Intelligence

Intelligence inquiry clears Government

By Michael Evans, Defence Editor
The report

Iraq Dossier

A CROSS-PARTY parliamentary committee which had access to all available intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programme and questioned the heads of the secret agencies, unanimously exonerated the Government yesterday of “sexing up” its Iraq dossier published last September.
There were many changes to the dossier as it went through different drafts but they were not as a result of political interference or insertions demanded by Alastair Campbell, Downing Street’s director of communications, the Intelligence and Security Committee said in a report.

The committee also disclosed that the reason Iraq’s ability to launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes was inserted late in the dossier was because a highly sensitive piece of intelligence had come in which was seen only by the head of MI6 and the head of Defence Intelligence. They passed it to the dossier authors for inclusion, with their personal stamp of approval.

New insight is also provided about the dossier’s controversial Niger uranium intelligence — Iraq allegedly seeking uranium for its nuclear programme — which some foreign agencies, including the CIA, have dismissed. The committee revealed that GCHQ, the government communications headquarters in Cheltenham, had picked up signals intelligence while eavesdropping on an Iraqi official visiting the African state.

The committee made no judgment about whether the war with Iraq was justified. However, in one revealing paragraph, the report disclosed that the Cabinet Office Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which was responsible for the September dossier, warned the Government that any collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime “would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists, not necessarily al-Qaeda”.

In its report, following a four-month inquiry into the intelligence behind the Government’s dossier on Iraq, the committee of eight MPs and one peer concluded that the dossier had properly reflected the secret material which had been provided by MI6 and GCHQ.

Yesterday’s report, published 24 hours after a leaked version appeared in the London Evening Standard which was described by Ann Taylor, the committee chairman, as inaccurate, gave further fascinating insights into the way raw intelligence material is handled and processed within Whitehall.

Since the Hutton inquiry into the death of David Kelly began in August, a deluge of classified documents has been placed on the inquiry’s website, opening up to public scrutiny every meeting, e-mail and memo relating to the Government’s dossier.

Yesterday it was the turn of the Intelligence and Security Committee to reveal more of the secret workings of Whitehall and the way the intelligence services operate.

The end result of the committee’s investigation was that the Government was “not guilty” of misusing intelligence to boost its case for going to war with Iraq. A similar finding was made by the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee in its report, published in July.

The ISC report makes no mention of the BBC Today programme which first raised the allegation that the dossier had been embellished. Nor does it refer to David Kelly, whom the BBC said was the source for the Today allegations, other than in a list of witnesses who appeared before the committee in private.

These are the main conclusions of the ISC report:

Was the Government dossier sexed up?

The committee concluded: “We are content that the JIC has not been subjected to political pressures and that its independence and impartiality has not been compromised in any way. The dossier was not ‘sexed up’ by Alastair Campbell or anyone else.”

John Scarlett, chairman of the JIC, told the committee “unequivocally, that he did not at any time feel under pressure. nor was he asked to include material that he did not believe ought to be included in the dossier”.

The committee said that in comparing the different drafts of the dossier, the language in the final and published version, completed on September 19, 2002, was, in some respects, “a toned-down version of the September 10 version”.

However, the committee expressed a number of reservations. It acknowledged that obtaining intelligence about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction was challenging in a country such as Iraq where, according to a briefing note from MI6, the regime’s network of security agents operating surveillance missions “in most streets”, included staff in newspaper kiosks. Iraq was a hard target but the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service or MI6) successfully ran a number of agents against Iraq and Saddam’s regime, the report said. Nevertheless, the intelligence was limited, and the JIC should have highlighted in its key judgments “the uncertainties and gaps in the UK’s knowledge about Iraqi biological and chemical weapons”.

The 45-minutes claim, inserted four times in the dossier, including in the foreword signed by Tony Blair, had also given rise to exaggerated interpretation.

The committee said: “The dossier was for public consumption and not for experienced readers of intelligence material. The 45-minutes claim was always likely to attract attention because it was arresting detail that the public had not seen before.”

The committee said this piece of intelligence needed further explanation for the average reader. “The fact that it was assessed to refer to battlefield chemical and biological munitions and their movement on the battlefield, not to any other form of chemical or biological attack (such as via ballistic missiles), should have been highlighted in the dossier,” the report said. It added: “The omission of the context and assessment allowed speculation as to its exact meaning. This was unhelpful to an understanding of this issue.”

In exonerating Mr Campbell of being involved in inserting the 45-minutes claim, the committee also dealt with the issue of why Mr Campbell, the Downing Street communications director, appeared to have been chairing meetings with intelligence officials about the contents of the dossier.

“Alastair Campbell did not chair meetings on intelligence matters. He chaired meetings on the presentational aspects of these issues which were appropriate to his position as Director of Communications and Strategy. Only ministers or members of the intelligence community chair meetings on intelligence matters.”

The committee also highlighted changes made in the dossier’s foreword which it felt had been “unfortunate”.

The report said that Saddam was not considered a current or imminent threat to the mainland UK. Although the dossier did not claim this, the first draft of the Prime Minister’s foreword contained the words: “The case I make is not that Saddam could launch a nuclear attack on London or another part of the UK (He could not).” The committee said this showed the Government recognised that the nature of the threat from Saddam was not directly to mainland UK. It was unfortunate that this point was removed from the published version of the foreword and not highlighted elsewhere, the report said.

Was Geoff Hoon accused of misleading the committee when giving evidence on the dossier?

Mr Hoon appeared before the committee on July 22 and was asked whether any members of the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) had expressed concerns about the drafting of the dossier. The report said the Defence Secretary revealed that “there had been a dispute” in the DIS about the precise language in which the 45-minutes claim had been included in the dossier.

However, he did not mention the fact that two members of DIS had put their concerns in writing to Tony Cragg, then the deputy chief of defence intelligence.

“Nor did his officials, even when pressed on the matter, after the Defence Secretary had left,” the report said. The committee was told that all the concerns had been discussed within the DIS as part of the normal drafting process.

However, it was not until shortly before his appearance at the Hutton inquiry that Martin Howard, the present deputy chief of defence intelligence, told the committee that two members of DIS had written to their line managers on September 19 and 20, 2002, expressing concerns about the language in the dossier. These letters had not been copied either to Mr Hoon or to Mr Scarlett, chairman of the JIC.

It emerged yesterday during a press conference given by Mrs Taylor and her fellow committee members that Air Marshal Sir Joe French, then the Chief of Defence Intelligence, had made the decision not to pass the letters to Mr Scarlett. He told the committee: “I had to make a corporate decision on which draft (of the dossier) we would actually live with. So the fact that this discussion goes on was just a weekly event as far as I was concerned; lively debate within the DIS.”

The committee, however, criticised the MoD for failing to mention the letters. It said in its report: “We regard the initial failure by the MoD to disclose that some staff had put their concerns in writing to their line managers as unhelpful and potentially misleading.”

It also said: “We are disturbed that after the first evidence session (on July 22) which did not cover all the concerns raised by the DIS staff, the Defence Secretary decided against giving instructions for a letter to be written to us outlining the concerns.”

The committee said that in future if individuals in the intelligence community formally wrote to their line managers with concerns about JIC assessments, they should be brought to the attention of the JIC chairman.

Mrs Taylor, in her press conference, emphasised that the committee was not accusing Mr Hoon of lying or giving misleading evidence but that it would have been helpful to know the full story before finding out about the letters some time later. Asked if the DIS letters of dissent might never have become known had it not been for the Hutton inquiry, Mrs Taylor said: “I hope it would.” She did say that she “took exception” to the memo written by Mr Howard to Mr Hoon on July 18 in which he advised against allowing the two DIS officials to give evidence to her committee. One of them, Brian Jones, now retired, gave the full details of his concern when he appeared before the Hutton inquiry on September 3.

Should the 45-minute claim have been inserted in the dossier?

The committee questioned Sir Richard Dearlove, Chief of SIS (MI6), about the intelligence behind this claim, as well as its sourcing. “He told us that the sourcing was reliable. The senior (Iraqi) military officer named and quoted in the (intelligence) report was in a position to comment on the deployment of chemical and biological weapons.”

The intelligence about the 45 minutes came in a report to MI6 on August 30. It claimed that chemical and biological munitions could be with military units and ready for firing “within 20-45 minutes”. The assessment staff of the JIC eventually decided to use the term “within 45 minutes”.

Michael Mates, a Tory member of the ISC, told the press conference that the intelligence on the 45-minute issue was so sensitive that only the heads of MI6 and the DIS were party to it before it was handed over to the Joint Intelligence Committee for inclusion in the dossier.

The intelligence was not passed on to officials lower down, such as Dr Kelly, one of the MoD’s experts on Iraqi weapons.

The ISC said it had been told by the assessment staff of the JIC that the 45-minute claim was consistent with experts’ understanding of “the Iraqi military and its capability to use weapons”.

The report said: “The reference to the 20-45 minutes in the JIC assessment adding nothing fundamentally new to the UK’s assessment of the Iraqi battlefield capability.”

Was it right to include the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger?

The committee again questioned Sir Richard Dearlove about this claim. He told the committee it came from two independent sources, one of which was based on documentary evidence. MI6’s two sources reported that Iraq had expressed an interest in buying uranium from Niger, “but the sources were uncertain whether contracts had been signed or if uranium had been shipped to Iraq”. After the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that it had also received documents about Niger but that they were considered to be forgeries, the MI6 documents came into question. But MI6 had a second source and told the committee what it was. “We know what the evidence is,” Mrs Taylor said. “We have questioned the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) about the basis of its judgment and conclude that it is reasonable,” the report said.

The reference to GCHQ’s involvement was also a revelation. The report said: “GCHQ also has some sigint (signals intelligence) concerning a visit by an Iraqi official to Niger”.

Main points of the report

Alastair Campbell is cleared of “sexing up” the dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
Downing Street is cleared of applying political pressure to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)
The 45-minutes claim is viewed as genuine intelligence but not properly explained
Intelligence operation: The dossier failed to highlight the limited intelligence available on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
Niger uranium: The allegation that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger was based on “reasonable” judgment
Terrorism: The JIC said that a collapse of the Iraqi regime could increase the risk of chemical and biological agents falling into the hands of terrorists
MoD: Geoff Hoon is criticised for failing to tell the committee about the letters from two Defence Intelligence Staff officials, detailing concerns about language in the dossier

September 13, 2003 at 10:45 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home