Lawyer Inez Weski: The Davids Report II? 

Not much to say on the coalition talks.

After the end of the first round, the signals are that Job Cohen is trying to block a right-leaning cabinet by refusing to share power with the Christian Democrats, as a result forcing the VVD to either go for broke with Wilders and the PVV or take a centre-left coalition seriously. The CDA almost unconsciously seems to go along with this by insisting that their heavy defeat at the polls means they can’t take a leading role in any discussions. “Ons past bescheidenheid” – we need to be humble – is their new, attractive party slogan.

Cohen has also suggested that another attempt should be made to form a right-wing dream cabinet VVD-CDA-PVV. While this might be awfully decent of him in terms of democratic principle, one wonders if he’s not playing games with CDA and VVD supporters and their willingness to support such a move. Cohen is after all pretty good with some sharp moves – just take a look at this.

But with the regular media already searching for something new to say on the negotiations, there is little point in this blog doing the same. So lets switch topic and go back to one of the more interesting curiosity items of news in 2009, the Telegraaf-AIVD case [An Intelligence Affair, 31 January 2010, and subsequent reports]. The reason that the case has re-appeared on the media radar screen is that the court case against AIVD officer Heleen S. and her partner, for allegedly leaking an internal report and other information to Telegraaf reporter Jolande van der Graaf, begins in Haarlem next Monday. Van de Graaf, who made good capital out of being bugged and harrassed by the Dutch state last year, has since fallen totally from any position of respect thanks to her highly inappropriate move to gain an interview with the 9 year old survivor of the Tripoli plane crash last month. But the case has since moved way beyond the ethics (or not) of journalism.

In an interview with Vrij Nederland, S.’s lawyer Inez Weski has stated that she intends to call Jan Peter Balkenende as a witness for the defence. The reason is that she suspects the leaked information – which was critical of the AIVD’s role in assessing intelligence on the Iraqi threat in 2003 – came not from the AIVD itself but from the Ministry of General Affairs, the administrative apparatus behind the Minister President. Why? As the Davids report showed, Balkenende, via the Secretary General of the Ministry R.K. Visser, in late 2002 received two British intelligence reports which were not to be circulated elsewhere. The usual channel for this exchange of information would be via the AIVD itself to allow the Dutch service to assess the material. Both the AIVD and MIVD leadership were offended at being bypassed in this way. In the interview Weski referred to Balkenende running a “private secret service”.

The relevance of this is that the coming court case could take an interesting turn. The Telegraaf article exactly claimed that the AIVD had failed to correctly assess Iraqi possession of WMD. Weski is suggesting that the Ministry of General Affairs is the source of the article because it was exactly the Ministry that swallowed the faulty British intelligence whole, not the Dutch intelligence services. Weski: “That Telegraaf article therefore looks like it served as a lightning rod to attract attention away from the failure of the private secret service of Balkenende.”

This is no small matter. In an article on the Davids report back in April, intelligence expert Bob de Graaff pointed out that up till now the Ministry for General Affairs had largely been ignored in the whole Iraq story, with most attention going to Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Foreign Affairs. The for-your-eyes-only documents were not the only ones that passed from London via Visser to Balkenende, and all these items – which were not disclosed to the Davids committee – were of crucial importance for setting out Dutch policy. De Graaff’s conclusion is that “a small club of civil servants without legal justification played intelligence analysts under the protection of the Minister President.” Not good.

The possibility now is that even if Balkenende doesn’t testify, the case will break open this aspect of the Iraq story a little more. Weski’s move could bring some late justice for the misused and abused intelligence services. But what looks certain is that Balkenende began his first premiership back in 2002 with the Iraq storm-clouds looming, and he’s going to end his last premiership with those same clouds still chasing him.