The first big news out of Jonathan Powell's recent book on the peace process was his advice to the British government to talk to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas and, more or less, all comers on the international terrorist scene.
Basically he is right, talk is cheap compared to war but, while it's less risky than fighting, dialogue isn't entirely risk free. What you say can come back to haunt you years later.
Here in Ulster many of our politicians will be left gagging at what he reveals about them. Casual indiscretions litter what is essentially a kiss and tell account of the elaborate courtship dance that lured Sinn Féin and the DUP into bed together.
Take Martin McGuinness who campaigned for years for a full inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday. "Martin McGuinness said to me in a private conversation some years later that he didn't know why we had done it: he thought an apology would have been sufficient" Powell blurts out in his book. McGuinness clearly picked the wrong man to have a private conversation with.
Powell was just as indiscreet when, on 18 July 1999, he joked with McGuinness about what asses they both thought various unionist MPs were.
That indiscretion wasn't in the book but in a conversation between Martin McGuinness's home phone and Downing Street which was bugged by MI5 and the RUC Special Branch. When my wife and I published details in a biography of McGuinness we were immediately arrested along with a retired police officer accused of being our source. Both the authorities and McGuinness tried to suggest that the transcripts might not be accurate but Powell dispenses with the smokescreen.
"The Security Service were embarrassed and called me to say Special Branch had been told years ago not to transcribe such conversations" he records, with never a mention of the arrests and fruitless raids which they mounted at the time and for which several police officers eventually faced disciplinary charges. Instead he tells how David Trimble rung him that night to rib him about it.
When they read the book the DUP may feel that Powell deserves to have his own door battered down by the police and whisked off to a holding centre for the evening. He exposes a backchannel line of communication which the Paisley party opened with Sinn Féin in 2003 but have denied ever since.
It had been rumoured that a senior DUP adviser was spotted meeting his Sinn Féin opposite number in the Linenhall Library and Powell talks of a journalist carrying message but any contact was also vehemently denied and nothing could be proved. I remember being threatened with legal action if I named anyone or accused anyone of lying without evidence.
Powell doesn't spare the DUP's blushes. He peppers his memoirs with references which were clearly noted down at the time for later publication.
Martin McGuinness, who had a secret line of communication to MI6 since 1973, managed his contacts with the DUP through an adviser. He then chatted about it over lunch at Chequers and at various other venues with Powell and Tony Blair. He recounted how documents were passed between the parties as they attempted to do business. All the while the DUP maintained a facade of disdain for Sinn Féin, maintaining that, until March 2007, the only contacts were through the British and Irish governments who spoke to both sides.
Powell tells a different story. At one point the line of communication went silent, but at another McGuinness said it was so efficient that he didn't need Powell to shuttle between the two parties any longer.
"If I was in government now I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taleban and I would want to find a channel to al-Qaeda" Powell told the Guardian.
My advice to al Qaeda would be to count their fingers.
The rules of the game for speaking in confidence to a senior British official seems to be that if you reveal what went on it is bad faith, if the press reveals it then it may be a breach of the official secrets act or irresponsible journalism. However if the official himself tells all then it's a fascinating memoir.
