The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (120 page)

Jamie Rubin [former US State Department chief spokeman] called to offer support. He said he assumed that I knew the BBC were in the wrong but they got into a ‘won’t back down to him’ situation and it all got out of hand. Pretty much. Even out on holiday, Philip was doing notes for me. He was seeing and reading more of the media than I was, I having pretty much given up on reading the papers. He felt that what came through, even in the ones who hated me, was a sense of really deep commitment and professionalism and work ethic and it was important that side of me was what came over to the judge. He felt I should strive to de-personalise, de-emotionalise my own role. Be focused and professional.

The office sent through my ISC evidence which I had to sign off. Again I felt confident in the facts. Neil could tell though how nervous I was. He said I could not bottle up something like this and if I wanted to talk to him at any time, he was there. He was very warm and supportive and also lifting a lot of the pressure on the family too. Even though Fiona and the kids were still doing all the things we do on holiday they were clearly feeling the tension a fair bit. Philip felt
the problem was that the media were effectively running this as the government on trial. The press were helping the BBC to reframe the debate in their favour, without vacating the field, so that they were both player but also ‘neutral’ spectator. Not. JP went to Kelly’s funeral and called me afterwards. He said Mrs Kelly had been fine with him, had not been seeking to blame the government for his death, which made me feel a lot better. I was starting to work on my own statement. I was not impressed with the advice we were getting from the Cabinet Office about lawyers.

We had dinner in Malaucene with Ian and Andrea Kennedy [personal friends]. I was looking forward to getting some hard-headed and objective advice from Ian about how to approach it. His chairing of the Bristol babies inquiry [into baby heart deaths at Bristol Royal Infirmary, begun in 1998] had been seen as pretty good, and he was always very good on problem solving generally. He felt, based on what he had read in the press, that I was fine on the substance. But he was amazed that I did not already have my own lawyer, and he was really pressing me to get my act together, or get the Cabinet Office to get theirs together. He said he had advised everyone involved in Bristol to have their own lawyer.

What would happen, he asked, if the nub came down to a difference of opinion between, say, me and Geoff Hoon, or me and John Scarlett? Was I really saying there would just be one government lawyer representing everyone? He thought it was ridiculous. I was already feeling pretty sick, having heard from the inquiry team that the judge wanted me to give him my diaries, or at least any relevant extracts. The request came as a real shock. Sandra Powell [secretary] had called me to read through all the various areas he wished to ask me about, and as she ran through them, I felt absolutely fine. It was only when she faxed through the letter that I noted at the end this request to see anything from my diaries. Ian thought it was probably just a fishing expedition but now not only was I worried – as I said to Fiona, Christ knows what I’ve written in there – but I was also beginning to panic a little about what Ian had said re the need for my own lawyer. I was very pleased Ian would be around.

Ian got hold of Alan Maclean, who had been one of his legal team for the Bristol inquiry, and made arrangements for him to come out next week. I called the Cabinet Office and asked for a list of lawyers
to choose from. Rosemary Jeffreys [Treasury Solicitor’s Department] gave me a list but of course what we didn’t know was who was available and this was the worst time imaginable to be trying to find one. I put a call into James Goudie [QC] for his advice, also Charlie F and Derry, and TB. Charlie in particular thought I would not get on with Jonathan Sumption [QC], who was the one Alan Maclean and Ian were recommending. The general view was that he was right wing, a bit quirky and someone who would want things done his way. Charlie felt we were both strong characters who would get on each other’s nerves. Ian was strongly of the view that if Alan was saying he was the best, and also as his reputation was so strong, we should try to get him.

Alan got on to his clerk. It transpired Sumption was staying at his place in France, and had indicated immediately he was keen to do it. I was also trying to sort the shipping out of my diary for this year. The summer holiday is the one time of the year where I don’t take it with me, and instead just scribble a few notes every now and then when I feel like it. Poor old Audrey had to get into the house, root around under the bed and then get the book to Number 10. Originally the plan was to get it shipped out with books that were being sent out for Gail but her stuff was coming out late so Number 10 had to sort it out. I was now finding it really hard to sleep. The request for my diaries felt like a hostile act to me. I suspected I was the only one being asked to do this. And why – because the papers had said I kept a diary. Why isn’t everyone asked if they keep a personal diary, and to provide any relevant bits?

I had received the request for my diary on Thursday and now, finally, this year’s was being flown out by Peter Howes [duty clerk]. As I left the house, and said goodbye to Fiona, I did actually wonder momentarily whether it would be the last time I saw her, whether what I discovered on reading my own diary would be so awful that I would want to top myself. It was only a passing thought, but it was there, and it came back several times as I drove down to Marseilles. I knew I had done nothing wrong, but in this climate, things had gone beyond reason, it was like a drama or a novel, and nobody had control of events. I tried not to be in a panic on the drive down, but I was. I couldn’t remember what I wrote in my diary the minute I wrote it. On the few occasions I ever looked back, I was always surprised at things that happened, things I said, things other people had said. I just didn’t know.

I met Simon Lever [UK Consul General in Marseilles] as we waited for Peter to come through. I managed to hide any nerves I had from Peter, who was dressed like he was just having a nice day trip to an airport on an aeroplane. But inside I was feeling sick. He handed me the package and I set off back to the car. I put it on the passenger seat, thought about opening it there and then but the car was hot and I wanted to get away from the airport. I drove for maybe half an hour and then pulled into a service station. It was now unbelievably hot. I opened the envelope slowly and then pulled out the diary, put it down again and just stared at it. What I had written in there, or so I felt, had the capacity to deliver vindication or destruction. One bad word, and who knows, for me, for Tony, for the whole bloody government.

When I thought of some of the things I’ve said in there about ministers, about colleagues, about the press, about the BBC. By the time I finally started flicking through it, I was sweating. It was now so hot that even in the shade of a few trees, the sweat was falling down my face. I found the various sections on the dossier. At first glance, it seemed fine, and I started to feel a bit better. There was certainly nothing I could see that would mean I would have to resign straight away. A few bad bits, a bit too colourful in parts, but overall manageable. The best thing was that in terms of all the facts in there, they supported what we had been saying about events.

It then suddenly dawned on me I had made a terrible mistake. I had been so focused on Kelly’s death, which was after all the subject of the inquiry, that I had only got this year’s diary sent out when of course it was last year that the dossier was put together and it was clear from the inquiry team’s letter that was absolutely central. I felt sick all over again. What an idiotic thing to do. As I sat there, feeling a mixture of relief that my cursory flick through had revealed nothing terrible, and anger at my own stupidity in not getting both diaries sent out, the phone went.

It was Number 10 with Godric. When I told him what I was doing, he was horrified. He said he thought it was unbelievable that he [Lord Hutton] was asking for my diaries. Like me he saw it as a hostile act. Maybe, he says, it shows he basically buys into the media line on us. Godric was so principled and proper, and a believer in playing fair, that he seemed if anything even more shocked and upset than I was. He made the same point I had – why hasn’t everyone been asked if they keep a diary? But anyway, we were beyond that. He then got more and more anxious as I told him what I was organising on the legal front. He said that he had heard nothing from the Cabinet Office
other than the fact he would have to give evidence. He had had the same conversation I had had with Omand on the day Hutton set out his terms, namely take a bit of a break and see what happens. It was, as Charlie F had also observed, a bit Heath Robinson.

Godric was asking whether I thought he should go back straight away. I could tell that I had ruined his holiday, if it wasn’t already ruined. I got home, and we went out to Villedieu for the evening. Ian [Kennedy] said he really thought I should put my fate in the hands of a good team of lawyers now, stop trying to make all the decisions myself, stop relying on the government or the Cabinet Office. He said Alan was terrific. Sumption was now on board and he described him as having ‘a brain the size of a planet’. I also now had Adam Chapman from the Treasury Solicitor’s Department. After Fiona and the kids had gone to bed, I went back through the diary, read it all more slowly and in more detail. The thought of it all being put before the inquiry did not exactly fill me with joy, but it wasn’t the disaster I feared. I was kicking myself though re not getting 2002 sent out. I wasn’t even sure where it was, so poor old Audrey was going to have to look around the house and we’d have to go through the whole process again.

Ian had really acted as a fantastic catalyst in getting a proper legal team together. Alan Maclean was staying with the Kennedys at Faucon and I met him briefly last night. He said he, Sumption and Adam Chapman had read the papers on the train from Toulouse to Avignon, where the other two were staying overnight. He said they had concluded that there were only two fundamental questions for me: 1. did I play around with the dossier on the 45-minute point, and 2. did I play a part in a conspiracy re Kelly? He said they all three of them felt, based on all the material they had read, that the answer was no to both. He said Sumption was very clear about it. ‘He has pretty much decided that you are the cowboys and the BBC are the Indians.’ He said Sumption was reflecting overnight on how we handle the issue of the diary request. I went over to the Kennedys’ this morning. Alan and Andrea were getting the printouts on the inquiry from the Internet.

We were into the third day and the BBC case appeared to be falling apart. Gilligan by all accounts a poor witness, Susan Watts to her credit refusing to toe their line and so making things worse for the BBC. The MoD seemed to be doing OK in stressing that they did what they could for Kelly. Sumption and Adam Chapman arrived a
bit late. He was not at all what I expected. I’d expected someone rather overbearing, tall, smooth. He seemed a bit shy and nervy, as though a comfortable holiday home was not really the place for this kind of thing. He had a mass of all-over-the-place grey hair. His clothes didn’t quite hang together. He was carrying a biography of [John Maynard] Keynes [economist]. We got down to business straight away and I took to him fairly easily, despite all the warnings. He was sharp, to the point, and very clear. He repeated the view Adam had expressed, about the two main questions, and said matter-of-factly ‘I don’t think you have to worry about that.’

He was also very direct about my diary. He said the prime minister has established an inquiry, Lord Hutton has been appointed, the PM has said he and his staff will co-operate fully, and this is an example of the judge asking for full co-operation. He felt it would be a very bad move to refuse to provide it, or to seek to frame an argument as to why I should. He said the judge would not appreciate it, so I should just accept I would have to do it, and take whatever heat came from it. It was what I had been expecting to hear, and in any event I had already gone through the pain barrier on that one.

On the draft statement I had done, he felt it was fine, in that all the relevant facts were in there, but both he and Ian felt it was too personal and too emotional. All the judge would want is fact. Adam and Alan worked on my statement while Jonathan S and I sat at the dining room table and went through my diary. He felt that he would have to be the judge of what Lord Hutton would deem to be relevant to the inquiry. In terms of what went in, and what stayed out, even though we did not know what Hutton intended to do with this stuff, and even before Sumption knew what I had written, he was at the broader end of the margin. I was sort of hoping that his attitude would be ‘when in doubt, keep it out’. It was the opposite. He clearly felt that the more open we were, the fairer the judge would be. I read through page after page, putting pencil marks through the bits he felt were irrelevant, but also making notes in the margins of the vague subject matter to show he had been through it.

Occasionally he would have a doubt but would usually say ‘No harm including it.’ Some days there was nothing relevant at all, on other days a line or two. At other times, virtually everything would go in. Obviously TB, other departments and the agencies were going to have to see this, and that would maybe have its own problems, but I had now pretty much decided that I was going to take Ian’s advice to take this guy’s advice, unless it clashed with TB’s interests, and as the day wore on, that seemed less and less likely. I found the
whole experience really stressful though, going over all the same ground again, not just Iraq, but the other big policy nightmares, TB/GB, Cherie and Carole, also some of the rows with Fiona, some of the guilt at not being there enough, some of the other political stuff, the hatred of some of the media, the pressure, the agonising at my own situation.