Alastair Campbell on the Iraq War

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0:25Gordon:well welcome declassified club members secret squirrels to this incredibly special bonus episode on the rest is classified and you all of course know that we only bring you the best guests on the declassified club which is why we are interviewing another podcaster from our friendly goal hanger stable. Welcome, Alistair Campbell, to the Declassified Club. David, Gordon, it's lovely to be here. I still resent that you said I was the lookalike to Mr. Pregosian. I am far better looking. I have more hair. You're alive. You're still alive. I've not been dropped out of a window in an airplane yet. Didn't leave a mercenary mutiny.

1:13No, no, but anyway.

1:15David:Okay, I'm glad you've forgiven us enough, Alistair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually thought it was an interesting observation. We haven't got Alistair on from our sister politics podcast to talk about Prigozian. We've got him here because, as listeners will know, we've started our big series on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. And we wanted to speak to a man who was quite literally in the room where it happened as Director of Communications for then Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was present at some of those key transatlantic moments that we talk about, including talking to President Bush, Dick Cheney, other characters, including British spies.

1:50David:We know this isn't necessarily your favourite subject to talk about, Alistair, so thanks for coming on. Pleasure. It's a pleasure. It's interesting talking about Iraq now, because for so many years, it was so politically heated, wasn't it? And it was hard to talk about it with any distance. Got a bit more distance now. But it's also reflected through the lens of recent events. And at the moment, we've got a US president starting a war in the Middle East, but this time without British support, without even bothering to make the case to his own public, let alone the United Nations, as happened back then.

2:20David:Yet still, you can feel the shadow of Iraq hanging over British politics, particularly as well? I mean, do you see it that way, still casting this long shadow? I think it does cast a long shadow. I mean, back when the Iraq war happened, I think you're right in saying we didn't have social media, but there's not a single day that within my social media feed, there isn't something usually of an abusive nature related to Iraq, related to the weapons of mass destruction dossier, related to David Kelly's death and all the things that happened during that period. But I think if you take it to the Iran context, one of the things we talked about in the rest of his politics recently was that when Trump and Netanyahu launched the attack on Iran, and immediately so many of the countries across the Gulf and the Middle East were brought into it in some way or another, Interestingly, Iraq, pretty deliberately, I think, and quite strategically, was not brought in.

3:23In fact, one of the risks, I think, as the thing developed and went on, was that Iraq might be brought into it more deeply. And I think that, look, even your listeners are probably not necessarily going to be convinced by anything I say that regardless of how much bad was done on the way, Iraq did work itself to a better place. Your podcast essentially is about the intelligence world. And I understand why people still want to pour over it and go over it because it was a very consequential thing. And it was a very, very consequential war, the consequences of which were at best complicated, confusing, and difficult sometimes to explain.

4:08Gordon:I do think that it's probably unfair to have a conversation about Iraq, especially given now that we're 23 years in the future without talking about the context in particular around September 11, 2001. Tony Blair is reelected in June of 2001. He's maybe fair to say at the height of his powers. But I think, Alistair, you're around the time of 9-11 actually thinking of leaving Downing Street. And I'm just kind of curious if you could kind of set up a bit of your story and what's going on in your mind at that time, but also more broadly, how 9-11 and the aftermath factors into the thinking around Iraq.

4:46I mean, the contest, if you go back, as you say, recently elected and reelected. So we had the 97 win. There was another big win in 2001. I bet none of your listeners and viewers will remember that the slogan in the 2001 election campaign was schools and hospitals first. And the reason for that was that in term one, we'd spent so much time on Kosovo, so much time on Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. but it's not the part of the United Kingdom that most voters in Great Britain are thinking about the whole time. So there's an element of Tony Blair's never here. He's always in Northern Ireland, or he's in Kosovo, or he's in America, or he's traveling around the world.

5:26We were rebuilding relations with the European Union, which had been pretty badly damaged by the latter years of the Conservatives. And so the reason we had the slogan, schools and hospitals first, it was a very deliberate message to say, okay, first term, there's a lot of stuff you didn't necessarily want us to be doing. But second term, this is where we're really getting down to the things you really care about. And that was the plan. And then, of course, 9-11, the plan changed. And the plan changed because it was thereafter impossible not to understand that if you're the leader of one of the most important countries in the world, which the United Kingdom is, then your prime minister has got to be focused on this big time and the day itself was I'm sure everybody says this but it was like it just was one of those moments where you felt the world changing we were in Brighton in fact just to underline the domestic nature of the policy debate at the time the news that morning on Gordon's old employee the BBC the news was without doubt leading on the fact that Tony Blair was walking into the lion's den of the TUC, the Trades Union Congress, where he's going to be explaining why I need to go faster and further on modernization of public services.

6:42Okay. And it was going to be a tough day. And we were working on Tony's speech in a hotel in Brighton. We were sitting in a room not dissimilar to the one that I'm in now. I'm in a hotel room in Belgrade. We were in a hotel room in Brighton. and my number two godrick smith came in and he said listen you need to turn on the tv i said why well you know we're busy we're doing this you know this is no something really big happening new york so we turned on the tv and we saw what happened the first tower and here's the thing don't ask me why there is a logic that with two towers coming down you know you've got to get back to London but with one tower coming down we thought right find out what this is about find out what's going on but meanwhile we've got to finish this speech we get back to the speech five ten minutes later Godric comes back in he says you need to turn the tv on again the second tower's gone down and and we did we just showed right this is now something cataclysmic is going on so we went back to London in fact it's the only time I think Gordon that Tony ever got a standing ovation at the TUC when he went to say he couldn't stay he's got to go back to London and everything changed.

7:52I remember on the train, you'll love this story, David, because you Americans, you do everything so much bigger than we do. Our police had worked out the best and quickest way to get back to London was by train.

8:04Gordon:Would never happen in the United States of America. It's almost unthinkable. Jeff McAllister, an American journalist working out of London, he had got the same train. He was in Brighton to cover the conference. He worked out what was going on he could not believe he got on the carriage and there we were you know tony blair sitting in the corner but as we were getting the train to london tony i'll never ever forget this tony had a pad a lined pad and a pen and he just we were chatting away we had somebody listening to radio five in the background we had somebody else talking to different people on different parts of the operation and i was just sitting down with tony he wrote down a list of all the things we needed to address when we got back to the office and i can't remember the full list but i think i I published the whole list in the extended volumes of our diaries.

8:50But what was interesting about it was just the scale of things that, you know, meetings that day, my diary in the future, when do we speak to Bush? Do I do a press conference? When do we call parliament? But one of them, which relates to your series, was he had a thing there that said, on the lines of rogue state weapons of mass destruction, on that first, the first sort of deep think that we were doing on it. So look, it was an extraordinary day.

9:16David:It really was. I mean the diaries are really I recently re-read them and they are extraordinary your diaries because you get a sense of what it was like at the time and then you suddenly get a Burnley Crystal Palace football result in the middle of Did we win? Did we win? I can't remember but in the middle of like some mad international crisis and then you get the football result

9:33Gordon:Burnley beat Crystal Palace 1-0 by the way

9:36David:1-0 What is this 1-0?

9:39Gordon:I'm not so good on soccer Alistair it's one of my moral failings

9:42David:Well David it's 1-0 It's interesting I was looking back And there was one note on the diary, because immediately this issue of how he relates to President Bush becomes like central issue for him. Friday, September the 14th, you note he has a call with President Bush. Afterwards, TB, Tony Blair, seemed a bit alarmed. My God, fasten your seatbelts, he said. People would understand Afghanistan, but if we went for Afghanistan and Iraq together, it would be absolute madness. And TB, Tony Blair says, my job is to steer them in a sensible path. I mean, that seems to, in a way, encapsulate a lot of his thinking, doesn't it, in that period?

10:18David:That it's America is this kind of angry, wounded, massive beast. And Tony Blair sees his role as to guide them in some way. Is that fair? I don't know about guide. Look, on that list, as I said earlier, you know, a lot of it was about what the United States would do. And I think in part because there were characters like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and Cheney and the neocons. and I never was quite sure how much George W. Bush himself, where his actual views were. I was never clear whether he was in exactly the same camp. But Tony's position essentially was, look, they are going to be, I can't remember if it was the same day, but there was a day, it was just, look, this is kind of like Pearl Harbor and they're going to feel, one, they have to do something and two, there will be pressures to do a lot and some of it might not be very wise.

11:10And he felt the best way to get himself into a position where he might be able, not to be a guide, but at least to be part of the discussion, at least for them to want to think, I wonder what Tony Blair will think, I wonder what the Brits would say about this. He wanted that to be part of our strategy from the word go. And that's why he was so hard over in terms of the support. Later on, when we get to the letters, the private notes that came out during the public inquiry, you know when he said you know i'll be with you whatever um that was that was the message very very publicly partly as a way to say you know we want to be part of this discussion and and to be fair to george w bush i think he wanted tony to be part of the discussion anyway but i think they did develop a pretty solid and sensible relationship that tony was part of discussions the whole time including up to the point I think I say in the diary it was one of the most extraordinary meetings I ever attended was when Tony was kind of trying to get the Americans to to understand the importance of the role of the UN at least to give it a go to go down the United Nations route and we were at Camp David in a meeting where it was really weird you got the president of the United States there you know we know that the UK is the junior partner in that relationship but he's kind of using Tony to try to persuade Dick Cheney that this isn't a crazy idea.

12:34Is that George W. Bush thinking, well, Dick Cheney's less likely to take it from me because we argue about this stuff the whole time? And it really was an extraordinary veto.

12:43Gordon:Alistair, one of the things that I think is hard for people to wrap their heads around now looking back 25 years on 9-11 and 23 years on Iraq is the note that Blair made as you're on the train linking in some way the response to 9-11 to rogue states and WMD. There's a lens where you look back and say, 9-11 was done by Al-Qaeda. They had sanctuary in Afghanistan. Why is Iraq even in this conversation? Why are we talking about WMD and rogue states? Where I would agree with people who listened to what I said earlier and think, why are they doing that? Look, I don't know what was in his head as he was writing it, but it wasn't Iraq necessarily.

13:24I think we will absolutely agree with you in relation to Afghanistan, that once it became clear, and people seemed to think right from the word go, all the intelligence around the world, people were saying that the only people who could do this are the Bin Laden crew. And it's almost certainly that, okay? Once that was established and the links with Afghanistan was established, and then the ultimatum given, it was pretty obvious where that was going to head. Now, we were also aware that there were people who were saying from word go, some of the neocons who were basically saying, well, look, if it is going to be Afghanistan, then, you know, maybe this is an opportunity in Iraq as well.

14:00Okay, now we were not part of that. What he meant by that was that if this organization and the people who are backing them have the ability to do what they have just done and to carry it out in the way that they have done, it shows one, their sophistication, two, their ability to get around a lot of the systems that we thought we'd put in place to prevent it. But three, their absolute stop at nothingness in terms of attitude to the damage that they might want to do. The ultimate of which would be if they managed to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction that were already in the hands of a rogue state.

14:42That was the thinking that went for that line in his note. And bear in mind, David, I wouldn't have an actual memory of that note unless I'd written about it in my diary at the time. So I don't even know if we talked about that at the time, but I'm looking back and thinking that is the context that I suspect he was putting on the page at the time.