ICC blowback for blair?(Insider Report)

In early February, the Labour Party government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair briefly considered prosecuting Katherine Gun, a former employee of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's eavesdropping agency. Last March, Gun blew the whistle on U.S.-British surveillance operations directed at six rotating members of the UN Security Council. The operations were carried out prior to a vote on a second resolution dealing with war against Iraq. That spying operation was intended to prevent any compromise proposal that would have forestalled an invasion. (It also illustrates the importance that the supposedly unilateralist Bush administration placed on getting the UN's imprimatur for war against Iraq.)

Within a few days of beginning its prosecution of Gun, the Blair government quietly shut down the case. According to conservative British commentator John Laughland, Blair declined to prosecute Katherine Gun because he "will do anything to keep secret the advice submitted ... by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, on the legality of the Iraq war. There is a very ...