How confidential?
Last week a new book was published, written by the UK's former Ambassador to Washington. Sir Christopher Meyer reportedly reveals a lot in his warts-and-all account, ridiculing government ministers and the way they acted in dealings with the White House - particularly concerning Iraq. Prominent cabinet members, including Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, are denounced as "pygmies" and an amusing episode in the bedroom of former Prime Minister John Major recounted. Here are a couple of extracts from a serialisation in The Guardian:
Hindsight usually follows failure. As I write, things looked bad in Iraq. At regular intervals over the last two years I have asked the same question of former colleagues in the British and American governments: in Iraq, is the glass half-empty or is it half-full? With one exception the answer has been "half-full". The exception was a trusted American friend and government official, who, after paying a recent visit to Iraq, returned to tell the White House: "We're f**ked."
Iraq ran like a toxic stream through my time in Washington. When I arrived in 1997, Saddam was already playing cat and mouse with the first generation of UN weapons inspectors. It was hugely embarrassing to President Bush, and more so to Tony Blair, because he had rested his case for war exclusively on the Iraqi leader's failure to disarm.
I had a handful of especially important contacts in the higher echelons of the US administration - people at the heart of planning for the Iraq campaign. I was told things that were highly sensitive. Absolute trust was the indispensable ingredient in our relationship. After each conversation, one of them would always say: "Don't get me burned." Sensitive information was not given to me because my friends liked the colour of my eyes. I had to give something in return.
*Taken from Guardian Unlimited Special Report.
Looks like an interesting read! One of the biggest questions being asked is exactly why the government allowed this book to be published. Relatively recently, the Foreign Office notoriously blocked the memoirs of Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK's last ambassador to the UN, because of the sensitive nature of content. Meyer's book, entitled DC Confidential (sounds like one of those crime drama TV programmes) was sent to the FCO and returned with "no comment". So is it really as sensationally controversial as everyone thinks?
Some sources would indicate it is, such as a recent leaked memo from Sir Michael Jay, head of the diplomatic service, warning ambassadors and other senior figures against publishing similar accounts. "Let me stress that we cannot serve ministers effectively unless they trust and confide in us, which they will only do if we respect that confidence - not just when doing our jobs, but afterwards too," he said. It's too late for the government to do anything about this book now, but many are predicting the instigation of strict new measures to prevent situations like this developing in the future.
However, one argument doing the rounds in response to this is that Meyer is simply giving the public information they need to have. People are always kept in the dark about backstage dealings; maybe the time has finally come to learn about some of them. The Iraq war was, and still is, a massively controversial issue and not easily forgotten in the cabinet - the revelations and allegations in DC Confidential may simply serve to reignite national debate about this tedious, over-discussed topic.
Maybe it will leave the public eye when the answers come out. Perhaps this whole thing will be a blessing in disguise for the Prime Minister, still struggling to escape accusations of lying to his electorate. The situation could develop over the next few months in either of these ways: Iraq will return to the forefront of political debate as more questions are asked and problems uncovered, or the opposite will happen and it will start to disappear completely, finally allowing this country to move on from discussing the endless whispering speculations we've become so used to hearing.
Hindsight usually follows failure. As I write, things looked bad in Iraq. At regular intervals over the last two years I have asked the same question of former colleagues in the British and American governments: in Iraq, is the glass half-empty or is it half-full? With one exception the answer has been "half-full". The exception was a trusted American friend and government official, who, after paying a recent visit to Iraq, returned to tell the White House: "We're f**ked."
Iraq ran like a toxic stream through my time in Washington. When I arrived in 1997, Saddam was already playing cat and mouse with the first generation of UN weapons inspectors. It was hugely embarrassing to President Bush, and more so to Tony Blair, because he had rested his case for war exclusively on the Iraqi leader's failure to disarm.
I had a handful of especially important contacts in the higher echelons of the US administration - people at the heart of planning for the Iraq campaign. I was told things that were highly sensitive. Absolute trust was the indispensable ingredient in our relationship. After each conversation, one of them would always say: "Don't get me burned." Sensitive information was not given to me because my friends liked the colour of my eyes. I had to give something in return.
*Taken from Guardian Unlimited Special Report.
Looks like an interesting read! One of the biggest questions being asked is exactly why the government allowed this book to be published. Relatively recently, the Foreign Office notoriously blocked the memoirs of Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK's last ambassador to the UN, because of the sensitive nature of content. Meyer's book, entitled DC Confidential (sounds like one of those crime drama TV programmes) was sent to the FCO and returned with "no comment". So is it really as sensationally controversial as everyone thinks?
Some sources would indicate it is, such as a recent leaked memo from Sir Michael Jay, head of the diplomatic service, warning ambassadors and other senior figures against publishing similar accounts. "Let me stress that we cannot serve ministers effectively unless they trust and confide in us, which they will only do if we respect that confidence - not just when doing our jobs, but afterwards too," he said. It's too late for the government to do anything about this book now, but many are predicting the instigation of strict new measures to prevent situations like this developing in the future.
However, one argument doing the rounds in response to this is that Meyer is simply giving the public information they need to have. People are always kept in the dark about backstage dealings; maybe the time has finally come to learn about some of them. The Iraq war was, and still is, a massively controversial issue and not easily forgotten in the cabinet - the revelations and allegations in DC Confidential may simply serve to reignite national debate about this tedious, over-discussed topic.
Maybe it will leave the public eye when the answers come out. Perhaps this whole thing will be a blessing in disguise for the Prime Minister, still struggling to escape accusations of lying to his electorate. The situation could develop over the next few months in either of these ways: Iraq will return to the forefront of political debate as more questions are asked and problems uncovered, or the opposite will happen and it will start to disappear completely, finally allowing this country to move on from discussing the endless whispering speculations we've become so used to hearing.
posted by Frederick at 00:00
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