Confidential Minutes of UK Intel Briefing, July 23, 2003
SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL – UK EYES ONLY
IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER’S MEETING, 23 JULY 2002.
SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL:
This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents. 
Manning, Hoon, Straw, Goldsmith
Scarlett, Dearlove, Wilson, Richards
Boyce, Powell, Morgan, Campbell
Bush, Tenet, Dearlove, Blair
OF MINUTES AND MINISTERS
Security, document classifications, and the distribution of Cabinet papers and minutes on a “need to know” basis have also been an important feature of Cabinet government under successive administrations. Cabinet and Cabinet committee papers and minutes are not given to all Ministers and chief executives. Each paper or minute is distributed only to the Ministers who are members of the committee to which the paper was submitted, and to Ministers and chief executives with an interest in the subject matter. The purpose of “need to know” distribution of Cabinet papers and minutes ensures that the relevant people are kept informed, while minimising the risk of unauthorised disclosure. (Some reflections on continuity and change in the Cabinet Office Diane Morcom, Secretary of the Cabinet IPANZ seminar, 20 April 2005)
www.ipanz.org.nz PDF format)
18. The principle of collective responsibility and the need to safeguard national security, relations with other countries and the confidential nature of discussions between Ministers and their civil servants impose certain obligations on former Ministers who are contemplating the publication of material based upon their recollection of the conduct of Government business in which they took part. They are required to submit their manuscript to the Secretary of the Cabinet and to conform to the principles set out in the Radcliffe Report of 1976 (Cmnd 6386) (see also paragraph 107).(Code of Conduct and Guidance on Procecures for Ministers, p.2)http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/)
Michael Smith; May 1, 2005
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1592904,00.html
A SECRET document from the heart of government reveals today that Tony Blair privately committed Britain to war with Iraq and then set out to lure Saddam Hussein into providing the legal justification. The Downing Street MINUTES, headed “Secret and strictly personal — UK eyes only”, detail one of the most important meetings ahead of the invasion.
…It records a meeting in July 2002, attended by military and intelligence chiefs, at which Blair discussed military options having already committed himself to supporting President George Bush’s plans for ousting Saddam.
“If the political context were right, people would support regime change,” said Blair. He added that the key issues were “whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan space to work”.
A separate secret briefing for the meeting said Britain and America had to “create” conditions to justify a war.
by Ray McGovern
Published on Wednesday, May 4, 2005 by TomPaine.com
www.tompaine.com/articles/ proof_bush_fixed_the_facts.php
Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy.
Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white–and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries’ leaders to fix facts to justify an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.
It has been a hard learning–that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.
Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents–this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international Truth-Telling Coalition or not, some brave soul has made the most explosive patriotic leak of the war by giving London’s Sunday Times the official MINUTES of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain’s CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration’s plans to make war on Iraq.
observer.guardian.co.uk/ politics/story/0,6903,1474276,00.html
Sunday May 1, 2005 ;Observer
The man who led Britain’s armed forces into Iraq has said that Tony Blair and the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, will join British soldiers in the dock if the military are ever prosecuted for war crimes in Iraq.
THE MAY 7,2003 GOLDSMITH OPINION
The Blundering Actions of a Desperate Man
by John Kampfner
Published on Friday, April 29, 2005 by the Independent (UK)
www.commondreams.org/views05/0429-22.htm
The story is worse than people think. Now that the government has been forced to disclose the full legal advice submitted by Lord Goldsmith, the extent to which Parliament and the country were misled is clear for all to see.
The issue at stake is not whether, when or why the Attorney General changed his mind on the legality of war in Iraq. Tony Blair and Jack Straw have pointed out, with the customary slipperiness of a profession they know well, that it is the right of a lawyer to elide from one line of argument to the next. Goldsmith’s views may well have evolved. In fact, I have previously documented how they did.
What matters is that MPs were not made aware of – to put it politely – the progression of his thinking. When Goldsmith sat in the cabinet seat vacated hours earlier by Robin Cook, he was asked by the Prime Minister to make a presentation of the legal case for invasion. Blair did not invite questions before the Attorney was thanked for his contribution and left.
London – A draft of a parliamentary motion to impeach British Prime Minister Tony Blair accuses him of “gross misconduct” over the US-led invasion of Iraq, a newspaper said on Sunday. The Independent on Sunday said it had obtained the text of the motion from a cross-party group of MPs, adding it would be offered for debate soon after the new parliamentary session begins later this month. The motion calls for a select committee to investigate the “conduct of the PM in relation to the war in Iraq,” the daily said. The committee would draw up the “articles of impeachment” and a panel of law lords would judge whether Blair deliberately misled the nation into waging an unlawful war, it said. A guilty verdict would see Blair arrested by parliament’s Sergeant at Arms. Michael Martin, the speaker in the House of Commons, must rule on whether the motion can be proposed for debate on the floor of the house. The newspaper said that although Blair had little chance of losing an impeachment vote, the very fact it was held would represent a serious humiliation.
Independent, UK – May 7, 2005
Tony Blair’s government has been accused of committing war crimes in Iraq in a complaint by the families of dead British soldiers to the International Criminal Court.
TomPaine.com, D.C. – May 10, 2005
… regarding the legal justifications for the war as well … document with the minutes of a secret meeting from … Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a July 2002 meeting …
By Joe Conason
Salon.com
www.salon.com/opinion/ conason/2005/05/06/bush_blair_iraq/
Friday 06 May 2005
…Are Americans so jaded about the deceptions perpetrated by our own government to lead us into war in Iraq that we are no longer interested in fresh and damning evidence of those lies? Or are the editors and producers who oversee the American news industry simply too timid to report that proof on the evening broadcasts and front pages?…
…On May 1, the Sunday Times of London published the confidential MINUTES of a meeting held almost three years ago at 10 Downing Stree, residence of the British prime minister, where Tony Blair and members of his Cabinet discussed the British government’s ongoing consultations with the Bush administration over Iraq. Those in attendance included the defense secretary, the foreign secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence chief and Blair’s closest personal aides.
But for Americans, the most important lines in the July 23 MINUTES are those attributed to Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, who in spy jargon is to be referred to only as C. The MINUTES indicate that Sir Richard had discovered certain harsh realities during a visit to the United States that summer…”
By Robert Parry
May 26, 2005
…You also hear more detailed questions: “Why won’t the press do its job of holding George W. Bush accountable for misleading the country to war in Iraq? How could the intelligence on Iraq have been so wrong? Why do America’s most powerful institutions sit back while huge trade and budget deficits sap away the nation’s future?”
There are, of course, many answers to these questions. But from my 27 years in the world of Washington journalism and politics, I would say that the most precise answer can be summed up in one word: fear.
It’s not fear of physical harm. That’s not how it works in Washington. For the professionals in journalism and in intelligence, it’s a smaller, more corrosive fear – of lost status, of ridicule, of betrayal, of unemployment. It is the fear of getting blackballed from a community of colleagues or a profession that has given your life much of its meaning and its financial sustenance…”
What are the legal implications of the public release of confidential minutes of an intel briefing July 23, 2002 for the Blair and Bush administratiions? Blair is being charged with war crimes before the International Criminal Court, 89 Congressman have sent a letter to Bush demanding explanation into evidence contained in Downing Street minutes, Congressman Conyers is leading an investigation team to London, Congressman Conyers has is seeking 100,000 signatures to a letter demanding inquiry, and a US coalition is seeking an inquiry into impeachable offences.
Have I seen the “memo”? No, I have not. But I’ve seen the minutes all right, and I am counting the minutes until the American public sees them, too.