TONY Blair’s Defence Secretary says he was ordered to burn a vital Iraq War memo. Geoff Hoon claims it stated invasion was illegal. The former Prime Minister had insisted in 2015 that the allegatio…
TONY Blair’s Defence Secretary says he was ordered to burn a vital Iraq War memo.Geoff Hoon claims he was ordered to burn a memo stating the invasion of Iraq was illegalBut now Mr Hoon, in charge of defence at the time of the 2003 war, is adamant his private secretary was told “in no uncertain terms” by Jonathan Powell, Sir Tony’s chief of staff, that it must be destroyed.Yet Mr Hoon says he was shocked to learn of Lord Goldsmith’s U-turn on the legality on the eve of the war.
He said: “When he wrote advice that war in Iraq could be illegal, he can hardly have expected someone would be told to ‘burn after reading’.”