Free The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries by Campbell Alastair

of the key people. But I agreed with Godric I should probably do a briefing, and we also pushed the line about changing UK law on terrorism. I was trying to pull them back from the sense of imminent military action. I went for a run and then back from TB’s TV interviews where he was very good on the empathy and some of the personal stories from New York.
    The summit [European Council emergency meeting on terrorism] was straightforward enough, and the text OK. TB wanted me to work on the US press to get them to see it as significant. Jack arrived and agreed to do the press conference rather than TB, who, thank God, wanted to leave early. I got home about midnight. Chris Patten [former Conservative Cabinet minister, now a European commissioner] hitched a lift back with us and said he was really worried about the Tories now but resisted my blandishments about defecting. The trip had gone well. TB was getting an amazing press at the moment. GWB had also turned things around with his speech which most of our media thought was very powerful, and some printed the whole thing in full.
Saturday, September 22
    We were really just in military build-up mode now, plus I was keen to get coverage in the mainstream media for what we were trying to do to reach Muslims at home and abroad. TB called from Chequers and clearly thought now we should probably go to Pakistan. We set off for Norwich vs Burnley and met Charles Clarke and family for lunch. Charles felt that our politics were fine and TB was getting real strength out of this. He felt Clare should have been sacked years ago, that he never saw why Neil [Kinnock, former Labour leader] tolerated her and the same went for TB. Almost two weeks on now, the media was still totally dominated by the attacks, particularly now the anti-terror laws and military build-up. I did a conference call for the ministers on programmes tomorrow stressing that we praise Pakistan and talk up OBL as being un-Islamic. We lost 2–1. Generally, I felt the mood was pretty good considering. Certainly no grief and if anything a sense that TB had done well. The Sundays arrived late, millions of words of fuck all.
Sunday, September 23
    TB called before a round of calls with Kofi [Annan], [Jean] Chrétien [Canadian Prime Minister], [Atal Bihari] Vajpayee [Indian PrimeMinister]. We briefed up TB’s meeting with the chairs of select committees tomorrow, Home Affairs, Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development. We needed to show we were building a domestic coalition as carefully as the international coalition. TB was sure now he needed to go overseas again but both of us were worried we were losing sight of the domestic agenda. Philip [Gould, pollster, strategist and adviser to TB] did a good note on the conference speech. We had dinner with the Goulds, Tessa [Jowell], David [Mills, Jowell’s husband] and Jessie [Mills, their daughter]. David and Jessie were both very heavily against military action. Jessie was very anti-American, and said most young people were.
Monday, September 24
    At the intelligence meeting, John Scarlett presented more evidence of OBL’s involvement. But they were still no clearer on exact current whereabouts. He went through what they knew of the kind of security operation that existed around Bin Laden, which meant he basically never stayed in the same place twice, and apart from a few who were with him the whole time, the others would rotate. The intelligence picture was very patchy and I had a lot of doubts about whether we could get to the stage where any of this was publishable. The feeling was military action next week rather than this. Boyce said the US were realising they did not have the targets they thought they might have. TB was interested in what more we could do for Pakistan. Lander briefed on the people who had been arrested, also on the intelligence that the UK could be the next threat, up to and including anthrax.
    TB and I had a long chat later re GB. TB had asked him