Bagehot's notebook

British politics

The Lockerbie bombing

A black cloud on the horizon for Anglo-American relations?

Jul 21st 2010, 20:13 by Bagehot

THE PRESS pack travelling with David Cameron in America seems pretty confident that his first prime ministerial visit to Washington DC went well. The judgement of those on the ground is worth listening to: even allowing for spin it is usually pretty obvious to reporters when a leader's entourage are happy, relieved or anxious. And the team with Mr Cameron are happy with the welcome he received from President Obama, says George Parker of the Financial Times:

David Cameron was still glowing last night after his three-hour bonding session with President Obama, who took him on a tour of his personal apartments in the White House as well as the garden: a far cry from the short “brush by” offered to him when he was still leader of the opposition.

In spite of all the pre-meeting efforts to dampen expectations - Cameron wrote that he was not bothered by the “baubles” of the “special relationship” - his team were immediately anxious to tell journalists how well the meeting had gone.

Mr Cameron and Mr Obama are both good at easy charm, and their joint press conference contains all the bonhomie and familiarity a visiting British prime minister could wish for. Gone are the reports of Gordon Brown pursuing Mr Obama through a kitchen in the hopes of a meeting, or Downing Street officials asking five times for some face time with the president. The pair played well off their similarities as forty-something parents of young children who have found themselves in gigantic jobs:

PRIME MINISTER CAMERON:  Well, first of all, can I thank you, Mr. President, for welcoming me so warmly to the White House today.  Thank you for the meeting, for the lunch that we had, and also for the tour of part of your home.  I have to say, I was most impressed by how tidy your children’s bedrooms were.  (Laughter.)  And I think if the President of the United States can get his children to tidy their bedrooms, then the British Prime Minister, it’s about time --

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  You can do it.

PRIME MINISTER CAMERON:  -- he did exactly the same thing.  (Laughter.) 

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  You have to give them some notice, that’s the only thing.  (Laughter.)

PRIME MINISTER CAMERON:  Right.  Well, they’ve got notice --

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Tell them the Prime Minister is coming.  (Laughter.)

PRIME MINISTER CAMERON:  They should be in bed by now, but if they’re not they have notice.  (Laughter.)

But I must admit, from a distance of several thousand miles, I am not so sanguine. For much of his visit, Mr Cameron was forced to answer painful questions about BP, the oil giant. American senators and reporters peppered him with questions about whether the oil giant (already on the rack for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill) played any role in the 2009 release from a British prison of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 above the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988.

Mr Cameron tried to play a straight bat. He repeatedly said Scotland’s devolved executive was to blame for the release. He said it had been “completely wrong” to release Mr Megrahi on the “compassionate” grounds that he was close to death from cancer (though Mr Megrahi remains alive in his native Libya, almost a year later), and noted that this had been his position long before he won the election. He confirmed that Britain's top civil servant, the cabinet secretary, had been asked to go through government papers to see if any more light could be shed on the release. He was sensitive to the depth of anger in America over the case, calling Mr Megrahi "the biggest mass murderer in British history". Yet he was careful to defend BP as a company, saying at one point: "let us not confuse the oil spill with the Libyan bomber." He said he was not sure a British government enquiry could do much good, given that he already knew the release had been a "bad decision".

Mr Obama played it straight, too. Though his administration appears to favour fuller investigation of the case, he did not call Mr Cameron on this. As the BBC's man in the travelling pack, James Landale, put it:

Messrs Cameron and Obama had clearly agreed a joint strategy to deal with the Lockerbie row. The PM promised that Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, would scurry around looking for any more information. And the president declined to push for a UK government inquiry. Not a bad strategy. Let's see if it works.

And yet, and yet. The combination of BP and the Lockerbie case is a potentially ghastly one. BP has already confirmed that one of its staff, a senior ex-British spook who had worked on the Libya dossier, later lobbied the British government in general terms over an agreement to transfer prisoners back to Libya. But BP denies lobbying directly for Mr Megrahi to be released. Pressed on this, Mr Cameron gave what can most kindly be described as a very careful reply:

You asked about the role of BP.  I mean, the role of BP and any lobbying they might have done is an issue for BP and an issue that they should explain themselves.  I mean, the decision to release Megrahi, though, was a decision made by the Scottish government, and I haven’t seen anything to suggest that the Scottish government were in any way swayed by BP.  They were swayed by their considerations about the need to release him on compassionate grounds -- grounds that I think were completely wrong.  I don’t think it’s right to show compassion to a mass murderer like that. I think it was wrong. 

But it’s a matter for BP to answer what activities they undertook.  But the Scottish government made its decision and has explained its decision on many occasions and I’m sure will explain it again.

For their part, the Scottish executive (the devolved government of Scotland) are coming out fighting, saying they had no truck with lobbying that linked Libyan prisoners to commercial contracts for oil firms, but that Mr Megrahi had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, which changed his case into a compassionate one.

The problem is that four senators, at least, have the bit between their teeth now and every reason to keep hammering this. One of them, Charles Schumer of New York, told CNN after meeting Mr Cameron:

 

"Our request for an independent investigation was still on the table," said Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. "It was not case-closed."

CNN adds:

The four senators said that questions over how al Megrahi could have survived almost a year and whether BP exerted influence in the case need to be answered. The Scottish government has insisted that BP never lobbied to free al Megrahi.

"We say there is a lot of circumstantial evidence -- no smoking gun -- strong circumstantial evidence, that something wrong happened here," Schumer said. "We don't think all the facts have come out."

Schumer was joined by fellow New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and New Jersey Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez. All are Democrats.

The senators released a letter Monday calling for the United Kingdom to launch a full investigation into al Megrahi's release and whether BP was involved.

Here is Mr Menendez, talking to The Cable, a blog of Foreign Policy magazine:

"This is beyond our bilateral relationship with the British; this is a question of what messaging do we want to send to terrorists. Do we want to tell them you can kill Americans and others and at the end of the day still get out of jail? That's the wrong message."

The senators would like to call British officials as witnesses at their hearing, set for next week. It is not clear if that is going to happen. But I have a hunch this story is not over. Even if the Scottish executive is vindicated by documents that are released, and Mr Megrahi's release really was triggered by his cancer diagnosis, there could be more than enough material about ties between Libya, BP and the last British government to make the "special relationship" a bit less special, in American eyes.

 

Readers' comments

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Liveinhope

The prob lem is that BP has become the enemy of the State in the USA ,mainly because of the behaviour of it's CEO.

BP kept too many secrets , and cut too many corners. The evidence is that it has continuously caused oil slicks in Nigeria, and of course Nigeria is not big enough to challenge BP.

In my opinion BP's behaviour is like that of a company that is used to getting away with any behaviour. The behaviour of it's CEO could be said to be 'I am beyond reproach , and i don't have to be honest , because I am the upper class'.

In this centuary that behaviour is acceptable. David Cameron would do well to introduce Egalitarian humility as the only acceptable behaviour at leadership heights.

Craig A.M.

Maybe it's time then for the New York senators to examine that other 'special relationship' and reopen the USS Liberty case but we both know New Yorkers won't stand for that.

bornwithapen

i have to wonder what washingtons response would be if our government asked for secret documents on 9/11 would be, be interesting to see that one

FFScotland

Unless, Innominata, the "terrorist" didn't actually commit the crime, which is highly possible with Megrahi. The evidence piling up for his appeal case was pretty damning.

Innominata

It would be worthwhile for both the UK and the USA to bring back the death penalty for heinous crimes. Then there would be no question of Libyan or Irish terrorists ever being released; they'd be dead. On compassionate grounds we could release their corpses to their families, and everyone would be happy.

rostbeef

@ffscotland
you said: "The United States is the top nation in the world."

Whilst I can think of some activities the US is probably unmatched in (perhaps including invading other countries & killing their people, greed, hypocrisy and mega-bucks level corruption?), I suggest at least five billion people on the planet would not agree that the US is "top" in any complimentary way.

Many Americans may be unconcerned at that. "You disagree? Too bad", as Bush said.

willstewart

The senator's seem blatantly and crudely political, given that there really does seem to be no connection and that the prisoner issue discussed specifically did not include Megrahi. Sling some mud and see if it sticks. Does anyone suppose that they would be on this one without the oil spill - irrelevant to Megrahi by anyone's standards?

US politicians seem devoid of much morality - I have mixed feelings about some of ours but some of yours seem crassly populist!

FFScotland

edgus, can you explain why you think the Scottish Government is perfidious? They look to me to be the one player in this shabby episode that wasn't perfidious. Naive, perhaps...

edgus

Clearly the Libyans got Fergie to drunkenly lobby Prince Andrew for them. Seriously though, I hope this disgrace ends several careers, especially those of the perfidious scot government. I also hope that Prince Andrew has better sense than to show his face in America ever again. As for BP, if the allegations are true, they deserve to have their assets stripped to the bone. I suspect it is already headed in that direction.

Mince and mealie

Keeping a prisoner in jail is intended to achieve four possible objetives: punishment, deterrence of others from committing the offence, protection of the public, and reform of the prisoner so he or she does not reoffend. Once Megrahi was diagnosed with late stage terminal cancer, none of these applied. (Readers of the Economist can work these out for themselves). All the documents pertaining to Megrahi's release were published on the internet by the Scottish government, except for the ones from third parties for which permission could not be obtained. These third parties are the UK and US governments. So what you are hearing from the US senators, Obama and Cameron is just utter humbug, spouted for political reasons.

No doubt Megrahi's release may have been convenient for some parties. The evidence that convicted him was dubious, and there is a fair chance that he might have won an appeal. That would have embarassed various people, including the US and UK governments. Blair's UK government signed the PTA with Libya because of business interests, no doubt. But Megrahi was not released under the PTA, and any suggestion that the Scottish SNP government was in some way following instructions from the UK Labour government is truly and comically ill-informed.

Of course, if you believe Megrahi to be guilty, you actually believe the Libyan state to be guilty, and the world seems to have forgiven them (including the US government)...

FFScotland

NotHere, to answer your question, the then UK Government couldn't do anything about Megrahi's release and didn't want to.

They couldn't any more than President Obama could prevent, say, the Texas Parole Board from releasing one of its prisoners. It didn't want to because they had signed a Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) with Libya that conveniently didn't require them to do anything - they just let the Scottish Government get on with it.

There was no conspiracy between the governments. The SNP who run the government in Edinburgh hate Labour, who were in charge in London at the time, and certainly wouldn't have done their bidding. There was also nothing in the PTA for them. It's now in David Cameron's interest to criticise both the release and the PTA, but he wasn't in charge of anything at the time. Perhaps the previous Government would have been smarter to have done the same because they ultimately got associated with Megrahi's release even though there was no formal linkage. It's all a big mess.

But as I commented earlier, Megrahi would probably have won his appeal if he hadn't been transferred out already. The world would have seen the original conviction as the sacrifice of an individual's judicial rights for political expediency, under pressure from the US who wanted to punish someone - it didn't matter who. They would have heard in court that the FBI not only withheld evidence, but fabricated it. Whether this particular allegation is true or not, Megrahi winning the case would be as good as a confirmation.

That's where the smell's really come from, I suggest.

Cutters

NotHere: A bit behind the times there. The Labour government got ousted a few months ago. Cameron would not have released the bomber and has not been in favour of handing over a mentally ill hacker either.

If your smelling fish, then check your surroundings and personal hygiene. This is pretty B&W and nothing to do with the Coalition.

NotHere

The problem with this al-Megrahi affair is that it doesn't pass the smell test.

Then foreign minister David Miliband himself said in parliament that the UK "would be damaged – perhaps badly – if Megrahi were to die in a Scottish prison rather than in Libya."

The British government did not make any effort whatsoever to try to influence the Scottish decision even after almost every organ of the US government from the president on down said publicly that it was not a good idea to release the terrorist.

This is the same British government that now wants to influence the US justice department regarding Gary McKinnon, the admitted criminal hacker facing extradition to the US.

And they want the US to believe that it was entirely the decision of the Scots and that the British government could not do anything about it?

Smells fishy.

Doug Pascover

juvhag, it may be different for those from the parts of the country closest to Great Britain and I'm speaking of impressions not research, but my sense of the atmospheric relationship from the perspective of Americans is that we like the Brits, and especially appreciate that the English have taken the time to learn our language.

But I'm not sure I've ever heard any American who wasn't either in office or writing for a newspaper use the phrase. The Falkland Islands wasn't our problem. I expect that if Barack Obama never again said "special relationship" with regard to the UK, we would hear a lot about that from our beloved Bagehot and not much from the Washington press corps.

How's that for a wordy "Yes?"

TheJollyGreenMan

These senators should expand their investigation to include answers to the following outstanding questions:-

Did BP fund Lee Harvey Oswald?

Did BP supply fuel to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto?

Is Elvis Presley still on the payroll of BP?

Let's get to the bottom of this once and for all!

Cutters

The US should be careful not to upset things to much. If the Scots become uncooperative over these constant allegations, there would be little Westminster could do about it.

Maybe the Queen should be sent to have a word, it wouldn't end well with the US if HM was to get angry with it, could upset a real hornets nest that.

This is obvious political wrangling to get elected in the up coming US elections.

FFScotland

The United States is the top nation in the world. To Britain its relationship with the US is indeed special. But the same can be said for Japan, Russia, The Cocos ...

The question is which countries are special to the US where the relationship goes beyond normal business. I can think of three countries. Canada and Mexico, which are neighbours and therefore perhaps to be expected. And Israel.

FFScotland

Bearing in mind that Megrahi's case was up for appeal, which he probably would have won with huge embarrassment all round - if he hadn't been released first - do the US authorities really, really want an investigation?

griffysfirstXI

With my cynical hat on, I can't help thinking that this link the senators have made between such emotive matters as Lockerbie and the Gulf oil disaster is rather low opportunism. But to what end?

About Bagehot's notebook

In this blog, our Bagehot columnist surveys the politics of Britain, British life and Britain's place in the world. The column and blog are named after Walter Bagehot, an English journalist who was the editor of The Economist from 1861 to 1877

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