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Diplomacy and the ethics of spying: Blair, Iraq and the art of government

Article  in  Policy & Politics · January 2011

DOI: 10.1332/030557310X550114

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DEBATEDEBATEDEBATE
Diplomacy and the ethics of spying: Blair, Iraq and
the art of government
Cris Shore

Introduction
The conceptual theme explored in this article concerns what might be termed
the ‘occult practices’ of government – those hidden aspects of government
that are officially denied or shrouded by ritual and taboo – and what happens
when those taboos are broken. Among the questions that have long intrigued
political anthropologists is the relationship between policy discourse and the
manufacture of consent. Put simply, how are policies discursively managed to
control public debate and to ensure particular outcomes? Power, as Foucault
has cogently demonstrated (1977; 1980) typically disguises the mechanisms of
its own operation. However, power is also most effective when its ideological
character is made to appear self-evident, ‘natural’ and ‘beyond question’, or what
Bourdieu (1977) termed ‘doxa’.

The case study I use to examine these arguments is the scandal that erupted in
February 2004 following disclosures that British security services were spying on
the United Nations (UN) before a crucial vote over war on Iraq. Although that
episode was subsequently eclipsed by other events (including allegations that the
dossier used to justify invading Iraq had been ‘sexed up’ and the suicide of Ministry
of Defence biological weapons adviser, Dr David Kelly), the story has particular
significance for policy analysis and understanding how states operate ‘back stage’.
My argument is in three steps. First I trace how the scandal developed; second, I
examine the reactions it provoked and the attempts to bring semantic closure to
the debate; and third, I analyse what these events reveal about diplomacy and
government in contemporary Britain.

Case study: spying on the UN

Events surrounding the ‘UN-bugging controversy’ are well known. They included
the widely held view that the legal case for war had been ‘stitched up’; the sudden
change of mind of Britain’s Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, who had previously
endorsed the Foreign Office advice that without a second UN resolution, war on
Iraq would be illegal; the resignation of Foreign and Commonwealth Office Deputy
Legal Adviser, Elizabeth Wilmhurst, the day war was declared; and growing unease

Key words: secrecy • national security • public interest • public consent • spying

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134 Cris Shore

about the politicisation of the civil service. Tony Blair had seemingly pushed Britain
into an illegal war and was systematically undermining the independence of the
civil service and judiciary.

But in February 2004 events developed in ways few could have predicted.
Katharine Gun, a 29-year-old Mandarin translator was prosecuted under Section
1 of the draconian Official Secrets Act 1989. Ms Gun, as a matter of conscience,
had leaked to a national newspaper a secret email from an official working for
America’s National Security Agency that allegedly revealed plans to bug members
of the UN Security Council before a key vote on the conflict. Gun did not dispute
the facts. However, just before proceedings were to start, the Crown Prosecution
Service announced it was dropping the case for ‘legal and technical reasons’.
Gun’s lawyers, however, suggested that Lord Goldsmith had acted to prevent
sensitive documents coming to light about his only partially published legal
advice. Goldsmith rejected this. Speaking in the House of Lords he declared: ‘The
attorney makes his decisions in the public interest, and not in the interests of the
Government,’ adding that it would be ‘inappropriate to comment’ on counsel’s
reasons as these concerned ‘issues of intelligence’.

When the BBC invited ministers to comment on the Gun affair no government
spokesperson was available save for Clare Short, former Minister for Overseas
Development, who had resigned in May 2003 in protest over the government’s
Iraq policy. During her radio interview with John Humphrys, Short argued that
Lord Goldsmith had been ‘persuaded’ to changing his legal advice and that the
government had placed enormous pressure on wavering UN members to vote
for a second resolution, including sanctioning Britain’s secret services to spy on
the then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan’s office and monitoring his private
conversations. Asked by Humphrys to clarify this astonishing admission she went
further, declaring that ‘this has been done for some time’ and that she had even
‘read the transcripts’.

Reactions to the disclosure

Short’s ‘bombshell’, as Humphrys described it, was denounced by Tony Blair as
‘deeply irresponsible’. However, Blair declined to comment on the work of the
security services. Like the Attorney General, he invoked the discourse of ‘national
security’ and ‘public interest’ and sought to bring closure on the matter. Asked
whether Short would be prosecuted or face party discipline, Blair suggested he
was considering this. Short retaliated angrily, saying that Blair would be lying if he
denied her claims. The UN’s reaction was more measured. Secretariat spokesman
Fred Eckhard said that if reports of phone-tapping by British intelligence were
true, ‘such activities would undermine the integrity and confidential nature of
diplomatic exchanges’ and that Mr Annan ‘wanted this practice stopped, if indeed
it exists’ (Turner 2004).

That was the official response. Unofficially, these allegations provoked private
amusement. Within the UN, it is common knowledge that the secretary-general’s

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 DEBATE 135

office is bugged. Indeed, phone-tapping and planting of microphones in UN

offices is so common that the organisation employs a team of debuggers to
routinely sweep offices. As Spain’s UN ambassador remarked, ‘everybody spies
on everybody, and when there’s a crisis, big countries spy a lot’ (Turner 2004).
Another Security Council member ambassador remarked, speaking on condition
of anonymity, ‘It used to be a shame; now it’s a matter of status. If your mission
is not bugged then you are really worth nothing’ (Priest and Lynch 2004).

None of this should come as any surprise as spying has been an acknowledge
fact of life in the UN since the Cold War. James Bamford’s book, Body of Secrets
(2001), records how President Roosevelt fought hard for the US to host the
opening session of the UN in San Francisco in April 1945, primarily to enable
the US to eavesdrop on its guests. Among ‘insiders’, bugging the UN is an open
secret; as long as no one speaks out in public, a veil of silence can be drawn.

How the crisis was contained

The government’s response to Short’s revelations was one of damage limitation.
Ministers drew a distinction between the bugging accusation itself and the fact
that a serving minister had revealed it. Short’s disclosure was treated as a far more
serious offence than the bugging claim itself. As Blair declared: ‘Our intelligence
services perform a vital task’ and it was ‘totally irresponsible … to expose them to
this public questioning’ (MacAskill 2004). What began as a scandal over revelations
of state-sponsored spying on friends became a tale of ministerial treachery and
betrayal. Short’s actions had broken the trust between the security services and
ministers, breached the Official Secrets Act 1989 and violated her Privy Councillor’s
‘oath of loyalty to the Crown’ (that archaic pledge requiring that members ‘keep
secret all matters committed and revealed unto you’). Attention therefore turned
to whether Short should be prosecuted or publicly sanctioned. The government
did neither, claiming it did not want to make her a martyr. However, it instructed
Sir Andrew Turnbull, the highest civil servant, to issue a ‘solicitor’s letter’ reminding
Short of her responsibilities under the ministerial code and threatening legal action
if she gave further interviews on the subject.

This rare rebuke from a Whitehall official produced a scathing response from
Short who accused Turnball of allowing Britain ‘to rush to war with Iraq without
proper ministerial oversight’ and blamed him for having ‘allowed our decision-
making system to crumble’ by allowing Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister’s
press officer, to chair the influential Joint Intelligence Committee (Hall 2004: 2).
For Short, the real breach of protocol was putting a ‘spin-doctor’ in charge of
this major policy committee.

By April, however, the controversy was overshadowed by continuing news of

bombings and insurgency in Baghdad and Falluja, the seizure of Western hostages
and the rising death toll of Iraqi civilians and US servicemen. For the UK and US
governments, the run-up to war was now ‘history’: whatever the rights or wrongs
of the decision to remove Saddam, the priority was to deal with the problems

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136 Cris Shore

facing Iraq now. Expediency, not argument, would finally bring closure to the
debate – although the Hutton and Butler enquiries prevented complete closure.

Analysis: policy and the art of government

At the heart of this curiously British controversy were three tangled policy disputes:
one about the remit of the intelligence services and the ethics of spying; the
second about ministerial discretion and Privy Council codes of honour; and the
third about the legality of the government’s case for war on Iraq. Contrary to what
Foucault (1991) argued, the ‘art of government’ is not just about the rationality
of liberal government. It also entails shaping political agendas and controlling
the terms of debate. That means mobilising particular norms and discourses to
shape what can be said, or must remain ‘unsaid’.

In any policy conflict, as de Waal (1994: 8) observed, there are usually two
competing narratives: ‘the conflict, and the meta-conflict – the conflict about the
nature of conflict itself’. Here the meta-conflict was the legality of war against
Iraq and the secretive, undemocratic manner in which that decision was made.
That was what precipitated Short’s public indiscretion. Bugging the UN was a
side issue. Eavesdropping on the UN is evidently a policy that many governments
sanction. However, whereas most policies derive their institutional legitimacy and
authority precisely from their status as ‘official policy’, spying belongs to a special
category of ‘covert policy’: policies that, for reasons of ethics or legality, ‘dare
not speak their name’ or must remain ‘deniable’. Knowing that spying happens,
most diplomats adapt their behaviour accordingly, but protocol requires that they
feign surprise or indignation whenever this becomes public.

From a theoretical perspective, these behaviours typify what Herzfeld (1997:

3) terms ‘cultural intimacy’: practices that are ‘considered a source of external
embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of
common sociality’. The work of the secret services is widely regarded as part of the
‘privacy of nations’. Why, then, place taboos on acknowledging what is common
knowledge? The Sicilian code of silence, omertà, provides useful parallels. ‘To
keep to the rules of omertà was to follow a double moral system, with one set
of norms applying among the members of a given group, and another, opposing
set governing relations with those outsiders’ (Arlacchi 1988: 3). The code of
conduct among British diplomats and ministers seems to be ‘I’m sorry, but we
do not comment on such matters.’ This prevents the shattering of delicate but
important myths. By refusing to have things said out loud governments protect
themselves from having to confront ‘inconvenient truths’, the maxim being ‘don’t
ask, don’t tell’ (Paris, 2004: 12).

The UN bugging scandal exemplifies how power is discursively framed and how
certain political discourses (‘national security’, ‘ministerial responsibility’ and so
on) are tactically mobilised to limit what can be legitimately said. But it also
highlights other trends within modern British government, including the informal
and personalised system of governance (or ‘sofa government’) that flourished

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 DEBATE 137

under Tony Blair. That system resulted in many major policy decisions being made
by a small clique of Blair’s personal friends and advisers, without formal minutes
or the involvement of cabinet or ministry officials. It also heralds a further erosion
of the Westminster system of government with its tradition of an independent
civil service and judiciary. As Short (2004a: 23) asks rhetorically, ‘Do we want to
live under a constitutional system that allows decisions to be made in this highly
personalised way?’ That may well be one of the enduring legacies of the Blair era.
These arguments are developed further in her book, An honourable deception
(Short 2004b).

Does the election of a new coalition government mark the end to that constitutional
system or to the practice of spying on the UN and other organisations? While
‘cleaning up government’ was a theme stressed by all the major political parties
during the election campaign, it is unlikely that such a clean-up operation will
extend to the security services, whose work is mostly beyond the purview of
democratic government in any case. When it comes to matters of national
security there seems to be little difference between Labour and Conservative
governments. ‘Defence of the realm’ is a discourse that has invariably trumped
that of ‘protecting civil liberties’ – even in the pre-9/11 era. Perhaps the main
difference between the parties is in the way they define ‘threat’ rather than the
national interest. Previous Conservative governments have often taken a more
expansive view. For example, according to Cambridge historian Christopher
Andrew’s recent book Defence of the Realm (2009), the British security services
have bugged the Cabinet Room, its waiting room and even the Prime Minister’s
office. That surveillance was carried out in 1963 at the request of Harold MacMillan
whose government was still reeling from the Profumo scandal, but it continued
for the next 14 years. And again during the industrial unrest of the 1970s and
1980s, Mrs Thatcher ordered the security services to place several leaders of the
National Union of Mineworkers under surveillance due to their close ties with the
Communist Party of Great Britain – although MI5 apparently resisted her request
to extend this to other union leaders (Norton-Taylor, 2010).

It is salutary to recall that Robin Cook’s attempt in 1997 to forge a ‘people’s

diplomacy’ and ‘ethical foreign policy’ which would recognise that ‘the national
interest cannot be defined only by narrow realpolitik’ was extremely short-lived
(The Guardian, 1997). For better or for worse, ‘narrow realpolitik’ remains a key
driver of foreign policy. Whether it serves the ‘national’ interest is another matter.
One shift in British politics that we might expect in future, however, is increasing
public incredulity towards the claims of political leaders, particularly those who
seek to justify taking their country going to war. Despite all the intelligence reports
and scientific surveillance techniques, no weapons of mass destruction were ever
found in Iraq; the government failed to produce the ‘smoking gun’ that it needed
to legitimise its pre-emptive action against Saddam. As the confidential leaked
Downing Street memo of July 2002 candidly acknowledged, ‘the intelligence and
the facts were being fixed around the policy’ (Simpson, 2005: 50-1). While it is
perhaps naïve and idealistic to hope for an ethical foreign policy, we should at least
aspire to an evidence-based defence and security policy – but that would mean

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 138 Cris Shore

‘declassifying’ and rendering transparent some of those more occult practices

that define the art of modern government.

References
Andrew, C. (2009) The defence of the realm: The authorized history of MI5, London:
Allen Lane.
Arlacchi, P. (1988) Mafia business: The Mafia ethic and the spirit of capitalism, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Bamford, J. (2001) Body of secrets: Anatomy of the ultra-secret national security agency,
New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday.
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a theory of practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
De Waal, A. (1994) ‘Meta-conflict and the policy of mass murder’, Anthropology in Action,
1 (3): 8–11.
Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Foucault, M. (1980) Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977,
(edited by Colin Gordon), New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1991) ‘Governmentality’, in G. Burchell et al (eds) The Foucault effect: Studies
in governmentality, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Cook, R. (1997) ‘Robin Cook’s speech on the government’s ethical foreign policy’, guardian.
co.uk, 12 May (www.guardian.co.uk/world/1997/may/12/indonesia.ethicalforeignpolicy).
Hall, B. (2004) ‘Short trades charges with top Mandarin spying allegations’, Financial
Times, 1 March, p 2.
Herzfeld, M. (1993) Cultural intimacy: Social poetics in the nation-state, London/New
York: Routledge.
MacAskill, E. (2004) ‘Did we bug Kofi Annan?’, The Guardian, 27 February 2004, p 1.
Norton-Taylor, R. (2010) ‘No 10 Downing Street bugged by MI5, claims historian’, guardian.
co.uk, 18 April (www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/apr/18/mi5-bugged-10-downing-street).
Parris, M. (2004) ‘I won’t tell if you don’t’, The Times, 28 February, p 12.
Priest, D. and Colum L. (2004) ‘Spying much denied but done a lot at un, experts say’,
Washington Post, 27 February, p 14.
Short, C. (2004) ‘How Tony Blair misled Britain in the run-up to war in Iraq’, The
Independent, 23 October, p 23.
Short, C. (2004) An honourable deception? New Labour, Iraq, and the misuse of power,
London: Free Press.
Simpson, T. (ed) (2005) DowningStreetGate: The dodgiest dossier, London: Spokesman.
Turner M. (2004) ‘Diplomats take UN bugging allegations in stride’, Financial Times, 27
February, p 3.

Cris Shore
Europe Institute
The University of Auckland, New Zealand
c.shore@auckland.ac.nz

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