Christian
Kerr writes:


More on those classified documents at the Cole inquiry that cannot be
released for reasons of “national security”. The Australian reports
today:

Senior
government sources, who have seen the classified material for which public
interest immunity was sought, said none of them contained damning evidence that
AWB had rorted the UN oil-for-food program.

“There
is no smoking gun”, observed one source of the documents in question.

So it’s all alright then. Just the same way
we’re told in other Cole news in today’s Agethat “One of Australia’s top diplomats, an expert in Middle East politics and
corruption, ‘investigated’ allegations AWB was paying kickbacks to Iraq by
making a phone call to an AWB middle manager.”

And just the way Tim Besley, the chairman
of the Wheat Export Authority, had to tell Senate Estimates of the regulator’s
embarrassment over its knowledge of the kickbacks allegations: “We looked them in the eye.
They came back, looked us in the eye and said, ‘Look, we’ve done nothing
wrong’.”