Orin Gor­don

In Jan­u­ary 2004, I wit­nessed an ex­tra­or­di­nary piece of me­dia his­to­ry. I was on a pre­sen­ter shift at BBC Sport at Tele­vi­sion Cen­tre in west Lon­don. Mid-af­ter­noon, there was a com­mo­tion… a pha­lanx of peo­ple swept past our desks, in our small cor­ner of the vast open plan news­room. One of them was the rarely-seen Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al, Greg Dyke.

The BBC had been in the news a lot. More on that in a mo­ment. We in­stinc­tive­ly knew some­thing was up, downed tools and fol­lowed Dyke, as he swept down a near­by stair­case in­to the low­er-lev­el news­room. He stood on a desk and told us he was re­sign­ing as DG. He cried as he did so. And he was cheered by every man­age­ment-loathing work­er, in what has some­times been called the Bol­she­vik Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion.

Dyke lost a bit­ter fight with the Labour gov­ern­ment of Tony Blair over their un­truth­ful state­ments about Iraq’s weapons of mass de­struc­tion (WMDs), and the out­ing and sui­cide of a top-lev­el source, Dr David Kel­ly, over a dossier that had been em­bell­ished to jus­ti­fy British sup­port for George W Bush’s in­va­sion of Iraq. The term of art at the time was a “sexed up” dossier. The en­tire thing was ex­plo­sive.

The Blair gov­ern­ment and its spokesman Alas­tair Camp­bell went to great lengths to cast doubt on the ac­cu­ra­cy of the BBC’s re­port­ing. The pres­sure was in­tense. BBC news an­chors did what they do best… sub­ject their own man­agers to tough in­ter­ro­ga­tion. The pres­sure even­tu­al­ly claimed Dyke.

His res­ig­na­tion isn’t the most im­pact­ful thing to have emerged from Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, but it was con­se­quen­tial. It was the re­sult of ef­forts by gov­ern­ments on both sides of the At­lantic to mis­lead the pub­lic and to go to war with re­porters who didn’t go along.

Gen­er­al Col­in Pow­ell’s blot on an oth­er­wise stel­lar ca­reer in the US mil­i­tary was his disin­gen­u­ous pre­sen­ta­tion to the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in Feb­ru­ary 2003. It at­tempt­ed to give flesh to phan­tom WMDs, which he claimed that Iraqi pres­i­dent Sad­dam Hus­sein had un­der his con­trol. The in­fa­mous British dossier false­ly stat­ed that Sad­dam could de­ploy chem­i­cal and bi­o­log­i­cal weapons in 45 min­utes.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his De­fense Sec­re­tary (or self-styled Sec­re­tary of War) Pe­te Hegseth have come clos­est to match­ing the of­fi­cial de­cep­tions of the pe­ri­od just af­ter 9/11. Trump tore up a multi­na­tion­al agree­ment, the Joint Com­pre­hen­sive Plan of Ac­tion (JCPOA), that had cer­ti­fi­ably suc­ceed­ed in con­tain­ing Iran’s de­vel­op­ment of a nu­clear weapon.

At the urg­ing of Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu, he first bombed the coun­try’s nu­clear in­stal­la­tions at For­dow, Natanz and near the beau­ti­ful, his­toric city of Es­fa­han. Af­ter claim­ing to have to­tal­ly crip­pled Iran­ian ca­pa­bil­i­ty, he launched a more ex­pan­sive bomb­ing cam­paign at wide-rang­ing tar­gets across the coun­try in Feb­ru­ary – in­clud­ing, trag­i­cal­ly and mis­tak­en­ly, a girls’ school on Day One, as well as the as­sas­si­na­tion of the coun­try’s chief Is­lam­ic cler­ic and Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

Trump has since giv­en the ap­pear­ance of be­ing in­ex­tri­ca­bly en­meshed in a con­flict he doesn’t know how to get out of with a win. It has caused sharp in­creas­es in oil prices – at the re­fin­ery and at the petrol pump – and in­creased in­fla­tion and the cost of liv­ing.

It has al­so tak­en an axe to his po­lit­i­cal im­age as the pres­i­dent of peace – some­thing he spent years cul­ti­vat­ing on the cam­paign trail. Who can for­get his glee­ful dis­man­tling of Jeb Bush, broth­er of George, as be­ing war­mon­ger-ad­ja­cent. He skil­ful­ly de­ployed Joe Biden’s weak en­abling of the de­struc­tion of Gaza against De­mo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Ka­mala Har­ris in the 2024 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

Be­sides Iraq – which had noth­ing to do with 9/11 – Dubya Bush’s lega­cy was the Pa­tri­ot Act. It ex­pand­ed the pow­ers of the state and in­fringed in­di­vid­ual rights. Fed­er­al agen­cies got in­creased pow­ers of sur­veil­lance.

The stat­ed aim was to cir­cum­vent and pre­vent ter­ror­ism, and it in­volved mea­sures such as war­rant­less wire­taps (sounds fa­mil­iar?)

Hegseth? Ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings of drug smug­gling sus­pects at sea un­der his watch went where even Bush failed to tread. Bush locked up in­def­i­nite­ly (at Guan­tanamo Bay) the sus­pects he opt­ed not to try. Trump and Hegseth zap them… even if (as was the case of two men just over a year ago) they sur­vived an ini­tial strike.