09/11/2013 Dateline London

at the top of the hour. Now on BBC News, Dateline London with Gavin

Esler. Hello, and welcome to Dateline

London. In an unprecedented televised hearing, the bosses of

British intelligence speak of the damage caused by Edward Snowden's

leaks. Evidence that Yasser Arafat was poisoned. And, what the loss of

British shipyard jobs tells us about the future of the Navy, and of

Britain. My guests are Abdel Bari Atwan, who

is a Palestinian writer and broadcaster, Nesrine Malik, a

Sudanese journalist, Greg Katz from Associated Press, and David

Aaronovitch of The Times. There are broadly two views of what

the US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has done. The first

is that he has heroically lifted the veil on US and British

intelligence's rather dodgy dealings, including bugging Angela

Merkel's phone. The other view is that the information now made

public, and more to come, has severely damaged American and

British national interests. The heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, not

surprisingly, take the latter view, and that is why they agreed to be

questioned by a Parliamentary oversight group this week. But, do

we trust their judgment as to what is in the public or national

interest? It was pretty much what you would

have expected this week. I think you are right to characterise in a sense

the over polarisation of the argument, to the heroic Edward

Snowden on the one hand as the archetypal whistle`blower who tells

us all the terrible things our government have got up to, and on

the other hand, the suggestion that he is some kind of villain, and the

people who have published this material are some kind of quasi

traitors, the modern equivalents of Burgess and Maclean. Neither of

these things, I think, are true. What they point to other genuine

dilemmas at the heart of how we conduct security. In a sense, it

would have been nice if a little bit more of that had come out of the

hearing with the heads of the security services. Of course, you

are going to attempt to use the technology you have available to spy

upon people who you consider maybe a threat to national security. I and

large, in a democratic society, people will subscribe to that. But

who is overseeing what happens that a mark we may want to set is not

overstepped, and Duberry trust those oversight procedures? In the heart

of that, is a real and serious debate. There is a third element,

which I will talk about later if we have time, but for the moment, it is

the dilemma that we have. How is this playing in the US? Some people

are saying that they are looking at any stick with which to beat Barack

Obama, that he seems to be out of touch. You would not expect him to

know everything going on, or would you? I think most people think

Barack Obama was aware of what was going on, and was not transparent

about it. A lot of people are disappointed that he has not taken a

more active stance on civil liberties and privity rights. I

don't find it the least bit shocking that Angela Merkel's phone was

tapped. Any intelligence agency would want to tap the private phone

of a foreign leader, friendly or otherwise. But those Americans who

care are truly shocked by the volume of e`mails and calls that were

harvested by this alliance between the government and the big Internet

companies. I think there is a sense of loss in America that the privacy

that is so built into our constitution eroded bit by bit. What

do you make of the argument made by the three intelligent chiefs in a

newspaper war here that this is giving comfort to the enemy?

Al`Qaeda and others are reading this and they will change whatever it is

they are up to. It makes sense they would change their communications

procedures. The terrorist groups would certainly have learned a lot

from Edward Snowden and being able to glean some valuable intelligence

and change some of their tactics. That made perfect sense. Whether it

is a catastrophic loss, some people are saying this is the worst breach

of intelligence ever, but who knows? It can't not help them. One point

there, when they say it is the worst reach, I can't help thinking do they

mean it is the worst breach because the bad guys get everything, or

because it is really embarrassing? Or both. I completely agree that

there is a fourth dichotomy being set up here. It is quite fashionable

these days to say if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to

fear. Let's be realistic about this, let's not be softies about this,

these people are saving lives. But I think it is not a naive position to

genuinely care about the right of privacy for the people. That is

something that is regretful. There has not been more space for that

argument, unfortunately, and it has become polarised. It has been

exacerbated by the British media, by newspapers grinding axes with other

newspapers. I don't think that has been helpful. That has not been a

responsible space where people have had a good, healthy debate about

this, and that is because, to be fair to the Guardian newspaper, when

they did ask officials to sift through the information and do a

filtering in cooperation with the government, they refused. The

Guardian newspaper had to make most of those calls themselves. The other

media outlets have taken either a pro`or anti stance. Has not been a

good debate about. They should have been more space to discuss things

without agendas. But there are those who say if we look at the judgement

of the three men who were being questioned this week, and asked if

they have got it right, we should also look at the editor of the

Guardian, who will apparently appear before a Commons committee on the

same thing, who is he to decide, is the other argument? Absolutely, but

thinking like that is a dead`end because they you come up against

characters, personalities, who do you trust more, the media or the

government question not people trust neither, if we are honest. And that

is the trouble, there has been no credible character or figure that

has come out and appealed to public sentiments. Maybe we trust Judi

Dench because she played a great head of MI5 in the James Bond

movies. I have watched most of these discussions and investigations. I

was shocked when they said terrorists are rubbing their hands

with glee when they watched Edward Snowden and his dispatches and

relations. I know Al`Qaeda people never used mobile phones or

smartphones, so it is personal contacts, letters and old`fashioned

clinic patients. Secondly `` old`fashioned communications. They

did not name names. Nothing really new there. A lot of lies. For

example, they said they do not torture. This is not true. And

ex`member of Al`Qaeda is suing the British government, the intelligence

agency in this country, of torturing him. Another point they said is that

they don't torture, yes, maybe they don't, but they send those accused

of terrorism to brutal regimes like Syria, Egyptian, Moroccan and they

do the job for them. I believe Edward Snowden did a good job.

Usually they cover themselves by saying they are doing this to

protect the people, combat terrorism, and they aborted about 35

attacks. But is Angela Merkel the head of Al`Qaeda? For her telephone

to be bugged under that excuse of terrorism, is, for example, three

out of 35 international leaders, it is amazing, it is pure lies.

Interestingly, it is not the revelation that is so interesting,

it is the timing. This `` if this had happened ten years ago, public

acceptance would have been far more accepting in the wake of 9/11, when

people made claims that there was not enough information sharing and

perhaps this could have been avoided if some walls had come down. But I

think a backlash has now developed. You are right. It was that decision

to lead to greater sharing that led to the situation whereby people like

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden actually had the availability to the

information they do, because they were wiring about `` worrying about

this. The third problem I alluded to was that one of the problems about

capturing meta data, and the way in which data is stored now by

intelligence agencies, is that it is far more open to these incredible

sizes of leaks. That is why this difficulty of describing Edward

Snowden simply as a whistle`blower, the material he was sending out on

he could not possibly have known what most of it was. This stuff has

been travelling around in various places, and it seems to me naive to

believe that the Chinese and Russians and so on have not had

access to some of it in the course of Edward Snowden's stays in both

Hong Kong and Russia. One of the big questions we must ask our security

agencies is how open they are effectively to massive intelligence

leaks as a consequence of the procedures, and of the consequence

of collecting so much information as they do under the modern

circumstances. It strikes me as being a real problem. It is after

the fact, really. The point about Bradley Manning was that hundreds of

thousands of people, literally, had access to the same information that

he had. Right, and these are fairly low`level people. The other thing

that this points out is how naive all of us were 25 years ago when

e`mails started creeping in. If you can remember thinking that these

things were private, even the big media corporations, everyone has

been acting incredibly carelessly with their data. This has made that

abundantly clear. Ask David Cameron. His private text messages have been

read out. But there are also commercial advantages to be had. I

had an e`mail this morning from a company saying if you use a certain

search engine everything is tracked and they will direct advertisements

to you, we won't do that. Where does the latest information on the

Falkirk Labour Party come from? They came from e`mails sent on company

time from a Labour Party official, which were intercepted by the

company and then released by the company in Grangemouth for their own

reasons. It is a fair assumption on the whole that if the state hasn't

got it, then someone else has got it. You have to recognise that when

you write it. Let's move on. For nine years,

Palestinians, and others, have wondered whether Yasser Arafat was

murdered in 2004. Now, news that very high traces of polonium have

been found in his remains has led Palestinian officials to call his

death an assassination, and point fingers at Israel. Israel denies any

involvement in his death. I have been very vocal on this. Ariel

Sharon threatened Yasser Arafat several times that he would actually

execute him one way or another. I also heard from people around Yasser

Arafat that he was scared. He put I'm bars on the top of his

headquarters so that they could not sent a helicopter. Also, he used to

carry a gas mask with him. Just in case a bomb was thrown to gas him.

One argument made against that is that, by the time of his death, he

was on his way out anyway. That is often said, that he was nowhere near

as powerful as he was just a few years ago. He was very powerful.

They imprisoned him in his headquarters for more than two

years. No water, no food, no electricity. He was in a very bad

condition. He was very powerful. So, Ariel Shomron decided to write him

off completely. The question is, we know the fact he was poisoned by

this polonium. We know there are only three countries in the world

with this kind of poison. Russia, US and Israel. I don't believe Russia

and US are interested in killing Yasser Arafat. It is very unlikely.

What are we going to do? we are not going to listen to nonsense like

this. You have no evidence that Israel assassinated him, and we do

not even know that he was assassinated, because that is not in

the report, either by the Swiss scientists who investigated it, who

were paid for by... They were not... I know the facts! Well, you clearly

don't, because... Even if it was... Let me finish, I am not saying it is

necessarily wrong, but it is something that people should know.

The second thing is that the Russian team who have looked that this have

not come to such hard conclusions, although the Swiss conclusions are

not hard either. Hold on, if you have a mind to a conspiracy, one

possibility is that somebody has placed polonium in there. I do not

believe that, but it is as likely as anything you have said. You then

make the jump, given all that, to saying Israel must have done it on

the assertion that only Israel, the active state or Russia, who says, as

access to polonium, and it cannot have been the other states, despite

the fact that Yasser Arafat was holed up in Ramallah, could do

nothing and become less powerful for everything that you said. The reason

why is you just seem to think that Israel is the arch villain in the

world... It is, Israel is! Who uses Australian and British passports to

kill people in Dubai? It was conclusive evidence that Israel

assassinated this man. Now, OK, I agree with you that... Look, Arafat

is killed, polonium... Did other Palestinians want to kill Arafat?

No, why should they kill him? Let me put it that way, we had

international investigation on the death of Rafi Kerry we, OK? `` Rafiq

Hariri. Why can't we have the same international team to investigate

the death of Arafat? Up just to roll back a little bit from where we have

ended up, I think it is important to establish that none of these are

established facts. There has been a Russian report that came out this

morning that said that it was not confirmed that there was polonium in

the remains... No, I read the report. I read the report as well,

so we can talk like this until the cows come home, but if you let me

finish, the report said it was conclusive but that there was a high

level of radiation in his remains. The fact that he was poisoned in the

first place has not been established, number one. It has not

been established? The fact that he was assassinated through polonium

has not been established unequivocally. This is an

investigation... It is not helpful if you don't let me finish, because

we are trying to get somewhere. To then leapt immediately and assume

Israel assassinated him, even though it might be in your mind, and in the

minds of millions of Arabs, a logical conclusion, it is also

something we should take a step back from, and say that he had other

enemies, enemies within Palestine. The third thing which I think is

hugely problematic, because I was listening to Al Jazeera, an Arabic

phone in yesterday, and Arabs do not need a reason to start a conspiracy

theory. What has been happening over the past 48 hours is that ridiculous

conjecture and theories have come out about what happened, let me

finish, about what happened to Arafat, and it is a complete red

herring, nobody is talking about the peace process, or Arafat's legacy,

or what will happen, do answer your question, is this going to run and

run and get more and more ridiculous? People will step further

away from the facts. What I would urge is that they should be an

investigation to quash these conspiracies. Back with me, just

one. The Swiss laboratory, the Russian laboratory, they are not

there decide who assassinated Arafat. They told us he was killed

by poison. No, they didn't. The polonium is very high. Bari, they

didn't. They did not say what you just said. No, they said that. They

did not say he was poisoned by polonium. About the conspiracy

theory, when they told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in

Iraq, I was one of the people who used to say, yes, there is no weapon

of mass destruction. They said, you believe a conspiracy theory, and

they wrote a book about that. Was it a conspiracy theory when we were

actually denying that there was no weapon of mass to structure in Iraq?

Let me bring in Greg Katz... He is the wise man? A wise man and a wise

woman, I have got that right! The reports are not conclusive. There is

no direct physical conclusion of an assassination. You certainly could

have an investigation, but you could not put anything before a court of

law that would be convincing. When anybody says there is very high

levels of polonium in these remains, with somebody with the profile of

Yasser Arafat, you have to believe conspiracy theories to believe it is

worth looking at, it is quite possibly the case. It raises

questions, but it is completely insoluble in our lifetime. What are

your matching that somebody from an intelligence agency, or somebody

from the Palestine authority is going to come forward and say, yes,

by the way I did this? There will be no scientific way to establish any

chain of evidence, nothing of this can be proven, so by definition it

is a conspiracy that will... If I can say one thing, if it was

conclusively proved that he was poisoned and by Israel, still

nothing will change, nothing will happen, nobody will be held

accountable. Why? Because it is Israel? Because it is above the

national community? Because it is above international law? You know

that, Bari, in some respects it is, de facto it is, but to be fair to

the conspiracy theorists back home, if it were established that Israel

was responsible, I don't think anybody is expecting that. We have

just a few minutes left, and we are not going to solve this problem.

Perhaps we can solve the problem of British of yards closing, there will

be no more in Portsmouth at the 500 years, but there will be

shipbuilding on the Clyde. Do you see this as inevitably connected

with Scottish independence? Do I? No, I think this is a decision that

was taken because they had to choose one place and the Clyde is better.

Knowing the Clyde was better, it would have been more political to

situate it in Portsmouth on the argument that maybe in 2014 the

Scots would vote for independence than it would have been the other

way around. You do not want to build ships in a foreign country? This is

a consequence of the fact that we have a smaller navy and we are not

building the ships that we used to. The tragedy is, I was listening to

summary from Portsmouth, who had built his plans on the basis of

this, but we knew ship building was going to be significantly reduced in

Portsmouth. Why are we so rubbish at planning the future of skilled

workers who are going to have to move somewhere? Why is this such

nonsense? That is a very good point, because the workers are extremely

skilled, we have a shortage of engineers, it is one of the terrible

things about Britain, and you would think that a bit of planning would

ensure that these people do not have an uncertain future. I think I

listened to the same interview that you did, which is that there is no

plan to reabsorb these engineers back into any establishments or any

other businesses, and he was saying that he had eight years before

retirement age and he is going to have to dip into his retirement

funds to survive. That was as bright, not the fact that it was

shut down. People are completely understanding of commercial

imperatives... Shipyard workers have lived with this for years, you

finish and order, what do you do next? Yes, but give us some warning

and try to facilitate an alternative. One thing I would like

to say is that it started out as a nonpolitical decision, but it has

been politicised by Scottish politicians, I find. I am shocked!

Politicians politicising things?! But in a bizarre way, English

politicians were attacked for playing political footballs with

shipbuilding, but it was the Scottish politicians who said, if

you do vote for independence, we will ensure that shipbuilding stays,

and to be fair to the Labour unions, they said, hang on, nobody was

talking about this in terms of secession, you brought it up. From a

broader angle, I believe the political emphasis, the economic

emphasis is changing. Now it is Britain, England, because anywhere

in five is tame, it will not be Great Britain maybe, because after

Scotland will gain independence, Wales, I don't know, I do not know

if it is fair to say Great Britain, but the economic emphasis is

changing. I think Britain is turning to a servicing country. The emphasis

now is an Islamic banking, they want London to be the basis for banking,

so they want Islamic money, so they are looking at tourism, other

things... 30 seconds. The one thing that argues against this is that the

British auto industry is going strong, which is fantastic. British

cars have made a comeback, the Indians have made a turnaround at

Jaguar Land Rover, lots of these companies are doing very well, and

that industry looks to be in a lot of trouble ten or 15 years ago. It

is not completely fading away. Thank you, Greg, I needed that! We all

did, that is it for Dateline London for this week, you can of course

comment on Twitter. Thank you for watching and goodbye.

A full UK weather forecast in a few moments, but first I thought we

would take a quick look at Typhoon Haiyan, which has been bringing

devastation to parts of the Philippines, one of the most

powerful typhoon is we have seen, this is it working out into the

South China Sea, and it is forecast to make a second landfall in

Vietnam. It will probably come onshore around Da Nang or to the

north, bringing gusts of up to 140 mph with the eye of the storm

grinding up along the coastline of the Nam, bringing very strong winds,

further devastation here and huge falls of rain. `` Vietnam. Heavy

showers here