AMY GOODMAN: You said you were giving this directly to the British Ambassador to the U.N. and to the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.?

HANS VON SPONECK: Indeed. When I went there, I handed copies to Ambassador Burley at the time. He will remember, and I also gave the reports to the British mission, to Ambassador Eldon, who was the number two ambassador to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was particularly agitated over the fact that I was instrumental in having these documents prepared by my security office in Baghdad.

AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Greenstock was particularly agitated?

HANS VON SPONECK: No, his deputy, who had been Deputy Manager, which he would always tell you with great pride, of the 1991 Gulf War arrangements, so it led to, in fact, a request to the Secretary General that I be removed because of -- one of the main reasons because I was issuing these reports, which the United Nations found quite useful, and I was encouraged to continue to write them.

AMY GOODMAN: So they were pressuring for you to be removed for reporting the effects of the bombing on the ground in Iraq?

HANS VON SPONECK: Well, that, Amy, that I'm afraid is correct. It's one -- it's not the only, but it was one of the reasons why the two governments felt that I was unsuitable for that position in Iraq. And all I was doing as a civil servant was to relay the cold-blooded facts that arose as a result of these incursions, these illegal incursions, after all, and well, I continued with the full support of the U.N. Secretariat.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about another U.N. official who was forced out. The Associated Press reporting John Bolton helped force out a top official at the U.N. ahead of the Iraq invasion because he feared the official could interfere with the Bush administration’s war plans. According to the Associated Press, “Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to personally demand that Jose Bustani resign his post as head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. At the time, Bustani was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Iraq. If the inspectors had been sent then, they would have uncovered that there were no chemical weapons, a discovery that would undermine the Bush administration’s rationale for war.” Did you know about this at the time?

HANS VON SPONECK: Actually, Mr. Bustani is heading, or headed an organization that's not part of the U.N. system. That is, it's totally outside the gamut of the United Nations. But I think what agitated the U.S. and maybe John Bolton was the fact that he tried at the time to bring Iraq into signing the Chemical Weapons Prohibition Act. And I think that increased -- that led to the wrath of Washington and maybe contributed to the decision to remove this senior official of an important institution.

AMY GOODMAN: Hans Von Sponeck, from your position as former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, your response to the Downing Street memo and the documents that have come out since? The significance of the meeting both for Blair and for President Bush?

HANS VON SPONECK: I would say, Amy, that this document is simply formal evidence of what was not a secret since -- in fact, since mid-2002. In October 2004, during a meeting with Robin Cook, former foreign secretary of the U.K. in Brighton, I was told by him that in mid-2002, meaning at the time when this memo, these minutes were written, they knew already in London that Prime Minister Blair had agreed with Mr. Bush to join him in going to war against Iraq, and what we see in the ensuing period, in retrospect, now this is – now one can say it -- then it was more difficult to discover -- but one can say that there was a gradual planned buildup, and it was not a question of a policy decision any longer. It was a P.R. exercise. How do we sell this to the public? How do we get through this to the objective, which we have decided to have, which is to implement the Clinton October 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, which the U.S. Congress passed, which called for regime change? But at that time it was more a regime change from within, using Iraqi opposition, but this of course, all changed on January 2001, when the Bush administration came in and translated into a very clear decision, and that is to go to war against that country. And apparently in mid-2002, the British came on board and this memo that these minutes that are now available to the public simply formalized what was already decided.

AMY GOODMAN: The last 30 seconds, Jeremy Scahill.

JEREMY SCAHILL: I think clearly what's needed right now is a congressional investigation. This is extremely important. This should be a mainstream issue in this country, that President Bush began the invasion of Iraq, the air war against Iraq a year before he actually officially began it. Months before he went to the Congress, months before he went to the United Nations, and the problem right now is that the Republicans are not going to allow the Democrats to hold a hearing with subpoena power. And that's the primary issue. But the last point I want to make is that this is yet another case of seeing that, actually Baghdad Bob, Chemical Ali, these guys were telling the truth. And they were saying the Bush administration is trying to provoke another Gulf of Tonkin here, by coming in and escalating these bombings. That's what Amir Al-Saadi, Senior Advisor to Saddam Hussein said to me the last time I talked to him. Tariq Aziz, the last time I talked to him, said the same thing. They're sending U-2 spy planes. They want to us shoot it down. They're looking for a reason to go to war. That’s clear right now, and there are so many pieces of evidence that one can turn to to prove this. This is one of the most rock solid, and it should be exploited by the Congress right now to prove that Bush lied to the American people.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, correspondent for Democracy Now!, was in Iraq almost a year leading up to the invasion of Iraq. John Bonifaz, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, and Hans Von Sponeck, Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, formerly. Thanks all for joining us.

Courtesy of Democracy Now

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