- The first casualty of war is intelligence. Several weeks
ago, on my arrival in Kuwait to be 'embedded' with the British Army before
the start of the conflict, I met Laurel and Hardy, two 'Human Intel' officers
attached to my unit. The duo oozed coffee breath, viewed their jobs with
Chandleresque intrigue and possessed the wary eyes of those whose contacts
have, over the years, led them down a hundred blind alleys.
-
- Our initial zone of engagement was benign. I was washing
my underwear outside my tent. Laurel said: 'I know everything about you,
but you know nothing about me. You're with the press.'
-
- I was wearing a bright yellow badge stamped 'Media' that
had been issued by the Ministry of Defence in London, so this was hardly
a great insight, I thought. I wondered what else he had deduced.
-
- 'Back home, you work on Gray's Inn Road,' said Laurel,
beaming with confidence. Wrong. 'Fleet Street?' Wrong again. 'Canary Wharf?'
Wrong once more. 'Wapping?' I put him out of his misery by telling him
I worked in Farringdon Road.
-
- Laurel had been right about one thing, though. I didn't
know anything about him, although it was beginning to dawn on me that for
an intelligence officer, he appeared a little dim.
-
- Hardy wasn't the brightest bulb in the building, either.
A few days later, as our unit approached Basra, he nudged my elbow. 'Got
something for you,' he said. 'Don't print this - it's third hand - but
they are going to take Saddam's palace.'
-
- Someone told him that the British television news organisation,
ITN, had anchored its show from the palace the previous evening. Hardy
looked shocked, but he spoke on in a whisper. 'Might have something else
for you,' he said. 'War graves. Getting close.' He held one finger to his
lips. 'Shhhh. Don't print anything.'
-
- As a breaking story, the lead turned out to be spectacularly
wrong. Wrong in the sense that southern Iraq is full of war graves...like
intelligence officers in a war zone, you can't move for bumping into them.
-
- In this land of tombs, the graves are as conspicuous
as posters of Saddam Hussein, Americans and balding war correspondents
who hold up their mobile phones and broadcast the sounds of falling bombs
to their foreign-desk administrators back home.
-
- I was starting to see why the words 'military' and 'intelligence'
are not mutually compatible. My last encounter with Laurel and Hardy, a
few days ago, was no less farcical. This time, we met in the vestibule
of Saddam Hussein's luxurious palace near the Boulevard of Martyrs in Basra.
I told Hardy I was planning to spend two days with the nuclear, biological
and chemical unit, the British forces combing southern Iraq for weapons
of mass destruction.
-
- 'Keep your ears open,' he said, before vanishing. Two
hours later, as I was making coffee, he reappeared at my side. 'Remember
what I said about keeping your ears open?' he whispered. 'Forget it. It
didn't lead anywhere. Might have something else for you later, though.
I'm into something big.'
-
- This proved to be true. Not long after, he fell into
a manhole. As I stood sympathising with the men, one of Hardy's colleagues
smiled. 'For an intelligence officer,' he said, 'that was bloody stupid.'
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