Chilcot secretary appointment raises serious transparency questions

24 Jan 11 | Uncategorized

New concerns have arisen about the openness of the Iraq inquiry after it emerged that its top official played a key role in co-ordinating the government’s Iraq policy during the period covered by the inquiry.

The secretary to the inquiry, Margaret Aldred, is on secondment from her role as deputy head of the Cabinet Office Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat, formerly Defence and Overseas Secretariat (DOS), where she has worked since 2004.

When the inquiry announced Aldred’s appointment in July 2009, it made no mention of her role in Iraq policy during the previous four and a half years. But parliamentary questions, freedom of information (FOI) disclosures and my investigations show that it was a significant one — and the main reason for her appointment.

The inquiry has stated that it has been given papers from the section where Aldred worked but has declined to state whether it has documents relating directly to her. It has not published any Cabinet Office documents from this period.

Last week, Tom McKane, one of Aldred’s predecessors at DOS was a witness at the inquiry. It appears that Aldred would herself have been called as a witness if she were not the inquiry’s secretary.

Elfyn Llwyd MP, parliamentary leader of Plaid Cymru, has secured a parliamentary debate on Tuesday (25 January) to discuss Aldred’s apparent conflict of interest. He has described her position as “untenable”.
Llwyd will also raise concerns over the Cabinet Office’s failure to disclose the process by which Aldred was appointed. The issue threatens further embarrassment — or worse — for Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, who blocked inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot’s request to publish records of what Tony Blair promised George Bush in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.

Although the inquiry previously stated that Sir John Chilcot had complete freedom to choose the secretary, the Cabinet Office has admitted in response to an FOI request to that O’Donnell personally nominated Aldred.
The Cabinet Office has stated that it has no written records of this process because discussions “were conducted orally rather than in writing.”

In a written parliamentary answer, Cabinet Office minister Nick Hurd has declined to state whether other candidates were considered for the role but cited Aldred’s “previous involvement in Iraq issues” as the main reason for her selection.

The apparent lack of a formal process is a possible breach of the civil service code. The information commissioner recently criticised the Cabinet Office for its handling of the FOI request and raised the possibility that disclosable information may have been deleted.

Chilcot has said that he was aware of Aldred’s previous involvement on Iraq at the time of her appointment but did not see any potential conflict of interest that would affect the inquiry’s independence. But the Cabinet Office has acknowledged that it did see a potential conflict of interest.

It has also emerged that the inquiry secretariat, of which Aldred is head, negotiated the controversial protocol on sharing sensitive information with the Cabinet Office, before it was put before the inquiry committee. Aldred herself signed the protocol, which prevented the inquiry publishing the Blair/Bush exchanges.

Last January Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, now deputy prime minister, said the protocol was “being used to gag the inquiry.” The inquiry has suggested that it was the basis for assurances given to the US that measures had been put in place to protect its interests during the inquiry’s hearings. The assurances emerged from a US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks.

The protocol has prevented the inquiry from publishing documents from before Aldred’s time at DOS, including leaked papers showing that in 2002 it drew up plans for “regime change “in Iraq.

Although the inquiry has not disclosed the details of Aldred’s own involvement in Iraq policy, it is clear that it was extensive.

Two witnesses have told the inquiry that Aldred usually chaired the Iraq Senior Officials Group, a committee of officials tasked with co-ordinating Iraq policy, although only one mentioned her by name.

The Cabinet Office’s annual report for 2004/5 — the year that Aldred took up her post — states that “Over the past year, DOS has coordinated policy development on Iraq.”

Another US embassy cable published by Wikileaks records that in October 2008 Aldred and her manager Simon McDonald met US officials and discussed the British government’s attempts to obtain a status of forces agreement (SOFA) before the expiry of a UN mandate authorizing the presence of British troops in Iraq. McDonald and other officials have been questioned about this issue at the inquiry. Another previously leaked document shows that Aldred was also involved in the issue of rendition and torture in connection with Iraq.

Llwyd said: “I cannot believe that it was in any way appropriate for a person who was involved in Iraq policy to be appointed as gatekeeper to this inquiry. This calls into question the independence of the inquiry and ultimately the credibility of its findings.”

He added: “Some commentators have said that the Chilcot inquiry have been utterly ineffectual in pursuing witnesses to obtain the truth. Given the major involvement of the inquiry secretary in formulation of UK policy towards Iraq since 2004, I conclude that the inquiry is flawed and that the position of the inquiry secretary is untenable.”

Keeping it quiet

20 Jan 11 | News and features

Tony Blair’s appearance at the Iraq inquiry is a test of the competing principles of free expression and confidentiality. John Kampfner asks who should decide what the public hears?

Tony Blair would not appreciate being likened to Julian Assange. The feeling would, I am sure, be entirely mutual. Yet there is a link of sorts between these two figures, so controversial in their very different ways. It revolves around the notion of confidentiality.

The lead-up to the former prime minister’s second appearance before the Iraq enquiry has been dominated by the issue of private correspondence. The refusal by the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, to accede to the request of the committee chairman, Sir John Chilcot, to release the full musings of Blair and ex-president George Bush is based around a question similar to the one relating to the industrial dumping of US State Department documents. When are the musings of individual officials or politicians public documents and when are they private?

In both cases the competing principles of free expression and confidence stumble on each other, head to head. Assange and his allies argue their case mainly around public interest. The world, he insists, should know all the dirty deeds of dastardly diplomats. A more convincing argument in his favour might be that no serious organisation could remotely hope to keep a single email secret if circulated to 2.5m people, as was apparently the case with the US diplomatic service.

As for the Blair/Bush love-in, the case for secrecy is undermined by Blair’s own decision to publish some of the discussions in his memoirs. Furthermore, written memos between world leaders could surely not qualify as “private”. Telephone calls, presumably yes, but not the written word.

As the Daily Telegraph commented in a leader article this week:

The public deserves to get the fullest possible account of why this country went to war on the basis of what turned out to be misleading intelligence. For many, this remains the rawest of issues; if we are ever to put it behind us, the inquiry must be seen to be as thorough and open as possible. Reaching sensible conclusions almost eight years after the invasion began will be difficult enough without the inquiry being fettered in this way.

In the spirit, we are sure, of free expression, a furious Chilcot decided to publish his exchange of letters with O’Donnell. The committee chairman suggests, in quintessential mandarin style, that he would be “disappointed” if Blair proved less forthcoming in his evidence than in his book.

Otherwise, the Telegraph concludes, “it will appear that Mr Blair is happy to breach the confidentiality of office for a lucrative book deal, but not to inform the British public of the process that led him to send our troops to war”.

John Kampfner is the chief executive of Index on Censorship

Iraq inquiry: What will the election hold?

03 May 10 | Uncategorized

In the run-up to the general election, the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war is being kept out of the public eye, with no new documents published during the campaign in order to keep out of party politics. But the result of the election could well impact on the inquiry. Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties have both promised to rethink the way it operates if they are in government after Thursday’s poll.

The Liberal Democrats have said they would introduce a fast-track freedom of information procedure and ensure the publication of key documents that the inquiry has been prevented from publishing. The Tories have repeated a threat to “revisit” the terms of the inquiry.

Since Gordon Brown announced the inquiry last June, he has come under fire from opposition parties for its lack of transparency. The prime minister initially said the inquiry that would sit in secret, but had to backtrack after fierce criticism from MPs on all sides and former mandarins, including former cabinet secretary Lord Butler, who led a 2004 inquiry into the use of intelligence in the run up to war.

In November, as public hearings began, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg ambushed Brown in the Commons after it became clear that a Cabinet Office protocol would severely limit the inquiry’s ability to publish and publicly discuss the documents that, according to chairman Sir John Chilcot, form the “great bulk” of its evidence.

Chilcot and other committee members have since expressed their frustration during hearings at the restrictions. In January, Tories and Liberal Democrats called for the “gag” on the inquiry to be lifted after former attorney general Lord Goldsmith said while giving evidence that he did not agree with the government’s decision to prevent publication of key papers.

The inquiry has not published any new documents since early February. I asked its spokesman whether this was because none had been cleared by the government or because the inquiry had chosen not to publish any during the run-up to the election. He referred me to Chilcot’s closing statement [pdf] on 8 March that “The Iraq Inquiry intends to remain out of the public eye over the period of the election.” The implication of this is that if the inquiry has documents that it is entitled to publish it has chosen to deny voters knowledge of their contents.

But a new Liberal Democrat or Tory government or coalition could see significant changes to the way the inquiry operates. Liberal Democrat shadow foreign secretary Ed Davey told me: “Labour has suffocated the Iraq Inquiry with rules and red-tape, effectively preventing publication of key documents. Liberal Democrats will review the protocol and appoint an arbitrator between the Cabinet Office and the Iraq Inquiry to rule on the publication of documents. This will act as a fast-track freedom of information procedure and ensure transparent and swift publication of documents.”

A Conservative spokesman said: “We have always said that a Conservative government will reserve the right to revisit the terms of the Inquiry. At the same time we have accepted that the Inquiry needs to hold some of its sessions and proceedings in confidence.”

The Labour party did not take up my invitation to comment but neither Labour nor ministers have given any indication that they plan to loosen the existing restrictions on the inquiry.