Produce the memo
Afront-page exclusive in the Daily Mirror is normally something to be treated with great scepticism. Until, that is, the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, offers his full stamp of approval by invoking the Official Secrets Act. Fantasies and hoaxes — unless they are fantasies and hoaxes propagated by HM government — by definition lie outside the scope of the Official Secrets Act. All of which convinces us that there must be some truth in the Mirror’s claim that in April last year President Bush, in the company of Tony Blair, discussed bombing the headquarters of the Arab television station alJazeera, in Doha, Qatar, and that the Prime Minister talked him out of such an attack.
It may be that President Bush was making a feeble joke, in the manner of Ronald Reagan’s declaration of hostilities against Russia to what he thought was a switched-off microphone. Or perhaps Bush was speaking rhetorically, in the manner of Henry II: ‘Who will rid me of this troublesome TV station?’ The Mirror’s unnamed sources appear to be divided on these possibilities. The matter could be cleared up if only the Mirror were allowed to publish the leaked minutes of the alleged conversation. As it is, the decision of Lord Goldsmith to block publication under pain of imprisonment of any editor who did so can only make us fear the worst: that the President of the United States really did contemplate bombing a free and independent television station based in a country which has shown no hostility towards America or the West.
The White House has denied that the President contemplated any such thing, or perhaps on closer reading it has declined to comment. ‘We are not interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response,’ were the words used by the White House spokesman Scott McClellan. Outlandish and inconceivable the story certainly is, but what we really want to know is: is it true? If true, then this magazine would finally abandon its long struggle to find anything to support in US policy towards Iraq and the Middle East in general.
It would be a strange way to promote democracy in the Arab world — to obliterate such an engine of freedom and democracy as al-Jazeera. Indeed, it would be akin to Ronald Reagan deciding to bomb the offices of Radio Free Europe. Al-Jazeera is no mouthpiece of mad mullahs. It is far removed from the demented Islamic media outlets which daily issue demands for the destruction of Israel and report that the Asian tsunami was Allah’s revenge on Muslims who have invited decadent Westerners on to their beaches.
That bin Laden chose to send his homemade videos to al-Jazeera, and that the television station broadcast them to the world, is not a reflection of prejudice or evil intent on the part of the TV station: it is only a consequence of the fact it is trusted as an objective source of news in the West, and it has a wide audience. If we wish the Arab world to reform itself along the lines of Western democracy, alJazeera is exactly the kind of institution we should be fostering. We should not be frightened of the free dissemination of news; rather we should recognise that it is a powerful weapon in the destruction of repressive regimes.
To his credit, Tony Blair is reported very quickly to have talked President Bush out of attacking al-Jazeera. But otherwise his commitment to a free media is highly questionable. As we have argued in these pages before, the government’s campaign against the BBC over Andrew Gilligan’s reporting of his conversations with the late David Kelly was an attempt to suppress a story which was essentially true: the government had enriched the available intelligence when compiling its dossier on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in September 2002. Tony Blair’s refusal to allow the publication of Lord Goldsmith’s full advice on the legality of the Iraq war was an example of exactly how not to handle the press. It merely gave the impression that Mr Blair had committed the country to a war he knew was illegal, and ensured that the story ran for months, when, as eventually became clear, Lord Goldsmith had never ruled the war to be illegal.
It would be a terrible mistake for the government to take the same line over the minutes of the Prime Minister’s conversation with President Bush. In contrast to Sir Christopher Meyer’s ‘revelations’ over John Major’s underpants and Tony Blair’s refusal to allow Mr Meyer to be invited to a White House lunch, the suggestion that the US President proposed bombing al-Jazeera is a serious matter.
If President Bush made a joke in poor taste, we can think it unwise, then forget it. If, on the other hand, he really did propose to salve his frustration about progress in Iraq by lashing out against a television station in another country, we need to know. One thing is for sure: block the leaked memo and rumours and conspiracy theories will abound; allow it to be published, on the other hand, and Tony Blair may be revealed to possess what Christopher Meyer said he didn’t: powers of persuasion with the US President. Sunlight, in the words of the US Supreme Court judge, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, is the best of disinfectants.
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