The Government Must Be Held Accountable for its Criminal Actions

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Hutton Inquiry:
The Government Must Be Held Accountable for its Criminal Actions
Who Is Hutton?

US and British officials must expose their leaders' lies about Iraq - as I did over Vietnam - By Daniel Ellsberg

The inquiry conducted by Lord Hutton into the death of Dr David Kelly has now concluded and a report has been published that has been widely reported in the media.

There had been much speculation that the Hutton Inquiry might also consider the issue of whether the government had sufficient justification for the invasion of Iraq and, in particular, whether the intelligence material in the dossier published by the Government and relating to Iraq’s alleged possession of "weapons of mass destruction" provided such justification. However, Lord Hutton made it clear in his statement yesterday that he did not consider that these issues fell within his terms of reference. He also made it clear that the Inquiry did not consider whether the material in the dossier was "nevertheless unreliable".

Indeed it now appears that one of the main consequences of the Inquiry has been to create all the conditions for even greater government interference in the running of the BBC. But the Inquiry has also made it even more glaringly obvious that no mechanism exists whereby the people of Britain can hold the government accountable for its criminal actions nor for flouting the people’s will.

In fact, according to the view of the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 earlier this week, nothing has changed since the government advanced its justifications for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Now, as then, Jack Straw argued that Britain was simply carrying out the will of the UN, that Iraq was in "material breach" of UN Security Council Resolution 1441, which amongst other things required it to prove that it did not possess "weapons of mass destruction".

It is amazing that Jack Straw can now present exactly the same justification for the criminal invasion of Iraq as he and the government did a year ago. It is now a matter of public record that Britain and the US were not carrying out the will of the UN, that they could not even get support for their criminal actions in the Security Council and that the invasion of Iraq breached not only international law but the UN Charter itself. Indeed how was it possible for Iraq to prove that it did not have "weapons of mass destruction"? Even now the governments of Britain and the US are still asserting that it did, although they have invaded and scoured the country and found nothing and the former head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, described in one newspaper report as "a hard-line CIA official" has recently declared that such weapons did not exist. Tony Blair seems to be making it a matter of personal principle to continue to assert his conviction that WMD will be found.

When during the course of the interview the Foreign Secretary’s argument was exposed as less than credible, he simply presented an entirely different one, and made the claim that the war had "removed a terrible tyrant", that Iraq now has "the beginnings of a representative system of government", that had Britain not gone to war "the authority of the UN would have been very severely weakened and undermined".

But these arguments are even more spurious and are largely based on the medieval principle that "might is right," that the US and Britain can do as they please and then present any justifications for their criminal actions. What is also clear is that the Iraqi people are far from satisfied with "the beginnings of a representative system of government" which has been imposed on them by force of arms and will be effectively dictated by representatives of US imperialism in Iraq. Indeed the many recent demonstrations in Iraq are precisely a rejection of this imposition by the US, which has openly denied the Iraqi people the right to sovereignty and self-determination on the grounds that if elections are held too soon, even under military occupation, they might lead to results that are not in the interests of the US and its allies.

The government’s attempt to present the criminal invasion of Iraq as "justified and reasonable" is becoming increasingly exposed but the Hutton Inquiry demonstrates that it is the working class and people who must establish the means to hold it accountable for its criminal actions. This is an extremely important conclusion.

The following was posted on the Indymedia site by Re-Sista! 28.01.2004

Upon his resignation as BBC chairman Gavyn Davies commented on the irreconcilable contradictions between Hutton's "bald conclusions" and the balance of evidence presented to the actual Inquiry.

Even BBC political editor Andrew Marr comments on Hutton’s underlying assumptions and background, making him more likely to believe and trust certain social groups: "again and again, he comes down on the side of politicians and officials."

So who is Hutton, and what is in his background to come to these extraordinary conclusions? What has lead to the reports extraordinary absolution of Blair's war lies and attack on journalistic freedom?

The 72-year-old Baron Hutton of Bresagh, County of Down, North Ireland, is a classic representative of the British ruling establishment. A member of the Anglo-Irish elite, he was educated at Shrewsbury all boys boarding school, and then Balliol, Oxford, before entering the exclusive club of the British Judiciary. Whilst British

Judges are overwhelmingly conservative, upper class, white, male and biased, Hutton's background is even more compromised.

His name will be familiar to residents of the six counties of Ulster. During the bloody thirty years war Hutton was an instrument of British state repression, starting in the late 1960's as junior counsel to the Northern Ireland attorney general, and by 1988 rising to the top job of Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.

Hutton spent his career as Judge and Jury in the notorious northern Ireland kangaroo 'Diplock Courts'. These were special non-Jury courts, condemned by human rights advocates for their miscarriages of justice. He was hated for this role by the families of the many innocent Catholics wrongly convicted here.

Hutton distinguished himself after the Bloody Sunday massacre of civil rights protesters in 1972. He played a key role in the ensuing judicial cover-up called the Widgery Inquiry, which absolved British troops of Murder. This miscarriage of justice is only now being investigated by the current Saville inquiry.

Then in 1978 he represented the British Government before the European Court of Human Rights, defending it against a ruling that it abused and maltreated detainees from the conflict.

However, he will be remembered in the rest of the UK for his role in the 1999 Pinochet affair. Another senior Judge, Lord Hoffman had contributed to the decision to arrest and extradite the notorious former dictator of Chile and mass murderer General Pinochet during his visit to Britain.

As a law lord, Hutton led the rightwing attack on Lord Hoffman, on the excuse that Hoffman's links to the human rights group amnesty international invalidated Pinochet's arrest! Lord Hutton said "public confidence in the integrity of the administration of justice would be shaken" if Lord Hoffman's ruling was not overturned.

More recently, Hutton was also involved in the ruling that David Shayler, the former MI5 agent, could not argue he was acting in the public interest by revealing secrets.

This history of intimate links with, and knowledge of Britain’s secret military intelligence operations meant he could be a trusted pair of hands when it came to the Kelly affair.

By Daniel Ellsberg*, January 27, 2004


Leak against this war

After 17 months observing pacification efforts in Vietnam as a state department official, I laid eyes upon an unmistakable enemy for the first time on New Year's Day in 1967. I was walking point with three members of a company from the US army's 25th Division, moving through tall rice, the water over our ankles, when we heard firing close behind us. We spun around, ready to fire. I saw a boy of about 15, wearing nothing but ragged black shorts, crouching and firing an AK-47 at the troops behind us. I could see two others, heads just above the top of the rice, firing as well.

They had lain there, letting us four pass so as to get a better shot at the main body of troops. We couldn't fire at them, because we would have been firing into our own platoon. But a lot of its fire came back right at us. Dropping to the ground, I watched this kid firing away for 10 seconds, till he disappeared with his buddies into the rice. After a minute the platoon ceased fire in our direction and we got up and moved on.

About an hour later, the same thing happened again; this time I only saw a glimpse of a black jersey through the rice. I was very impressed, not only by their tactics but by their performance.

One thing was clear: these were local boys. They had the advantage of knowing every ditch and dyke, every tree and blade of rice and piece of cover, like it was their own backyard. Because it was their backyard. No doubt (I thought later) that was why they had the nerve to pop up in the midst of a reinforced battalion and fire away with American troops on all sides. They thought they were shooting at trespassers, occupiers, that they had a right to be there and we didn't. This would have been a good moment to ask myself if they were wrong, and if we had a good enough reason to be in their backyard to be fired at.

Later that afternoon, I turned to the radio man, a wiry African American kid who looked too thin to be lugging his 75lb radio, and asked: "By any chance, do you ever feel like the redcoats?"

Without missing a beat he said, in a drawl: "I've been thinking that ... all ... day." You couldn't miss the comparison if you'd gone to grade school in America. Foreign troops far from home, wearing helmets and uniforms and carrying heavy equipment, getting shot at every half-hour by non-uniformed irregulars near their own homes, blending into the local population after each attack.

I can't help but remember that afternoon as I read about US and British patrols meeting rockets and mines without warning in the cities of Iraq. As we faced ambush after ambush in the countryside, we passed villagers who could have told us we were about to be attacked. Why didn't they? First, there was a good chance their friends and family members were the ones doing the attacking. Second, we were widely seen by the local population not as allies or protectors - as we preferred to imagine - but as foreign occupiers. Helping us would have been seen as collaboration, unpatriotic. Third, they knew that to collaborate was to be in danger from the resistance, and that the foreigners' ability to protect them was negligible.

There could not be a more exact parallel between this situation and Iraq. Our troops in Iraq keep walking into attacks in the course of patrols apparently designed to provide "security" for civilians who, mysteriously, do not appear the slightest bit inclined to warn us of these attacks. This situation - as in Vietnam - is a harbinger of endless bloodletting. I believe American and British soldiers will be dying, and killing, in that country as long as they remain there.

As more and more US and British families lose loved ones in Iraq - killed while ostensibly protecting a population that does not appear to want them there - they will begin to ask: "How did we get into this mess, and why are we still in it?" And the answers they find will be disturbingly similar to those the American public found for Vietnam.

I served three US presidents - Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - who lied repeatedly and blatantly about our reasons for entering Vietnam, and the risks in our staying there. For the past year, I have found myself in the horrifying position of watching history repeat itself. I believe that George Bush and Tony Blair lied - and continue to lie - as blatantly about their reasons for entering Iraq and the prospects for the invasion and occupation as the presidents I served did about Vietnam.

By the time I released to the press in 1971 what became known as the Pentagon Papers - 7,000 pages of top-secret documents demonstrating that virtually everything four American presidents had told the public about our involvement in Vietnam was false - I had known that pattern as an insider for years, and I knew that a fifth president, Richard Nixon, was following in their footsteps. In the fall of 2002, I hoped that officials in Washington and London who knew that our countries were being lied into an illegal, bloody war and occupation would consider doing what I wish I had done in 1964 or 1965, years before I did, before the bombs started to fall: expose these lies, with documents.

I can only admire the more timely, courageous action of Katherine Gun, the GCHQ translator who risked her career and freedom to expose an illegal plan to win official and public support for an illegal war, before that war had started. Her revelation of a classified document urging British intelligence to help the US bug the phones of all the members of the UN security council to manipulate their votes on the war may have been critical in denying the invasion a false cloak of legitimacy. That did not prevent the aggression, but it was reasonable for her to hope that her country would not choose to act as an outlaw, thereby saving lives. She did what she could, in time for it to make a difference, as indeed others should have done, and still can.

I have no doubt that there are thousands of pages of documents in safes in London and Washington right now - the Pentagon Papers of Iraq - whose unauthorised revelation would drastically alter the public discourse on whether we should continue sending our children to die in Iraq. That's clear from what has already come out through unauthorised disclosures from many anonymous sources and from officials and former officials such as David Kelly and US ambassador Joseph Wilson, who revealed the falsity of reports that Iraq had pursued uranium from Niger, which President Bush none the less cited as endorsed by British intelligence in his state of the union address before the war. Both Downing Street and the White House organised covert pressure to punish these leakers and to deter others, in Dr Kelly's case with tragic results.

Those who reveal documents on the scale necessary to return foreign policy to democratic control risk prosecution and prison sentences, as Katherine Gun is now facing. I faced 12 felony counts and a possible sentence of 115 years; the charges were dismissed when it was discovered that White House actions aimed at stopping further revelations of administration lying had included criminal actions against me.

Exposing governmental lies carries a heavy personal risk, even in our democracies. But that risk can be worthwhile when a war's-worth of lives is at stake.

* Daniel Ellsberg is the author of Secrets: a Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000-page McNamara study of US decision-making in Vietnam on which he had been working and gave it to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, Washington Post and 17 other newspapers, and it became known as the Pentagon Papers. Since the end of the Vietnam War he has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era and unlawful interventions.