The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (107 page)

Later I sat down with Jeremy [Greenstock] and explained that TB was looking for someone to go to Iraq effectively to be his man, and we would be urging Bush to do the same. Jeremy wasn’t keen. He said he was an Arabist not far from retirement and desperate for a break and not sure he really wanted to keep doing government work. He also felt that unless and until the Defense Department moved over and let the whole bigger operation take over, it was not going to work. He really admired David M for the way he worked with Condi but said he found it quite alarming that what was basically happening was that David was almost tutoring the American president and his team. He felt TB had much more influence over Middle East policy than on Iraq and he was clear TB had to stay close to GWB. But he felt sometimes they just didn’t care sufficiently either about the way things blew back on us or actually, whether things got better or not.

The impression was almost of a country-by-country war strategy and they were far less focused on what happened after the fighting stopped. It was brought home to me later when Rebekah and Les Hinton dragged me out to Langan’s [restaurant] and the
New York Post
editor [Colin Allan] said ‘WMD just isn’t an issue here. Nobody cares.’ So we had to be careful. I said to Jeremy G I was worried that TB was setting himself up for too much of the blame if it went wrong. He said that Bush didn’t really grip these guys at all, but Rumsfeld was off the leash and out of control. He said the other reason why he was hesitant was because the American system knew that he thought very little of Rumsfeld.

Godric called just before his briefing, said the frenzy was going apace and was obviously going to keep going up to Wednesday. I spoke to Jonathan and we agreed a way forward was for the ISC to trail an inquiry before TB formally announced it and John S to make clear nothing improper took place. I wrote a long note for TB re what we
should try to do in rebuttal of the continuing WMD allegations. Defensive and offensive, give context and explanation, inquiry, defend ourselves re agency interference nonsense, and also hit back in that the people who were saying there would be no WMD were the people saying this other stuff too. Five pages or so, culminating in MEPP and they said we would never do that either but we are, GWB is there etc. We had to fight back but also put over a more subtle message. But there was no doubt we were in trouble on it, and the trust thing was back, which was partly about trying to undermine him on the euro. I felt it was an OK piece of work though and hoped it helped him. He was going to be feeling the heat on it, although the Beeb would try to deflect it to me.

I finished my speech for the funeral and then dictated a long note to TB by telephone. I guess the main point was that he needed to give a sense of process, show understanding of the concerns but also make clear we did the right thing because of the better things now happening. Met up with some old friends in a bar before the funeral, then up to the church. I read my speech over the phone to Fiona and was worried I wouldn’t be able to hold it together. Susie [Mark Gault’s widow] was in a bad way and the boys just looked out of it. The speeches were fine. His brothers [Philip and Hugh], me, two good friends and a McCann-Erickson [advertising company] executive. I just about got through without breaking down. The worst bit was when the boys told me that Mark was still their best friend.

The event afterwards was pretty dreadful. A series of corporate speeches, one of which seemed to be saying that what he would want was for the company to use this to go out and pitch for business. It really was the worst of corporate America. I got a lot of nice plaudits for the speech, certainly got the most laughs. Mark’s dad [Jim Gault] said he didn’t get the impression that some of the people speaking at the wake really knew him at all. WMD still raging at home. I spoke to TB, who said it was grotesque. There was no story here at all, but it was being driven by the BBC as a huge crisis for us. He said he liked my note. I got on the plane and slept all the way back with the help of a sleeping pill.

I arrived back and the big story was John Reid saying rogue elements in the security services were out to get us. By the time I landed, Switch[board] called me to say that C, John Scarlett and [Sir] David Omand [permanent secretary and security intelligence co-ordinator, Cabinet Office] had all called for me. I called Richard [Dearlove, C]
who said there would be a bad effect on the staff if they felt ministers couldn’t trust them. I said I’m sure Reid would not have meant to attack them as a whole but clearly someone was stirring it. I said TB would be very supportive at PMQs. Scarlett said he was pushing back the attacks on me and my integrity. I’d asked for all my notes to be dug out on the dossier and I was provenly in the clear. I’d done a long three-page process note on Sept 9 last year making clear it must be one hundred per cent their product and there must be nothing in it they’re not happy with. And there was also a long note I made with detailed drafting suggestions.

I went to a TB meeting re what to say about it all with Omand, Scarlett, David Manning, Sally M, Clare Sumner [private secretary], Jonathan. Scarlett was fine re what we were going to say, namely we did not override them. TB was pretty cool with me and the truth was he wasn’t taking much advice. I had a chat with Bruce [Grocott, Lords chief whip] about my future and he said he was worried the operation would fall apart if I went. Then a better than usual meeting with Balls and Mike Ellam [head of communications, Treasury] to lay the ground for a euro statement. It was all about the body language. We really had to go out of our way to show a united front. Peter Hyman was trying to push towards a referendum in this parliament, or a change of gear to the next steps, but Ed was not having any of it. It was an OK meeting but I suspect they felt they had got their way. Fiona was really fed up with Cherie. It transpired she hadn’t sorted the finances of the Bermuda trip. Fiona also discovered CB had agreed to a
Harper’s Bazaar
[fashion magazine] interview.

The main focus of the day was the euro Cabinet. TB and GB had had literally dozens of meetings and TB remained convinced that something had moved in GB, that he wanted to be in a pro position but he also wanted to keep the anti press on board. Ed Balls had revealed that yesterday when I said the best way to signal a gear change was for the
Sun
and the
Mail
to say this was getting serious and there was a real fight on and Ed said yes, but we don’t want the
Sun
to go for us next week. WMD still raging on and I sent a long letter of complaint to the BBC re Gilligan, pointing out factual inaccuracies e.g. the fact that he said the JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee] was a Number 10 committee.

TB seemed pretty clear with me that he was thinking of standing down before the election, but I couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t just stringing me along a bit. He had made no mention of the note I
showed him last week about my departure, and was clearly hoping it would just go away. The euro Cabinet started with TB making quite a long exposition of where we were, then GB, as usual in rather more dense form but not too bad. The discussion was OK, though nobody openly said what I suspected most of them thought, namely that the assessment was more negative than the earlier discussions had led them to believe. GB was pleased with the process, as were we all, as there had been no real leaks on this for weeks, ever since we took the decision to involve them all. Patricia H and Charles C were both very strong on the costs of staying out. Peter Hain was very pro, Margaret Beckett far more pro than I thought she would be. Helen [Liddell] and Tessa [Jowell] were very pro. JR, DB and Jack S a little bit more sceptical, Darling and Andrew Smith more so. But it was a good discussion and the mood was definitely ‘yes but’ rather than ‘no but’, with a lot of focus on the steps to get there.

The discussion ended with a barnstorming JP performance in which he said that when TB and GB were united, and the Cabinet involved properly, there was nothing we couldn’t do. So the mood was good. But then GB went out in the street and did his usual ‘nothing to harm the national economic interest’, so we ended up with the usual headlines, facing both ways. We had also agreed a joint TB/GB letter which I drafted and sent over but it came back with lots of changes that made it more dense and Brownish. Even the little things were difficult with them. We were going right up to the statement knowing that it would all be in the body language and the briefing.

Reid’s comments had upset the spooks and Jack said to me they should have been told straight away about what he had said. But at the same time, there was some stirring going on somewhere and they needed to grip it, surely. I left for the ballet with Fiona and David and Janice Blackburn [friends]. I didn’t like ballet at the best of times, and these weren’t the best of times. I have never been so stared at in my life. I felt like I was an exhibit in a zoo. It was a mix of ‘He doesn’t look too evil’ and ‘What on EARTH is he doing here?’ I wondered myself.

Iraq meeting with ministers and officials, TB wanting to get fully briefed on how bad it was, for example reconstruction work going too slowly, what the military really thought. He was due to speak to Bush later. Jack was scathing re Rumsfeld, said ‘Let’s be honest Tony, he has no affection for you or the government and couldn’t care if we survive. He just wants his troops home.’ TB was looking pretty
fed up with this. He realised that WMD was one thing but if we didn’t grip this it would give us problems for the future. [General Sir] Michael Walker [new Chief of the Defence Staff, succeeding Admiral Sir Michael Boyce] was much less friendly than [CDS preceding Boyce, now General Lord] Guthrie.

The Bush call began with lots of congratulations re the MEPP summit. GWB was sympathetic re the way we were getting hit on Iraq and WMD which was still running today because Blix had criticised our intelligence. There was a fair bit of the usual friendly banter but TB was getting a little exasperated at the Pentagon’s seeming lack of grip. At the office meeting, we had yet another discussion on strategic message. TB and GB had been discussing it and they wanted to go for a message based around ‘choice and equity’. I didn’t like it at all. I also felt we needed less new policy and more focus on seeing existing policy through, and with far greater drive on message. There was a lot of reshuffle talk in the press. Derry [Irvine] was in a terrible state because of all the talk of him being for the chop. DB was fretting on all the suggestions that he would lose out [as Home Secretary] with the creation of a new Ministry of Justice.

TB wanted Ann Taylor [chair of ISC] to do a quick investigation into the 45-minutes stuff.
⁶⁰
TB was telling us that we had to get back on domestic politics but then also saying he wanted to make more speeches on Europe, wanted better rebuttal on Afghanistan and more of our people into Iraq. I can’t say I blamed him wanting to avoid domestic because it was such hard work dealing with GB at the moment.

Lots of pick-up on yesterday’s
Guardian
splash on a briefing note Peter M did re TB and GB during the ’94 leadership contest, on which GB had scribbled ‘change’. It was not much of a document but such was the media interest in TB/GB chemistry that it was reproduced in most papers with various interpretations. Peter M was adamant he wasn’t responsible and if there was a gainer out of this, it was GB,
because it showed him both as Mr Fairness and Mr ‘I’m in charge’. TB was worried about the euro and I briefed the
Observer
, based on TB, JP and GB interventions at Cabinet, to the effect that the idea of a referendum in this parliament was still on the agenda. I told Neil [Kinnock] that the line would be ‘yes but not yet’ and he was happy enough with that. I also told him about leaving, and he said I should leave if I wanted, but he was worried about it.

WMD was still rumbling on with the BBC driving it as hard as they could and we were bracing for more Sunday stuff, a lot of which basically directed at me, e.g. David Clark [former special adviser to Robin Cook] in the
Mail on Sunday
, AC must go. The
Sunday Times
went back to the old dossier and why we didn’t publish it. The
Sunday Telegraph
led on a so-called apology from me to Richard Dearlove re the [February 2003] dodgy dossier, the
Indy
talked of the spies recording all the pressure put on them, and so it went on. I felt I was being royally set up for a fall.

The Sundays arrived, ghastly, full of absolute shit about me, which would keep the story going. Also I’d been invited by FAC [Foreign Affairs Committee] and ISC to give evidence so it was going to be a grim few weeks. I worked out a line with Danny Pruce re the
Sunday Telegraph
– it was not the case at all about an apology, but that I had made clear to those who produced the [February 2003] dossier they should have acknowledged the author of the article [Ibrahim al-Marashi] and I assured agencies that greater care would be taken about anything that impacted on them or their work or their reputation. Of course, the BBC just took that as a green light to say that we had said that we had abused the intelligence.

Ludicrously, my ‘apology’ to SIS was leading the news and being conflated into a sense that it was an apology over the main [September 2002] WMD dossier rather than – the reality – that it was about the so-called dodgy dossier [February 2003] about which I’d accepted mistakes were made, sent a letter to the system about it, and on which Omand suggested new procedures. But it was an outrage the way the BBC was twisting this. Anyone listening to their bulletins would think I’d apologised – all I had done was give assurances – and that I’d admitted we abused intelligence material – I didn’t. We were going through a totally mad phase.

The first call of the day was from GB who wanted to know what to say on
Frost
and we agreed it was best to get on to the bigger theme of WMD and why we did the right thing. I explained the line
and the fact that this was the second dossier they were talking about. In the event there was very little about it, mainly Europe and the euro, he was pretty good, very strong and confident, pushing a pro-European line and the effect was pretty good. I called Richard Dearlove on the way to Calum’s tennis match, said I was really dismayed that our exchanges were leaked and twisted in the
Sunday Telegraph
. He was in Cornwall, said he could not recall an apology, not at least a letter, felt there may have been something verbal. Then he said that he may have told the ISC he had had an apology. I also told him that some of the papers said he and Eliza [Manningham-Buller, director general of the Security Service, MIS] had threatened to resign. He said that was totally untrue. He was actually more concerned at news that he was going to be Master at Pembroke College [Cambridge] was going to break. I agreed with Richard that he would deny the resignation story and re the apology we just had to put out the line that we had not had major rows but that somebody was stirring it.