“Drop it”, ministers strongly advised, as I sensed the government was not coming clean about their role in “extraordinary rendition”, the US practice of secretly transferring terror suspects to places where they were likely to be tortured. It was the familiar attempt to smother an embarrassing tale, a practice at which New Labour and its spin doctors were particularly adept. The first indications from the Con-Lib coalition are that it intends to unearth its predecessor’s activities. William Hague, the foreign secretary, has delivered what he promised before the general election — a judge-led inquiry into allegations of complicity in torture.
What was astonishing was the lengths to which ministers and officials went to cover up their activities. As they persisted in a shameless pursuit of secrecy, they blamed journalists and conspiracy theorists, fed, they claimed, by human rights groups and misguided lawyers, for not letting go.
The determination of the Blair and Brown administrations, which in their very early days promised a new era of openness, to suppress information was more than an instinctive bureaucratic reaction by those simply enjoying power and wanting as quiet a life as possible. Ministers, and Blair in particular, adopted an extraordinarily cavalier attitude to the rule of law, and to constitutional and democratic principles...
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Richard Norton-Taylor @'Index on Censorship'
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