Q283 Grant
Shapps: To continue, if I may, on this
point, you just said that Jack Straw had a point of principle which was not
justified. Can you elaborate on that because I am not clear.
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: I am only making the point
that he seemed to be saying there should be an absolute restriction on
diplomats, in this case, writing about their public experience, at least
while most of the people who were involved in those affairs were still in
public office. The point I am making is that that has to be judged in the
discussion with your Department or with the Cabinet Secretary over the text
you have written, it is a judgment on the specific rather than an absolute
restriction in principle. That is where I differ.
Q284 Grant
Shapps: So if I understand your point
correctly, you felt he was wrong to say that but nonetheless you would take
his point of view into account. Is that a fair summation?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: Yes. I was a bit puzzled he
was saying it without having looked at my text, partly I think because what
I was writing was, in my view, in net terms helpful to the Government’s case
on Iraq rather than the opposite.
Q285 Grant
Shapps: From the outside I suppose it
could look like you caved into political pressure. You have been to see the
Foreign Secretary, he has told you he does not want you to publish, he has
not read it, you have said what he said was not justified, I am curious now
whether you did in fact cave into political pressure or was it more that he
made your conscience catch up with you, he somehow pricked something in your
own conscience?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: There are other
considerations, of course. For a start, I think the effect of his
intervention was to make the Foreign Office scissors and pen rather more
active on my text than they had been previously, so it affected others as
much as it affected me. Secondly, with other things which were going on and
other books which were being published and public comment on all of that,
the atmosphere was becoming considerably more febrile than it was when I
started. There were judgments to be made against other considerations than
just the Foreign Secretary’s intervention.
Q286 Grant
Shapps: Your memoirs are an interesting
case for us because of all the people we have interviewed as witnesses on
this subject, you are the only one who openly says, and it obviously did
happen, that there was direct political influence as to whether or not you
published. When do you think you might well publish your memoirs?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: I have not made that
decision. The book is not in the deep freeze, it is in the fridge.
Q287 Grant
Shapps: That suggests three months, six
months, and then you will have to throw it away.
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: That is, it can be quite
quickly recooked if necessary. I have a gentleman’s agreement with my
publishers that I will come back to them. The original contract is set
aside, there would need to be a new contract, but that was by mutual
agreement, they did not end the association on their side. I will judge by
events and by the atmosphere at the moment when it might be relevant to
return to it. The possibility is never.
Q288 Grant
Shapps: Never?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: The possibility is never.
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: Indeed.
Q289 Grant
Shapps: To continue your metaphor, by
saying it is in the fridge and not the freezer, you are saying there is no
thawing time required, you can bring this out and publish it very quickly.
Does that mean you have actually completed the book?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: I had completed the book in
July. The original publication date was the beginning of September, so by
the middle of July the publishers would have had to have a final text to
have copies on the bookstands by the end of August. We can go into the
uninteresting detail of why I stopped at that precise moment, but you have
to either proceed or cut at the point when the publishers had to go to
press. If I return to the book, I would have to update it; it was set at a
particular time with events in Iraq having reached a certain point, and
there is a certain amount of comment at the end about what the whole saga of
Iraq means which would have to be updated, so some fresh writing would be
necessary.
Q290 Grant
Shapps: You now have a book which is
complete, though will need a bit of updating, sitting in your fridge at
home, and presumably you are going through some kind of internal conflict as
to whether this should ever be put in the public domain at all. On the one
hand you appeared to be about to say to me, “Actually I could publish this
very quickly, which is why it is in the fridge and not the freezer”, but on
the other hand you are telling me it may never be published. Is this
because of an internal conflict for you or just because you genuinely do not
know or because you fear political pressure? Why?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: I just have not decided.
Having been through the intensive business of getting these words on the
page, revising them endlessly with my publisher on the one hand, with the
Foreign Office on the other, pulling in different directions, it is all
quite an intensive experience. When you stop that, the whole thing goes off
the boil in your mind. I am sorry about all these culinary metaphors. It
remains off the boil. I do not know whether I can regenerate the energy to
return to it.
Q291 Grant
Shapps: Does this feel like an unfinished
project to you?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: No. It feels like something I
have been through and finished and it would be a considerable effort to
return to it. This is perhaps a clearer answer about where it stands at the
moment. It would need a lot of energy to return to, but having spent the
time on it that I have, it would be a pity to waste it altogether, and the
bulk of what is there is usable.
Q292 Grant
Shapps: Have you read DC Confidential?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: Yes, I have.
Q293 Grant
Shapps: If you were to rate your text
alongside, is this more or less sensational? Are you somewhat aggrieved
that Sir Christopher Meyer managed to slip his book out and you have been
stopped? How does it make you feel?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: I am not thinking in terms of
comparisons.
Q294 Grant
Shapps: You are the only man who has read
both, are you not, so you are the only person we can ask?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: Together with a few people who
have been through my text. After all, quite a lot of the Foreign Office has
read both, and the Cabinet Office.
Q295 Grant
Shapps: Though not the Foreign Secretary.
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: He may have done by now, I do
not know. He may not have read DC Confidential.
Chairman:
I think he has.
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: The two books are different.
I am dealing with a much narrower and deeper area. I am talking about a
saga of foreign policy as it evolved - a foreign policy story, if you like –
whereas Christopher is representing an experience over a number of years. I
am not going to offer any adjectives about it or comparisons, they are
different books.
Q296 Grant
Shapps: Are you saying yours is a more
serious, in-depth book?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: I have not said that. I think
Christopher has made a lot of serious points and has been very enlightening
about what it is like to be ambassador in the United States, but I am
seeking to explain a narrower and deeper range of events.
Q297 Grant
Shapps: So the Foreign Office objection to
your book is more based on the serious nature of the content than, as I
think we suspect with Sir Christopher Meyer’s, it was the tittle-tattle
which made his unpalatable to the current administration?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: I have not entered into the
realm of value judgments of people in public officer and their performance.
I am though trying to explain why things happened, how things happened, what
happened to some extent in the background, while not revealing confidences
and secrets which may not be revealed. So a very careful judgment has to be
made about how you can explain things when you cannot say everything that
does explain them. It was necessary in my view to have a discussion, almost
a negotiation, with the Foreign Office about where those rather fine lines
were to be drawn, and I think I sensed in the Foreign Office a dichotomy of
feeling, that they actually saw the point of having an explanation of this
kind of how a very controversial piece of foreign policy was enacted, yet on
the other hand they did not want facts to emerge which might affect the
continuing diplomacy on Iraq. Where was the balance? Would Iraq policy
from the UK interest point of view benefit from the deeper explanation or be
damaged by the revelation of certain things that happened which have not yet
come into the public domain?
Q298 Grant
Shapps: I am interested in whether you
think the Radcliffe rules et cetera and the Foreign Office rules have in
your case worked or not worked when it comes to publishing your memoirs?
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock: In my case I think so far they
have worked. I have no argument with them. In re-reading Radcliffe, it
seems to me to remain an eminently sensible report, and before you ask me
the follow-up question, Mr Shapps, or anybody else, I think it did not work
in the case of Christopher Meyer. That is my view.
