The Foreign Office repeatedly hides the truth from the public: on Cambodia, on East Timor, on arms sales and now on sanctions.
Mark Higson was the Iraq desk officer at the Foreign Office in 1989 when the British government was still giving Saddam Hussein almost anything he wanted, secretly and illegally, a year before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Higson, who resigned in protest, was one of the few British officials commended by the Scott inquiry into the arms-to-Iraq scandal. He described “a culture of lying” at the Foreign Office.
“The draft letters I wrote for various ministers,” he later told me, “were saying that nothing had changed, the embargo on the sale of arms to Iraq was the same.”
“Was that true?” I asked.
“No, it wasn’t true . . .”
“And your superiors knew it wasn’t true?”
“Yes. If I was writing a draft reply for a minister, replying to a letter from an MP, I wrote the agreed line. I also wrote replies to go to members of the public. The letters
— source johnpilger.com | john pilger | 20 Mar 2000