Panic grips Congo as rebels advance on town of Goma
• Forces loyal to warlord declare unilateral ceasefire
• UN warns of 'catastrophic' humanitarian crisis
Xan Rice in Nairobi
Congolese rebels closed in on the eastern town of Goma yesterday, causing panic among residents and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of international aid workers and UN staff.
Around 45,000 internal refugees, most of whom had only arrived on foot a day earlier, fled a displaced persons' camp near Goma as forces loyal to Tutsi warlord Laurent Nkunda battled international peacekeepers and government troops. After UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, warned of a humanitarian crisis of "catastrophic dimensions", the rebels announced last night they were declaring a unilateral ceasefire "to avoid panicking the population of Goma".
Nkunda's men have already captured several key towns near Goma in North Kivu province and raised fears of a return to full-scale war in Democratic Republic of Congo. The national army has been routed, and troops were reported to be fleeing Goma yesterday. Tension between Congo and Rwanda, which it accuses of supporting Nkunda, also increased sharply, as they traded accusations yesterday over cross-border artillery attacks. The US said while Rwanda was not directly involved in the fighting, its territory was being used to support rebels.
The rebel advance has caused alarm in the international community. The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, called for the deployment of a hundreds-strong EU force to eastern Congo, while the UN security council expressed "grave concern" at the fighting and called an emergency meeting to discuss an urgent request for more troops for the UN peacekeeping force.
The US has dispatched its top Africa envoy, Jendayi Frazer, for talks in the Congolese capital Kinshasa. Louis Michel, the EU's development aid commissioner, was also there to meet President Joseph Kabila. Congo's previous wars between 1997 and 2003, which sucked in several neighbouring countries, caused the greatest loss of life anywhere since the second world war, with more than five million deaths, mainly from hunger and illness. Since then the mineral-rich east region has remained restive, despite a peace agreement signed by all main rebel groups in January this year.
Nkunda, who is though to have 5,000 fighters in his National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), claims to be protecting the minority Tutsi population in the east from Hutu militias linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Despite signing the deal he refuses to disarm, accusing government forces of breaking the ceasefire and collaborating with Hutu rebels.
Both the army and the CNDP rebels have a deep mistrust of Monuc (the UN mission to Congo), the 17,000-strong peacekeeping force, and have separately attacked it in recent days. Monuc has pledged to defend the North Kivu towns of Goma, Sake, Masisi and Rutshuru, which was abandoned by the Congolese forces. But Alain Doss, Monuc's chief, said the force was "stretched to the limit", and has requested additional support.
After coming under much criticism for failing to protect civilians, Monuc attack helicopters yesterday fired on Nkunda's forces in Kibumba, 19 miles north of Goma, stalling the rebel progress.
"We were positioned just 15km from town, but Monuc engaged us with their helicopter gunships," Amani Babu, a senior CNDP officer told Agence France Presse. "We think in two or three days we will be able to take the town of Goma."
Aid agencies say that would be a disaster. Around 250,000 people have been forced from their homes in North Kivu this year. Tens of thousands have fled their homes or shelters on foot this week. Around 30,000 arrived at a camp in Kibati, six miles north of Goma, in recent days, "exhausted and traumatised".
But the camp emptied yesterday when refugees saw government forces retreating south "fairly fast, and in fairly large numbers", according to Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency.
Before the ceasefire announcement last night the atmosphere in Goma was tense. There were reports of government troops firing into the air and commandeering vehicles. Civilians hurled rocks at a UN compound near the airport as rumours swirled that the town was about to be overrun.
Emmanuel de Merode, the director of Virunga National Park, said: "There has been movement of government troops out of the town, which caused panic among the population."
Friday, 31 October 2008
Patrolling al-Qaida’s last Baghdad stronghold
- A suspect is forced to sit facing a wall and await questioning by soldiers who had just discovered him near a secret bomb-making factory in an unfinished house in al-HadarDavid Smith.
- A suspect is forced to sit facing a wall and await questioning by soldiers who had just discovered him near a secret bomb-making factory in an unfinished house in al-HadarDavid Smith
Congo pictures 2
- A woman cries as displaced people march into GomaPhotograph: Walter Astrada/AFP/Getty Images,
- An internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in KibatiPhotograph: Walter Astrada/AFP
- A woman and her children arrive at GomaPhotograph: Walter Astrada/AFP/Getty Images
- Government soldiers on patrol after inspecting damage to Rumangabo base camp, about 25 miles north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu provincePhotograph: Sarah Elliott/EPA
Congo pictures
A woman carries a child on the main road to GomaPhotograph: Michael Arunga/World Vision/Reuters
Phillip Sands Op Ed
The torture time bomb
The Bush administration's approval of the abuse of detainees is a toxic legacy for the next US president
As the US presidential election reaches a climax against the background of the financial crisis, another silent, dark, time bomb of an issue hangs over the two candidates: torture. For now, there seems to be a shared desire not to delve too deeply into the circumstances in which the Bush administration allowed the US military and the CIA to embrace abusive techniques of interrogation - including waterboarding, in the case of the CIA - which violate the Geneva conventions and the 1984 UN torture convention.
The torture issue's cancerous consequences go deep, and will cause headaches for the next president. New evidence has emerged in Congressional inquiries that throw more light on the extent to which early knowledge and approval of the abuse went to the highest levels. What does a country do when compelling evidence shows its leaders have authorised international crimes?
For three years I have followed a trail which leads unambiguously to the conclusion that the real bad eggs were not Lyndie England or others on the ground in Abu Ghraib, but the most senior officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the department of justice. Over recent months, Congress has been looking into the role of senior officials involved in the development of interrogation rules. These have attracted relatively scant attention; little by little, however, senators and congressmen have uncovered the outlines of a potentially far-reaching criminal conspiracy.
The first hearings were convened before the judiciary committee of the House of Representatives, at the instance of its chairman, Congressman John Conyers, apparently off the back of my book Torture Team. Parallel hearings have been held before the Senate armed services committee.
The evidence that has emerged is potentially devastating. It confirms, for instance, that the search for new interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo began not with the local military but in the offices of Donald Rumsfeld and his chief lawyer, Jim Haynes. It shows that when the career military expressed objections on legal grounds, Haynes intervened to stop the normal process of review. And it shows a previously unknown interplay between the department of defence and the CIA: a visit to Guantánamo in September 2002 by the administration's most senior lawyers was followed days later by a senior CIA lawyer, to brief on the new techniques. "If someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used," he explained, "the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental."
Last month the Senate armed services committee received new material from Condoleezza Rice, the first cabinet-level official to confirm high-level involvement in discussions on interrogation techniques. "I participated in a number of meetings in 2002 and 2003 ... at which issues relating to detainees in US custody, including interrogation issues, were discussed," she said. Those present at such meetings included Rumsfeld, attorney general John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and CIA director George Tenet. The meetings, which concerned the CIA programme, "occurred inside the White House". Rice confirmed she was aware of the existence of, but did not read, the justice department legal advice of August 1 2002 that abandoned the international definition of torture and replaced it with a definition drawn from a US Medicare statute.
Buried away in this testimony lies the most dangerous material of all: evidence which may establish that abuses on detainees in Iraq in September 2003, in the period perhaps including the events at Abu Ghraib, were the result of decisions taken at the highest levels of the administration. The administration has long proclaimed it did not allow aggressive interrogations in Iraq, since the Geneva conventions applied. Last month we learned this was false: not everyone had protection under Geneva. If you were considered to be a terrorist, you had no protection at all. A senior US intelligence officer visited Iraq in September 2003. He witnessed abusive interrogation techniques that violated Geneva and complained. The response? He was told the techniques "were pre-approved by DoD GC or higher". DoD GC is the general counsel at the department of defence, Jim Haynes. Who could be higher? His boss: Rumsfeld.
I have testified before Congress on these issues, and have been asked if there should be criminal investigations and prosecutions. At the very least, the next US president must ensure the full facts are established. It will then be for others to decide what follows. But if the US doesn't get its own house in order and restore its reputation for the rule of law, others will surely step in.
The Bush administration's approval of the abuse of detainees is a toxic legacy for the next US president
As the US presidential election reaches a climax against the background of the financial crisis, another silent, dark, time bomb of an issue hangs over the two candidates: torture. For now, there seems to be a shared desire not to delve too deeply into the circumstances in which the Bush administration allowed the US military and the CIA to embrace abusive techniques of interrogation - including waterboarding, in the case of the CIA - which violate the Geneva conventions and the 1984 UN torture convention.
The torture issue's cancerous consequences go deep, and will cause headaches for the next president. New evidence has emerged in Congressional inquiries that throw more light on the extent to which early knowledge and approval of the abuse went to the highest levels. What does a country do when compelling evidence shows its leaders have authorised international crimes?
For three years I have followed a trail which leads unambiguously to the conclusion that the real bad eggs were not Lyndie England or others on the ground in Abu Ghraib, but the most senior officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the department of justice. Over recent months, Congress has been looking into the role of senior officials involved in the development of interrogation rules. These have attracted relatively scant attention; little by little, however, senators and congressmen have uncovered the outlines of a potentially far-reaching criminal conspiracy.
The first hearings were convened before the judiciary committee of the House of Representatives, at the instance of its chairman, Congressman John Conyers, apparently off the back of my book Torture Team. Parallel hearings have been held before the Senate armed services committee.
The evidence that has emerged is potentially devastating. It confirms, for instance, that the search for new interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo began not with the local military but in the offices of Donald Rumsfeld and his chief lawyer, Jim Haynes. It shows that when the career military expressed objections on legal grounds, Haynes intervened to stop the normal process of review. And it shows a previously unknown interplay between the department of defence and the CIA: a visit to Guantánamo in September 2002 by the administration's most senior lawyers was followed days later by a senior CIA lawyer, to brief on the new techniques. "If someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used," he explained, "the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental."
Last month the Senate armed services committee received new material from Condoleezza Rice, the first cabinet-level official to confirm high-level involvement in discussions on interrogation techniques. "I participated in a number of meetings in 2002 and 2003 ... at which issues relating to detainees in US custody, including interrogation issues, were discussed," she said. Those present at such meetings included Rumsfeld, attorney general John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and CIA director George Tenet. The meetings, which concerned the CIA programme, "occurred inside the White House". Rice confirmed she was aware of the existence of, but did not read, the justice department legal advice of August 1 2002 that abandoned the international definition of torture and replaced it with a definition drawn from a US Medicare statute.
Buried away in this testimony lies the most dangerous material of all: evidence which may establish that abuses on detainees in Iraq in September 2003, in the period perhaps including the events at Abu Ghraib, were the result of decisions taken at the highest levels of the administration. The administration has long proclaimed it did not allow aggressive interrogations in Iraq, since the Geneva conventions applied. Last month we learned this was false: not everyone had protection under Geneva. If you were considered to be a terrorist, you had no protection at all. A senior US intelligence officer visited Iraq in September 2003. He witnessed abusive interrogation techniques that violated Geneva and complained. The response? He was told the techniques "were pre-approved by DoD GC or higher". DoD GC is the general counsel at the department of defence, Jim Haynes. Who could be higher? His boss: Rumsfeld.
I have testified before Congress on these issues, and have been asked if there should be criminal investigations and prosecutions. At the very least, the next US president must ensure the full facts are established. It will then be for others to decide what follows. But if the US doesn't get its own house in order and restore its reputation for the rule of law, others will surely step in.
Stella Rimington feature
Free agent
Former MI5 chief and spy novelist Stella Rimington speaks her mind - on Iraq, the 'huge overreaction' to 9/11, and why the secret service is much more liberal than we think
Stella Rimington has condemned the politicisation of national security since she left the secret service. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
When guide dogs are retired from service, it is common for them to enter a state best described as old-aged adolescence. As they begin to understand that they're no longer responsible for the safety of their owner, the dogs can become almost puppyish, amazed by the unfamiliar freedom of irresponsibility.
It's now 12 years since the first ever female, publicly named director general of MI5 retired from duty, and when we meet this week she is unrecognisable from then. The severe-looking woman with the brutally sensible crop and the dry, institutionalised reserve has softened into velvety folds of laughter, and a warmly engaging ease. Stella Rimington has just published her fourth novel, Dead Line, an elegantly pacy thriller starring a female MI5 agent, and at 73 she gives the impression of someone enjoying the novelty of speaking her mind. The effect is not strident so much as touching. Usually when people are being interviewed, you can see them telling themselves not to say too much, but before Rimington answers a question she often seems to be reminding herself that she really can let go.
"Yes, it is a gradual process," she agrees, smiling. "The shades of one's former existence do hang around for quite a long time. It takes a long time to get rid of that. And I still haven't entirely got rid of it."
She isn't doing badly though. She spoke out against 42-day detention last month, and this week welcomes the government's climb-down unequivocally. "We shouldn't introduce new intrusions into our civil liberties unless they are absolutely necessary - and nobody had demonstrated that they were necessary. If there isn't any need, then don't move the boundaries." She argues that we should "treat terrorism as a crime, and deal with it under the law - not as something extra, that you have to invent new rules to deal with." She is opposed to ID cards, because she can't see how they could be "a significant counter-terrorist measure", and although she admits she's "had more time to think about it since I left the service", she says her attitude to civil liberties has always been liberal. The big change, she argues, has been not her position, but the politicisation of the issue.
"One of the things I have observed in the last few years, since I left, is that national security has become much more of a political issue. And that parties are tending to use it as a way of trying to get at the other side. You know," she adopts a mocking playground tone, "'We're more tough on terrorism than you are.' I think that's a bad move, quite frankly.
"After the vote in the House of Lords, one heard the home secretary saying something like, 'Well nobody can say I'm not tough on terrorism'. As though the implication was there are people who aren't. Which strikes me as very odd. Because most of the people in the House of Lords whose contributions to that debate I'd read were serious people, who'd possibly spent a life, as I have, trying to protect the country from serious threats. So the implication that, you know, a politician was going to say 'I'm tougher on terrorism than you are' struck me as ... " and she flicks a wrist, batting away the boast with the back of her hand like a fly. "And it's happened broadly since 9/11."
The response to 9/11 was "a huge overreaction", she says. "You know, it was another terrorist incident. It was huge, and horrible, and seemed worse because we all watched it unfold on television. So yes, 9/11 was bigger, but not ... not ..." Not qualitatively different? "No. That's not how it struck me. I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life, and this was, as far as I was concerned, another one."
Rimington hopes President Bush's successor will stop using the phrase "war on terror". "It got us off on the wrong foot, because it made people think terrorism was something you could deal with by force of arms primarily. And from that flowed Guantánamo, and extraordinary rendition, and ..." And Iraq, I suggest. "Well yes," she says drily. "Iraq."
Jacqui Smith gave a speech this week on international terrorism which rather remarkably failed to mention the war in Iraq at all. I ask Rimington what importance she would place on the war, in terms of its impact on the terrorist threat. She pauses for a second, then replies quietly but firmly: "Look at what those people who've been arrested or have left suicide videos say about their motivation. And most of them, as far as I'm aware, say that the war in Iraq played a significant part in persuading them that this is the right course of action to take. So I think you can't write the war in Iraq out of history. If what we're looking at is groups of disaffected young men born in this country who turn to terrorism, then I think to ignore the effect of the war in Iraq is misleading."
These might not be unremarkable views for most Guardian readers - of whom Rimington is one. But according to Rimington, they are widely held within the intelligence service - much more so than most members of the public, and perhaps particularly Guardian readers, ever suspect.
"I don't think I'm unusual, frankly. It's the general public's, or whoever's it is, view that's out of date." She points out that Baroness Manningham-Buller, another former head of MI5, has been "saying broadly the same things. I think what that reflects is that the caricature of the service is out of date now.
"People [in the intelligence service] are very conscious of the possibility of intrusions into civil liberties - and therefore the importance of restricting that to the extent of what's strictly necessary. I think people are fully aware that the more you intrude into people's civil liberties, the more you set up grievances for people to, you know, encourage people to do all the unpleasant things that are going on."
At times the picture Rimington paints of MI5 seems almost too good to be true. She has always said she never carried a gun; none of her agents were ever killed; MI5 does not kill people; it does not spy on the prime minister - not even Harold Wilson - or even vet BBC journalists (even though the BBC has admitted submitting names for vetting). As I run through the list, she anticipates the next question, and grins: "So what do we do?" No, I say. My point was going to be that, well, you would say that, wouldn't you?
What I mean is that we all know she's not at liberty to tell the whole, unedited truth about her old job - so how can we know how much of her account to trust? She looks hurt, and then insulted.
"Why would I wish to engage in this and tell you a load of garbage? It would be a waste of everyone's time, including my own. Maybe what you ought to be looking at is, are you pursuing a myth about what British intelligence does? Are you still back in the days when people thought that we were like the Stasi? If that's where you're coming from then you shouldn't be surprised when my answer to your questions is no that doesn't happen. Because it doesn't.
"The point I'm making is that if journalists ask me certain questions and get the answer no, could it be that they're asking the wrong questions? You're assuming if you get the answer no, I'm saying we don't do anything - so I must be lying. But the thing is subtle. If the answer's no, it's because the question isn't the right question." Has she ever given an untrue answer to a question? "I'm not in the business of giving untrue answers," she says coolly. "I don't think it's helpful."
Rimington has herself, though, been on the receiving end of some deliberate unpleasantness from her old service, and admits it shook her. In 2001 she wrote her autobiography, infuriating her former employer - and when she submitted the manuscript for clearance, someone put it in a taxi and sent it to the Sun. Suddenly, she discovered what it felt like to be on the wrong side. I ask if the experience had ever made her reconsider or doubt anything she'd done in office.
"I don't think I doubted anything we'd done," she says quickly. "But - well, I think I maybe did think more about people's reaction to the secret state. When you're in the secret state you are, hopefully, pretty confident of the probity of everything you're doing, and the reason for it. And perhaps you don't think that much about how it looks to people outside. Not that I think you necessarily should be thinking that - because it's not your role.
"But I think I had this sense suddenly that, having been in the heart of it, here I was on the outside submitting this manuscript to the system and I had no control or knowledge of what was going on in that system. And I thought, hmm, I think this must be how people feel when they're dealing with the state machine in many of its manifestations - this Kafka-esque thing."
Former MI5 chief and spy novelist Stella Rimington speaks her mind - on Iraq, the 'huge overreaction' to 9/11, and why the secret service is much more liberal than we think
Stella Rimington has condemned the politicisation of national security since she left the secret service. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
When guide dogs are retired from service, it is common for them to enter a state best described as old-aged adolescence. As they begin to understand that they're no longer responsible for the safety of their owner, the dogs can become almost puppyish, amazed by the unfamiliar freedom of irresponsibility.
It's now 12 years since the first ever female, publicly named director general of MI5 retired from duty, and when we meet this week she is unrecognisable from then. The severe-looking woman with the brutally sensible crop and the dry, institutionalised reserve has softened into velvety folds of laughter, and a warmly engaging ease. Stella Rimington has just published her fourth novel, Dead Line, an elegantly pacy thriller starring a female MI5 agent, and at 73 she gives the impression of someone enjoying the novelty of speaking her mind. The effect is not strident so much as touching. Usually when people are being interviewed, you can see them telling themselves not to say too much, but before Rimington answers a question she often seems to be reminding herself that she really can let go.
"Yes, it is a gradual process," she agrees, smiling. "The shades of one's former existence do hang around for quite a long time. It takes a long time to get rid of that. And I still haven't entirely got rid of it."
She isn't doing badly though. She spoke out against 42-day detention last month, and this week welcomes the government's climb-down unequivocally. "We shouldn't introduce new intrusions into our civil liberties unless they are absolutely necessary - and nobody had demonstrated that they were necessary. If there isn't any need, then don't move the boundaries." She argues that we should "treat terrorism as a crime, and deal with it under the law - not as something extra, that you have to invent new rules to deal with." She is opposed to ID cards, because she can't see how they could be "a significant counter-terrorist measure", and although she admits she's "had more time to think about it since I left the service", she says her attitude to civil liberties has always been liberal. The big change, she argues, has been not her position, but the politicisation of the issue.
"One of the things I have observed in the last few years, since I left, is that national security has become much more of a political issue. And that parties are tending to use it as a way of trying to get at the other side. You know," she adopts a mocking playground tone, "'We're more tough on terrorism than you are.' I think that's a bad move, quite frankly.
"After the vote in the House of Lords, one heard the home secretary saying something like, 'Well nobody can say I'm not tough on terrorism'. As though the implication was there are people who aren't. Which strikes me as very odd. Because most of the people in the House of Lords whose contributions to that debate I'd read were serious people, who'd possibly spent a life, as I have, trying to protect the country from serious threats. So the implication that, you know, a politician was going to say 'I'm tougher on terrorism than you are' struck me as ... " and she flicks a wrist, batting away the boast with the back of her hand like a fly. "And it's happened broadly since 9/11."
The response to 9/11 was "a huge overreaction", she says. "You know, it was another terrorist incident. It was huge, and horrible, and seemed worse because we all watched it unfold on television. So yes, 9/11 was bigger, but not ... not ..." Not qualitatively different? "No. That's not how it struck me. I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life, and this was, as far as I was concerned, another one."
Rimington hopes President Bush's successor will stop using the phrase "war on terror". "It got us off on the wrong foot, because it made people think terrorism was something you could deal with by force of arms primarily. And from that flowed Guantánamo, and extraordinary rendition, and ..." And Iraq, I suggest. "Well yes," she says drily. "Iraq."
Jacqui Smith gave a speech this week on international terrorism which rather remarkably failed to mention the war in Iraq at all. I ask Rimington what importance she would place on the war, in terms of its impact on the terrorist threat. She pauses for a second, then replies quietly but firmly: "Look at what those people who've been arrested or have left suicide videos say about their motivation. And most of them, as far as I'm aware, say that the war in Iraq played a significant part in persuading them that this is the right course of action to take. So I think you can't write the war in Iraq out of history. If what we're looking at is groups of disaffected young men born in this country who turn to terrorism, then I think to ignore the effect of the war in Iraq is misleading."
These might not be unremarkable views for most Guardian readers - of whom Rimington is one. But according to Rimington, they are widely held within the intelligence service - much more so than most members of the public, and perhaps particularly Guardian readers, ever suspect.
"I don't think I'm unusual, frankly. It's the general public's, or whoever's it is, view that's out of date." She points out that Baroness Manningham-Buller, another former head of MI5, has been "saying broadly the same things. I think what that reflects is that the caricature of the service is out of date now.
"People [in the intelligence service] are very conscious of the possibility of intrusions into civil liberties - and therefore the importance of restricting that to the extent of what's strictly necessary. I think people are fully aware that the more you intrude into people's civil liberties, the more you set up grievances for people to, you know, encourage people to do all the unpleasant things that are going on."
At times the picture Rimington paints of MI5 seems almost too good to be true. She has always said she never carried a gun; none of her agents were ever killed; MI5 does not kill people; it does not spy on the prime minister - not even Harold Wilson - or even vet BBC journalists (even though the BBC has admitted submitting names for vetting). As I run through the list, she anticipates the next question, and grins: "So what do we do?" No, I say. My point was going to be that, well, you would say that, wouldn't you?
What I mean is that we all know she's not at liberty to tell the whole, unedited truth about her old job - so how can we know how much of her account to trust? She looks hurt, and then insulted.
"Why would I wish to engage in this and tell you a load of garbage? It would be a waste of everyone's time, including my own. Maybe what you ought to be looking at is, are you pursuing a myth about what British intelligence does? Are you still back in the days when people thought that we were like the Stasi? If that's where you're coming from then you shouldn't be surprised when my answer to your questions is no that doesn't happen. Because it doesn't.
"The point I'm making is that if journalists ask me certain questions and get the answer no, could it be that they're asking the wrong questions? You're assuming if you get the answer no, I'm saying we don't do anything - so I must be lying. But the thing is subtle. If the answer's no, it's because the question isn't the right question." Has she ever given an untrue answer to a question? "I'm not in the business of giving untrue answers," she says coolly. "I don't think it's helpful."
Rimington has herself, though, been on the receiving end of some deliberate unpleasantness from her old service, and admits it shook her. In 2001 she wrote her autobiography, infuriating her former employer - and when she submitted the manuscript for clearance, someone put it in a taxi and sent it to the Sun. Suddenly, she discovered what it felt like to be on the wrong side. I ask if the experience had ever made her reconsider or doubt anything she'd done in office.
"I don't think I doubted anything we'd done," she says quickly. "But - well, I think I maybe did think more about people's reaction to the secret state. When you're in the secret state you are, hopefully, pretty confident of the probity of everything you're doing, and the reason for it. And perhaps you don't think that much about how it looks to people outside. Not that I think you necessarily should be thinking that - because it's not your role.
"But I think I had this sense suddenly that, having been in the heart of it, here I was on the outside submitting this manuscript to the system and I had no control or knowledge of what was going on in that system. And I thought, hmm, I think this must be how people feel when they're dealing with the state machine in many of its manifestations - this Kafka-esque thing."
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