MESOPOTAMIAN APOSIOPESIS
John Simpson on the uses of not getting to talk to Saddam Hussein
Baghdad BY THE waters of Babylon we sat down and ordered a large, unappetising lunch. It was Saturday. My colleagues and I had escaped from Baghdad to help me forget that our competitors had won a prize I had wanted for myself: a television interview with Saddam Hussein. As the turbid waters of the Euphrates flowed with surprising speed past the Babel Tourist Hotel, Sad- dam was pacing the length of the interview room in his silk slippers, talking over the questions with a newsreader from ITN. A newsreader. It required an afternoon of poking around those parts of Babylon which Saddam had failed to rebuild, to get rid of the cafard. Everyone was supportive: `He won't say anything new; he never does.' It turned out to be true. The interview merely restated the Iraqi offer of 12 August, and if I had asked the questions I would have received nothing better in the way of answers: quite possibly less. Sad- dam Hussein's idea of being interviewed is to talk for ten minutes at a time, largely ignoring the questions, and not accepting any supplementaries.
What I had coveted, though, was the experience of meeting him face to face. And I had come so close: the Ministry of Information had accepted that the BBC was the natural vehicle for an authoritative interview. Brutally, I had ensured that the ministry was aware of the latest viewing figures: the Nine O'Clock News ranging from 9 million to just under 7 million; ITN's News at Ten managing only a maximum of 7.2 million and a minimum of 4.8 million that week. I explained how against all the rules of contemporary jour- nalism the BBC had added viewers by going serious and up-market, while ITN (which once upon a time was so much better than the BBC) had come under new management and gone down-market and lost viewers accordingly. It was, of course, a powerfully self-serving argument.
In Iraq, though, nothing counts beyond the wishes of the President; and the Presi- dent doesn't like his words to be edited, trimmed, interrupted or abbreviated. My instructions from London were clear: the BBC could not open its airways unres- trictedly to any politician, let alone one who had invaded someone else's country and was holding hundreds of British people hostage. I was in no position to offer to broadcast the interview unedited. Instead, I undertook that the full sense of the President's words would faithfully be pre- sented. Some of our programmes would use only a minute or two of the interview, others fifteen minutes or more. I boasted of the glories of Radio 4 and the External Services. I offered an audience of 25 millio during the course of a single day, not to mention the 100 million listeners of the World Service. Finally, I said I was willing to offer the Iraqis a personal guarantee. I would oversee the editing and reporting myself, and would return to Baghdad afterwards. If there were any dissatisfac- tions . . . My voice trailed away in the Greek rhetorical device of aposiopesis. The Minister of Information approved our proposition personally. Everything went smoothly for some days. Then, sud- denly, it became hard to speak to anyone at the ministry. I went round and heard the news in person: the President hadn't liked the idea that someone would chop his words up. He wanted full access to the British audience and nothing less. The cultured, intelligent figure behind the clut- tered desk shifted uncomfortably. 'There has been another proposition. From ITN more aposiopesis. 'You don't mean they've actually promised to broadcast the whole interview unedited?' They had. I thought of what the enemies of public service broadcasting, the Norman Tebbits and the Paul Johnsons, would say if the BBC broadcast an unrestricted hour of Saddam Hussein.
My depression wasn't purely for myself. I had hatched a scheme to use the inter- view to win the release of three British hostages. The plan was to spring the three cases on Saddam during the interview, in the hope that he would make the grand gesture and let them go. One of the three, Julian McCullough, is in his thirties and sufferes from heart disease. His wife died at 27. He and Dick Pagett, who is in his sixties, have kept up everyone's spirits with an unceasing flow of wit, and deserve relief. The third man is a British Muslim, a pilgrim in Iraq, who suffers from severe mental depression. I had already had to break the news to these three that they wouldn't be leaving with Edward Heath. Now another chance was gone.
I drove back from Babylon in the gather- ing dark, great drops of sandy rain bursting on the windscreens like transparent bugs. Morosely, I counted 47 posters of Saddam by the roadside including one in dark glasses and another puffing on a fat cigar. But that evening there was a faint recom- pense. I had dinner with a Dutch journal- ist, and at midnight we walked back to our hotel. We paused on the Fourteenth of July Bridge to look at the Tigris and speculate on the chances of war. Two police cars swerved on to the pavement beside us. An officer with a staring eye on his shoulder-flashes screamed at me and threatened to throw me in the river be- cause I wouldn't take my hands out of my pockets. He accused us of taking photo- graphs of military installations, though we had no camera. After two hours a more senior man drove up. I told him that if I had an interview with the President the next morning I would report him and his sidekick to the great man in person. I allowed a little more aposiopesis to take place, and his face assumed a more serious look. He radioed to his mate, using words like `television' interview' and `Saddam'. Soon a decrepit Volkswagen Passat ar- rived. A young man in a rumpled suit climbed out wearily: the secret police had arrived. 'If I give you a lift to your hotel, will you say anything to Saddam?' No,' promised, truthfully. The two officers clasped my hand and bowed over it in gratitude. We said goodbye and climbed into the Passat. In Iraq, even failing to interview Saddam Hussein confers power.
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