February 27, 2004, 9:20 a.m.
Situational Secrecy

Remember Clare Short? To Brits, she's a political familiar, a Labour Party regular — kind of a Bella Abzug-type, but where Bella had crazy floppy hats, Clare has crazy loose lips. During the wind up to the war in Iraq, Short bravely declared her independence from Tony Blair for a day or two. But when it became apparent that she was going to lose her cabinet position as a consequence, she immediately became craven and desperate and apparently a little mad. It was a pretty appalling performance, even for a politician. (This blast from the past in the Observer will help those of you who have no Short-term memory.)

In the wake of this week's Katharine Gun acquittal, Short became the
perfect radio-talk-show guest. Gun, as the Guardian reports, was the young translator working for Britain's GCHQ (the foreign office's information monitoring agency), who, despite being bound by Britain's Official Secrets Act, took it on herself to leak to the Observer classified documents that alleged the U.S. and the U.K. may have monitored the conversations and activities of several U.N. delegations during the prewar U.N. Security Council debates. Gun thus wandered down the David Kelly path, the route taken by all oath-taking bureaucrats who decide that their own shifting convictions outweigh the promises they made in order to obtain employment. Kelly committed suicide when his duplicity was revealed, but Gun is made of steelier stuff, and earlier this week, the government decided not to prosecute her. The court in which she was being tried consequently found her as guiltless as Kelly.

Normally, that news would have received as short a shrift as the original leak did. But the landscape in Britain has been changed by the Hutton Report — which showed that the Radio 4's Today program, the BBC's influential morning news broadcast, had lied in its reporting, while Blair had been honest (my take on Hutton is here). Even journalists who don't think much of the BBC feel the need to defend the BBC pressing home the only fact that can over-ride Hutton: the notion that Blair lied not just about some things, but about all things relating to the decision to go to war in Iraq. He's just a lying kind of guy.

In this climate, Gun not-guilty became a much bigger story than Gun accused. And to comment on this potentially embarrassing flap, BBC's Today, once the home of Blair-Bush basher Andrew Gilligan, summoned Clare Short to the microphone. Short was already seen as a loose cannon, but on the tilted deck of the BBC, she went completely overboard and, as the IHT among many others reports, told the audience that she had seen proof in cabinet meetings that Britain was spying on Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary general. She then, according to the Independent, slightly shifted the blame to the U.S. in subsequent gabfests. The news was picked up with happiness in the EuroPess, including Le Nouvel Observateur. For what it's worth, British cabinet ministers such as Short are sworn to secrecy, and revealing government secrets for no apparent purpose other than garnering a little press attention has always been, at least until now, a serious offense.

For one complete news cycle, the BBC pounded Blair. Nearly every news broadcast on Radio 4 and on the World Service led with the Short item. The BBC newsroom must have been like the good old days again. But then a new day dawned, the Sun came out — "Sack Her!" was the front page headline — and surprisingly the Brit press rounded on Short with a vengeance. The leftwing Guardian blasted Short, saying, "Even by the standards of the notoriously backbiting Labour party, Clare Short's year-long feud with Tony Blair has plumbed new depths of pure personal animus," while the conservative Daily Telegraph offered a more gentle reminder from John Keegan that spying isn't exactly a novelty. The paper's leader-writer took a shot, too, writing that "Miss Short, who actually voted in support of that war, has betrayed not only the people who protect this country, but also the principle of collective cabinet responsibility." The editorialist quoted the Telegraph's own legal expert who said, "there would appear to be ample ground for Miss Short to be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act."

"Ample ground" maybe. But not a high probability. Can anyone seriously imagine prosecuting someone in today's Britain for merely violating an oath? Especially one taken before God. This week, BBC 2 broadcast a 90-minute program called, with appropriate hubris, "What the World Thinks of God." The show, presented by a happy chappy in a yellow suit, was mostly a round-up of the results of a huge poll that showed that among the nations of the world, few were as dismissive of the Almighty as the British. More than a third of Britons polled chose Beckham as an influence in their lives more profound than God.

Obviously, to reign in the Guns and Shorts, something has to be done — not about the Official Secrets Act, but about God. Until God can command the respectful weekend attention of as many Britons as Beckham does, then who cares if you break a solemn vow you've taken before Him (that would be God, not Beckham), anyway — even if it's a vow taken in some ornate governmental palace. Some would argue that the British love of liturgical dress-ups has been a superficial extravagance signifying nothing for some time — like since Henry VIII, if this report in the Telegraph is right. Just this week, according to the paper, Britain launched a brand new faux-ancient ritual requiring new British "citizens" — not even "subjects" any more — to take an oath before God of allegiance to the Queen. The spectacle of an agnostic nation requiring newcomers to pledge loyalty to a largely disregarded figurehead was dutifully overseen by the Prince of Wales, perhaps one of the most spectacularly caricatured humans on the face of the earth.

As the Independent noted in its Short story coverage, Downing Street is now concerned that "it could be impossible to mount a prosecution of someone who leaked information in the hope of averting military conflict." Amen. David Kelly, Katharine Gun, Clare Short — they just call 'em as they see 'em. The U.S. should beware placing its trust in a nation whose servants are so eager to help the press, often just in exchange for some fun publicity, that they betray not only their meaningless oaths, but the nation whose taxpayers support them. Including — just to put the fear into them — David Beckham.

ITEMS — it's an anagram, folks!

Musical chairs. When Peter Morton's Hard Rock café opened in London in 1971, the nightly (but, in those days, orderly!) queue to get inside to eat a real American-style burger instead of those weird British things they sold back then went around the block. Now there are Hard Rocks everywhere, and, according to the BBC, investors are getting stuck between them and a hard place. Hard Rock cafés may soon suffer from bottom-line syndrome, a financial ailment of my invention named after the ultimate New York City rock venue — and my permanent home during the '70s when I had inexplicably found employment at a rock magazine. The Bottom Line closed its doors last month.

Now he tells us. King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, who is 81 and the father of 14 kids, confesses to the Daily Telegraph that he isn't gay after all. However, in the spirit of Buddhism, he does support gay marriage, explaining, "It's not their fault if God makes them born like that."

Are those speed bumps? Non! Those are what France 3 calls "Les professionnels du vin dans la rue." Vintners are on the boulevards, according to La Croix, because the French government published a public health law concerning the tendency of some French people to drink those $5.00 bottles of very excellent Burgundy to excess. (I found a bottle of the very rare Gallo red in a local supermarket; not bad!) The law, complains the grape-footed protesters, is ruining sales. (Le Figaro explains this typically Hexagonal law in detail, if you can get to it before the link gets archived.) Meanwhile, those hardworking Frenchmen who, according to Sud Ouest, are "victimes de l'intransigeance de l'administration Bush" simply because they cruelly force-feed cute ducks and geese, harvest their enlarged livers, grind them up in what may be unsanitary conditions and smear them on toast, are up in liver-spotted arms after the U.S. banned French foie gras. The paper claims the ban is in retaliation for the French ban on U.S. chickens after the most recent mad-chicken scare or whatever it was.

Duty calls. The EU, meanwhile, has its own retaliatory strategy in place, according to the BBC, which cites the EU's trade commissioner, Pascal Lemy, as saying that "a 5% duty would be put on exports from the US to Europe next week because of unfair help to firms by Washington." The tariff, it's claimed, "will cost American business hundreds of millions of dollars" — and that's only the EU's opening salvo. Note to Congress: We need to give these people more billions for defense, right away — at least until they get their own EU army in place.

Shoo, Bruxelles. I'd like to say hundreds of readers asked me about a link to the Sprout item I mentioned here last week about the MEP who accused the EU of waging war on the U.S. and Israel. Actually, the exact number was three, but it's still early, and I should have given it anyway. The piece is here.

Right wrong, again. The British right, confused over whether to bite the bullet or suck the barrel, forced themselves to choose between backing Blair or the BBC in the recent Iraq war reporting flap. Why? For the same reason they can't win elections. They're heroically, impressively, enthusiastically incompetent. Or, to put it in terms more familiar to US readers, if the Tories ran the U.S., there'd still be a Title IX, an education department and affirmative action. That's how dumb they are. The BBC is no more likely to be fair to the Tories than Blair is — in fact, on balance, Blair is probably more Tory-friendly. Nevertheless, the Telegraph reports, like the mighty lemmings they are, the Conservatives seem bound to help the BBC continue to be one of the world's biggest, most unaccountable media organizations. Meanwhile, this week, the BBC World Service wrapped up its series on "the American empire", had a long and meaningful Kyoto chant, a deeply moving interview with a guy from the Carnegie Foundation for Bliss and the usual obsessive coverage of American foreign failures — all accomplished without the need to report divergent points of view. Time constraints, no doubt.

Germany sees light. French moods darken. Gerhard Schroeder, the man who has led Germany not only into a Franco-German marriage but also into economic recession, has decided to back the Bush Mideast plan making democracy and stability a priority for the region, according to this John Vincour piece in the IHT. The German announcement won't be well-received in Paris, if this report in Le Monde is anything to go by.

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