Bush co-conspirator in political trouble

[Donutboy 0]

Gee, imagine a country where leaders are still held responsible when breaking the law. It seems that Blair has a bit of a problem with someone revealing the identity of weapons scientist David Kelly, who then committed suicide, as the person who "juiced the evidence" in Britain's lead-up to war.

The Storm Breaks

What is in the Hutton report remains secret - but what we do know is that the battle lines have already been drawn. As Tony Blair braces himself for publication, Gaby Hinsliff analyses the strategies of Number 10 and its adversaries.

Sunday January 11, 2004

The Observer

High winds whipping the Tarmac as the Prime Minister's Boeing 777 touched down in Hong Kong last July were the first sign of a typhoon descending.

It had been an extraordinary rollercoaster of a week for Tony Blair, taking him from a hero's welcome before the US Congress to the shattering news the next day of weapons scientist David Kelly's suicide. It culminated in a press conference in Japan at which he was asked if he had Kelly's 'blood on his hands'.

But it was the four short words Blair himself uttered three days after that, in the air between China and Hong Kong, that have pitched him into the most turbulent storm of all.

It was a tired but relatively bouncy Blair who strode down that plane to the economy cabin for a chat with journalists on Tuesday 22 July. The tide seemed to be turning: the BBC had just confirmed the late Dr Kelly was the source of its reports about the 'sexing up' of the case for war, putting broadcasters rather than Downing Street centre stage.

Blair even managed a joke with reporters about his wife's Beatles sing-song with Chinese students a day before. Then the questions turned serious.

Standing on a seat to be heard as the press pack crowded round Blair was Paul Eastham, the tenacious deputy political editor of Number 10's least favourite paper, the Daily Mail . 'Why did you authorise the naming of David Kelly?' he demanded.

And Blair - who had until then insisted all questions about Kelly should be left to the judicial inquiry hurriedly announced into his death - took the bait. 'That is completely untrue,' he snapped.

As others pressed him, the Prime Minister hastily qualified his answer, adding: 'Emphatically not, I did not authorise the leaking of the name of David Kelly.' He was only denying leaking the name: Eastham's charge was the broader one of letting a name emerge by whatever means.

Last week the tiny gap between those statements rebounded on Blair. In electrifying exchanges over the Commons dispatch box, Tory leader Michael Howard highlighted testimony given to Hutton nearly three months after the Far East tour.

Sir Kevin Tebbitt, the Permanent Secretary of the MoD, had revealed Blair himself chaired the meeting which decided the strategy for naming Kelly. So had Blair authorised the exposure or hadn't he? 'Either the Permanent Secretary or the Prime Minister is not telling the truth,' Howard intoned ominously.

It was not quite the killer blow it seemed. Hutton may never rule on whether the bizarre strategy of encouraging journalists to guess Kelly's identity from clues provided by the MoD equated to leaking. And he may not conclude that such exposure led Kelly to slit his wrists. The question of whether anyone lied about events afterwards is, strictly speaking, also beyond his remit.

But Howard has gambled that, with the truth still buried in a confusing blizzard of Whitehall memos until Hutton reports, the first side to tell a simple, gripping version of what happened will drown out the rest. 'They're trying to pre-set the agenda so that, when Hutton reports, the things that people are talking about will be ones they've flagged up beforehand,' said one senior Labour MP.

Blair is left insisting that his remarks be taken in their 'totality'. Gleeful Tories argue that to astronomers, the word means 'the moment of complete obscuration' in an eclipse.

Clutching an untouched glass of red wine, Michael Howard was at his most disarming last Tuesday night as he hosted the Shadow Cabinet's rather belated media Christmas party.

Confiding that he was worried about letting people down over Hutton, he said his main fear was that the media might be sidetracked by a row over the BBC. So how would he prevent that? Howard smiled inscrutably.

His attack on Blair at Prime Minister's Question Time the very next day made that clear. It reflected at least six weeks' work by his hand-picked Hutton team - headed by the bright young MP David Cameron, and foreign affairs researcher Jonathan Collett. They spent December wading through the 1,148 documents published by the inquiry.

Among their helpers was ex-Cabinet Minister Peter Lilley. Criticised by the last judicial probe with the power to destroy a Government, the Scott report on arms to Iraq, Lilley helped to second-guess how Downing Street might react.

Blair's words on the plane were identified very early as gold dust. Not only were they simple to understand, they formed his only apparent pre-emption of the judge by commenting directly on Kelly.

Nor was Howard alone in getting retaliation in first. Greg Dyke and Gavyn Davies, the BBC's chief executive and chairman, launched a 'lunching offensive' of Fleet Street editors last week to argue Hutton would vindicate the BBC, despite its acknowledged mistakes. Gilligan would not be fired, and internal reform was unnecessary.

Blair, however, has been hamstrung by the convention that governments do not comment on inquiries they have set up. Even last Sunday's brief visit to British troops in Basra - meant to show that, even if no banned weapons had been found yet, at least an evil regime was toppled - backfired when he referred in a slip of the tongue to weapons of 'mass distraction' not destruction.

Howard's plan now is to exploit Blair's inability to comment on Hutton, portraying him as evasive and slippery. Each time he declines a question, Tories will accuse him of running scared.

'Every day the Conservatives come up with another procedural point just to stir the pot. We are not going to rise to the bait with all of this,' said one senior Downing Street source. But until Hutton delivers his report, Kelly's widow, Janice, is not the only one left in a vacuum.

He has spent the past few weeks rigorously training for a triathlon, but Alastair Campbell has never been far from Downing Street. Blair's former director of communications and strategy still speaks to him at least twice a week: and yesterday Campbell may have done his former master one last apparent favour.

In an impassioned interview with the Times Campbell insisted there was no 'naming strategy' over Kelly, accusing the BBC of going 'beyond the pale'. His words confirmed fears among some aides that Campbell, whose retirement was meant to restore some calm to media relations, will not fade quietly away, and it allowed the Tories to redouble their attacks.

Yet with the Prime Minister facing a grilling over Hutton on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme today, the man who described his job as being 'part of Tony's shield' has provided some of the answers Blair cannot give.

The real nerve centre of the Government's response to Hutton is a discreet unit of lawyers and senior civil servants in the Cabinet Office, examining every implication of the report - from reform of the civil service to potential lawsuits from Kelly's family.

One key scenario is damning criticism of the White House-style circle of unelected advisers: figures like Powell, the director of government relations Sally Morgan, and Campbell. Were Whitehall procedures - and the Cabinet - bypassed by this clique, as with the 'naming' meeting which neither Tebbitt nor Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon attended? And did personal loyalties within this group cloud judgment when Campbell was so personally attacked by Gilligan?

'The attack on Number 10 will probably be of an organisational nature - that it's a clique and we can't run things that way,' said one well-placed source.

Downing Street can argue it has learned its lessons. Shortly after Hutton reports, it will publish the Phillis review of government communications, urging a reduction of powers enjoyed by Campbell - already adopted - and a less adversarial relationship with the media.

There will be new debates on freedom of information, led by Lord Falconer, the Constitutional Affairs Secretary to whom Hutton reports, signalling a more open style of government.

Can they pull it off? The lesson of Scott is that Hutton's wording will be crucial: if it is couched in factual, lawyerly terms - leaving others to draw judgments - witnesses may wriggle free.

'The Tories have got to set up expectations in advance that Hutton is not going to produce the key punch,' says one former aide who helped compile the Major Government's defence. 'Then it's a bonus if he does.'

Parallels with Scott are striking: both inquiries came within 18 months of an expected general election, involving Iraq and an human casualty - in Scott's case, the directors of engineering firm Matrix Churchill, facing imprisonment as a result of the cover-up. Robin Cook's dissection of the report then was vital to the prosecution: his verdict now is keenly awaited. Major survived Scott without losing any Ministers, but his credibility was wrecked: he lost the election.

'Scott did the Government a considerable amount of damage without anyone having to resign,' says the former aide. 'It was about politicians who looked like they were out of touch and didn't take responsibility for their actions. And look what you've got here (with Hutton).'

The fear in Downing Street will be of winning the battle, and losing the war.

Ain't it horrible what those nasty conservatives in Great Britain are trying to do to their revered liberal Prime Minister?!?!

[Tiger Al 0]

DB, I'm calling you out!!! He didn't say the evidence was "juiced up" he said it was "sexed up"!!!

[Donutboy 0]

DB, I'm calling you out!!! He didn't say the evidence was "juiced up" he said it was "sexed up"!!! 

Well, I thought using the term "sexed up" would implicate Bill Clinton. You know how he gets blamed for all of this administration's failings already!!

[Tiger Al 0]

:kiss2: