It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action … But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.
– Matthew Rycroft, memo to David Manning, 23 July 2002
PUBLICATION OF THE Frank Koza message created an unexpected detour on the Bush–Blair road map to war. In truth, there were two maps, one public and one secret, parallel routes with quite different landmarks along the way. As was known at the time, the stubborn group of swing nation UN Security Council members – Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, and Pakistan – along with troublesome sceptics like France, China, and Russia, were already creating disappointing, highly publicized roadblocks.
A proper trip to Baghdad, charted on the public map, required the United Nations’ authorized support of military force; it required a broad-based, approving coalition. However, standing in the way was the uncooperative behaviour of the anti-war bunch, a collection of mischief-makers waving Caution and Detour signs. The stalemate led to the cartographers deciding that covert intervention was called for, that it was necessary to switch maps. To purchase clandestine travel insurance, as it were. They would buy it from the NSA.
The next-to-last historic marker on the public map was to have been a new UN Security Council resolution, with the final destination the strike itself. Now, there would be no second resolution. It was necessary to bypass that marker post-haste and travel directly to Baghdad, ignoring the niceties of UN resolutions and world approval.
No magic carpet ride to Persia was planned for this perilous secret trip. No yellow brick road leading to Oz, but rather to a mythical destination at least as imaginatively conceived (a quick, easy, slam dunk of a war), a destination sought by a cast of peculiar and intriguing characters doing business in London, Washington, and Crawford, Texas.
The world had come to know the supposedly legal – if, to some, alarmingly accelerated – trip to Baghdad. But as of 2 March, when the Koza message was revealed, the existence of the secret map was, at least in part, also revealed. The world – at least those who took notice – learned that an ugly, illegal business was being conducted by the Baghdad-bound. While open, above-board debate continued with the swing nations, below-board dirty tricks were being played on them.
Those in the know understood that enticements of various kinds were quietly being offered in exchange for pro-war commitments; they also understood that non-compliance with United States wishes could be unhealthy for smaller nations dependent upon US largesse for certain essential needs. But for others, naïve about the art of bully diplomacy, the Koza revelation was shocking.
It was shocking as well to unsuspecting members of Congress and of Parliament, even to those who understood that spying on the United Nations was nothing new. What was new was an obvious and blatant attempt at manipulation of UN votes. This was a different matter entirely.
Together, the United States and the United Kingdom had been travelling a secret and deliberately deceptive route for at least eleven months before the Koza message was leaked. Alone, America had been following the course for several years, if one includes the team of advisers who had been pushing for an invasion of Iraq since the late 1990s. Now, there was George W. Bush, in whose craw Saddam had been residing since the early 1990s – although not nearly as irritably as in that of Dick Cheney, who had been Secretary of Defense during George H. W. Bush’s presidency.
The new vice president was in the game for the first Iraq War. Unfinished business could be troubling to a man like Cheney.
All the way around, for both the jaded and the naïve, there is no question that publication of the NSA message to GCHQ was politically and diplomatically explosive. As for the perpetrators, one can only imagine the reaction of NSA director Michael Hayden when he learned of the Observer story, which must have happened before the London ink was dry on page one. For Sir Francis, still at the GCHQ helm, the revelation also must have been a moment of horror, the single bright spot the fact that only a handful of insiders knew at the time whether the British had responded to the US invitation to conspiracy. Worldwide outrage would focus on the chaps across the Atlantic. But Richards, and Pepper to follow, would have their competent hands full at home, not only in finding the detestable culprit who leaked the Koza message, but also in dealing with elements of the UK government who would be asking embarrassing questions. Parliament, unaware of the full extent of Blair’s commitments to Bush, clearly would become a horrendous headache.
It would be two years before the world learned additional details about the secret map that had charted the course from the beginning or, indeed, about the lies and deceptions related to its existence.
Volumes have been written about America’s run-up to war in Iraq. It is a sad and tawdry tale, but not one to be repeated in detail here, with all the characters, telephone calls, meetings, and pleadings. Instead, focus is directed toward certain British–US aspects that seem particularly significant to this story. Included is mind-blowing information from a 21 July 2002 UK Cabinet Office briefing paper, and a now-notorious ‘Downing Street memorandum’ dated two days later, both essential in understanding the context and motivation for a very risky illegal spy operation.
The leaked information helps in understanding why a young woman’s effort to avert a war was futile, given the secret war planning already under way. The armoured train had left the station, and there would be no stopping it until it reached its final destination.
It should be noted that publication of these secret documents, two and three years after the war began, received little follow-up attention in the US media. A yawn, a ho-hum view prevailed in the weeks following their disclosure. Enough had been said in print and on broadcasts. After all, everyone knew, or should have known, what the Bush camp was up to when it was spinning the WMD story and hiding its real motive for war; they knew, or should have known, that no one really believed Saddam Hussein had WMD. In fact, a Harris poll challenged that position, noting that the share of Americans who believed Saddam possessed WMD at the time of invasion was on the rise; by February 2005, 50 per cent were believers.[1] Following up on these stories would have been helpful to a public’s understanding of the magnitude of the deception involved.
Typical was the opinion expressed on 12 June 2005 by Michael Kinsley, Los Angeles Times editorial page editor and columnist, who gave the memo short shrift. Who needed a secret memo to know that war was inevitable, that ‘the administration’s decision to topple Saddam Hussein by force’ was decided by the fall of 2002? Kinsley was off slightly; the decision to invade was made in the spring of 2002.
Katharine Gun will not tell how much she knew of what was going on in her secret world and has spoken publicly only of her outrage at seeing the Koza message, of understanding its meaning, and of her reaction. It is safe to say, however, that she (otherwise naïve) and many of her fellow intelligence officers troubled about the war were aware of at least some of the truth.
Gobsmacking stuff, as it were.
To begin at the beginning, America’s future president was alleged to have referred to Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s as ‘the man who tried to get my dad’. Campaigning in 1999, he told his audience that he would ‘take out’ Saddam. By the time he became president, it is not unreasonable to conclude that some sort of amorphous map leading to Baghdad already existed in the mind of George W. Bush, for whom taking out the Iraqi leader seemed an excellent idea.
A map to Baghdad more exact, more elaborate than Bush’s existed in the minds of members of his inner circle, the colourful characters who were on the scene well before Bush took office. In addition to Cheney, they include I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, convicted of leaking the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Libby’s planned leak was an apparent payback for her diplomat husband’s disputing White House claims that Iraq was purchasing yellowcake uranium from Niger. Those who assumed Libby leaked Plame’s name on instructions from a get-even Cheney were surprised when Libby corrected the record by identifying his source as George W. Bush, who later commuted Libby’s sentence.
Among other members of the hawkish circle were Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard L. Armitage, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, John Bolton, and Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush.
All were a part of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a right-wing think tank and source of a letter to President Bill Clinton in 1998 demanding military action to remove Saddam Hussein. Signatures on the letter included those of Abrams, Armitage, Perle, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz.[2] At the time, Clinton’s interest in getting rid of the Iraqi president was mainly expressed in dollars filtered to the opposition in support of efforts to topple Saddam. This was not nearly aggressive enough.
In Great Britain, Tony Blair and Foreign Office officials, noting a September 2000 PNAC document titled ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’, and familiar with its origin, worried about a secret US map to Iraq – and to other destinations in the Gulf region. PNAC obviously wanted to get rid of Saddam, by whatever means. Perle, however, has been quoted as saying that Saddam was only the first target – nothing short of ‘total war’ would do the trick.
‘No stages. This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq … this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war … our children will sing great songs about us years from now.’[3]
Former UK cabinet minister the Honourable Clare Short was one of those in Blair’s government who doubted that the future held the promise envisioned by Perle. She was desperately worried about what appeared to be a disastrous policy born in the project, and now PNAC members were among President Bush’s closest advisers. America was on the wrong path and attempting to drag the United Kingdom along. It was abusing its power, seeking to dominate, heading for certain downfall.
‘This is a mad administration! It’s the Roman Empire all over again,’ she told the authors. ‘It was the world’s most powerful empire, and then it crumbled. I think America has gone barmy; it is misusing its power, it’s spending too much on arms, making itself hated.’[4] Short quotes polls indicating the extent to which hatred of America has increased worldwide in recent years; most significantly, the Iraq War years.
The outspoken British lawmaker strongly cautioned Blair against ‘making serious mistakes’, against going along with what appeared to be a frightening Bush-led trip to Baghdad. He told her not to worry; he would not blindly follow the American president – not walk the Bush walk. She should be assured, he said, that Parliament would be kept in the Iraqi loop.
It was not.
Clare Short was not alone. A number of her colleagues believed George Bush to be truly obsessed by the idea of being the war president who would rid the world of Saddam Hussein. They counted on Blair to deal with the obsession, and the prime minister continued to insist that nothing was decided upon, that no agreements had been made about joining the United States in going after Saddam. At the time, there was strong feeling that the Palestine state issue must be settled before Blair even thought about Saddam. Blair said he agreed. Palestine first.
On the weekend of 6 April 2002, Bush and Blair met at the president’s ranch in Texas. This is where Blair agreed to go along with a military strike against Iraq for ‘the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime followed by elimination of WMD’.[5] Here was the secret, number-one, primary reason for war, a reason later deliberately buried under a ton of frightening WMD rhetoric, and with good reason. Regime change was outlawed by international accords binding both the United States and the United Kingdom.
Publicly, the spin had not been on regime change, but solely on the WMD threat to Iraq’s neighbours and to Western interests. Blair was concerned about regime change. There was no certainty that removal of Saddam’s regime would necessarily lead to elimination of Iraq’s WMD. The British view was that even if getting rid of the Iraqi leader was ‘a necessary condition for controlling Iraqi WMD, it is certainly not a sufficient one’.[6]
At Crawford, a nervous Blair had his conditions for UK participation in a war against Iraq: efforts must be made to construct a coalition and to shape public opinion; the Israel–Palestine crisis must be quiescent; and options to eliminate WMD through weapons inspections must be exhausted. He remembered Palestine, as he had promised Short and other members of his cabinet. But at some point along the road to Baghdad, Blair would abandon his conditions.
Spinning half-truths and deceptions would become a part of a major effort to shape public opinion by both Bush and Blair. And not only were their efforts directed to an unsuspecting public – the United States Congress and the British Parliament were blindsided as well.
By this time, the president and his White House advisers – Colin Powell and his team versus Donald Rumsfeld and his – were vigorously and often contentiously debating the How and Why of an Iraqi strike. For Powell, however, the Why was most troubling. It is ironic that it would be his task, a year later, to sell the world a defective Why. A 28 April 2002 New York Times story got the When and the How pretty much right. Early in 2003, it said, the United States would launch a full-scale air and ground campaign. At the time of publication, denials came from both military and civilian leaders. There was no timetable, no plan for war. Of course, behind the scenes, Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks at the Department of Defense were deep into formulating war plans, Powell and company were working on a plan for post-war Iraq at State, and the White House was busily debating how to sell the whole business to a reluctant world.
In May 2002 the United States and Great Britain were secretly and illegally bombing Iraqi targets, engaging in war without a declaration of war. The goal was to weaken Saddam’s defences and to provoke a response, thus providing a reason for a full-scale attack. Two months earlier, British foreign officers had advised the Blair government that such raids were illegal. Routine air surveillance and attacks were justified in defending Kurds and Shias; anything more was ‘not consistent with UN law’.[7]
Undaunted, the United States and United Kingdom began serious bombing of Iraqi targets, with the British planes dropping as much tonnage as their airborne colleagues. Taunted, an uncooperative Saddam refrained from responding. The attacks continued in the guise of allowable routine operations.
In truth, the air strikes were nothing new. They had been going on for years, even before the Bush presidency, part of Clinton’s effort to depose Saddam without going to war.[8] But now, it seems there was a new impetus, a compelling need to elicit an actionable response.
Clearly, the policy was changing.
On 2 June 2002, a West Point audience of young men and women training for the business of war sat quietly listening to the words of their commander in chief, George W. Bush. He was candid, focused. He spoke to his mesmerized audience about the doctrine of pre-emption.
‘Our security will require all Americans [to] be ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and defend our lives.’ The United States must strike first against another nation to prevent a potential threat from becoming an actual one, the president explained.
If the president’s words fell on receptive ears at West Point, they were not so well received in certain other circles. There was the question of evaluating the level of threat involved, of deciding what was ‘potential’ and what was ‘actual’. Further, the United States had long held the position that it would not strike first. Pre-emption was not only a new ethical and political construct, but also a difficult one for most Americans. Wasn’t the country’s traditional stand, that of striking only in retaliation or in response to imminent attack, one of the national characteristics that made the United States different? But it was not just Americans who asked questions about what appeared to be a drastic change in policy.
On 3 August, John Bolton, then Undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, ‘Our policy … insists on regime change in Baghdad.’ The following day the Observer said of Bolton, ‘His words sent alarm bells ringing in London.’
Of critical UK concern was the need to establish a legal justification for war. The Americans might be careless about this sort of thing, but the British were not. There were specific and hardbound conditions for legal UK support of military action. Specifically stated in the 21 July Cabinet Office briefing paper were only three reasons considered lawful for UK participation in pre-emptive military action against Iraq: ‘In the right of individual or collective self-defence, if carried out to avert an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe, or if authorised by the UN Security Council.’ It should be noted that Tony Blair had already agreed to go to war for the purpose of removing Saddam Hussein from power, regardless of what was reported on 21 July.
On 23 July, two days after closely guarded distribution of the Cabinet Office briefing paper outlining conditions for military action – which just happened to be newly-wed Katharine Gun’s twenty-eighth birthday – a top-secret prime minister’s meeting took place. Present, among others, were Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, GCHQ head Sir Francis Richards, and ‘C’, MI6 head Sir John Dearlove.
Carefully recorded meeting minutes (‘the Downing Street memo’) would later be leaked, despite a caution: ‘This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made.’
Discussed were two broad US military options: a ‘generated start’ or a ‘running start’ utilizing only sixty days compared with the ninety required in the slower, generated build-up of forces. Ideally, this second option would be ‘initiated by an Iraqi casus belli’, a provoked justification, or more aptly, an excuse, for military retribution. The British were finding this second option a problem. Engineering a justification could prove to be risky. Most interesting is that Attorney General Goldsmith warned the group, ‘The desire for regime change was not a legal basis for military action.’[9]
It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran.
Dearlove reported conversations with Washington about Iraq. Bush, he correctly understood, had as his principal goal the removal of Saddam Hussein, which he intended to ‘justify by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD’. But, Dearlove realized, ‘the facts are being fixed to fit the policy’.[10]
As the British mulled over US plans and their own limitations and capabilities for going to war against Iraq, the bottom line seemed to be a question of whether the benefits of military action would outweigh the obvious risks. Timing was a key concern, not just the time needed to marshal UK resources for armed conflict, but also that necessary for ‘shaping public opinion’. The British population was strongly against military action. Even more troubling was just how to go about getting Parliament to support a war it did not want.
On 29 August 2002, MI6 received what would come to be known as the ‘45-minute threat’, a report that came ‘third hand through a main well-established source via a second link in the reporting chain and originally an Iraqi military source’. In itself, the origin of the information should have been enough to cause serious doubts about its authenticity. But it did not.
Discussion and debate led to serious concern among senior intelligence officers. One officer e-mailed the Joint Intelligence Committee assessment team saying the claim was ‘rather strong since it is based on a single source’. Could a final JIC draft read that intelligence ‘suggests’ rather than ‘shows’ the existence of these weapons? Others in the intelligence community were becoming nervous. The source may or may not have been reliable. But Tony Blair wanted to go with the strongest possible wording. Here was a threat the public – and Parliament – could understand. And it was one that could be shared with Bush.
A year later, reliable source allegations surfaced that during this time JIC head John Scarlett had urged a ‘hardening’ of Iraq WMD reports by requesting that details of already disproved claims be included as if valid. Inspectors are said to have refused the request, saying that to include the false claims in their report would be ‘dishonest, deceitful and eventually disastrous’.[11]
On 12 September, President Bush addressed the opening of the UN General Assembly, where he threw the Iraqi gauntlet at the feet of the prestigious international gathering. He challenged the United Nations body to face up to the ‘grave and gathering danger’ of Iraq – or to become irrelevant. The invitation – or ultimatum, depending upon the receiver – was translated into various languages and was unmistakably clear in all of them.
One week later, continuing the theme discussed at West Point, Bush released his administration’s new National Security Strategy. It set out a more militarized policy, which, by now and to no one’s surprise, relied on first strikes. The United States would never allow a challenge to its military supremacy. Further, the United States would use its powers, both military and economic, to encourage ‘free and open societies’, with America defining both ‘free’ and ‘open’.
Abroad, work was under way on the content of what would become Britain’s notorious intelligence dossier on Iraq. Dearlove was deeply concerned about including the 45-minute claim. He reportedly told Blair, just days before the prime minister presented the document to Parliament, that ‘the case is developmental and the source remains unproven’.
Meanwhile, in the UN Security Council, the temperature of the debate over launching a pre-emptive war against Iraq continued to rise by the day. Mexico’s Aguilar Zinser, who was attempting to keep discussions productive, asked MI6 at this time: ‘Do you have full proof of the existence of these weapons, at any one of these particular sites that you are referring to?’ According to Aguilar Zinser, the answer was direct.
‘No, we don’t.’[12]
Not entirely coincidentally, at the time Aguilar Zinser was one of America’s spy targets.
Tension increased between Downing Street and the intelligence services, while the US team nervously kept its fingers crossed. Battles raged between Blair’s press officer, Alistair Campbell, and the head of MI5, Stephen Lander. The issue is said to have been disagreement over presentation of ‘straight’ rather than ‘spiced, or sexed up’ intelligence.
On 24 September, the British dossier on Iraq was finally published, with a strongly worded introduction by the prime minister.[13] ‘The document discloses that his [Saddam’s] military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.’
As it would turn out, of course, the ‘sexed up’ claim was as unreliable as its original source. It would become, however, a significant selling point for war in Colin Powell’s remarkable speech to the United Nations five months later. It was a strong and chilling threat and helped Powell make the case for war.
While Blair was going through a proper British ‘rough patch’ promoting the idea of war to Parliament and even to some members of his cabinet, Bush was making significant progress in selling the Iraqi WMD threat to Congress. Saddam’s WMD were a threat to Middle East stability, American interests, and even world peace.
On 11 October, the United States Congress adopted a joint resolution authorizing use of force against Iraq. Bush asked for a vote before the congressional adjournment in October, ‘for the sake of peace, for the sake of freedom for our country’.
For the United States and the United Kingdom, the next step was drafting a new UNSC resolution imposing new arms inspections on Iraq and leaving little doubt as to dire consequences for non-compliance. On 11 November, the UN Security Council, in its 4,644th meeting, found Iraq in ‘material breach’ of disarmament obligations and offered the country a ‘final chance’ by complying with its tough new UNSC Resolution 1441.
Some three weeks after adoption of Resolution 1441, weapons inspections resumed in Iraq under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency and UN experts. And a month after its adoption, on the sixty-first anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Iraq submitted a monumental 12,000-page declaration on its chemical, biological, and nuclear activities, claiming it had no banned weapons. The report was received with enormous scepticism. Saddam was back at his old game of lying.
10 December was International Human Rights Day, celebrated in more than 150 US cities. Demonstrations, rallies, and vigils sent a clear message to the White House. War against Iraq, at least for now, was unacceptable. A popular theme of the public outcry was ‘Let the inspectors work.’ This sort of unfavourable public display had enervated President Nixon; it seemingly only energized President Bush.
A similar message was sent to Downing Street. The number of protesters was unprecedented. There were additional demonstrations in London. Among those marching for peace at various times were Katharine Gun and friends from the intelligence community, each one looking over their shoulder, worried about being seen in the crowd.
In the final significant scene before the holiday break in Washington, before the president and his close advisers would retreat to Texas, Bush approved the deployment of US troops to the Gulf region. There were arguments among the Bush team as to how and when to send how many troops. Timing was essential. Otherwise, the world would take note that war was imminent. Pundits were estimating that by March more than 200,000 US troops would be on the ground ready for war. They came close. And on 11 January, Tony Blair sent a naval task force to the Gulf. Aboard were 3,000 British marines. Two days later, an incautious Blair said that his country could act against Iraq, in US partnership, without a new UNSC resolution.
On the twenty-eighth of the month, George Bush delivered his State of the Union speech, saying that Saddam was not disarming but deceiving.
Three days after Bush’s inflammatory message, increasing top-level concern over wavering UN Security Council support for war sent the NSA’s Frank Koza to his computer. It was the same day as the Oval Office meeting of Bush, Blair, and Rice at which the understanding was clear. There was a single option left for legitimizing a pre-emptive strike against Iraq. Self-defence wouldn’t work, and it was impossible to identify an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe, given that none was looming on the relevant landscape. They needed a UNSC resolution.
For most of the world, the Oval Office meeting would be kept secret for three years, until its contents were leaked, little by little at first, and then in full, on 27 March 2006, in a New York Times front-page story. Revealed was a memorandum written by David Manning, Tony Blair’s chief foreign policy adviser at the time. Manning dutifully summarized the shocking discussion that took place between Bush and Blair. The adviser’s notes confirmed what some in the intelligence community strongly suspected was happening behind the scenes, despite both public statements and secret assurances to the contrary. Among the suspicious had been certain members of the staff at Cheltenham, where Katharine worked.
It was made clear in Manning’s report that George Bush discussed both legal and illegal means of obtaining an internationally recognized green light, an unqualified ‘go’ for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. By far, and patently obviously, the best choice was a new UN Security Council resolution specifically authorizing war, authorization lacking in the existing UNSCR 1441. Tony Blair agreed, noting that a resolution, among its other benefits, ‘would give us international cover’ – international political PR, as it were. Too, a resolution would be lawful, which appears, from Manning’s notes and other UK intelligence documents, to confirm that legal authorization for war seemed far more important to Blair than to Bush. Also essential, although not specifically mentioned in this context, would be its value in building a strong military coalition for war.
Alternatives to UN authorization reportedly suggested by Bush that day seem preposterous in the telling and read like lines in a silly, low-budget film. It might be necessary to paint a plane in UN colours and entice Saddam to fire on it, thus creating a catalyst for war. Or a defector could be found and convinced to speak about the existence of the annoyingly elusive WMDs, an existence both Bush and Blair doubted to a degree. And, last, there was the option of assassinating Saddam. Preposterous, but clues as to why having the NSA illegally spy on the personal lives of certain members of the Security Council must have sounded to Bush like a brilliant idea at the time. It would be instrumental in reaching a desired end, and a way of avoiding messy alternatives.
The key to the ugly NSA gambit, then, was Bush’s determination to win a resolution at any cost. He insisted to Blair during the Oval Office meeting, ‘The United States would put its full weight behind efforts to get [the desired] resolution and would twist arms and even threaten.’ No longer could anyone deny the extent to which the president was willing to go to get what he so desperately wanted.
This was the historic day when Koza e-mailed GCHQ. There was too much at stake, too much water over the proverbial dam, too much invested since George W. Bush took the White House in 2001, too much to be lost since the journey began, to depend upon diplomacy.
All that had taken place thus far, all of their plans, were at stake. Baghdad, destination on the road map to war, a pathway pitted with lies and deception, must be reached at any cost. Given all that had transpired, it is clear why the world’s two top power brokers were willing to pursue the risky UN spy operation Katharine Gun revealed.
Five days later, US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his persuasive presentation – complete with charts and graphs and dire threats – to the United Nations. On a chilly February day to follow, the United Kingdom’s Joint Intelligence Committee chairman John Scarlett called upon Leader of the House of Commons Robin Cook at his home at Carlton Gardens. His purpose was to brief Cook on the WMD issue. He explained that the infamous ‘45-minute’ threat referred not to missiles, but to battlefield weapons. Further, even those had been dismantled and were not usable because their parts were stored separately. Cook was outraged.[14]
To no one’s surprise, on 24 February, the United States, Great Britain and Spain formally introduced the widely anticipated second resolution to the UN Security Council. It concluded that Iraq had failed to take advantage of the offer provided in Resolution 1441; as a consequence, it was time to authorize the use of military force. And, to no one’s surprise, France, Germany, and Russia introduced a counter resolution intensifying weapons inspections and saying, ‘there is a real chance for the peaceful settlement of this crisis’. The military option, said the three, should be a last resort. But it was far too late for this sort of thinking.
Thus was the scene set for the 2 March publication of the Koza message and the diplomatic and political outrage to follow. Shortly after the Observer story appeared, any second resolution became a matter of history, in spite of last-ditch efforts to gain passage.
On 5 March 2003, British intelligence officer Katharine Gun was arrested at GCHQ and held in custody. Some have credited her for having the key role in the resolution’s failure; others have ignored her part in its collapse.
What followed her arrest is also a matter of history.