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 Straw, to 'put some steel in his spine', as one official has said. 
  
 On 11 February, Goldsmith met Taft, a former US ambassador to Nato who 
 was then chief legal adviser to the Secretary of State, Colin Powell. 
 After a gruelling 90-minute meeting in Taft's conference room 6419, 
 Goldsmith then met the US Attorney General, John Ashcroft, followed by 
 a formidable triumvirate including Judge Al Gonzales, Bush's chief 
 lawyer at the White House. 
  
 Goldsmith also met William 'Jim' Haynes, who is Defence Secretary's 
 Donald Rumsfeld's chief legal adviser, and John Bellinger, legal 
 adviser to Condoleezza Rice, then the National Security Adviser. This 
 group of lawyers is as renowned for fearsome intellect as it is for 
 hard-line conservative politics. Bellinger is alleged to have said: 
 'We had trouble with your Attorney; we got there eventually.' From 
 copies of Goldsmith's legal advice to the Prime Minister published 
 last week, it is clear that these meetings had a pivotal role in 
 shaping Goldsmith's view that there was a 'reasonable case' for war. 
  
 Goldsmith states: 'Having regard to the information on the negotiating 
 history which I have been given and to the arguments of the US 
 Administration which I heard in Washington, I accept that a reasonable 
 case can be made that Resolution 1441 is capable in principle of 
 reviving the authorisation in 678 [which approved of military force in 
 the first Gulf war] without a further resolution.' 
  
 In an exclusive interview with The Observer, Taft has for the first 
 time disclosed details of Goldsmith's mysterious visit to the US 
 capital. Up until now, the British government has been reluctant to 
 give any details of his meeting with the powerful network of lawyers 
 in Bush's inner sanctum who helped persuade him that a second UN 
 resolution was not necessary. 
  
 Taft reveals the role Straw played in fixing up these meetings and how 
 pleased the US lawyers were when they heard Goldsmith's final 
 'unequivocal' advice delivered to Parliament on the eve of invasion. 
  
 Taft, a former deputy defence secretary under President Ronald Reagan, 
 was the man to do that. He had been credited with masterminding the 
 doctrine of 'pre-emption', which argues that a state can take military 
 action to deter an attack. Crucially, Taft was also personally 
 responsible in 2002 for drawing up 1441, which called on Saddam fully 
 to comply with demands to disarm or face 'serious consequences'. 
  
 Speaking from his country home in Lorton, Virginia, Taft explains how 
 Straw set up Goldsmith's visit. 'It was something that grew out of a 
 series of conversations between Secretary Powell and Secretary of 
 State Straw,' said Taft. 'The question was: in particular 
 circumstances - namely the failure of Iraq to comply with resolution 
 1441 - would the use of force be authorised in the absence of a 
 further decision by the Security Council? We had reached the 
 conclusion that, while a second resolution would be desirable, it was 
 not necessary. 
  
 'As a legal matter, 1441 had been drafted in such a way that the 
 Security Council was required to meet and discuss the subject in the 
 absence of Iraq's compliance, but no further decision was needed. 
 Secretary Powell had shared that conclusion with Mr Straw and Mr Straw 
 said his lawyers were looking at this, the Attorney General in 
 particular, and asked, could he meet Secretary Powell's lawyers? 
 Because of that, Lord Goldsmith arranged to talk to us about our 
 views.' 
  
 Taft, who has since left the State Department to resume work in the 
 private sector, said: 'Lord Goldsmith met with me and one or or two 
 others in the State Department most of the morning. He then met with 
 our Attorney General, and met with people at the Pentagon - Jim 
 Haynes, and Judge Gonzales and John Bellinger.' 
  
 To human rights groups and many international lawyers, this roll-call 
 of Republican lawyers will ring alarm bells. Gonzales, the 49-year-old 
 son of immigrants from Texas, has been at the heart of controversy 
 over detainees in Guantanamo Bay and prisoner abuse scandals at Abu 
 Ghraib. 
  
 After a political battle in Washington, Bush appointed Gonzales US 
 Attorney General earlier this year, despite leaks of memos from him 
 that appeared to authorise the use of torture on 'enemy combatants' 
 not categorised as prisoners of war. Critics say his interpretation of 
 guidelines on torture paved the way for human rights abuses at Abu 
 Ghraib. 
  
 He was criticised after writing a memo to the President in which he 
 said the war against terrorism was a 'new kind of war' that renders 
 obsolete the Geneva Conventions' strict limitations on questioning 
 enemy prisoners and renders 'quaint' some of its provisions. 
  
 Haynes, another Texan, was appointed to the top legal job in the 
 Pentagon in May 2001 and has been a controversial architect of Bush's 
 'war on terror' under the wing of Rumsfeld. Like Gonzales, he has been 
 embroiled in the Abu Ghraib scandal. His nomination as a federal judge 
 last year led to a 35,000-name petition being sent to the White House 
 demanding the withdrawal of his name. 
  
 Philippe Sands QC, an international lawyer whose book Lawless World 
 re-ignited the row over the Attorney General's legal advice said: 'How 
 delightful that a Labour government should seek assistance from US 
 lawyers so closely associated with neo-con efforts to destroy the 
 international legal order.' 
  
 Taft denies that any undue pressure was put on Goldsmith or that the 
 British Attorney General expressed grave doubts about the legality of 
 any war. He said: 'We all told him what our views were in the same way 
 .. although he didn't indicate at the time what his own conclusion 
 would be. Our discussions were very straight up and he was looking to 
 understand our argument.' 
  
 Laughing he added: 'I will say that, when we heard his statement in 
 Parliament, which was the next thing we heard about, what he said 
 sounded very familiar.' 
  
 The visit to Washington proved to be vital for providing a case for 
 war that side-stepped the need for a second UN resolution: the 
 so-called 'revival argument'. This relied on linking three UN 
 resolutions: 678, which authorised the use of force in removing Iraqi 
 forces from Kuwait in 1990; 687, which set the ceasefire conditions at 
 the end of the war in 1991, including the dismantling of weapons of 
 mass destruction; and 1441, which threatened 'serious consequences' if 
 those conditions were breached. 
  
 In his 7 March legal advice, Lord Goldsmith makes it clear that some 
 British law officers believed that it was up to the Security Council, 
 not individual states, to decide if Iraq was in breach of its 
 obligations. 
  
 But Goldsmith discloses that he had fully taken on board the arguments 
 made to him during his visit to Washington: 'The US have a rather 
 different view: they maintain that the fact of whether Iraq is in 
 breach is a matter of objective fact, which may therefore be assessed 
 by individual member states. I am not aware of any other state which 
 supports this view.' 
  
 The advice clarifies a second vital point: that the American legal 
 advisers who drew up 1441 were convinced that it contained, in itself, 
 the authorisation to use force against Saddam if he could be shown to 
 have failed to disarm. 
  
 Goldsmith refers specifically to his meetings with the neo-cons and 
 the effect the arguments that Taft and others had on him: 'I was 
 impressed by the strength and sincerity of the views of the US 
  
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  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)