Global Arab Network | UK - Iraq Inquiry Has to Prove Its Credibility

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UK - Iraq Inquiry Has to Prove Its Credibility

Global Arab Network - Robert Bailey

Tuesday, 04 August 2009 15:47

Successive British governments have turned to supposedly independent inquiries to dampen the clamour of political opponents and the electorate over controversial military interventions.

Heralded as a forensic examination of how and why events happened and who was responsible for them such official inquiries tend to last for extended periods and produce thousands of pages of evidence. Yet finality is difficult to achieve in practice.

One such inquiry being conducted by Lord Saville a high court judge is still in progress eleven years after being set up to look into the events surrounding the shooting of 27 Irishmen on the streets of Londonderry in 1972 by British paratroops.

The participation of British troops in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is no less controversial and still a politically contentious decision that continues to anger many British electors not least those within the ruling Labour Party.

Public opinion in the UK turned hugely against Tony Blair in the aftermath of the war and the wisdom and legality of the action has been a recurring theme in the years following.

A pervasive feeling that government has not been held accountable has dogged Mr Blair and his successor Gordon Brown ever since notwithstanding that the main opposition Conservative Party broadly supported the war.

Inquiries already held, notably that of Lord Butler’s which focused on intelligence matters in the run up to the war and later Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the death of weapons inspector David Kelly, have failed to assuage feelings in some quarters that the full truth has yet to emerge.

The latest inquiry concerning the events surrounding the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is to be headed by Sir John Chilcot a retired career civil servant. The expectation in official quarters is that this investigation will finally draw a line under the conflict at least as far as the British political process is concerned.

Whether or not this will be achieved will depend on the way evidence is assessed and witnesses questioned as much as the conclusions of the inquiry.

Chilcot and four other committee members are to examine Britain’s involvement in the war from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009 when British forces officially ended their presence in Iraq.

A review of written evidence is already under way and Sir John has said he hopes to publish a report with in a year but cautions that this may well take longer perhaps into 2011.

According the Sir John: “Our terms of reference are very broad, but the essential points, as set out by the Prime Minister and agreed by the House of Commons, are that this is an inquiry by a committee of Privy Councillors. It will consider the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, embracing the run up to the conflict in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned.”

However, things started off badly when Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted that while the terms of reference of the inquiry were not limited all of its hearings would be held in secret. This cack-handed decision immediately sparked an explosion of criticism from all political quarters as well as the media and was subsequently reversed.

Brown had tried to draw on the precedent of the inquiry conducted by Lord Franks, a former diplomat and academic, into the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982. Franks’ conclusions though led to widespread accusations of a whitewash and criticism that it had failed to draw larger conclusions that were implicit in its detailed findings.

Sceptics are asking whether the Chilcot inquiry will be any different from those in the past especially whether it will adequately grill participants about controversial decisions or extract sensitive material and as well whether it will examine evidence that has been exposed through leaks or rule such material as inadmissible.

In theory, all documents held by the British government and any British citizen could be called upon to give evidence. While nobody was “on trial” the committee will not “shy away from making criticism” according to Sir John.

Chilcot has ruled out a “whitewash” and stated at a press briefing in London on July 30 that “if we find that mistakes were made, that there were issues which could have been dealt with better, we will say so frankly.”

He promises to make the inquiry “as open as possible” with hearings televised and streamed online and transcripts made available on a special website. Some evidence will be held in closed session in order “to get to the heart of what happened.”

According to Sir John that will be consistent with the need to protect national security, sometimes to ensure complete candour and openness from witnesses.”
Sceptics are concerned though that national security may well be regarded as a synonym for government embarrassment.”

Nobody will be on oath since it is not a judicial inquiry. Nevertheless, Chilcot maintains that “if anyone were foolish or wicked enough to tell an untruth and then be found out, their reputation would be destroyed. It simply will not happen.”

Key figures including Tony Blair are unlikely to be called towards the end of the inquiry in order to make sure they are asked the most pertinent questions. “If we find going through the evidence that we see that people fell short in their duty made mistakes, acted wrongly, we shall most certainly say and say so clearly.”

The government has agreed that the inquiry should have access to papers written by the US or other foreign governments which are held by the British government. The inquiry will also be able to call witnesses who are not of British origin, such as Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector or Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General.

Sir John has said he would like to take evidence from overseas governments, including principal members of former president George W Bush’s administration. But he admits “we have no power to compel witnesses here, let alone people in foreign governments.”

Perhaps at the very least the inquiry is likely to offer an insight into the machinery of British government processes and into the so-called “special relationship” the UK has with the US and how far this has been affected by the events of the last seven years.

Chilcot will begin the inquiry this autumn at a yet to be announced location in London. He will be assisted in the mammoth task of sifting through mountain of written evidence and questioning by a group of former diplomats, civil servants and academics.
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Sir John a Cambridge graduate and former permanent under-secretary of state at the Northern Ireland Office is a career civil servant who has served five administrations going back to the 1960s. He has also had close links with the country’s security and intelligence agencies.

Chilcot was appointed a privy councillor in 2004 when he was appointed a member of the Butler inquiry set up to examine intelligence issues concerning the Iraq war. The four other members of the latest inquiry have each been appointed privy councillors this summer following their appointment to the inquiry.

This is not an insignificant detail. The Privy Council is an arcane body dating back to Tudor England at certain meetings of which the monarch formally agrees legislation. There are several hundred members including secretaries of state previous administrations as well as from the current government.

Essentially, all members have to swear a binding oath requiring them to “keep secret all matters treated of in Council” which constrains any discussion of dissemination of sensitive government information to outsiders.

Chilcot’s fellow privy council inquiry committee members are Baroness Usha Prashar, chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission, Sir Roderick Lyne, a former senior diplomat and who also served on the Butler inquiry; Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at Kings College London, and Sir Martin Gilbert who is best know as the biographer of Sir Winston Churchill.

The committee’s composition has not met with universal approval. The official Tory opposition in parliament has called for a “wider and more diverse” membership of inquiry.

Some believe that the polite and affable style displayed by Sir John will fail to penetrate the defences of long experienced public figures as well as senior officials. They recall Sir Robert Armstrong, a former cabinet secretary giving evidence on behalf of the Margaret Thatcher administration in a court case in Australia attempting to halt publication of a book by Peter Wright a disgruntled former MI5 officer, memorably commenting that it was sometimes expedient to be “economical with the truth.”

Ministers as well as senior civil servants have a well practised ability to evade direct questions and divert criticism. Sir Menzies Cambell, a senior Liberal Party opposition MP as well as a Queen’s Counsel barrister, has criticised the panel for not including a senior military and political figure and for not appointing a leading lawyer to conduct cross examination of witnesses.

Another opposition MP perhaps echoing a widely held view states that “Sir John Chilcot has a mountain to climb if he is to convince people that this is an open and independent inquiry and not some establishment stitch-up with Downing Street pulling the strings.”

Phillipe Sands an international lawyer and a QC, who monitored the Butler inquiry closely, is blunter: “Having some familiarity with Sir John’s questioning it is not apparent that he will have the backbone to take on former government ministers.”

Sir John says that “the independence of members of this inquiry, I think, cannot reasonably be challenged. None of us is partisan, none of us, as it were, holds the patronage of the government behind us. What we have to do to secure the confidence in our report that it shall not be seen as a whitewash, is to do the job as thoroughly, as fairly, as independently as we can.”

According to Chilcot the committee is “determined to be thorough, rigorous, fair and frank to enable us to form impartial and evidence-based judgements on all aspects of the issues, including the arguments about the legality of the conflict.”

Much of the clamour for an inquiry has been motivated by the inkling that there is some dramatic piece of evidence buried in the Whitehall files that, when disclosed, will occasion a political earthquake.

The history of British administrative inquiries does not suggest such disclosure is likely. But nothing can be pre-judged and there is the potential for reputations of senior figures in and out of government to be severely dented

The inquiry will have ample opportunity to examine some highly controversial political and military decisions. Contentious areas concern the advice given by the British attorney-general, the government’s chief legal advisor, and whether this advice was changed. Admiral Boyce chief of staff at the time of the invasion, for example, wanted written assurance as to the legality of the war.

The inquiry is also expected to look at the preparedness of the British armed forces for their role and the lack of planning for the aftermath of the invasion.

There is as well scope to examine British operations in Basra especially after the decision to pull out of patrolling the city after reaching an agreement with local militias.

Some observers believe that the most damaging revelations will concern Anglo-American disagreements after the fall of Baghdad and not about the run-up to the war.

The handling of so-called leaked documents by the inquiry will also be interesting and whether it will be willing to consider such material as admissible evidence. It is hard to see how it could not even though these leaks show that in effect that British officials were in effect planning with US counterparts to prepare for war.

Plenty of such leaked information suggests that Blair decided to back the Bush administration’s war policy long before the elaborate diplomatic manoeuvres that preceded the invasion and that his government exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction.

One such leak had Sir John Dearlove, then head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency MI6 after visiting Washington telling a Downing Street meeting including Blair that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

The 2004 closed door hearings into the use and abuse of intelligence in the British government’s decision to go to war had a narrow remit. It was provided with many documents it did not publish, or even refer to, because Lord Butler, a former cabinet secretary, believed they were not relevant to the scope of his inquiry.

Testimony such as that given by Carne Ross, the UK’s representative on Middle East affairs to the UN, which suggested Iraq was not seen as a threat and there was no evidence the country held chemical or biological weapons only emerged after the Butler inquiry ended.

In spite of the doubts, some believe that the latest inquiry by Sir John Chilcot will serve an important role in drawing a line under the past but also useful in providing guidance in terms of the current campaign being carried out in Afghanistan.

Yet Britons still critical of the fateful decision to join forces with Washington are unlikely to be easily mollified nor are the millions of Iraqi citizens who have been displaced and the hundreds of thousands killed and wounded as a consequence of the hostilities. It is to be hoped that testimony on their behalf will also be heard in the months to come.

Those who wish to provide evidence or contact the inquiry, which is expected to commence its hearings this autumn can contact the secretariat, headed by Margaret Aldred, at 35 Great Smith Street, London SWIP 3BQ.

Global Arab Network

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