Power Play. Gavin Esler
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The more hostile media we receive for perceived human-rights abuses, the more discriminate our deterrence and the more potent the Spartacus Solution. Hostile media works for us. It is an effective communications tool. The Romans understood it best: Fear works.
‘But just talking of a Spartacus Solution, Mr Vice-President,’ one of the White House reporters asked, waving the extracts in her hand, ‘isn’t that inflammatory? Crucifying terrorists on the road to Rome? Is that seriously going to be American policy in the twenty-first century?’
‘You are, with respect, confusing a metaphor with a policy,’ Vice-President Black retorted. ‘What is inflammatory is blowing up American airliners on takeoff from Manila.’
Another British reporter, Jack Rothstein from The Times, stood up. I liked Rothstein and had in the past briefed him about our side of the rows over torture and Muhammad Asif Khan.
‘Mr Vice-President, diplomatic sources say this kind of talk is not in the best traditions of the United States. Abraham Lincoln …’
‘And I have explained to “diplomatic sources” that Abraham Lincoln did not have to deal with your British suicide bombers,’ Bobby Black interrupted scornfully.
‘We will not rest until all the people attacking us are in a place where they can no longer do any harm. We will do what it takes. Abraham Lincoln would understand that, even if a few diplomats in striped pants don’t get it.’
Black went on the offensive. He said that since 9/11 you were ‘either with the United States or you were against it. There just is no middle way. There is no split-the-difference between Right and Wrong.’
‘Aren’t things a bit more complicated in the real world than simply black or white?’ a woman from CBS suggested.
‘On the contrary: since Manila, there is no such colour as grey,’ Bobby Black shot back. ‘International leaders, diplomats, journalists who see the world in terms of grey are deluding themselves, or, worse, they are deluding the people who elected them–or, in the case of some TV news anchors, they are deluding the people who watch their news programmes.’
I listened to the interview with sinking heart. My job is a study in shades of grey. I sent Kristina a text message: ‘You watching this?’ She did not text back. A couple of hours later, FOX News quoted an unnamed ‘American official’ describing me personally as ‘a leading appeaser of terror’ for my intervention in the Khan case, and saying it was ‘not expected’ that Prime Minister Fraser Davis would ‘waste time during his upcoming Washington visit’ arguing on behalf of the rights of a terrorist, ‘unlike Ambassador Alex Price.’ We started to take hostile calls at the embassy. The people at FOX News gave out our number on the air, which meant that every right-wing wacko with access to a telephone dialled in to shout abuse at what one caller described as the ‘pansy-assed British faggots.’ Ironic, you might think, given that at that very point I was no longer pressing Khan’s case at all.
Late that night, Kristina called me on my mobile. ‘I guess you saw it?’ she said.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘What did you think?’
‘Any statement which pisses off your friends and encourages your enemies is not a good idea.’
‘That good, uh?’ Kristina said.
‘Are you coming to the dinner for the Prime Minister?’ I wondered. I was hosting the event at the ambassador’s residence.
‘Yes.’
‘Will you be my partner for the evening?’
Kristina thought for a moment.
‘Of course.’
Then she rang off.
dThe day before the Prime Minister was due to arrive in Washington, I had yet another run-in with Bobby Black. It was becoming increasingly difficult to deal with him, even though I had managed to ensure–thanks to some deft footwork from Kristina–that Fraser Davis would indeed sit down with President Carr for his allotted fifteen minutes of ‘special relationship’ face-time. I had promised that Davis would not raise the Khan case. Johnny Lee Ironside called me.
‘I see you got your man in,’ he laughed. ‘Despite the best efforts of me and my man to keep him out.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I replied.
‘You and me need a serious talk, Alex,’ he said.
‘You coming to the dinner for the Prime Minister? It’s over at ten. Stay behind afterwards and have a few beers with me. We need to do something to make all this better before it turns into a festering sore.’
‘Talking ‘bout festering sores,’ he said, ‘the Vice-President wants to see you again. Wants to whup your English ass.’
This time it was about Britain’s reluctance to provide locations for part of the anti-ballistic missile shield the newspapers call ‘Star Wars’. Fraser Davis had been back-pedalling. The Poles and Czechs had been threatened with Russian nuclear obliteration for their part in playing host to the American radar network, and there were political problems too. As soon as the Spartacus Solution news conference ended, you could feel the wave of unpopularity towards Carr and Black hit Britain, Europe, and most American allies.
It was profoundly dispiriting. Carnwath told me it was starting to rival the way the United States was seen during the Bush/Cheney administration at their worst. Fraser Davis could read opinion polls. He did not like the new wave of anti-Americanism. None of us did. But he also knew he had to be careful. Carnwath told me that at all costs Fraser wanted to avoid what he called ‘the poodle factor’–being seen to jump to every American demand; being thought of as the new Tony Blair. On the way to the White House, I skimmed through my briefing papers on missile defence in the back of the Rolls. This time it was just Bobby Black, Johnny Lee, the British military attaché Lee Crieff, and me. No Kristina. As she feared, she had been sidelined in matters that she should have played a part in.
Bobby Black sat at his desk and scowled. He delivered a terse lecture on the ‘need for urgency in the creation of the missile shield, and the need to live up to commitments.’ When he finished talking, I prepared to argue back, saying that we accepted the urgency but the British people were not persuaded about the nature of the threat requiring a space-based antimissile system.
‘There is a clear danger to Britain,’ I said, ‘and no clear benefit.’
It would always be cheaper for the Russians to build more missiles than it ever would be for the Americans to keep increasing the power of the supposed missile shield–even assuming that it did work. Our scientists said that, so far, it didn’t.
Suddenly Bobby Black snapped: ‘Thanks, Ambassador.’
‘B-but …’
Then he said, ‘Goodbye.’
That was it. Vice had spoken. I was ushered out by Johnny Lee who said, ‘We’ll talk after the dinner.’ He said it in a whisper. Later that evening, I read on the wire services that the White House had briefed journalists that ‘the British have been consulted’ about Strategic Missile Defence and that the British had ‘agreed with the Carr administration that they would make radar early warning facilities fully available in the United Kingdom in a timely manner.’
It was nice that he told us.
Woof, woof.
By the time of Fraser Davis’s visit, Bobby Black was so obviously the driving force in the White House that late- night comedians were joking that it was Theo Carr who was ‘one heartbeat away’ from the presidency of the United States, and I decided I needed to try to get Black and Davis together again, under tight supervision. James Byrne, in one of his Washington Post columns, said Black had become ‘like one of the Dementors in a Harry Potter novel–he sucks the souls from those who meet him’, and that he represented the Carr