War on Terror

Anthony Barnett (London, OK):  There are rare occasions when opinion columns become reporting and break a story. Is today's Nick Cohen 'Comment' one such? It is well worth a read. If what it seems to be saying is true then the Observer should have put more journalists onto it and given it a front page link as it signals all the 'deep state' developments that seem to have accellerated under New Labour. The implications seem to be this: enraged by police sergeant Mark Kearney warning his fellow officers not to illegally bug an MP and lawyer when he was talking to a terrorist suspect, the authorities are doing everything they can to harrass Kearney incuding at getting at those who have loved him, thus making an example of him and deterring any other equally law-abiding police officer who might object to the improper use of surveillance. To this end they have strip-searched and held in custody for 24 hours a 50 year old part-time reporter Sally Murrer, who has a disabled child, and who works for the nobly named Milton Keynes Citizen. She is now facing ridiculous charges for which she will be tried with Kearney next month. Cohen says that it is a "sinister  assault on press freedom". If Murrer is found guilty,

there will be a precedent for imprisoning reporters for talking to contacts in the police, local authorities or central government without official approval.

But even if she isn't it seems that the warning will have been made: question the improper use of police powers if you are a junior police officer and your life will be made hell. There are important implications for the growth of the database state. It is only as good as those who run it.

John Jackson (London, Mishcon de Reya): At the end of her judgement in the BAE case one of the law lords, Lady  Hale, said “- - I would wish that the world was a better place where honest and conscientious public servants were not put in impossible situations such as this - - -“. I would wish that too. I would also wish that people and nations did not seek to advance their interests by violence or the threat of violence. If that were so there would be no need of armaments industries and questions of national security could be dealt with in a more open and satisfactory way.

The impossible situation to which Lady Hale referred was the dilemma confronting the Director of the SFO in deciding, with incomplete information, whether, to quote Lord Bingham, “the public interest in pursuing an important investigation into alleged bribery was outweighed by the public interest in protecting the lives of British citizens”. The incompleteness of information available to the Director is the link to my second wish and my remark about how questions of national security are dealt with.

Jon Bright (London, OK): The government has today finally been forced into the publication of an early version the Iraq weapons dossier which was at the heart of Dr. Kelly's death and the subsequent Hutton inquiry. There is, quite unsurprisingly, no mention of "45 minutes." Several other drafts have been published, of course - we've essentially been here before. But it's another reminder of the breathless, colourful language these "dossiers" were written in - a far cry from the sort of dispassionate analysis one might hope for from intelligence services and their counterparts. To quote:

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): My subscription copy of the Spectator seemed riddled by an Xmas and New Year hangover. It announced Michael Gove on the Roots of Kenya's Evil, but instead Clemency Burton-Hill's article on The Palace appeared twice, once in Gove's place. A welcome relief, no doubt, except that it apologised for the monarchy and even suggests that it provides "vital" constitutional checks and balances - come off it, Clemency! Meanwhile, Willy Shawcross responds to Bhutto's assassination by proclaiming that we must fight "Islamists" everywhere, showing no weakness in our war on terror (a theme taken up by a shallow editorial) indeed it promises that we must even declare war on despair only, before it could get to our vital fluids it ended abruptly in mid-sentence - definitely a relief. Meanwhile, in  mid-magazine Matthew Parris, who helped John Major with his speeches, takes up the former prime minister's claim that under him sleaze was not "systemic" and agrees. Tell that to those who advised on rail privatisation! Parris mentions the Scott Report in his list on non-systemic 'one-offs', where, as I recall, the evidence shows Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe discussing the need to sell weapons in secret to Saddam Hussein because he had been gassing Kurds. That only opened the way to sleaze under Major, of course, though it was he who won the vote on the Scott Report but lost the argument. At least Parris uses evidence to make a case, does not go on about 'evil' and is worth responding to. But overall it's no way to publish an issue on "The War for the World", no less. The marvellously energetic Matt d'Ancona has created a brilliant and professional blog at the Coffee House perhaps he needs to push some of it back into the magazine.