 | | | | by Brendan O'Neill |
'The whole government leaks - from the White House, State, Defence, and even the CIA and FBI - like a broken water main…' (1)
| So wrote an American journalist in October 2002, as yet another leak about US foreign policy made its way from the White House (this time) to the media. According to the UK Observer, in the run-up to the clash with Iraq, officials at the Pentagon, the State Department and the UK Ministry of Defence have been leaking 'liberally', secretly revealing everything from invasion strategies to troop numbers to postwar plans (2).
| At the same time, some in the American and British elites who are concerned about the coming conflict have been leaking info that they think undermines the case for war. In the UK, officials at the Cabinet Office leaked the news that sections of a government dossier on Saddam's regime had been plagiarised from PhD essays found on the internet. In the USA, some military officials have given anonymous interviews to the press, to voice their concern about the administration's drive to war.
| In earlier times of war, states kept sensitive information about their plans and ambitions to themselves. And internal concerns about a conflict and its consequences would have been expressed privately, if at all. Now, in the words of one US commentator, we can 'read all about it' - 'how many troops are going to do what to Iraq', and who supports it and who doesn't - in our morning papers. What's going on?
| The leaking frenzy points to deep divisions within the US and UK elites. For all Bush and Blair's talk of taking a united stance against Iraq, in their own circles there is much uncertainty about the coming war. And today - when any notion of an international mission or a coherent war aim are notable by their absence - there is little to stop such potentially damaging disagreements from going public. With little sense of what ties them together, the elite's squabbling can quickly spread from the back rooms of the Pentagon and the Cabinet Office on to the front pages of the papers.
| The planned attack on Iraq has been leaking for months. In July 2002 there was, in the words of the UK Observer, a leaking 'frenzy', as different camps in the US elite handed sensitive information to the media (3). On 4 July 2002, the New York Times was given a 'five-inch thick' dossier outlining America's plans to invade Iraq with a force of 250,000, a story which quickly took the world by storm.
| | | There is a deep divide between the political and military wings of the US elite |
| Speculation was rife about who leaked the invasion plans - and all eyes focused on the White House. This was 'cynical manipulation', said one newspaper, a sly attempt on the part of Bush and co to divert attention from plummeting public confidence in their ability to run the economy by putting their war plans into the public domain. 'It's certainly strange that the more the finance scandals approach the White House, the harder and sharper the plans for an attack on Iraq', said a spokesman for the US Democrats (4).
| It later transpired that the invasion leak came, not from an economically insecure White House, but from officials at the Pentagon itself. And not from just a Pentagon teaboy keen to make a quick buck or an anti-war splash, but from the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - from 'the top professional soldiers and planners who drew [the plan] up in the first place', as one paper described it (5). According to one report, the leak was made by 'soldiers opposed to a war the president and their civilian political masters, led by defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, want them to fight' (6).
| The July invasion report opened the leaking floodgates. On 10 July 2002, American military officials (again) leaked the claim that the USA planned to attack Iraq from Jordan. According to some reporters, the aim seemed to be to strain relations between America and Jordan before any attack on Iraq - and it appeared to have the desired effect. Jordanian officials, oblivious to America's alleged plans to use their territory as a 'launch pad', reacted to the news by rejecting 'the principle of interfering in the internal affairs of its brothers under any justification' (7).
| Also in July 2002, another report - again sourced to 'anonymous officials' - claimed that America's latest strategy was to provoke Saddam into taking action against a neighbouring state, thereby justifying US action against him (8). Again, the leak seemed to have come from the US military - from, according to foreign policy analysts, 'military commanders who believe [US] politicians are blithely talking up an operation whose potential cost in casualties for US forces they do not fully appreciate' (9).
| For all Bush's tough statements against Saddam, the July leaks revealed a deep divide between the political and military wings of the US elite - between a political administration making grand statements about 'resolving the Iraq issue' and military leaders increasingly cautious about launching an all-out invasion. Things got so bad that, in mid-July 2002, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld attempted to clamp down on leaks that he said showed a 'damaging lack of professionalism' (10).
| According to Rumsfeld (who never misses an opportunity to mix metaphors): 'If people start treating war plans like they're paper airplanes and they can fly them around this building and throw them to anybody who wants them, I think it's outrageous. It's inexcusable and they ought to be in jail.' (11) But Rumsfeld himself has been known to leak. As the New York Times put it, 'Even Mr Rumsfeld is not immune from publicly musing about sensitive plans' (12). Indeed, Rumsfeld's internal memo warning against leaking ended up being leaked, most likely by somebody in Rumsfeld's department.
| | | Defence officials use leaks to put pressure on doubters in their ranks |
| Rumsfeld's own officials have taken to leaking information about military operations inside Iraq as a way of putting pressure on some of the doubters in their ranks. In recent weeks, anonymous officials in Rumsfeld's defence department have told media contacts that the US and British Air Forces have doubled the number of patrols in the no-fly zone over southern Iraq, and have expanded their bombing campaign in an attempt to 'soften Iraq up' for a ground invasion. The leaked claims of heightened military action in southern Iraq appear to have been directed as much at anti-war ditherers in the West and at home, as they were at nobbling Saddam's regime (see War by the back door, by Brendan O'Neill).
| It is unprecedented that a state preparing for war should so publicly reveal and discuss its plans with the world. Some US military analysts - largely the traditionalists - have expressed horror at this new trend for leaking. 'I find it terrifying', says Kenneth Pollack of the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations. 'I am very uncomfortable with the level of public debate over the military strategy.' (13) According to the New York Times, it is common practice for US officials to play out their disagreements over issues like tax in public, 'but extremely rare' for them to do so over military strategy (14).
| As the New York Times says: 'For all its reputation as a taciturn crowd, the Bush administration is downright chatty when it comes to Iraq. Officials who were tight-lipped about energy strategy and homeland security have taken to analysing in detail a battle that the president insists he has not decided on. They have begun tallying up its costs before a single shot has been fired.' (15)
| It seems that, where tax, energy and even homeland security, generate the usual, everyday public spats between public officials, the planned attack on Iraq has exposed deeper fault lines in the US elite over what kind of action America should take on the international stage, and why. A war that was meant to give the Bush administration a unifying international mission - especially in the wake of the inconclusive and ever-confusing Afghan War - appears only to have brought divisions to the fore.
| In Britain, too, leaking has become commonplace. On 5 February 2003 - the day that US secretary of state Colin Powell was due to give his evidence against Saddam's regime to the UN - British intelligence officials handed a document marked 'Top Secret' to the BBC, which claimed that there 'are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network' (16). The leak was seen as an attempt to undermine any claims Powell was planning to make about a Saddam/bin Laden link, and also to challenge British ministers who were 'increasingly coming around' to the idea that Iraq and al-Qaeda are in cahoots.
| The BBC's defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan, who was given the document, described it as 'an almost unprecedented leak', and an attempt on the part of intelligence officials to launch a 'shot across the politicians' bows' (17). Gilligan claimed that throughout late January and early February 'intelligence sources have told the BBC there is growing disquiet at the way their work is being politicised to support the case for war on Iraq' (18).
| | | British intelligence officials expressed their disgruntlement through the BBC |
| On 7 February 2003, officials at the Cabinet Office, the heart of the British government, revealed that sections of a government dossier on Iraq published five days earlier had been plagiarised. Apparently, excerpts from a paper by Californian student Ibrahim al-Marashi were used in the intelligence document, as were sections of articles take from the defence journal Jane's Intelligence Review.
| Colin Powell had praised the British dossier as an example of hard evidence against Saddam, while Blair made great play of Britain's contribution to 'exposing Saddam'. Many concluded that the leak was an attempt to embarrass Blair, and to muddy his relationship with US officials. That the leak appears to have come from inside the Cabinet Office itself was, in the words of one journalist, 'astounding'.
| It isn't only faceless intelligence and Cabinet Office officials who are publicly expressing concern about Blair's drive to war - so too are some politicians and their private secretaries. Clare Short, the UK minister for overseas development, has said she will resign if Blair goes to war without a second UN resolution, while Sunday's papers revealed that 10 junior government ministers, the parliamentary private secretaries who act as assistants to ministers, were 'deeply unhappy' about potential war. So far, neither Short nor the secretaries have been asked to resign.
| From the Gulf itself, British soldiers claim that 'they are not ready for war'. Troops have complained about a lack of basic kit, poor food rations, and weapons that don't work. Sections of the British media have made the troops' worries into headline news. The Daily Mail is even offering £10 for soldiers' horror stories from British camps in the Gulf (though surely even British troops are not so hard up that they need a tenner from the Mail?).
| And as in the USA, some pro-war elements in the UK appear to be taking the leaking route as a means of expressing their seriousness about war. In early March 2003, the front page of the UK Daily Telegraph announced that 300 SAS troops were already engaged in action in different parts of Iraq, information that allegedly came from 'defence sources'.
| It is unheard of for defence officials publicly to reveal information about military action - especially action carried out by the ultra-secretive SAS. During the first Gulf War of 1991, SAS operations were very rarely discussed in public, though they may have been speculated on. It wasn't until after the war that SAS members wrote anonymous, semi-fictional accounts of what they had gotten up to in Iraq.
| | | The actions of the ultra-secretive SAS have become headline news |
| So what's behind the leaking phenomenon in Britain and the USA? Many theories abound. Some claim that American leaks are part of 'a deception plan, an aspect of psychological warfare' (19). Others argue that the leaks are an attempt to 'generate debate' and clarify issues in relation to the coming war (20). According to one report, recent leaks (from pro-war types) are an attempt to amend the damage done by earlier leaks (from concerned-about-war types). 'Political observers say the Bush administration seems determined to muddy the waters with disinformation to cover up earlier leaks', says the New York Times (21).
| No doubt there are many factors driving the leaks. From the pro-war lobby using leaks to assert its determination to those worried about war using leaks to undermine their political superiors, different sections of the British and American elites appear to be out for themselves, getting everything they can by promoting their agendas and rubbishing their opponents in surreptitious leaks to the media.
| But the leaking phenomenon points to far bigger divisions within America and Britain. The Iraq crisis has exposed the contradiction between American and British claims of unity, and the reality of disunity. US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice says that 'the [Bush] administration is united on the question of Saddam' - but the facts tell a different story. Far from uniting America around a common sense of purpose and mission, the Iraq war talk seems only to have exposed differences and brought divisions to the surface.
| In effect, sections of the American and British elites are at each other's throats over Iraq. In earlier eras, with clearer foreign policies and a more coherent sense of their role in international affairs, it would have been unthinkable for America and Britain's internal divisions to go so public. Disagreements over military tactics and aims would have been settled in private, subsumed under the wider interests of the elite and the broader war aims.
| Today, when America appears increasingly defensive about its international role and its unipolar position, there is little to rally the elite around. When US leaders have less and less sense of what ties them together, of what values and ideas they all agree on, there is little to stop their deep divisions spilling from inside the White House on to the front pages of our morning papers - spurred on by bitter, individuated members of the elite, no longer bound by any idea of a collective goal or mission.
| Even as a question mark hangs over when the war with Iraq will start, the internal wars at home look set to continue.
Brendan O'Neill is coordinating the spiked-conference Panic attack: Interrogating our obsession with risk, on Friday 9 May 2003, at the Royal Institution in London.
Read on:
spiked-issue: War on Iraq
(1) Leaks will happen - but let's not overreact in plugging them, Pat M Holt, Christian Science Monitor, 3 October 2002
(2) War clouds gather as hawks lay their plans, Jason Burke and Ed Vulliamy, Observer, 14 July 2002
(3) War clouds gather as hawks lay their plans, Jason Burke and Ed Vulliamy, Observer, 14 July 2002
(4) War clouds gather as hawks lay their plans, Jason Burke and Ed Vulliamy, Observer, 14 July 2002
(5) War clouds gather as hawks lay their plans, Jason Burke and Ed Vulliamy, Observer, 14 July 2002
(6) War clouds gather as hawks lay their plans, Jason Burke and Ed Vulliamy, Observer, 14 July 2002
(7) Jordan refuses to allow launchpad for invasion, Ewen MacAskill, Guardian, 10 July 2002
(8) America rattles Saddam's cage hoping he will lash out in anger, Rupert Cornwell, Independent, 13 July 2002
(9) America rattles Saddam's cage hoping he will lash out in anger, Rupert Cornwell, Independent, 13 July 2002
(10) US probes 'Iraq war plan' leak, BBC News, 23 July 2002
(11) For each audience, another secret plan to attack Iraq, Christopher Marquis, New York Times, 11 August 2002
(12) For each audience, another secret plan to attack Iraq, Christopher Marquis, New York Times, 11 August 2002
(13) For each audience, another secret plan to attack Iraq, Christopher Marquis, New York Times, 11 August 2002
(14) For each audience, another secret plan to attack Iraq, Christopher Marquis, New York Times, 11 August 2002
(15) For each audience, another secret plan to attack Iraq, Christopher Marquis, New York Times, 11 August 2002
(16) Leaked report rejects Iraqi al-Qaeda link, BBC News, 5 February 2003
(17) Leaked report rejects Iraqi al-Qaeda link, BBC News, 5 February 2003
(18) Leaked report rejects Iraqi al-Qaeda link, BBC News, 5 February 2003
(19) For each audience, another secret plan to attack Iraq, Christopher Marquis, New York Times, 11 August 2002
(20) For each audience, another secret plan to attack Iraq, Christopher Marquis, New York Times, 11 August 2002
(21) For each audience, another secret plan to attack Iraq, Christopher Marquis, New York Times, 11 August 2002
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