Not many people get to sit in on private meetings between presidents and prime ministers in the Oval Office of the White House. Today the Iraq inquiry hears from one who did.
Sir David Manning was security adviser to Tony Blair in the run up to the Iraq war. And it was no ordinary meeting he was party to. It took place just two months before the conflict began.
The secret memo he wrote up after it – and later revealed by Channel 4 News – showed the US was already preparing for an invasion despite the ongoing diplomatic wranglings at the UN. It also showed George Bush was even considering painting an American reconnaisance plane in UN colours, flying it over Iraq and goading Saddam Hussain to fire.
Sir David Manning, like those appearing at the inquiry last week, was a career diplomatic and civil servant. He would later follow Sir Christopher Meyer as British Ambassador in Washington.
But with Sir David there was one crucial difference. His office was in 10 Downing Street. He was Tony Blair’s right-hand man on Iraq policy. He was at the heart of the decision-making process. His evidence should be revealing to say the least.
And we haven’t heard much from him before. Well apart from memos. His memos do seem to have got out there. Another, this time from 2002 and sent to Tony Blair regarding a meeting he had with Condoleeza Rice, purportedly commented “I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States.”
The inquiry may want to ask just how important “regime change” actually was to the whole endeavour.
Governments of course never comment on leaked memos so it will be good to hear from the man himself.
A couple of interesting sidebars about him.
On the morning of September 11, 2001 he was in a plane flying over Manhatten and looked down to see the Twin Towers burning beneath him.
And his wife Lady Catherine, using the nom-de-plume Elizabeth Ironside, is an award-winning author of crime fiction, praised in Time Magazine by one Laura Bush.
Should be an interesting session.