THE SCOTT INQUIRY into arms for Iraq actually did a half-way decent job.
The 95 per cent of the population who always suspected that politicians and top civil servants perpetually lie, fib, deceive, tell porkies, hoodwink, dissemble, mislead, cheat, double-cross, trick, peddle untruths, fiddle, diddle, and generally economise with the truth now know for certain.
But if the hearings weren't the whitewash that cynics expected, in many key respects they didn't go far enough. The inquiry's terms of reference were strictly limited to the questions of whether the government breached its own restrictions on arms exports to Iraq and the suppression of evidence in the Matrix Churchill trial.
The potentially explosive Thatcher connection has only been touched upon. Mark Thatcher, son of former prime minister Margaret, had extensive business dealings with Industrias Cardoen, the Chilean company that built the Iraqi arms factory that Matrix Churchill's lathes equipped.
Furthermore, arms sent to Saudi Arabia as part of the giant Al Yamamah deal signed by Margaret Thatcher in 1986, enabling Mark to glean hefty commissions as a middle man, may have been diverted to Iraq. Looking the other way? Kenneth Clarke was Defence Secretary Neither those who facilitated Iraq's arms procurement programme - the clearing bankers, the accountants and the lawyers - nor any of the major defence manufacturers - Vickers, British Aerospace/Royal Ordnance, Racal or Marconi - have even been questioned.
All we are likely to get is a handful of scapegoats, probably William Waldegrave, currently chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and Sir Nicholas Lyell, the attorney-general, who may well to be dispatched in a cabinet reshuffle even before the Scott report is published, tactfully after the end of the political conference later this year.
The remarkable story starts in October 1985, when Sir Geoffrey Howe, then foreign secretary, announced in the Commons that the government would not approve exports of 'any defence equipment which, in our view, would significantly enhance the capability of either side to prolong or exacerbate the [ran-Traq] conflict'.
These were in themselves weasel words. Alan Clark, then defence minister, described them as drawn up in 'as elastic as possible a way as the English ously drafted with the objective of flexibility?
In 1988, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered that the Kurdish town of Halabja be bombed with poison gas, killing 5,000 people. That didn't stop the then trade minister, Tony Newton, flying to Baghdad shortly afterwards to offer £340m in trade credits. The government had visions of developing the country into a major export market for This was the year that MI6 pressed for Matrix Churchill, a Coventry-based manufacturer of sophisticated computer-controlled machine tools - equipment, such as lathes, that shape metal - to be allowed to sell to Iraq, enabling the company's directors to provide intelligence on the country.
Machine tools aren't weapons as such, but they can make them. Were they thus covered by Howe's guidelines? Much of the subsequent story hangs on precisely this question.
"Flexibility"
In December 1988, three junior ministers took a secret decision to permit 'flexibility of interpretation' of the embargo, in what has since hecome known as the 'tilt' towards Iraq.
The first was Waldegrave, Eton and Oxford educated younger son of the 12th Earl of Waldegrave and brother-in-law of Marmaduke Hussey, former chair of the BBC, was then at the Foreign Office.
The second was Clark, then trade minister, the Eton and Oxford-educated son of the multimillionaire Lord Kenneth Clark. The third was the 2nd Baron Trefgarne, then defence procurement minister. So much for -the classless society.
Labour backbenchers were starting to ask difficult questions. Margaret Thatcher told Harry Cohen MP in April 1989: 'The government have not changed their policy on defence sales to Irag? The evidence is that she knew about the tilt, and was quite simply lying.
Margaret Thatcher had instructed Whitehall to provide her with intelligence reports on Irag's arms procurement efforts in Britain. An Iraqi Procurement Working Group was established in May 1989, which met at least six times before it disbanded in February 1990. Minutes show chill's assistance to the Iraqi missile programme.
In March 1990, Saddam ordered the hanging of British journalist Farzad Bazoft. The following month, Customs officers at Teesport seized components of the biggest gun in history, bound for Iraq.
Licences
They had been made by two British firms, Forgemasters in Sheffield and Walter Somers of Halesowen, who had export licences to supply steel tubes for a petro-chemical project.
Two men were arrested, including Walter Somers' managing director, Peter Mitchell. His defence was that the project had been agreed with the government, thanks to the mediation of his personal friend, local Tory MP Sir Hal Miller.
Miller made it plain that he was willing to go public, in technicolor, if his buddy had to take the rap. Meanwhile, Iraq occupied Kuwait in August 1990, and in January the following year, the Gulf War began.
British soldiers were killed with munitions manufactured on British equipment, supplied with the Tories' full approval despite their parliamentary denials. The government had every motive to keep such story quiet.
In the middle of the conflict, all charges against Mitchell and Chris Cowley, an engineer who had worked in Iraq, were suddenly dropped after the intervention of Sir Patrick Mayhew, the then attorney-general. The decision is still unexplained.
Customs were hopping mad and determined to get a result elsewhere. Four executives of a company called Ordtech (short for Ordnance Technology) were charged in Reading with supplying shell fuses to Jordan that were in reality bound for Iraq.
Parallels
There were uncanny parallels to the later Matrix Churchill trial. Peter Lilley, then trade secretary, and Kenneth Baker, then home secretary, signed gagging orders on government documents requested by the defence, while one of the defendants, Paul Grecian, claimed to be an intelligence asset.
After threats to call ministers and civil servants, the accused were allowed to plead guilty to small technical offences instead. It was light fines, suspended sentences and large gin and tonics all round. Customs got even madder, and began investigating Matrix Churchill.
But after threats to call ministers and civil servants, the accused were allowed to plead guilty to small technical offences instead. It was light fines, suspended sentences and large gin and tonics all round. Customs got even madder, and began investigating Matrix Churchill.
Meanwhile, in February 1991, John Major, the prime minister, insisted in the Commons: 'For some considerable time we have not supplied arms to Irag.' Again, he was almost certainly lying.
Late the following year, Customs prosecuted three Matrix Churchill directors - Henderson, Peter Allen and Trevor Abraham - for supplying machine tools allegedly specially designed to make arms to Iraq.
Both the government and the civil service were petrified that the tilt would come to light. Whitehall tried and failed to block the prosecution. Four ministers signed gagging orders - officially known as public interest immunity certificates -which suppressed government documents vital to a defence case based on government complicity.
These were Malcolm Rifkind, defence secretary, Kenneth Clarke, home secretary, Michael Heseltine, trade secretary, and Tristan GarelJones, foreign office minister, acting in the absence of the number one in his department, Douglas Hurd.
All insisted that the were merely obeying orders from Lyell, who, it later transpired, didn't even bother to find out exactly what he was telling his colleagues to hush up. Heseltine contended that he only went ahead on the understanding that his serious misgivings were passed on to the court. This was not done.
The prosecution was already in trouble when Clark stood up in the witness box and admitted that he had been economical with the actualit_' in advising Matrix Churchill to say that its exports to Iraq were for general engineering purposes.
No-one is quite sure why he did not simply go along with the cover up. Shortly afterwards, the case collapsed after Judge Brian Smedley QC exercised his •option to overturn the gagging orders.
There was instant public outcry, forcing the government to set up the Scott inquiry. Testimony after testimony reveals that while MPs are not allowed House, event. up.' Major is in all this up to his neck. At least half a dozen relevant documents crossed his desk. One he said he didn't see. One he carried his own handwriting in the margins, but somehow he failed to twig their significance. Inventing new 'flexibility': William Waldegrave is now laughably reassigned as minister for 'open government' The explosive connection: Thatcher go as far as the previous witness statement had'.
David Gore-Booth, the Eton and Oxford educated son of Lord Gore-Booth, himself a one-time foreign office chief, was formerly responsible for Middle Eastern policy at the foreign office and is now ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Quizzed on answers to MPs, he said: 'Of course half a picture can be accurate.' Full or half empty He added: 'The extent to which a parliamentary answer should be full, half full or empty is very much up to the minister.' Similarly, Sir Robin Butler, head of the civil service, insisted: 'Half the picture can be true. My justification of the answer is it didn't mislead, it gave half the picture.' He went on to lambast the media for saying nasty things saw, but he says he did not read the relevant about 'middle-ranking officials who could not have expected to be thrust into the limelight in the way in which they have and condemning 'the damage which has been unfairly done to our system of government, to the reputation of the civil service and to individuals'. Perish the lieves that 'of course you must not tell parliament untruths, or mislead them, or tell them something that's not so, but you don't tell them everything you can.' Waldegrave contended that "in exceptional cases, it is necessary to say something that is untrue in the House of Commons'. He argued that there were 'plenty of cases' when a minister 'will not mislead the House... but he may not display everything he knows about a subject'.
Heseltine said: 'I was of course preoccupied that I had given false information to the House of Commons. I'm not going to tell you that no minister has ever told half the truth to the House of Commons?
Major is in all this up to his neck. At least half a dozen relevant documents crossed his desk. One he said he didn't see. One he saw, but he says he did not read the relevant page. Three he had to admit reading, as they carried his own handwriting in the margins, but somehow he failed to twig their significance.
Margaret Thatcher denied that she had been told about the tilt, a dubious proposition given the Iraq Procurement Working Party.
Moreover, official papers on arms-related exports to Iraq bore her handwriting in the margins. Against one claim 'MoD, FCO and DTI consider the government could argue that the sale would be within the revised guidelines', she had written 'doubtful'.
Garel-Jones had no regrets about enforcing confidentiality, as release of documents "implanted in the minds of ordinary citizens that public servants were engaged in some sort of conspiracy to see if they could somehow have slipped arms to Iraq when no-one was looking, which is absurd.' Actually, Garel-Jones, that sounds like a fair summary of what was actually going on. All of this makes nonsense of the liberal media uproar about government willingness to see 'three innocent men' go to jail.
The Matrix Churchill directors were guilty of breaking the law. The Tories should be done for aiding and abetting.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.61, April 30, 1994, Page 10 TWENTY years ago, on 25 April 1974, officers of the