155. The Road to Iraq: How 9/11 Changed Everything (Ep 3)

16:34Gordon:Forgive the stupid question, but this really is important. Why Iraq?

16:42David:I think it's worth running through some of the different theories. And I think the truth is there are lots of reasons for different people which all coincide. So I think one which we've touched on is this sense of unfinished business, that some of the key players were involved in Gulf War I, they regret not finishing the job in Gulf War I, and leaving Saddam Hussein in place, and they want to finish it. And I think for President George W. Bush, there is also a slight psychodrama. I think people are perhaps right in thinking this, that it's hard to speak for someone's own mind, but - But do it anyway, Gordon.

17:20David:Do it anyway. Let's do it anyway. The son finishing the job his father didn't do. It's to some extent, I'm going to complete what my father didn't do, which is get rid of this bad man. So it's showing I'm my own man and I can even do something he didn't do. There's also mixed in with this,

17:37Gordon:but distinct, the neocon worldview. And the idea here is let's transform the Middle East, starting with Iraq. Iraq are the big boys on the block. The Iraqis are antagonistic toward our friends in the region. So, let's take Saddam out and use it as an almost domino effect to spread more open societies, democracy, and freedom, and protect our friends in the Middle East. Yeah. That's kind of the Wolfowitz view of the world and Iraq.

18:09David:Which is a kind of weird mix of idealistic, the idea you really can spread democracy and everyone will welcome you, you know, and you can create democracy and freedom, which at the time people believed. And it's harder to understand that now, but that was a view, along with a very hawkish view, which is you do this at the barrel of a gun. You do it through force. So I think that's definitely another view. Then you get another one, which I think is maybe one which Cheney and Rumsfeld are less if you like neocons, but they are more people who want to restore American deterrence post 9-11. I think there is this sense which America has been hit really badly on 9-11, and they just want to hit back to some extent.

18:54David:It sounds weird, but I think Afghanistan wasn't big enough to do to show that America was back and capable of taking on its enemies. It was almost too small. Whereas I think taking down Iraq, that is a message, which is don't mess with us because we're going to go after our enemies.

19:13Gordon:There's also this other idea which Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda.

19:17David:Yeah.

19:18Gordon:Which didn't turn out so well in retrospect. That we should say is total nonsense. But there was a lot of pressure on the CIA to find a link. And I think this gets back to, and maybe this is a bit of a mix of a number of these different theories. It seems like there was a reflection inside the administration that we had been hit by this terrorist group. And terrorism was a scourge. Terrorism was going to be a constant threat and risk. We're going to keep getting hit by terrorist groups. All of this is emanating in the Middle East. We have to rework the Middle East so that we don't get hit by these groups.

19:55Gordon:And the way to rework the Middle East is to take the biggest, baddest guy down and put something new in his place. And it's great if you're trying to justify a conflict with Saddam. It would be ideal if there actually were direct links between Saddam and the people who had just attacked America on 9-11.

20:13David:Yeah. In fact, most of the hijackers, the majority are Saudi citizens. But of course, Saudi is US allies, so no one wants to point to that. So they are looking for some way of linking Iraq to the attack. And there was this claim that maybe the leader of the hijackers, Muhammad Atta, had met an Iraqi official in Prague, but there's nothing to it. The Brits push back on this. I mean, Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 at the time, who we're going to be talking to on bonus episode, is reported to have called it bollocks, which is a British phrase for - Thank you.

20:44Gordon:I didn't know. It sounded like gibberish to me, Gordon. Thanks for translating.

20:47David:For not true. I mean, my favorite story is that a Greek woman turns up claiming to have been Saddam's lover, and that in the 80s, she said she'd seen a tall bearded man at one of the palaces. And when she'd asked Saddam's son, the son had said, that's Osama bin Laden. And it turns out she was being pushed around by Ahmed Chalabi's exile group, the INC. Classic example of trying to find someone who can support a theory. But we can dismiss the Al-Qaeda link pretty quickly. But the WMD issue is going to be the one, isn't it? Because I think that's what's so interesting. You haven't got a direct link to 9-11, as in to al-Qaeda and the attacks.

21:34David:And so what you get is this idea that it's the fear of weapons of mass destruction getting into the hands of terrorists like al-Qaeda that is one way of justifying going after Iraq because it's presumed to be developing these weapons of mass destruction and is a nasty regime. So it's a way of linking, isn't it, 9-11 terrorists and Iraq through this nexus of WMD.

22:02Gordon:And there's an appetite among many in the administration, in particular someone like Cheney, for dealing with really high impact risks that also might be low probability. Yeah. There's a willingness and a desire to use military force to, in their view, eliminate these risks. Because even if they're not likely to happen, even if it's not likely that Saddam would peddle WMD to terrorist groups, if there's a 1 % chance of doing it, well, then you've got to go solve the problem. That's the post-9-11.

22:37David:That's the new mindset.

22:38Gordon:Yeah, exactly.

22:38David:That's the new mindset. And you do get things like you get anthrax appearing in the post in the US after 9-11. It doesn't turn out to be Iraq, even though people for a few days think, well, maybe it's the Iraqis. Maybe they posted this anthrax to senators and media folk. But it's part of that kind of wild fear post 9-11 about what could happen. And as Kabul falls in Afghanistan, this intelligence that bin Laden might have met with former members of Pakistan's nuclear program. You've got intelligence about AQ Khan coming in, selling nuclear technology to other states. So it's part of this mix of fears about WND at the time.

23:17David:The issue is not that Saddam is more of a threat in a sense, but the tolerance, as you put it, that tolerance for any risk has changed in Washington.

23:25Gordon:You're right. And Saddam's weapons programs were in reality, no more of a threat after 9-11 than they had been before. And in fact, spoiler alert, Saddam had not reconstituted these programs, but the world has entirely changed. And really importantly, Saddam doesn't appreciate this in the least, we should say. Now, Mike Murrell, President Bush's PDB, President's Daily Brief, briefer on 9-11 and was with Bush on 9-11, by the time we get into 2002-2003, has become one of the top three analysts in the Directorate of Intelligence at CIA. Morell is quoted by Steve Cole in his book, The Achilles Trap, as saying, quote, The president's thinking on Iraq was motivated by the soul-crushing impact of 9-11 and the legitimate fear that as bad as 9-11 had been, things could be much worse.

24:23Gordon:If Saddam got it into his head to either use his weapons of mass destruction as a terrorist tool against the West or provide those weapons to an international terrorist group. These dire scenarios were unlikely, US intelligence analysts believed, yet Bush concluded that they were risks he could not ignore.

24:40David:There is a logical fallacy to this, which is why would Saddam, even if he had the WMD, give them to al-Qaeda? And in reality, Saddam, like lots of Arab leaders, hated al-Qaeda. He fears the Islamists. They're not his friends, are they? I mean, they are actually enemies because al-Qaeda bin Laden hates these regimes which are secular, which are Arab nationalists. You know, he wants a different type of regime, doesn't he? So, there is a bit of this which just doesn't actually make sense.

25:16Gordon:It's hard to put yourself back in the mindset of the American government in the immediate period after 9-11. It was really a paranoid, panicked time. And it was very, very difficult to separate real threats from stuff that was just totally, totally blown up. But what about Saddam? What is Saddam doing during this period?

25:40David:He doesn't seem to be that worried. And it goes back to something we've talked about before, he doesn't really understand America. He doesn't know that much about it.

25:49Gordon:I suppose he didn't have anything to do with 9-11. So he probably thinks, they know that and I'm good.

25:56David:I didn't do this. Yeah, the all-powerful CIA knows I didn't do it. So what's the problem? He doesn't get, I think the fact that 9-11 has changed America, his main focus, David, and you'll appreciate this, his main focus is changing career to some extent, to being a novelist, something you and Saddam have in common, which is a desire to tell stories. And by the way, we should say for

26:20Gordon:people who aren't familiar with Saddam Hussein, Gordon is not joking. Saddam Hussein has become a novelist in this period. And it is, you're right, I didn't appreciate until we started digging into the series how similar my life experience is to Saddam Hussein, because we both left government service to become novelists. So he and I share that bond. He doesn't leave government service. I mean, that's... I know, I exaggerated it.

26:50David:You exaggerate. But he actually, people do say he was devoting more of his time. Like, he was stepping away from running the country day to day because he wants to write his novelist. We talked a lot about poets because we've had a lot of poets, haven't we? Bin Laden was a poet. But for Saddam, it was novels. And his romance novel, which I'm sure has been a big influence on you, Zabiba and the King, had just been published in 2000, all about a common girl who falls for a lonely king in medieval Tikrit. I think it's supposed to be some kind of allegory for Iraq, isn't it?

27:24Gordon:i i kind of think i'm not quite sure it is it's set in ancient babylon okay it is about a married king who falls in love with a young beautiful and wise woman named zabiba i would describe it as a polemical allegory in which zabiba is a rock and the king is saddam i would it is also not a very well hidden or subtle allegory this is it's very clear that the king is saddam and zabiba is the nation of Iraq. And through this story, it is ostensibly a love story, but I would describe the romance in this novel as being rather dull. It's certainly no 50 shades of gray. And throughout this story, the king, Hagen-Azadam, learns how to be a better ruler.

28:11Gordon:And so, there are a lot of lessons that Zabiba imparts on the king about how to run the country in a wise fashion. Zabiba has a brutal husband who is quite obviously a stand-in for the United States of America in the story. And Zabiba and the King has published anonymously, but everybody in Iraq knows exactly who the writer was. I think the CIA believed that it was ghostwritten, but it's not. He really wrote it. He meticulously wrote it by hand, and then he would deliver a few pages at a time to his press secretary for copy editing, a task that if I were the press secretary, I would have done with extreme trepidation.

28:56David:Yeah, I think so. It sells a million copies, which, you know, I mean, it maybe helps if you're president, but I think that's like, that's McCloskey level sales. That was pretty good. And being turned into a play around this time of 9-11, a 20-part TV series. A 20-part TV series? So that's Saddam. So he's like only kind of half paying attention to this stuff.

29:18Gordon:my view of saddam hussein at the time yeah was that you had this madman military dictator who was totally in control of the country and spending all of his time basically cooking wmd and you know plotting vicious you know vicious political intrigue just to emphasize the reality of saddam hussein's life at the same time as 9-11 is that he is spending most of his days writing novels. He's obviously still very paranoid, clearly. And deeply afraid of assassination plots, and he is still in control of Iraq. He is spending most of his time writing novels.

29:59David:Yeah.

29:59Gordon:In the run-up to the war.

30:01David:It's nuts. Yeah, it is nuts. But I guess the question is, you've got all these different motives, but how are you going to justify it? because it's no good saying to the public, oh, we just, you know, unfinished business, you know, all these things. It's not 2026. You can't go attack a country with...

30:18Gordon:Yeah, imagine. There was a time... There was a time when you needed a reason.

30:22David:Unbelievable. And you needed one reason and to stick to it rather than like five different reasons which you put out every day. And so the answer, I guess, is that they settle on is weapons of mass destruction. I think this is also really interesting because just after the war, Paul Wolfowitz, does an interview with Vanity Fair. And he says, for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, weapons of mass destruction. I just think it's such an interesting insight. If we're going to pick one to make the case for, to the public, about why to get rid of Saddam, we're going to pick weapons of mass destruction.

31:02Gordon:I suppose that makes sense, given the different personalities we talked about, the different reasons to potentially take down Saddam. You'd have people who wanted to do it purely based off of ideology around the use of military force and the promotion of democracy and freedom. And then you have other people who maybe do think that Saddam's connected to 9-11 and you have others who see Saddam as kind of a stain because he was left in power after the 91 war. So, you have a bunch of different competing reasons for it, but they could probably all agree that Saddam still has weapons of mass destruction and therefore represents a significant threat to the US and to our partners in the region.

31:44Gordon:And there you go, lowest common denominator.

31:46David:Yeah. And also, if you're making it to the public, I think you can link it to terrorism. You can link it to this idea, WMD might get into the hands of the terrorists and threaten another worse 9-11, which is a kind of powerful argument, even though, as we said, there's a fallacy to it. You've got the advantage that you think, you've got evidence for it. Think, we'll come back to that, obviously. And also, and I think this is important, it's what your allies want, particularly the UK, because for them, focusing on weapons of mass destruction has a real advantage because you can say this is all about enforcing UN resolutions to say he must disarm.

32:29Gordon:Well, I think that's a good spot to take a break. And when we come back, we'll see how the UK and Prime Minister Tony Blair in particular become not just partners in the war, but play an outsized role in the intelligence justification for the conflict.

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35:59Gordon:Well, welcome back. Gordon Carrera has succeeded in taking us down a UK detour in this otherwise apple pie Americana story about a failed war in Iraq.

36:12David:Well, I'm afraid in this story, the two countries are bound tightly together. Unlike in the current epic fury of Iran, these were different times. And I think that's what's so interesting about this story as well, is Tony Blair and British intelligence play such an important role in this conflict and in the justification for the conflict and this question of WMD. So let's do Tony Blair. He's been first elected in 1997, re-elected June 2001, so just before 9-11. And he's arguably at the peak of his powers. Abroad, it's the era of liberal interventionism. Blair has been quite successful in this.

36:53David:And notably, he pushed Bill Clinton to intervene in the Balkans over Kosovo. And that ends up being a successful intervention. And Blair, I think, feels he guided the Americans. And this is his model. So you've got this new president, George W. Bush, who's less experienced, and he's also desperate to do something after 9-11. So you can see for Tony Blair, post 9-11, this is his moment on the world stage. He enjoyed being, in his words, a big player. And he tells his foreign secretary, Jack Straw, my job is to steer them, the US, in a sensible path. I think it's a really interesting phrase, isn't it?

37:29David:He sees his role as guiding this new administration.

37:32Gordon:Are they overselling UK influence here? We talked about this in the last episode where Maggie Thatcher is bucking up H.W. Bush and enforcing. It's a good question. I mean, yeah. The first Gulf War. Yeah.

37:45David:Yeah. And I think this period is one of the peaks of British influence. Now, I still agree with you. It still may be oversold at certain points. But I think Blair really does have some influence in Washington at this point. We talked about the cast list in Washington of Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld. You could almost put Blair in the mix there as one of those players in Washington who has influence in his own way. Yeah. Yeah. It's also, I mean, Blair does have some of the same nightmares as those in Washington about terrorists and weapons of mass destruction joining with catastrophic consequences. And he also, his critics say he becomes more messianic over time, but he does have these big ideas that there is a big struggle in the world between different forces and there's a need to modernize the Middle East.

38:35David:And he is coming from a liberal interventionist world, but in an interesting way, It does overlap, you can see, with the neocom world. Yeah. And by late 2001, it is becoming clear to him, everyone in London, that the US is talking about Iraq. Now, another big character in our story here is the chief of MI6, Richard Dearlove. Worth setting him up briefly, he's a veteran operational officer. So he's not like a kind of securocrat or a staffer. He's been a spy. Also, a deep Atlanticist. You know, he'd done some schooling in the US. He'd been head of station in Washington. Special relationship is important to him like Blair.

39:11David:1999, he's head of the Secret Service. So he's C, chief of MI6, which is also important because, you know, I think maybe like the CIA, they hadn't had the easiest decade in the 90s. There's a bit of insecurity, isn't there, in the spy world in that post-Cold War period.

39:27Gordon:The CIA in the 90s lost just about 25 % of its workforce. They just stopped hiring. And so, you know, a bunch of people had tritted out and then roughly a similar amount of budget. Yeah. So you had security services that I think were casting around for a new raison d 'etre after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

39:51David:Yeah. I mean, the famous joke, wasn't it, that when a plane crashed into the, like a small plane near the White House, the joke was that it was the CIA director, James Walsey, trying to get a meeting with President Clinton. because it was so he couldn't, you know, it was the only way he could try and get to see him. And I think there was a bit where like, I think that is part of our story that the intelligence agencies in the 90s had struggled to make themselves appear relevant to their customers, the prime minister and the president. And now suddenly after 9-11, they're important.

40:21Gordon:And Blair and Bush are close, aren't they? And speak regularly in this period. There's a phone call between the two on December the 3rd of 2001 in which blair says that he's open to regime change in iraq but that it would require quote an extremely clever plan that sounds about right it will have to be clever to get rid of saddam the novelist justify it yeah and blair is saying if we're going to do it we need to build

40:51David:support domestically and internationally and interesting on that call he says to bush richard dear love head of mi6 is coming over two days later dear love is in the white house you know, for talks with Bush's top team. And Dear Love is kind of acting, even though he's MI6 chief, as almost a kind of back-channel envoy from the Prime Minister to Washington, communicating, but also, I think, reporting back to London, here's what's really going on in Washington. Here's what the White House are thinking. And Dear Love said to me years later, he said, I was probably the first to say to the Prime Minister, whether you like it or not, get your ducks in a row because it looks like as though they're building up to an invasion.

41:32David:Keep close if you want any influence. You can see the direction of travel. And it's interesting because, you know, Dear Love cultivates his relationship with CIA officers, including George Tenet.

41:43Gordon:It's an interesting case study in how the intelligence relationship becomes a conduit to influence policy on both sides of the Atlantic. And I think it's not something that either intelligence agency would say out loud or directly, but I think both countries see that relationship because it's so intimate and there's so much shared trust between the two sides that it's actually a really effective way if you get the personalities right and there's connection between the chief or it goes way down to pretty mid-levels of the organizations where you can have really close relationships. If you get that right, it's a way to influence how the other side thinks about the world and the choices that they make.

42:26David:Yeah. And I think there was a joke in Washington, which is, Tenet was Dear Love's best recruitment, one CIA officer said. So the UK is trying to work out what's going on. At one point, they think a big meeting in the summer is cancelled because the Americans are so busy and the Brits are like, no, no, no, we really want to come out. So they agree that a quick meeting takes place, if it's in Washington over the weekend. Dear Love approaches Tennant and asks to speak offline, and they talk for close to two hours, the two intelligence chiefs. Now, this is according to George Tennant's memoir, Dear Love comes away with a clear perception that the US administration was determined to transform the Middle East, starting with Iraq.

43:10David:Tennant says that Dear Love spoke to Cheney's team and believed that the crowd around the vice president was playing fast and loose with the evidence. So that is Tennant's recollection of what Dearlove is. Dearlove comes back straight from that meeting to Downing Street because there's a big meeting of Britain's top national security team, July 23rd. Very interesting because it's a very secret meeting, but we know about it because what's called the Downing Street memo is later leaked, which is a draft memo of this meeting. So we have this really fascinating moment where you can see what's going on in London.

43:44David:And the meeting starts with the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee laying out the state of Saddam's regime. Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, also a character in our story, John Scarlett, former MI6 officer, later to be MI6 chief. Scarlett, this meeting says, Saddam's regime is tough based on fear. Doesn't mention he's mainly writing novels. Says the only way of overthrowing it would be through massive military action. Dear Love stands up next and reports back on his trip in Washington. Now, in the draft minutes of the meeting, he's quoted as saying that there had been a perceptible shift in attitude.

44:23David:Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. very interesting statement which i should say dear love will later dispute that that's what he meant and he will have those minutes corrected but that's what goes in the draft minutes and

44:51Gordon:in any case i don't think it's accurate as we'll see later in any case the brits i think it's fair to say gordon dislike the idea of a massive war being fought by the americans without being involved at this point in time. Yeah. Again, contrast to today. Contrast to today. And the chief of the defense staff tells Blair later that there would be a real problem with this army if they were not properly involved in the American war.

45:21David:Then the military did not like the idea that the US could do a big land invasion and us not being alongside them. It's kind of like, that is what we are there for and that's what we do. We plug in alongside them. So it's interesting. The military, and this is often overlooked, were really keen on not having the Americans do this alone. The most cautious voice was the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who says the case was thin against Saddam. He says Saddam's WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran. It's really interesting, isn't it? I mean, he's right. He's right. He's right.

46:00David:But the problem is that those are not the countries that the US have decided to go for first. Which is so fascinating because in 2000, this is 2002,

46:11Gordon:so I mean essentially concurrently with this, this is the first glimmers that the world has gotten of the enrichment facility at Natanz in Iran. Yeah. And obviously the US, no friend of Iran at this time. So it does beg this interesting question of why not focus on Iran? Where you actually have very recent...

46:33David:hard evidence of - Of a secret centrifuge plant has just been rid of.

46:36Gordon:Of a secret centrifuge plant. Which you don't have with Iraq.

46:39David:But this exactly goes, I think, to the key point, which is the reasons were not fundamentally WMD. Because the reasons were they want to get rid of Saddam for all the other reasons, grudges, history. They think it's maybe a bit easier than Iran. And so they picked Iraq as the place, and then they've decided on WMD as the justification for it. And it is interesting because even in this meeting, you sense in Downing Street, the UK needs that legal rationale of why to be involved in regime change. And the advantage with Iraq is you can use non-compliance with the UN resolutions from the 1990s as a rationale for war.

47:22David:And this is why the Brits are also quite keen on pushing the argument, Let's make this about regime change. Regime change in itself is not a legal or a political justification for the war, which works for the UK. Whereas saying that Iraq is in defiance of UN resolutions is something you can build a case around legally, internationally, and domestically. While there are voices in the UK and some in the US who say, we can make a moral case for getting rid of Saddam. We should focus on the moral case, which is he's a murderous tyrant who's used chemical weapons against his own people in Hulabja. That doesn't get you over the line in terms of making a case.

48:04David:Again, for the UK, WMD is the most useful justification. Let's assume we're taking part, but there's a lot more work that needs to be done. And let's focus on this as the reason. It's interesting, the cabinet secretary at the time is surprised at how forward-leaning Blair is and says, there's a gleam in his eye, which worries me.

48:24Gordon:And five days after the Downing Street meeting, presumably with that mad gleam still in his eye, Tony Blair sends a personal note to Bush, never designed to be public. And in fact, the UK government will fight for years to stop it being made public. But it gives, I think, a really full sense of his thinking and his strategy. And actually Blair shows the note to some of his closest advisors who tell him the language is too open-ended and he should change it. But I guess like all good writers, when someone tells you to edit something down, you just ignore it, you know, like Sadab would have done with his copy editor who dared touch his novels.

49:03Gordon:And so Blair doesn't change any of the language and he pens this note. And the opening line is quite famous now.

49:11David:It says from Tony Blair, I will be with you, whatever. I mean, it's so interesting. Wow. That is the opening line of this note. Now, Blair, we should say, is quite defensive about this note. Now, I've interviewed Tony Blair, and I've asked him specifically about that language and talked to him about it. And he is quite defensive about it. He says people are over-interpreting it. You have to see it in the context of this being a personal note about the personal relationship. and he says, look at the rest of the note, because the rest of the note, and he's right about this, is all the things that need to be done.

49:45David:It goes, here are all the difficulties, we need planning, this isn't going to be as easy as Kosovo, it's not going to be as easy as Afghanistan, it's the right thing to do, but we need to do this, we need to do that. Basically, he's saying, I'll be with you, whatever, but here are all the potential problems in regime change, including post-war planning, that we need to think about if we're going to do it. And so Blair is kind of making the case that we need a coalition, we need to go through the United Nations, we need deadlines, we need inspectors. But he is fundamentally saying, I'll be with you, whatever.

50:21Well, he's not linking UK support for the war to Bush taking seriously or taking steps

50:31Gordon:on any of the other things he's listing out, right? He's saying, we will be with you. Here's some things you need to think about. We will be with you if you do these things.

50:40David:Yeah.

50:40Gordon:Was there a world where the UK wouldn't have gone with the US into Iraq at this time? Like, is that an actual counterfactual or what? It is.

50:51David:There are historical parallels, for instance, when Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the 60s decides not to go into Vietnam with the Americans, despite massive pressure. And today, Keir Starmer, despite pressure, did not even let UK bases be used for offensive operations in Iran. But I guess you're back here to this post-911 era.

51:15Gordon:Yeah, it's 2002.

51:16David:It's a very different time. And America has been hit. Blair is at the peak of his powers and thinks he's got influence. And his strategy is, you know, I can influence the US. They're going to do this anyway. I can influence them onto a better path. He is making the case that we need to go through an international process. And it's interesting in this note, he also says, we need to make the case. If we recapitulate all the WMD evidence, add his attempts to secure nuclear capability, and as seems possible, add on an al-Qaeda link, I think it will be hugely persuasive over here. plus, of course, the abhorrent nature of the regime.

51:52David:It's relevant because there's actually a big debate going on in Washington over the summer about how to go about regime change.

51:59Gordon:Yeah, this is the summer of 2002. And there are a lot of different voices in the administration who have different views on Iraq and why it should be done and even how it should be done. I mean, you have hawks like Cheney who absolutely do not want to go down the UN route. They don't see a need for it. The US can just act unilaterally and let's get on with the war. Secretary of State Colin Powell wants to go down the UN route. He and the UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw are meeting and working together to try and persuade their leadership to go through the UN. So we have this jockeying over how the case for war is made that's continuing throughout the summer of 2002.

52:39Yeah.

52:40David:And Blair is going out to meet Bush in Camp David in early September for a final decision about how the plan is going to unfold. And it's interesting. Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair's Director of Communications at the time, keeps a diary. September the 1st, 2002, he writes, obviously, the best thing to do would be to avoid war, get the UN inspectors in and the weapons out. But it was obvious that the US had to be managed into a better position. So it's interesting. You get a sense there that they're trying to manage the US. So it's that thing about Blair. It's about influence. So Blair goes out to see President Bush at Camp David early September.

53:21David:Lots of people think Blair is already committed to war earlier in the year. But I think this is the real moment because President Bush looks Tony Blair in the eye. They have a talk. Bush says, we have to deal with Saddam. Bush recalls he was probing and pushing Blair, making clear this process may well end up in war. Blair says, I'm with you, looking him in the eye. Bush then sees Alistair Campbell, who, as I said, we have on a bonus episode afterwards. And President Bush says to Alastair Campbell, your man has got cojones. Have I said that right?

54:01Gordon:You've largely pronounced it correctly. That's right. And we should say what those are. Balls in Spanish or in Texan. In Texan rancher, in Texan rancher, it also translates as balls. And Bush will call it the cojones meeting afterward. And Bush has also agreed, though, to go to the UN. And in so doing, has helped make it easier for Tony Blair to back him.

54:31David:Yeah. So this is effectively what they've agreed. Blair has said, I'm with you. And Bush has agreed, okay, I will go through the UN to get new inspections on Iraq and to get a new resolution putting pressure on Saddam. And that's the agreement they've come to, which for Tony Blair, for those around him, this is an example of UK influence because Cheney did not want this. The vice president was just like, we don't need to get bogged down in inspections in the UN. We just need to get on with this war and show American power. And if the Brits are with us, fine. And if they're not, whatever. But Blair, along with Colin Powell as a kind of ally, I think has succeeded in this policy of going through the United Nations, getting inspections, but also part of the plan is to make the public case now for regime change.

55:26David:And there's this fascinating comment from Andrew Card, who was the White House Chief of Staff. And in September, he does a New York Times interview, and he talks about how that month, so September 2002, just after this meeting between Bush and Blair, they're going to start making the case to the public and also Congress. Remember when Congress mattered. And he says, from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August. In other words, they decided you don't start the case in August. In September, we come back from a marketing point of view. That's when you introduce your new product.

56:07Gordon:And the product, of course, here is a war. The marketing strategy is going to be to use the justification of WMD. And the means by which that marketing strategy is going to be sold is the intelligence picture. And that is going to be a place where things go very badly wrong. That's right.

56:30David:So let's stop there and we'll start looking really in detail about how crazily the intelligence goes wrong and some of those specific claims about 45 minutes about nuclear weapons, about exiles in the next episodes. And a reminder, of course, you can hear those straight away if you're a declassified club member. Join at the rest is classified dot com. And people will get access to these really interesting interviews for club members with people who were in the room. So we're going to be asking Alistair Campbell about his cojones or about Tony Blair's cojones, I guess. I don't know whether he's going to answer, but we could ask him.

57:13David:as well as to Richard Dearlove. We can ask whatever we want. It's our show. I don't think we can ask whatever we want. Are you going to ask Richard Dearlove and Mike Murrell of the CIA about their cohoces? I think not. But they've got a lot to say because they were in the room as well where it happened.

57:28Gordon:So do sign up to hear those interviews. That's right. And also a reminder, we have live shows coming up on the 4th and 5th of September in London. Do get your tickets for that. Also at therestisclassified.com and we will see you next time. See you next time.