Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340-359)
SIR CHRISTOPHER
MEYER KCMG
19 APRIL 2006
Q340 Richard Younger-Ross: During your
discussions in the time you were in Washington can you give us
any light on what discussions you were aware of or what preparation
was being made or what joint meetings were being set up on what
to do in Iraq post-conflict?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Yes. My
recollection of that is that not a lot was going on to discuss
Iraq post-conflict. It was clear from Crawford, roughly around
that time onwards, that the Americans were not devoting a great
deal of attention to what would follow. Towards the end of 2002
I remember two Foreign Office (or they may have been interdepartmental)
delegations from Whitehall coming over to talk about what was
going to happen if and when there was war and Saddam was removed.
The difficulty they had, and I cannot give you exact dates because
I cannot remember; it was something like November/December, or
it might even have been October, was that there was not a united
position on the American side in the bureaucracy on post-war,
and so they found themselves talking separately to the State Department
and then to the Ministry of Defence. By the time I retired from
Washington and from the Service it did not seem to me that that
kind of discussion had got very far.
Q341 Richard Younger-Ross: Are you
aware that there was a meeting which the Americans organised in
a hotel in Cobham of Iraqi dissidents?
Sir Christopher Meyer: What I
was aware of, and this is a slightly different thing, is this.
Post-Iraq: what actually are we talking about here? If we are
talking about an agreed plan on what to do on Saddam-toppled-day
plus one, plus two, plus three, that did not seem to have been
worked out between the British and the Americans. On the question
of the Iraqi opposition, during most of 2002 I was aware of a
conflict within the US administration over whether Challabi and
the INC were worth supporting or not. There was talk all the way
through the early summer of 2002 of getting together a conference
of Iraqi dissident groups, which would include the INC but not
only the INC, and this seemed to have broken down on rivalries
between the INC and the other groups whose names I cannot remember,
and on at that time a very intense, almost internecine warfare
between the Department of Defence and the State Department. I
do not remember a meeting in Cobham but it sounds to me like some
kind of offshoot of those rather abortive discussions that were
going on inside the administration.
Q342 Richard Younger-Ross: It was
broadcast as a secret location and a secret meeting but from the
exterior shot of the hotel it was quite clear where it was to
anyone who has ever driven down the A3. If I can go on from that,
Challabi was seen as promoted by a number of those within the
US. Did we have a view on his worth? Were we keyed into the information
he was giving, both in terms of what should happen post-conflict,
but also the information it is alleged he gave regarding weapons
of mass destruction?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I was told
by the Foreign Office that they did not hold the INC in high regard.
They held Challabi and the INC in low regard, much like the State
Department did and, as far as I remember, much as the CIA did.
I have to say that this is why, and I think I have made this clear
elsewhere, I did not fully take on board the influence of Challabi
on the US administration other than the State Department until
I had left Washington. I was aware he was around. I knew the INC
were very active, but what I had not fully appreciated was for
how long and how assiduously Challabi had cultivated the Republican
Party in Washington. I believe that he modelled his campaign on
that of the African National Congress which had a good deal of
success in another decade in working on the US administration
to come round and support them. It was only later when I was talking
to people in Washington after I had left the Service that I came
to understand how successful he had been at getting over to the
Republican administration the notion that post-Saddam was not
going to be all that difficult: you just turned up, you got rid
of him, Iraq was ripe for revolution and upset, the British and
American forces would be welcomed as heroes in the streets of
Baghdad and Basra, and off you would go. He and his party were
very largely responsible for convincing the Americans that that
was what would happen after Saddam fell, and, of course, it was
not like that at all.
Q343 Richard Younger-Ross: So indirectly
you are saying that Challabi was responsible for the US and British
failure to deal with the post-conflict period?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Forgive
me for saying so but I think it is a little bit simplistic to
say that because there were plenty of other voices in Washington
and London who were arguing the contrary. The powers that be,
or the powers that were, in both Washington and London took the
view that they took. There was a very strong feeling that it was
not going to be particularly difficult after Saddam fell. Philippe
Sands may have mentioned this when he came in the earlier session
but the minute of the meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair
on 31 January 2003, which fell off the back of somebody's lorry
into his hands and into his book, records the Prime Minister and
the President agreeing that the likelihood of civil war after
the fall of Saddam was remote, and certainly on the American side
that was in large part down to the advice that they were getting
from the INC.
Q344 Chairman: I want to take up
one little point coming out of that. You said that you were not
aware of much work being done post-conflict. I was at a conference
in Stockholm in late 2002 where a leading American said that there
were 22 studies going on within the State Department about post-conflict
Iraq. Is it true that that was the case? Were you aware of those
studies, or is it that the Pentagon basically took over and therefore
all the studies that the State Department were running were irrelevant?
Sir Christopher Meyer: We were
well aware of this work that was going on. I do not want to be
misunderstood here. We knew the State Department was working on
this stuff and working on it hard. I think their opposite numbers
in the Foreign Office were doing the same thing. All the Middle
East hands who knew Iraq well were doing the same thing for Jack
Straw, and indeed some of that emerges from some of the other
papers that have been leaked about Foreign Office attitudes in
the spring of 2002 before Crawford, so we were aware that all
this work was going on but what was not happening, at least in
my time, was the ability of a British team to come to Washington
and find a consolidated US team on the other side who were agreed
on what was to be done afterwards.
Q345 Chairman: Is that not a usual
US problem? At the moment there seem to be very different views
within the administration about this.
Sir Christopher Meyer: It is both
the great glory and the great defect of the American system that
you have these ferocious internecine battles between different
departments in Washington and you either regard it as constructive
tension which actually produces a rather good policy or you do
not. I think in this case it was the latter because in the end
the whole bang shoot was given by the President to Don Rumsfeld
and Tommy Franks to sort out, as Bob Woodward in his book has
recorded so vividly.
Q346 Mr Purchase: President Bush
set out his doctrine of military pre-emption, saying that the
USA would not hesitate to act alone if necessary in the interests
of national security. Taking you back to your part and that of
your fellow advisers from Number 10 and the Foreign Office, can
you recall what the thrust of advice was that you gave to Prime
Minister Blair in regard to ultimately the attack on Saddam Hussein
in Iraq? Can you remember what the general thrust was? We know
of one departure from the Foreign Office staff of a high-ranking
official who said, "In the absence of a second resolution
I cannot continue to serve". Was there anyone seriously demurring
from the idea of attacking in your lot, if you like?
Sir Christopher Meyer: In my lot?
I tell you what I thought personally. I was not aware of any dissidence,
certainly in the embassy in Washington, although there was—
Q347 Mr Purchase: Do you by mean
people who were against?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I mean
by people who were against the notion of going to war—
Q348 Mr Purchase: They were all in
favour?
Sir Christopher Meyer: As far
as I was aware everybody in my team in Washington was working,
as they were expected to do, to keep London properly informed
on what was moving in the American administration and where necessary
to try to persuade the Americans to do the things that we wanted
them to do or not to do things that we did not want them to do,
the traditional diplomatic function, and nobody came to my office
and said, "Christopher, I do not think I can do this because
I do not agree". That never happened. I personally was in
favour of getting rid of Saddam but, if you like, for non-neo-Con
reasons because I thought that we should have called him to account
early in 1999 after the first generation of inspectors, UNSCOM,
were forced to leave because he would not let them do their job
properly. I was always for that, not for reasons of messianic
democracy or weapons of mass destruction or even 9/11; you did
not need any of that stuff to justify making a case against Saddam.
That was where I came from and I knew the lawyers were fighting
like ferrets in a sack over this: what would actually justify
an attack on Saddam, and as I am no lawyer I found myself persuaded
by the argument that Saddam, having been in violation of God knows
how many Security Council resolutions and the basic ceasefire
of 1991, thoroughly deserved to be removed if he did not come
into compliance with all this stuff. That was where I came from.
I think most people in the embassy did as well.
Q349 Mr Purchase: So we can establish
just for the record that the general thrust of opinion was to
support an attack?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Yes.
Q350 Mr Purchase: May I move on very
quickly to a second point and that is that you mentioned earlier
globalisation in response to my colleague who asked about whether
America would retreat into isolationism. I agree with you entirely
that globalisation, American interests, now make that almost a
non-starter, but it also seems to be the basis on which there
has been a growth in terrorism. The spread of American culture,
the spread of American business seem to have coincided—and
it may be coincidental—absolutely with the rise and rise
of terrorism. Is there anything the Americans can do that would
persuade the world in general that globalisation, the appetite
of capitalism to spread, is a good thing rather than a bad thing,
and thereby reduce the level of terrorism that we experience presently?
Sir Christopher Meyer: That is
a huge question.
Q351 Mr Purchase: I am a fairly large
chap!
Sir Christopher Meyer: I find
it quite hard to know where to start on that.
Q352 Mr Purchase: Are the two things
connected?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Yes, they
are connected, but I do think we need to be extremely careful
about talking about wars on terrorism or global terrorism as if
you have thesis/antithesis: you have globalisation driven to a
large extent by American capitalism here and growing global terrorism
on that side spurred on by what is going on here, a Coca-Cola
there, terrorism here sort of thing. I do not think it is like
that at all. I think the genesis of the Osama bin Laden and al
Qaeda business is actually quite narrowly based in its origins
on the presence of American troops on Saudi soil. That is what
got him going. Having been in Sudan, he moves off to Afghanistan
because they have given him, if you like, safe haven to do what
he is doing. I do not like the "war on terrorism". I
think you have to be a little bit careful about this. If you look
at al Qaeda it is a bit like—and I hope he will not sue
me for saying this—Richard Branson's Virgin. Virgin is a
kind of worldwide franchise. You have the headquarters and then
you have Virgin Airlines, Virgin Railways, Virgin Cola, Virgin
telephones. You have got Osama bin Laden but it is a decentralised
system. You have Osama bin Laden now sitting somewhere or other—I
do not know—in Tora Bora, maybe, and he has this thing called
al Qaeda. I think it is a highly decentralised system of terrorism.
You do not have this guy sitting in a cave running the business
like a global monolith.
Q353 Mr Purchase: He does have access
to internet there.
Sir Christopher Meyer: Internet
helps, obviously, but the internet, of course, can be intercepted,
as mobile phones can be. I am not an expert on terrorism but I
am very persuaded by those who say, "Hang on a minute. You
have got the al Qaeda brand. It is used by all kinds of people
round the world, such as in the UK and Madrid terrorist outrages,
but that is a different thing from saying it is centrally controlled
and planned". I think this has all kinds of implications
not only for the way in which you tackle terrorism but also the
way in which you link it to your foreign policy priorities.
Q354 Andrew Mackinlay: We all accept
that intelligence is flawed and it is not an exact science and
so on, but are you, looking back now, shocked, horrified, surprised
or whatever, at how totally wrong the critical intelligence was
on Iraq and/or, if you were still in service and were asked to
make recommendations, would there be anything you would be saying
has really got to be done to avoid a repetition of what was a
cataclysmic failure of intelligence, I would have thought? You
may not agree. You have been in Number 10. You have been a mainstream
diplomat. How do you look at this now in retrospect?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I am not
entirely sure, and this goes back to an earlier answer I gave
you, that the intelligence was entirely wrong. If you take Colin
Powell's presentation at the UN Security Council on 5 February
2003, a lot of what he put out there has now been demonstrated
to have been wrong, and Heaven knows he worked extremely hard
on the raw material he was given to be disciplined about it. If
we boil this down to, were there supplies of biological and chemical
weapons, were there the laboratories there to manufacture the
stuff, did Saddam intend to resume further manufacture once loosening
the sanctions regime made this possible, and my God, it was loosening
very fast, I think the answer is yes because the Iraq Survey Group,
although it came back at the end of 2004 and said, "We cannot
find a piece of WMD anywhere", and that got the headlines,
it did also say, "But, my God, all the mechanisms and protocols
are there to resume production as soon as the sanctions are either
lifted or have become porous enough to let the Iraqis import the
stuff", so I am not convinced that somewhere in a garage
in Damascus or under a hill in Iran there is not some of the stuff
that the intelligence picked up as being in Iraq. I think the
verdict is not yet final, and I have said before that from my
own point of view you did not actually need the physical presence
of WMD to justify getting rid of Saddam.
Q355 Andrew Mackinlay: Why did you
mention Iran? Probably I have been asleep on this but I am surprised
that you think it is even conceivable that there was this linkage
with Iran when the history is one of anathema.
Sir Christopher Meyer: I know.
You are absolutely right about that, but there is one curious
episode from the 1991 war which I have never had explained to
me satisfactorily, which was when the entire Iraqi Air Force decamped
to Iran so it would not be destroyed by the Americans. It is,
I think, still there, is it not?
Q356 Chairman: It is still there.
Sir Christopher Meyer: So why
on earth, unless, I suppose, all the pilots were—Shia were
better pilots than Sunni. I do not know. I do not know what the
reason is but I think the politics of the region are so entangled
and in some ways mysterious that—like you, I thought, "What
the hell is going on here?", but it is a fact of history
that the Iraqi Air Force was flown to Iran for safekeeping and
they have been fighting the devils for 10 years. That is why I
think there is more to this than meets the eye.
Q357 Andrew Mackinlay: Can we invite
your observations on where we are on Iran?
Sir Christopher Meyer: We are
in an unbelievably tight spot on Iran. It is really an intractable
problem. I would be prepared to bet a lot of money that, even
if the Iranians hold to their present position of insisting on
being able to enrich uranium, denying access to the IAEA inspectors
and all this, taking a really hard line, there will never be voted
in the Security Council serious sanctions against them. I just
do not think that Russia and China would be prepared to countenance
this. I also think that efforts by the Europeans to broker some
kind of deal, the four-power thing, is destined to go nowhere
at all. Basically, the Iranians do not care about the Europeans.
Q358 Andrew Mackinlay: Bush does
what then?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Ah! The
one peaceful thing, if you like, the one non-military thing that
has not been tried yet in dealing with Iran is intensive diplomatic
negotiations between the United States and Iran. That is one piece
that has not been put into the jigsaw. The Americans find themselves
between a rock and hard place because on the one hand you have
got Halizad, the Farsi-speaking, Afghan-born American Ambassador
in Baghdad quietly talking to the Iranians to get them to soft-pedal
on support for Shia insurgency, at least among those Shia who
are pro-Iranian, and then you have got the stuff going on over
nuclear enrichment, and then you have got a State Department programme,
I think $75 million worth of cash, which is supposed to be paid
into beaming TV and what-not into Iran to try and drive a wedge
between the Iranian people and their leaders. If you are going
to bomb the bejesus out of Iran you are not going to drive a wedge
between the Iranian people and their leaders when you bring them
together again, so there is incoherence everywhere and I think
a completely different tack needs to be taken with Iran than is
being taken now.
Q359 Mr Maples: We have had, during
the period when all this has been going on and you have been covering
in your evidence, quite a long shopping list with the United States
which we seem to be very unsuccessful at getting met. The ITAR
waiver, which must have been on the agenda every time I have been
to Washington for the last 10 years, now that JSAF have a second
engine on it, the steel tariffs, the extradition treaty, and some
more things I have written down here, the Transatlantic Air Services
Agreement; there is a whole load of things here. I am not a supporter
of this Government but nobody could have gone more out of their
way to their own domestic political cost to support the United
States than Blair has over the last few years. Why is it so difficult
for us to get any of this? Are they taking us for granted? Is
there a genuine block between the White House and Capitol Hill?
What do you read as the difficulty? Presumably you addressed a
lot of these issues when you were there. Why is it so difficult
to get any quid for our quo?
Sir Christopher Meyer: It is always
difficult to get a quid for our quo with the United States, however
good the political relationship is, because quite often the forces
aligned against are, in American political terms, extremely powerful,
and you really have to go in there hammer and tongs to try and
win your points. I am not making a political point here but the
model, I think, for having a close and healthy relationship with
the United States is the one which Margaret Thatcher developed
with Ronald Reagan. They loved each other. They were so close
it was unbelievable. Do not misinterpret me.
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