An Independent reader opines with eloquence on my work as HM Ambassador in Warsaw as described here:

It all seems reasonably clear. Charles Crawford is a gutless little tosser who clearly knew that Poland was being used for the illegal torture and interrogation of prisoners – but he did nothing about it. And now this talentless little FCO worm is desperately struggling to shed the dirt that’s attached itself to him.

Look at the ingenious drafting and the logic jump he makes:

It ‘seems (sic) reasonably (sic) clear’ … [he] clearly (sic) knew …’

I always struck out from drafts served up to me such weasel phrases as “it seems clear”. 

It is either clear, or it is not. If you’re not sure, say so – don’t hedge your bets in this pseudo-knowing but sneaky way.

The point (of course) is that I did not know, clearly or otherwise. But at least I do not say loudly that I did know and that I campaigned vigorously and honourably to stop extraordinary rendition, even though I did not know and was not in the country at the time.

What about the broader point?

Say that a civil servant has suspicions that some dirty deeds are being done by  people elsewhere in the system. What exactly should he or she do?

One obvious thing to do within the system (ie not involving stirring up media interest via leaks or otherwise) is to send a formal letter/memo to a high level in the bureaucracy asking what is happening, saying that one’s own professional conscience can not rest easy with all these doubts swirling around.

There are procedures laid down for this if one wants to get into raising a matter formally in that way, but it would not be surprising if they did not take one too far in issues where high-level state security work is concerned. The reply might well be something like:

… on the ‘need-to-know’ basis you’ll just have to take our word for it that the issue you fairly raise is under active consideration by Ministers. Rest assured that they are confident that everything is being done legally and properly.

If you are unable to accept this explanation, we’ll be happy to look at moving you to another posting where you will have no working link to these issues, even directly. Failing that, the door to leave the Ministry is always open…

Another approach is to ask to have a private frank word with a top friendly official to try to get some insider background on the problem and what is actually happening, plus a sense of the mood of Ministers. Are they feeling the heat and getting ready to shift policy, or are they comfortable that as and when the full facts are revealed they will be vindicated (enough)?

This is the best thing to do, but not really possible to do quickly when you are at Embassy overseas. Plus even this relies on your accepting the integrity of the senior official concerned as of the system as a whole – and if you accept her/his and the system’s integrity in this sense, why not take it that the same integrity is being devoted to the issue about which you are so worried?

Or you can resign, as FCO Legal Adviser Elizabeth Wilmshurst did over Iraq. That is the most principled way out.. But it leaves the bureaucratic gene pool diminished by the loss of one person with such high principles. Individual conscience salved. Are the public better off in the longer run?

Look at it from another point of view. Read the raging debate in the comments prompted by a Guardian article that argues for not worrying overmuch or at all if a national DNA database is set up to help catch more criminals:

But, Jacqui, I’d like you to keep my DNA. For as long as you want. I simply can’t see why not. I’ll fight as hard as the next man against the loss of genuine civil liberties. I don’t think I should be held without charge for more than a couple of weeks. I don’t want to have to carry an ID card when I go out for a pint of milk. But I truly do not understand how my DNA profile sitting in a database limits my rights or freedoms.

Many of the hostile comments seem to assume that too many people in the public service are prone to (or at least tempted by) cheating and lying to the point of abusing any such new DNA database to frame innocent people.

Part of a wider stereotyping. Public servants are either hard-pressed decent people doing their best under stressful conditions. Or oppressors of the law-abiding public – a law unto themselves.

The core point in all this is simple. In a modern democracy the state’s structures are staffed with ordinary people with all the usual hopes and fears for themselves and their families. Those closer to sharp-end work do think about the ethical component of what they are doing.

But tough decisions are expected to be taken by people at the top in good faith with the overall public interest in mind , who do so in full knowledge of the facts and options at their disposal while assuming full personal and political responsibility for the outcome. That is precisely the idea behind fomer President Clinton’s thinking for authorising the application of pain to someone to get him/her to talk.

People elsewhere in the system who lack the full facts and options on any given issue – because that is not in their direct area of responsibility – have to decide what to do if their private unease grows too large. And if necessary leave.

That happens rarely. Not because the mass of civil servants are gutless. But rather because the whole edifice rests on trust that people throughout the bureaucracy will act decently and in good faith.

Which may not be optimal from a purist point of view on any one issue where things may be going wrong. But is that a price we just have to pay for running public service in a civilised way?