Lord Goldsmith

[2010 Jan] It was like hearing the school swot delightedly recount mixing with the big boys  At first I felt more or less ambivalent towards the man.  By the end I found I could barely listen to his over-rehearsed tones, his unctuous attempt at modesty, his amazing lack of human sorrow at the outcome of our war in the hot, sticky sands of Persia....'The lawyer has to reach the correct legal view, whatever the consequences might be,' he said, the tips of his front teeth flashing at the narrow cavern of his dark mouth.  I must confess I found that one of the most chilling sentences I have ever heard from a British politician.

[2009] Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger  In February, Jack Straw, one of Blair’s principal accomplices, the man who let the mass murderer General Pinochet escape justice and the current “justice secretary”, overruled the Information Commissioner who had ordered the government to publish Cabinet minutes during the period Lord Goldsmith was pressured into changing his judgement that the invasion was illegal. How they fear exposure, and worse.