“Respect,”
said Eldridge Cleaver, “commands itself and it can neither be given
nor withheld when it is due.” The legendary Black Panther had very
little respect for himself in later years when he became a
“red-fighting” Republican and “anti-communist”. (I’ve always found
that strange expression deeply humorous. It always reminds me of the
reply the Watergate burglar gave when asked by the judge his name
and profession: “Bernard Barker, anti-communist”. The judge’s
response is no less priceless: “Anti-communist? That, sir, is not
your average profession.”) Nonetheless, the aphorism holds: respect
commands itself.
So it came as no surprise when Geoff
Hoon, the new Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons and
former defence secretary, was heard bleating about the lack of
“respect” shown to MPs and Parliament. The whining included the
following gems: “Parliament is facing a crisis of respect. We need
to communicate better” (mislead better?), “Many of us are concerned
with the apparent alienation that people feel from the political
process” (no “apparent” about it), “How depressing it is to see
younger people swearing at police officers, or parents complaining
unreasonably about teachers who have dared to discipline their
child? This is sounding an alarm call for all of us in civil
society” (not depressing, however, to concoct a story about WMD? No
alarm call for civil society that war crimes have been committed?
That no one has been held account?). Since it is Mr Hoon calling for
“respect”, let us see whether Mr Hoon is worthy of any.
Tuesday 12 October 2004 saw the Blair
government “formally withdraw” the claim that Iraq was able to
deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. This was
Blair’s way of accepting that no weapons of mass destruction will
ever be found in Iraq, though New Labour is sticking to the
unbelievably feeble line that Iraq had “weapons of mass
destruction-related programme activities”. (For those who can’t
quite grasp the usefulness of this broad description, it is that
since any university laboratory is theoretically capable of having
activities related to WMD, Iraq has violated the UN security council
resolutions on WMD by merely having university laboratories teaching
chemistry and physics. It was a manufactured get-out-of-jail-free
card the Downing Street gangsters needed.) Let’s take a look at Mr
Hoon’s role in the infamous affair of the “sexed-up” intelligence.
Gilligan’s two claims were that the government knew that the 45
minute claim was wrong and that intelligence was “sexed-up”. The
second claim is known to be true - without the corroborating
evidence from the numerous leaks and the deliberately enfeebled
Hutton and Butler inquiries. No one, except a few within the
government, accepts that the “dodgy dossier” was not a messy web of
wild fabrications spun - “innocent errors” and “a complete Horlicks”
said Jack Straw, a latter-day Cicero - by Alastair Campbell. So to
the 45 minute claim.
On Thursday 5th February 2004 a new
round of WMD controversy kicked off after further revelations had
Geoff Hoon allegedly concealing intelligence from the public and the
Prime Minister. Hoon appeared on the Today programme, BBC Breakfast
and many other programmes throughout the day with the same guarded
and well-crafted argument. Carefully worded answers were the order
of the day. He related to the British public an outlandish version
of events that seemingly cleared up the controversy engulfing the
government about their knowledge of Iraq’s alleged WMD capability.
Hoon ostensibly cleared up the matter, but only by depicting
everyone at the MoD, FCO and Downing Street as bunglers of
extraordinary ineptness. Furthermore, Hoon argued, as bad as it
looked for the government what was important was that there was no
possibility that the government had deceived the public. Bunglers?
In a league of their own. Liars? A monstrous and unsubstantiated
suggestion verging on slander. The public, Hoon reasoned, could
forgive bungling even if it leads to war, but not outright lying to
justify war. So Hoon, naturally, swallowed his pride and admitted to
clownish blundering. And of course many would buy it: everyone
thinks he’s a clown anyway. Well, up to a point.
Hesitant and not especially forthcoming
with clear and straightforward answers, Hoon was eventually cornered
into answering the central questions. Did he or did he not know that
Iraq’s supposed WMD capability referred to battlefield munitions
which could not possibly be used against Britain or British
interests. Yes, the “Botcher of Baghdad” replied. How was it that he
knew but the Prime Minister did not? Was this not at all curious?
Not at all, apparently. Indeed, Hoon himself did not know until his
“curiosity” led him to ask the security services what weapons they
were referring to in the infamous 45 minutes warning. Although now
notified of this revealing and crucial information, Hoon decided not
to pass on what he knew to the Prime Minister, or so he says. Hoon
was asked the clinching question on BBC Breakfast: Why was it that
when the press media went gaga with such headlines as the Sun’s
“Brits 45 minutes from doom” or the Evening Standard’s “45 minutes
from attack” that he, Hoon, did not inform them of their
unintentionally misleading and irresponsible reporting. Hoon replied
that at the time he had no idea that the press was running such
stories. “Well, I didn’t see that newspaper [the Sun] or indeed any
newspaper referring to that issue at the time.” On the Today
programme, Hoon further claims that he was relieved upon learning
that it was only the Sun that was doing so, which, in any case, he
did not read on the day they hysterically claimed that the UK was 45
minutes from disaster. It may be true that he did not read the Sun.
But the MoD press office? The FCO press office? And the Downing
Street press office? But let’s give Hoon the benefit of the doubt:
no one in the vast Westminster political machinery read the UK’s
biggest selling “newspaper”. And so could not correct their
unintentionally misleading “journalism”.
There are many problems with Hoon’s
version of events. We shall start with the most obvious before
turning to the most egregious. What is obvious is that the Sun was
not the only newspaper to report the 45-minute claim, which Hoon
claimed was “not controversial”. The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The
Guardian, The Independent and the Daily Mail all reported the
45-minute claim on September 25th 2002, the day after the
publication of the September dossier. They all carried the 45-minute
claim within the context of Iraq’s ballistic missile capability and
crucially with reference to British troops in Cyprus being in danger
in one way or another. The Evening Standard carried its “45 minutes
from attack” on the day Blair made the frightening claim, which he
says no one paid any attention to. Apparently no one associated with
the dossier within the MoD, FCO, Downing Street or their hordes of
press officers read any of the newspapers that day. One can only
wonder what press officers get paid for.
The most glaring difficulty with Hoon’s
attestation is stunning in its audacity, since it directly
contradicts his own testimony to the Hutton Inquiry. It is worth
quoting Hoon’s testimony at length (editing out Hoon’s numerous
prevarications):
Q: “Are you aware that on 25th
September a number of newspapers had banner headlines suggesting
that this [Iraq’s alleged WMD capability] related to strategic
missiles or bombs?”
A: “I can recall, yes.”
Q: “Why was no corrective statement
issued for the benefit of the public in relation to those media
reports?”
A: “I have spent many years trying to
persuade newspapers and journalists to correct their stories. I have
to say it is an extraordinarily time consuming and generally
frustrating process.”
Q: “But, Mr Hoon, you must have been
horrified that the dossier had been misrepresented in this way; it
was a complete distortion of what it actually was contended to
convey, was it not?”
A: “Well, I was not horrified.”
Q: “Can we forget journalists for the
moment and concentrate on the members of the public who are reading
it? Will they not be entitled to be given the true picture of the
intelligence, not a vastly inflated one?”
A: “I think that is a question you
would have to put to the journalists and the editors responsible.”
Q: “But you had the means to correct
it, not them. They could not correct it until they were told, could
they? Do you not accept that on this topic at least you had an
absolute duty to try to correct it?”
A: “No, I do not.”
Well, there you have it. The public
doesn’t deserve to be given the full facts, and that Hoon has better
things to do with his time than to inform newspapers of crucially
important information, though on very minor issues press offices and
press officers are incessantly berating the media for getting things
wrong. But on matters of war, forget it. Hoon’s testimony reads like
something right out of the unforgettable satire Yes, Prime Minister.
In the episode “Party Games”, Bernard tells the soon to be Prime
Minister, Jim Hacker: “Minister! You realise the press will be
printing something that isn’t true?” To which Hacker replies,
“Really! How frightful!” Hoon’s recent lamentations have a
nauseating humour about them. A prime example, and precious at that,
would be the following Hoon bellyache: “And as someone who has not
always seen eye to eye with our great British media, I would
certainly agree that we need to encourage more and better reporting
of the detail of our business.” The words “shameless” and
“charlatan” for some reason are rattling around in my head.
And so we move to the main charge,
which is impossible not to notice: there exists a tremendous
discrepancy - in fact diametrically opposed - in what Hoon told the
Hutton Inquiry and what he told the media. Hoon admits in his
testimony to the Hutton Inquiry that he did know that newspapers had
appeared with misleading headlines. However, on February 5th, in
interviews with the media, he claimed time and time again (so no
room for a simple slip of the tongue) that he did not know that such
misleading reports were being published. Compare “Yes, I am aware”
with “Well, I didn’t actually see that newspaper or indeed any other
newspaper referring to that issue at the time”. Either he lied to
the Hutton Inquiry (a perjury offence?) or he went around media
studios on February 5th, and almost certainly on other occasions
since that date, telling whoppers with extra cheese. The testimony
to the Hutton Inquiry seems plausible. Therefore his whirlwind tour
of media studios with his very carefully worded but ultimately less
than airtight argument is a tissue of lies. This begs the question,
why? Why the two different version of events? He can admit that he
was less than honest to a judicial inquiry, or he can admit to lying
to the whole British media. But, then, perhaps Mr Hoon has a
revelatory explanation for all this - and perhaps one worthy of
“respect”.
There is, admittedly, one way out for
Hoon. He can mimic Clinton’s bamboozling semantics and argue that in
his case being “aware” of the newspaper reports is not the same as
“seeing” them. How far that will wash with an already sceptical
British public is not too difficult to judge. Some questions,
however, remain. Given Hoon's testimony admitting that he knew Iraq
did not have WMD in any conventional sense, what exactly did Andrew
Gilligan get wrong? Why has no one been brought before a court? Is
it conceivable that the Secretary of State for Defence knew Iraq
didn’t have WMD but the Prime Minister did not? Is it conceivable
that a Defence Secretary would withhold such information from a
Prime Minister? Although desperation has its own dynamic, to assume
that one can spew out such nonsense and get away with it is truly
remarkable. (Correction - he has gotten away with it.) One has to
have “respect” for this kind of brazen lying.
Hoon is flabbergasted that “there is a
popular myth that MPs should be regarded as a bunch of second-raters
who are in it for what they can get. This is grossly unfair…” Indeed
it is. Mr Hoon is a first-rate liar, a first-rate spinner of yarns
and a first-rate unabashed whiner. I for one will never understand
why he is known as Buff Hoon. His new title as Lord Privy is,
however, apt.