[Media-watch] "The Law Chief who bowed to Blair "New Statesman

[Sigi D]

This is a shocking article in the New Statesman. (22.
11 2004)
All the lawyers are know are disgusted.
Reads like a thriller - except these lies and
manipulations didn't lead to one murder  but the
murder of tens of thousands of civilians. Filthy,
slimy, corrupt.
Best
S

http://www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_NS

http://www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_NS
The law chief who bowed to Blair
John Kampfner
Monday 22nd November 2004

EXCLUSIVE: The NS reveals how, on the eve of the Iraq
invasion, Tony Blair and George Bush leant on Lord
Goldsmith, the Attorney General, to change his mind on
the legality of the war. By John Kampfner
As Tony Blair implores the nation to appreciate the
benefits of the so-called special relationship, more
evidence has emerged of the extent of the Bush
administration's pressure on the British government in
the run-up to war against Iraq.

We already knew that the Prime Minister agreed to back
George W Bush's war plans as early as April 2002. He
was concerned about regime change and needed to find
another reason - weapons of mass destruction - to
justify military action politically and legally. What
is less known is how Blair, together with the
Americans, leaned on the UK Attorney General, Lord
Goldsmith, to change his mind about the legality of
the war. That story can now be told.

A commercial barrister and personal friend of the
Blairs, with little experience of international law,
Goldsmith shifted his position on the legality of war
not once, but twice. He was asked by Blair to stay
silent until he could guarantee that his advice was
helpful in justifying war. Even then, his first
attempt was not deemed positive enough, so at the last
minute a new version was produced. If any of the
doubts had been made public, Britain's armed forces
could have been vulnerable to legal challenge.

So sensitive is the whole affair that Goldsmith was
reluctant to speak about it during his two appearances
before the Butler inquiry earlier this year. His
testimony was regarded as evasive and unconvincing.
Initially, he even suggested that he could not show
the committee the contentious legal advice he provided
to Blair on 7 March 2003, which has never been made
public. The five-person committee was flabbergasted.
Goldsmith gave in to their demand only after they told
him they would abandon their inquiry and announce why
they had done so.

Between September 2002 and February 2003, Goldsmith
let it be known, usually verbally, that he could not
sanction military action without specific United
Nations approval. He indicated that resolution 1441,
passed unanimously by the UN Security Council in
November 2002, did not provide that automatic trigger,
and that a further resolution was necessary.

Throughout this period, Blair was fully aware of the
Attorney General's reservations. For that reason, he
instructed him not to declare his position formally.
When challenged by one cabinet minister in autumn 2002
as to why the government had not yet received formal
advice from Goldsmith, Blair responded: "I'll ask him
when I have to, and not before."

Blair, although a lawyer himself, made it clear
throughout that the legalities were an unwelcome
distraction. He had allowed himself to be won over to
the American position. This was that resolution 687,
passed in 1991 at the end of the first Gulf war, gave
any permanent member of the UN Security Council the
right at any point to declare Iraq in further material
breach of its obligations to get rid of its WMD. The
long-held British view, in common with just about
every other country, was that only the Security
Council itself could make such a judgement.

Meanwhile, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, let it
be known to his department throughout the autumn of
2002 that he disagreed with his own legal team. The
lawyers took a clear and united view. At one meeting
he flatly overruled them, causing them to appeal to
Goldsmith to act as an arbiter. Goldsmith, crucially,
told them they knew what his view was but he could not
give formal advice. The implication was that Blair
would not let him. The two offices work closely;
usually, one Foreign Office legal person is seconded
to the Attorney General. If at any point during this
period Goldsmith had disagreed with the Foreign Office
legal opinion, he had ample opportunity to tell them.
>From November 2002, all the lawyers worked on the
basis that a second resolution was not just desirable
but a legal requirement. That included the entire
Foreign Office legal team, led by Michael Wood, whose
deputy, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned on the eve of
war. Wood did not. In the 2004 New Year Honours List,
he received a knighthood.

Goldsmith was uneasy. In late January 2003, he wrote a
memorandum to Blair expressing his concerns. In
mid-February, he was instructed to go to Washington to
hold talks with senior American officials. The Butler
report refers obliquely to how the Attorney General
"met members of the US administration who as
co-sponsors of the resolution [1441] had detailed
knowledge of the negotiation of the resolution". He
met not just his US counterpart, John Ashcroft, but a
powerful behind-the-scenes figure called John
Bellinger. Bellinger's formal title is senior
associate counsel to the president and legal adviser
to the National Security Council. He is responsible
for advising on US and international law on national
security, use of force, intelligence and terrorism.

After that trip, Goldsmith agreed to produce the legal
advice Blair sought. His 13-page paper set out in
detail the status of the various UN resolutions. He
did not give a definitive view, but suggested that the
government's case would have been "safer" if it had
been based on a further reference to the UN on the eve
of war. In his conclusion, he set out the potential
for legal challenges to the government. In a break
with the ministerial code, Goldsmith's advice to Blair
on 7 March was not circulated to either the cabinet or
the permanent secretaries of key government
departments. When asked about this by Butler, the PM
suggested he could not trust some members of his
cabinet with such papers. Blair's answer to the
committee that day confirmed its worst fears about his
approach to the machinery of government and led it to
conclude: "We are concerned that the informality and
circumscribed character of the government's procedures
which we saw in the context of policy-making towards
Iraq risks reducing the scope for informed collective
political judgement."

A copy of Goldsmith's document was sent to the office
of the Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Michael
Boyce, as would normally be the case on the eve of
war. He responded by saying that it was too equivocal,
and that he needed a more definitive declaration if he
was to commit his forces, and to ensure that they or
their officers did not become liable under
international law.

Goldsmith, still deeply uncomfortable, felt he could
not give that definitive response. When asked about
this during his hearings before Butler, he suggested
it was the Prime Minister's call to make the final
determination on WMD. Never before had an Attorney
General felt unable to give legal direction on his
own. On 14 March, as the Butler report states, the
legal secretary to the Attorney General wrote to
Blair's private secretary asking for confirmation that
"it is unequivocally the Prime Minister's view that
Iraq has committed further material breaches as
specified in . . . resolution 1441". The following
day, he received such an assurance that "it is indeed
the Prime Minister's unequivocal view that Iraq is in
further material breach of its obligations."



Blair knew that Goldsmith's advice of 7 March, if
released, might not be strong enough to convince
wavering Labour MPs ahead of the crucial Commons vote.
That weekend, the Attorney General was asked to
produce something more compelling. His final version
was published on 17 March, on the eve of the debate,
in the form of a written parliamentary answer
described as "the Attorney General's view of the legal
basis for the use of force against Iraq". This was not
the same as his formal legal advice to the Prime
Minister. Contrary to the public assertions of several
ministers, this was not a "summary" of the legal
advice.

Blair, who knew the real story, made sure he avoided
that formulation. This was a partial, tendentious
account of that advice, shorn of various caveats and
qualifications that Goldsmith had included ten days
earlier. A qualified document had become a document of
advocacy. Sexing up had become a habit.

Goldsmith was asked to appear before the cabinet on 17
March to present the case. Sitting in the chair
previously occupied by Robin Cook, who had just
resigned, he read out his brief statement before Blair
moved the discussion on. Questions were not permitted.
On the 23 occasions that Iraq had been on the agenda
for cabinet discussions, this was the first time a
member of the cabinet can recall the Attorney General
attending. In the space of a year, a man who had
shared the doubts of almost the entire legal
establishment about the lawfulness of a war without an
unequivocal endorsement from the UN had been prevailed
upon to cast those doubts aside. In the fraught weeks
of Feb- ruary and March 2003, Goldsmith told lawyer
friends that his position was impossible. He wondered
out loud whether he should stay in his job. He did the
business, and did stay. What was published on the eve
of war was not the legal advice. The legal advice of 7
March, which has never been released, did not sanction
war.

Blair took it upon himself to make a final
determination that was not his to make.

[http://www.jkampfner.net]

This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For
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