British Sources Say "FIXED" -- Means "Manipulated" or "Cooked"
Conservatives have attempted to dismiss the Downing Street memo,
a secret British intelligence document indicating that intelligence
officials there believed that the Bush administration was manipulating
intelligence to support its case for war in Iraq by insisting that the
term "fixed" has a different meaning in British English than in the
United States. The memo describes Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the
British foreign intelligence agency MI6, stating that in Washington,
"the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." In
fact, British reports -- including one that quoted the memo itself six
weeks before the British Sunday Times published its full text on May 1 -- refute the notion that "fixed" means anything different in British parlance.
Robin Niblett, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, claimed
that "'Fixed around' in British English means 'bolted on' rather than
altered to fit the policy." In an exclusive interview with Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice on the June 15 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Rice eagerly agreed
with Matthews's suggestion that in Britain the word "fixed" really
"means just put things together." In the June 20 issue of the
conservative Weekly Standard, contributing editor Tod Lindberg wrote
of the memo: "'Fix' here is clearly meant in its traditional sense, in
the sort of English spoken by Oxbridge dons and MI6 directors -- to
make fast, to set in order, to arrange."
Other conservatives questioned the meaning of "fixed" without
explicitly suggesting transatlantic miscommunication. On the June 10
edition of PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, National Review editor Rich Lowry claimed
"it was meant in the sense that the intelligence is supporting the
policy asking questions like what will a post-invasion Iraq look like
and questions of that nature." National Review Online contributing
editor James S. Robbins also doubted the meaning of "fixed around the
policy" in a June 6 column and in a June 16 article on the conservative website CNSNews.com. The June 14 edition of CNN's Inside Politics cited a commentary making this argument by the conservative blog Dean's World.
But British sources contradict these claims. In a British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) documentary from March, which quoted the Downing Street Memo more than a month before the Sunday Times
published it, BBC reporter John Ware explained: "By 'fixed' the MI6
chief meant that the Americans were trawling for evidence to reinforce
their claim that Saddam was a threat." The headline of a Sunday Timespreview
of the documentary -- "MI6 chief told PM: Americans 'fixed' case for
war" -- also makes it clear how the British understand "fixed."
Similarly, Sunday Times reporter Michael Smith, who first
disclosed the memo on May 1, ridiculed the notion that "fixed" has a
different meaning in Britain in a Washington Postonline chat:
SMITH: There are number of people asking about fixed and its meaning. This is a real joke. I
do not know anyone in the UK who took it to mean anything other than
fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If
you fix something, you make it the way you want it.The
intelligence was fixed and as for the reports that said this was one
British official. Pleeeaaassee! This was the head of MI6. How much
authority do you want the man to have? He has just been to Washington,
he has just talked to George Tenet. He said the intelligence and facts
were being fixed around the policy. That translates in clearer terms as
the intelligence was being cooked to match what the administration
wanted it to say to justify invading Iraq. Fixed means the same here as
it does there.
Moreover, when the Sunday Times first disclosed
the memo on May 1, it noted the Bush administration's attempt "to link
Saddam to the 9/11 attacks" as an example of "fixing" the intelligence
around the policy:
The Americans had been trying to link Saddam to the 9/11 attacks;
but the British knew the evidence was flimsy or non-existent. Dearlove
warned the meeting that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed
around the policy".
In a May 2 column in London's Daily Mail, political editor
David Hughes argued that the meeting detailed in the Downing Street
memo "led inexorably to the publication of the 'sexed-up' Iraq weapons
dossier two months later," referring to a now-famous 2003 report by BBC
reporter Andrew Gilligan alleging that a British dossier on Iraq had
been "sexed up" to hype the Iraqi threat. Gilligan's report became the
subject of intense controversy
when British weapons expert Dr. David Kelley committed suicide
following the revelation that he was a key source for that report. An official inquiry into Kelley's suicide criticized Gilligan, his report, and the BBC, which prompted claims that the inquiry was a whitewash.
