincidence!) that Jack Straw in his then guise as Foreign Secretary was deeply implicated in the Iraq war decision. It was also, as it happens, the same Jack Straw who was heavily involved, in his guise as Home Secretary, in the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act, one of the few brighter sparks of the New Labour regime. But, having entrusted its application to an Information Commissioner, he has now conveniently invoked the get-out veto to overrule the Commissioner who had authorised publication of the minutes. For heaven's sake, what the Cabinet decided 6 years ago, with the UK at last extricating itself from Iraq, ought to be regarded now as history and important history at that which the public have a right to know. Certainly as the Tories and LibDems, with the tacit support of many Labour MPs, now press for is the pressing need for a full independent Inquiry into this shameful episode of our recent history. Ultimately that will happen and the Straws of this world are simply putting off their evil day by such moves as the veto.

Over the years I have been waging a little personal campaign over the Iraq War issue. I have had letters published in The Times and other papers. I have resuscitated two such letters reproduced in a letter sent yesterday to the Guardian - which the paper won't publish but which I now quote to indicate my feelings.

Jack Straw's veto on the release of minutes of the two Cabinet meetings on 13 and 17 March 2003 is wholly predictable. Ostensibly to protect democratic decision-making, its real purpose, and a personally self-serving one at that, is to seek to stifle public debate on the legality of the decision on the Iraq War in whose genesis Mr Straw, then Foreign Secretary, played a crucial role. It will be recalled that the senior FCO legal officer Elizabeth Wilmshurst resigned a day after the 17 March Cabinet meeting in protest at the legality of a decision taken in the absence of a second UN Security Council resolution, a view commonly shared by FCO staff and, indeed, apparantly initially by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith before his volte-face giving the decision his legal blessing.When Ms Wilmshurst's resignation entered the public domain in 2005, the Times published a letter from me on 29 March which bears reproduction as it is pertinent to Mr Straw's current stance:

Elizabeth Wilmshurst's resignation letter raises, in an acute form, questions both as to the quality of the legal advice the Government relied upon to approve the Iraq war, and the calibre of our ministers who made the decision. The Government relied on the final opinion of a vacillatory Attorney-General whose professional expertise was commercial, not public international, law in preference to the consistent consensus stance of the legal staff of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who included distinguished international lawyers, not least Ms Wilmshurst, and whose view on the legality of the war without a second UN Security Council resolution was shared by almost every international lawyer of repute, as well as by Lord Goldsmith himself before his volte-face.Equally, Simon Jenkins (Comment March 25) rightly highlights the devastating effect on sound administration of the manner in which the decision was made. The Foreign Secretary must have known of the opinion of the FCO's lawyers, when the legality issue was before the Cabinet on March 17 2003, even though Ms Wilmshurst's resignation was not until the following day. Did he, himself a lawyer, tell the Cabinet of the legal consensus which conflicted with the Attorney's " unequivocal" opinion? There has been speculation that the Attorney would not take questions after his cursory statement to the Cabinet. I would be alarmed if a Cabinet stiff with libertarian warriors like Patricia Hewitt and Peter Hain and radical lawyers like my erstwhile legal practice partner Paul Boateng, let alone the maverick Clare Short, had supinely accepted a prohibition on debate of an issue of such moment.

Needless to say, my letter elicited no response from any of the named ministers. Nor had a letter from me in the Independent on Sunday on 31 October 2004 in which I said:

The Attorney-General based his legal opinion justifying the Iraq war on authorisation provided by Security Council resolution 1441. In the light of the categoric assurance given to the Security Council at the time by our representative, Sir Jeremy Greenstock - (quoted by Clare Short in your extract from her book "Powers of persuasion" -24 October): "Let me be clear...as a co-sponsor with the United States of the text we have adopted. There is no 'automaticity' in this Resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion....." - I would like Lord Goldsmith to explain how he arrived at his conclusions.

No wonder Jack Straw has vetoed publication of the Cabinet minutes. But what is there to inhibit some of the ministers at those meetings from giving us their own versions of what was said - and damn the Official Secrets Act?

Another letter I sent to The Times on 3 February 2004 was not published but expressed my views at the time and still does. It said:

How right you are to urge that the investigation into the evidence that led Britain into war with Iraq should not be seen as open season on the secret services. indeed there are many of us who believe that it would be a travesty of justice to make the intelligence services a scapegoat for wrongdoing by the Government, that an inquiry into intelligence failures is as much a red herring as was the Hutton Inquiry and that the imperative need is to investigate and lay bare the political origins of the war, as Charles Kennedy has demanded and the Prime Minister is reported to have resisted. Did Mr Blair early on commit Britain, come what may and whatever the justification, to join with the United States in an invasion of Iraq, a decision which, according to Paul O'Neill the former US Treasury Secretary, was pre-determined soon after President Bush assumed office? Until we know the answer to this key question public unease will not abate.

I say now "Amen" to that. The likelihood is that, with the Obama Administration now in command, the answer to that still unanswered and acutely live question will come from the US which has always respected freedom of information more jealously than we have. The sooner the archives are opened on both sides of the pond the better.

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