Craig Murray is using an FOI bid to extract from the FCO a minute with then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s manuscript note on it, which Craig thinks will prove his case conclusively that Jack Straw is lying on key parts of the Torture story.

Craig’s posting describing this bid is interesting. Have a look.

I myself think that Craig is misleading people, by claiming incessantly that if HMG accepted information known/suspected to have been extracted by overseas torture, we ipso facto are complicit (in a legal sense) in that torture.

This is not the law as laid down in the landmark 2005 House of Lords judgement.

I have posted a long comment on Craig’s site, trying to find out what precisely Craig is claiming and what he thinks his FOI request will achieve even if successful. Here it is:

Craig,

 

In the spirit of friendly professional engagement (rather than quibbling or scattering red herrings), may I ask a couple of questions drawing on your interesting posting above?

 

What exactly are you claiming that Jack Straw did which was wrong as a matter of law? Options include:

 

  • Deliberately inciting the use of foreign torture (“get them to extract that information for us, come what may”)
  • Ordering British officials to use intelligence known to have extracted by torture
  • Ordering British officials to use intelligence which they had good reason to think had been extracted by torture
  • Ordering British officials to use intelligence which they thought might have been extracted under torture
  • Ordering British officials not to ask searching questions about how the intelligence had been gained (“don’t ask, don’t tell") when they had suspicions 

Other permutations and sub-permutations could be listed:

 

·         The Foreign Secretary not giving specific instructions one way or the other, but somehow presiding over ‘informal understandings’ that torture-extracted information would not be challenged

·         The Foreign Secretary authorising the use of individual pieces of intelligence known/suspected to have come from torture if there was a pressing operational case to do so, but specifically disallowing others where that was not the case

·         The Foreign Secretary authorising the use of categories of intelligence (eg ‘intelligence from Country X’) where some reports could have come from torture but others not

·         Etc

 

The point is that the House of Lords judgement in 2005 (praised by you in your first book) looked carefully at distinctions of fact such as these. Various statements made by different Law Lords came down firmly in favour of the proposition that the ‘executive’ power (ie Government) could decide to use information which they thought or knew had come from torture if there was a pressing public policy reason to do so. In other words, they specifically did not accept that to do so amounted to ‘complicity in torture’. That, therefore, seems to be the best available UK law on the subject.

 

If therefore Jack Straw did what you say he did (ie “took the policy decision that the UK would receive intelligence obtained under torture by the CIA and other liaison intelligence services”) he arguably did nothing wrong under UK/international law as long as he was persuaded that there was a clear public policy benefit.

 

You make much play of the minute helpfully published on your website recording FCO Legal Adviser’s Michael Wood’s view:

 

“After my protests at our obtaining intelligence under torture, I was astonished to be called back to London for a meeting on 8 March 2003 at which I was told that torture intelligence was legal, and that Jack Straw and Sir Richard Dearlove, Head of MI6, had decided that in the "War on Terror" we should, as a matter of policy, obtain intelligence got by torture by foreign intelligence services.”

 

I suspect that you were not told that ‘torture intelligence was legal’. If you were, the sentence is largely meaningless. Michael Wood (being a smart fellow) carefully distinguished between receiving intelligence derived from torture (not an offence) and using it in evidence in judicial proceedings (not allowed). This view was later upheld by the House of Lords.

 

I therefore don’t see why you are in FOI pursuit of the minute recording your meeting with Linda Duffield. Jack Straw’s manuscript marginalia on it are highly unlikely to be relevant to the core issue. Indeed, even if he said disobliging things about you, so what? If he had agreed or ordered or accepted that HMG use evidence possibly derived from torture for solid reasons aimed at protecting the UK from terrorism, he would be comfortably within what the House of Lords said was lawful in these complex and circumstances.

 

It may be that you are right that Jack Straw has not been telling the truth or all the truth about what he did or did not authorise/order/encourage. But even if what you say is correct on that point, it does not seem to follow that what he did was illegal/improper under international and English law.

 

Much of your argument (and perhaps its appeal to many people) looks to be based on the idea that huge numbers of senior people dealing with these issues simultaneously were all incorrigibly corrupt, cynical and dishonest if not downright wicked. I just don’t find that credible, which is where you and I basically part company on the substance.

 

Don’t you think it possible that when the issue was raised (perhaps indeed by your own tough and commendable questions) Jack Straw took the best available legal and policy advice on what was and was not permissible (advice which perhaps was later upheld by the House of Lords looking at the whole issue with the utmost care) and acted accordingly?

 

And that when he says your account is “entirely untrue” he may be right, insofar as the claims you are making are just not accurate in that sense?

 

All that said, you might say that whatever the law might say, it is Just Wrong to accept any intelligence tainted by suspicions of torture and that Jack Straw falls squarely into that camp: that even if was lawful it was not acceptable.

 

But you then have to wave goodbye to President Clinton who made clear his view that if he himself had to order the use of extreme interrogation methods to try to thwart an imminent terrorist attack on American citizens, that’s what he would do – and live with the consequences.  

Regards, Charles