Regards, Ivan
Posted on 04/22/2003 4:30:05 PM PDT by MadIvan
George Galloway has responded with characteristic bravado to the evidence published in yesterday's Daily Telegraph that he received at least £375,000 a year from Saddam Hussein's regime. The Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin evidently believes that attack is the best form of defence.
He accuses this newspaper of participating in a "smear campaign" against him, describing it as "a highly partisan source" and even suggested that the Telegraph might have forged the documents. The suggestion is that we are either fools or knaves, duped by Western intelligence or actively conspiring to discredit him.
Mr Galloway impugns our methods and our motives. Yet the documents that are so damning for his reputation were not planted; they did not arrive mysteriously in an unmarked envelope, or in response to a tip-off. They were discovered in the Iraqi Foreign Ministry by the Telegraph's correspondent, David Blair, who took advantage of the chaos that followed the collapse of Saddam's regime.
Nobody led him to the secret files that contained the correspondence between the head of Iraqi intelligence and Saddam's secretariat, in which the remuneration of Mr Galloway was discussed. It was superlative detective work by Mr Blair to rescue these documents, but he did not get his scoop entirely by serendipity.
Telegraph correspondents in Baghdad were instructed to look out for documents of the kind that had surfaced after the fall of Kabul. Only last week Philip Smucker discovered similar dossiers revealing Iraq's links with Islamist terrorists in Uganda. In both cases, the journalist found the papers by himself. The methods by which Mr Galloway's activities came to light were those of a classic scoop; any decent newspaper in the world would have published these documents.
Our motive, too, was less complicated than Mr Galloway would have the world believe. David Blair uncovered strong prima facie evidence that a British MP had been in the pay of a foreign dictator with whom this country had just been at war. It is self-evidently in the public interest that such a serious matter should be aired.
Others must decide what the consequences should be for Mr Galloway. The Labour Party, the Commons Standards Committee and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards will certainly follow up our investigation. But the first duty of any newspaper is to place the evidence in the public domain. That is what The Daily Telegraph has done.
Publication does not authenticate a document, but forgeries are usually exposed as such very quickly once they are subjected to public scrutiny. These documents, found among thousands of others that have now been authenticated by those mentioned in them, do not look like forgeries to anyone except Mr Galloway.
Apart from the bluster about forgery and the threats of lawsuits, Mr Galloway's response has been remarkably unspecific. It is curious, and unintentionally revealing, that he could not at first recall which Christmas he spent with Tariq Aziz in Baghdad. A glance at the Commons Register of Members' Interests reveals that, last year alone, Mr Galloway went on no fewer than eight foreign trips in connection with his campaigns on behalf of Iraq.
Perhaps this regularity of contact explains why he has "forgotten" whether he was in Baghdad on Boxing Day, 1999. Yet he is apparently quite sure that he had no meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer, on that day or on any other. Indeed, he seems indignant at the mere suggestion that he, who "had access over the years to Iraq's political leadership", would have dealt with a mere spy.
Mr Galloway thereby confirms the intimacy of his association with men who are now wanted for crimes against humanity. It is, however, all too likely that, while Saddam was happy to hear Mr Galloway praise his "courage, strength and indefatigability", he would leave the sensitive question of rewards to be negotiated by an underling.
Mr Galloway naturally denies that he profited from the oil-for-food programme or from food contracts, as the documents found in Baghdad suggest. He makes great play of the fact that he has "never seen a barrel of oil, never owned one, never bought one, never sold one" and he demands to see cheques from the United Nations made out to him.
Nobody who knows anything about the ways in which Saddam exploited oil-for-food to rake in nearly £3 billion last year alone would suppose for a moment either that Mr Galloway would have needed to engage directly in oil trading, or that his money would have come directly from the UN. Mr Galloway's percentages of oil and food contracts were arranged – if arranged they were – with Iraqi ministers, but channelled through intermediaries.
The Iraqi intelligence chief actually explains in some detail how he says this was done in Mr Galloway's case, through his Jordanian associate Fawaz Zureikat and an Iraqi oil trader, Burhan Mahmoud al-Chalabi. For Mr Galloway to protest that he never actually saw "three million barrels of oil every six months" is beside the point.
Indeed, it would appear that Mr Galloway's appetite for "continuous financial support from Iraq" was greater than the regime's readiness to pay. The apparent reason for the 1999 meeting in Baghdad was that he wanted more. The response from Saddam, published today, speaks of "exceptional support which we cannot afford". George's extravagance was, it seems, too gorgeous even for Saddam.
Where did the money go? Over the years, Mr Galloway has set up various organisations to campaign for Iraq, most notably the Mariam Appeal, ostensibly on behalf of an Iraqi child suffering from leukaemia. Yesterday, for the first time, Mr Galloway revealed that the Mariam Appeal raised about £1 million, mainly from other Arab governments; but he has yet to explain precisely how the money was spent.
We know that his many trips and conferences have been paid for by such shadowy entities as the Great Britain Iraq Society, of which he is chairman; but these phantoms have no address and nothing is known about them. The possibility arises that these are front organisations, financed by the Saddam regime partly for the benefit of Mr Galloway and his causes. Until he discloses their finances, and his own, few will believe that he "never solicited or received money from Iraq for our campaign against war and sanctions".
If Mr Galloway did receive this money, what precisely has he done wrong? First and foremost, it is a betrayal of trust. He has betrayed those who, out of genuine philanthropy, donated money to his campaigns. He has betrayed his fellow campaigners against war and sanctions. He has betrayed the voters of Glasgow. He has betrayed the Labour Party, both locally and nationally. He has betrayed Parliament. And he has betrayed his country.
Whether or not he has committed a criminal offence, he has done great damage, not only to his own reputation, but also to that of Parliament. Those who have fought alongside him would be wise not to fall for his conspiracy theories, or defend him out of a misplaced sense of loyalty or solidarity. Mr Galloway is a greater menace to his political friends than to his enemies, as the Labour Party has evidently realised.
Mr Galloway's own motives are obscure. If he took Saddam's shilling, he would not be the first public figure to have been suborned by a foreign intelligence agency. The KGB, which helped to train its Iraqi counterpart IRIS, perfected the technique. Once Mr Galloway had been drawn into the web, he could not have escaped without risking the destruction of his career. His exposure suggests that others may follow.
Though he is a colourful and eloquent figure, Mr Galloway does not wield much power or influence. He would not be the only Western European politician to have yielded to the temptations of Saddam. Others who acted as his apologists over many years must now be wondering what further documents will emerge from the ruins of the regime.
Regards, Ivan
Regards, Ivan
I assume the BBC is ignoring it.
Waiting...expectantly
Mark Twain
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