What must worry Blair is that someone will spill the beans, says robert fox |
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The news that Alastair Campbell's diaries are to be censored makes you want to cry - with anger and hysterical laughter. So the big spinner has been spun.
No 10 has apparently insisted that passages be removed because of the robust account they give of encounters with Clinton and the Queen, Gordon Brown's character, Tony Blair's language, and conversations with the Blair children.
Campbell's outpouring is just one of a torrent of revelatory political and strategic memoirs post-9/11. He will be followed hot-foot by the UK's top soldier at the time of the Iraq invasion, General Sir Mike Jackson. We have just had At The Centre Of The Storm by George Tenet, head of the CIA. People are making up their versions of history before the heat of battle and the blood in the corpses have cooled.
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| People are making up their versions of history before the blood in the corpses has cooled |
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What is going on is this: these ragbags of gossip and undigested memories are not so much revelatory as exculpatory. They seem to be attempts to get in the plea bargain before the jury has been empanelled. What must worry Blair, who will put out his own book before too long, is that in the interim someone might actually reveal a truth.
Iraq is at the heart of Campbell's dilemma. He has to explain why he was so heavily involved in shaping the presentation of 'intelligence' for the case for war. Colin Powell’s dismally inaccurate 2003 presentation to the UN of the case for attacking Saddam brings the following limp-wristed defence from George Tenet: "Despite our (CIA) efforts, a lot of flawed information still made its way into the speech. No one involved regrets that more than I do."
Will Campbell go in for a similar mode of penitence? I doubt it - for as surely as he told Blair, "We don't do God," our Alastair doesn't do sackcloth and ashes either. For the truth, we must carry on digging through the detritus of evidence to the Hutton enquiry. 
FIRST POSTED MAY 30, 2007
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