British Iraq Inquiry Likely to Seek Testimony from U.S. Witnesses

A U.K. government inquiry investigating Britain's involvement in the Iraq War may want to take testimony from U.S. citizens, a British government official has confirmed to NEWSWEEK. The U.K. investigation, which began public hearings late last month, is examining why the British government decided to participate in the operation to oust Saddam Hussein. The inquiry's mandate includes examining how the war was launched and conducted, what happened when the initial military operation ended, and whether there are "lessons that can be learned." In public testimony so far, U.K. notables—including then-prime minister Tony Blair's former national-security adviser and a former U.K. ambassador in Washington—have provided new details about how George W. Bush's fixation with Saddam surfaced only days after the 9/11 attacks. Former U.K. officials have also described how feuding among Bush administration factions over Iraq was so intense that British officials sometimes had to inform Washington contacts about what their rivals in the U.S. government were up to.

So far no U.S. officials have appeared before the inquiry nor have any been included on the tribunal's published list of future witnesses. However, much of the testimony given during the inquiry's first two weeks related to dealings between Blair and his aides and Bush and his team; if it really wants a complete picture of what went on, the U.K. inquiry will want to hear from some of the American officials British witnesses say they were talking to. A British diplomat acknowledged to NEWSWEEK that the U.K. had informed the Obama administration about the Iraq Inquiry and added, "We do anticipate the inquiry might want to talk to U.S. citizens—but we do not know yet who that would be or how they would be asked to get involved." A State Department spokesman did not respond to an e-mail from NEWSWEEK last week asking what the Obama administration's response would be to any U.K. request for American cooperation in the British investigation.

To date, the U.K. inquiry has received little attention in the U.S. and it has largely faded from British headlines. But some of the testimony it has elicited is quite revealing—particularly in comparison with the kind of information produced by patchy official U.S. investigations into the Iraq War. U.S. inquiries to date never produced public testimony by Bush, former vice president Dick Cheney, or other senior war planners like Pentagon policy gurus Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, or top U.S. diplomats like Colin Powell and Richard Armitage.

Hence, the public testimony by Tony Blair's former national-security adviser, Sir David Manning, at a session of the British inquiry attended last week in London by Declassified, while flat and unemotional, seemed to offer some genuine nuggets of revelation. According to Manning (whose testimony, like other public witnesses, is rapidly transcribed and posted on the Inquiry's Web site), on Sept. 14, 2001—only three days after 9/11—Bush was already suggesting to Blair that "there might be evidence that there was some connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda." According to Manning, Blair's reaction was skeptical, to say the least: "The prime minister's response to this was that the evidence would have to be very compelling indeed to justify taking any action against Iraq. He also cautioned the president in a letter, in October, against widening the war." By the following February, Manning said, U.S. national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice had advised him that the Bush administration was "looking at options" regarding Saddam. At a meeting at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, in early April 2002, the president informed Blair that he had already ordered U.S. Central Command to "do some planning and to think through the various options" for possible U.S. military action in Iraq. Manning goes on to describe how, at Camp David in September 2002, Cheney unexpectedly turned up with Bush to meet Blair, apparently because "the president wished to expose the vice president to [British] arguments in favor of going the U.N. route. This is my supposition, because it was widely thought, certainly in London, that the vice president belonged to that group ... that were intent on regime change and did not want to go back to the U.N."

Historically, the British government has been known for its lack of transparency in official decision making and draconian official secrecy laws. However, when it comes to examining the Iraq War's antecedents, the U.K. arguably has outshone the U.S. government. In addition to oversight by parliamentary committees (not all of which, particularly on the intelligence side, has been particularly informative) while he was still prime minister, Blair impaneled two Iraq-related investigative tribunals. One of these examined the background to the suicide of a government scientist who was a source for a BBC journalist alleging that Blair was hyping prewar intelligence about Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction programs, while the other conducted a broad review of the Blair government's handling of prewar Iraq intelligence. Gordon Brown, Blair's successor as prime minister (and Britain's finance minister during the the run-up to the war), initially resisted calls for another Iraq War inquiry. But Brown finally agreed to the latest inquiry after the last British troops left Iraq.

Initially, Brown indicated that he wanted the new inquiry—whose leader is a former senior civil servant, and whose other members are picked from a pool of establishment figures—to take testimony behind closed doors. But after a public outcry, the prime minister changed his mind and allowed public testimony. For the most part, questioning of witnesses by members of the inquiry panel so far has been polite and gentle, and while witnesses are asked to sign a statement attesting that the official transcript of their testimony is true and accurate, they are not administered a formal oath before testifying. Also, none of the inquiry members are lawyers, and lawyers so far have not played a role in questioning any witnesses. A senior U.K. political source said that the absence of lawyers likely will result in greater public disclosure, since the involvement of lawyers on the tribunal, in turn, would encourage witnesses to hire lawyers, who would then advise their clients to be circumspect in their testimony. Declassified intends to keep on top of the London proceedings as they unfold.