Examination of Witnesses (Questions 760-779)
RT HON
JACK STRAW
MP, SIR MICHAEL
JAY KCMG AND
MR PETER
RICKETTS CMG
24 JUNE 2003
Q760 Mr Chidgey: I appreciate that.
Mr Straw: Either Dr Samore or
Mr Taylor were very clear in their evidence that with these dual-use
facilities, which the Iraqis were unquestionably operating during
the period of the UNSCOM inspections, they were adept at completely
cleaning these facilities so they were sterile in between the
production of CBW agents.
Q761 Mr Chidgey: That is not the
opinion of all the experts. Can I ask you one final question:
have any inspections been undertaken of those sites that I mentioned
post-conflict?
Mr Straw: We will find out and
come back to you[4]
Q762 Mr Olner: Can I ask, basically
on a similar theme to Mr Chidgey, why do you think Saddam did
not either provide evidence of destruction of weapons of mass
destruction in accordance with UN demands or once military action
had started why did he not use them?
Mr Straw: The most credible explanation
as to why he did not comply was that this was consistent with
his previous behaviour of lying to and cheating the international
community in order that he preserved his capability, and that
the most rational judgment made on the basis of Saddam's behaviour
by the middle of March was that the anxieties of the international
community about the fact that he had concealed chemical and biological
weapons programmes and was beginning to try to put together a
nuclear programme were indeed very well-founded. I know everybody
here, with the exception of Mr Chidgey, voted for the Government
resolution on 18 March, but I have to say that the question for
those who took a different view is what position would we now
be in if with all this evidence of non-compliance and of covert
programmes, only revealed as a result of defections and the most
intensive subsequent inspections, and with the incontrovertible
evidence we also knew of the building up of their missile programme
in the period after the inspectors had left, if we had suddenly
walked away and allowed the inspections to dribble away, which
happened before and would have happened again once the military
pressure was off, what would have been the position now in the
Middle East? You would have had an emboldened Saddam causing immense
disruption to regional peace and security there. Your second question,
Mr Olner, was why did he not use chemical and biological weapons
during the campaign? We do not know is the answer. The assumption
was that he would use those and, as I think either Mr Taylor or
Dr Samore said, since the assumption was that he was likely to
use them, the provenance of these weapons would be found during
the course of the military campaign. I can only speculate why
he chose not to do it. It may have been that having made serious
undertakings to some people in the international community that
he did not have this material, he decided not to use it and to
continue to have it concealed, but am I satisfied about the basis
for the judgment that the Security Council made on 8 November
and that we made on 18 March? Yes.
Q763 Mr Olner: How confident are
you that the interrogation of Iraqi personnel will produce these
concrete results in the weeks and months ahead?
Mr Straw: I am hopeful but—
Q764 Mr Olner: —But not confident?
Mr Straw: I say hopeful. You choose
your words, I will choose mine, and I am hopeful. First of all,
what we are looking for is further corroborative evidence. The
case was justified on 18 March on the basis of evidence then available,
let's be clear about that. Again, as some of your witnesses have
explained, there are immense difficulties, particularly at this
time, in creating a safe, secure and confident environment in
which the right people feel confident about talking about their
involvement in programmes. I am told by people from Iraq that
the sense of fear that Saddam could still be somewhere is very
strong. There is a real anxiety by people that if they offer information
they could still be subject to intimidation or worse by people
still loyal to Saddam. I also have to say that arrangements have
not finally been made to offer immunity to appropriate people
in return for evidence and of course where you are offering immunity
you also have to make sure that it is done in a sensible and sensitive
and relatively transparent way otherwise the evidence could be
the subject of concern that it has been tainted the other way,
in other words, the people giving evidence are simply providing
what their interrogators want to hear in return for immunity,
so these are complex issues.
Q765 Mr Olner: How far away are we
from that immunity being granted?
Mr Straw: I cannot give you a
precise answer just now. I will try and get you one for Friday[5]
Q766 Mr Olner: Can we try and move
on a little bit because it is well documented that the Iraq Survey
Group got off the ground a little bit slowly, given that there
were other priorities that I agree needed to be attended to first.
Now it is up and running, how many personnel are there and what
type of skills have they got? Is this a big operation or just
an add-on operation?
Mr Straw: It is up to 1,300 people
now and I will bring in Mr Ricketts in a second, mainly US with
some UK and Australians.
Mr Ricketts: The total number
is going to be 1,300, they are building up to that now, of which
there will be at least 100 British personnel with a wide range
of skills necessary for looking for WMD.
Q767 Mr Olner: Foreign Secretary,
how much importance do you think the Government should attach
to having plans and things in place to ensure that the verification
of any weapons of mass destruction finds are done completely away
from and completely independently and completely transparently
of the global community?
Mr Straw: If we are talking about
physical evidence, it is obviously very important that any evidence
that is found is subject to rigorous, independent examination.
Of course we all recognise that. That said, I think that recent
events show that the concern by the coalition is simply to arrive
at the truth and nothing else and that is what we are seeking
to do. It is as frustrating for us as it is for everybody else.
There is a separate issue about the direct involvement of the
IAEA and in particular UNMOVIC. As you will be aware, the terms
of Resolution 1483, the latest Security Council Resolution on
Iraq, said words to the effect that the Security Council would
re-visit the role of UNMOVIC and the IAEA in Iraq, and again your
two witnesses Dr Taylor and Dr Samore gave you quite good explanations
as to why they thought the current environment was not an appropriate
one for the civilian inspectors.
Mr Olner: Thank you, Chairman.
Q768 Mr Illsley: Foreign Secretary,
you just mentioned that the issue after 1441 was disclosure and
non-co-operation as opposed to the threat posed by weapons of
mass destruction. Are you now telling the Committee that the decision
to take military action was based on disclosure and co-operation
rather than the threat?
Mr Straw: I did not put it in
that way. If I may say so, that is the wrong way of looking at
it. It was because the international community said there was
a threat from Iraq to international peace and security posed by
its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, its missile
systems and its failure to comply with a succession of Security
Council resolutions, that it then imposed new obligations on Iraq
which were the inspections. The two key tests under 1441 were
a complete disclosure, which they failed to provide on 9 December,
and then full, active and immediate co-operation with the inspectors,
which they also failed, but of course, as events moved on, the
focus came on these two tests because they were the tests under
operational paragraph 4 of what amounted to a "further material
breach". You will remember that under op 4 "further
material breach" was a failure of disclosure and other failure
"actively, completely and immediately to comply." In
the absence of their meeting these two tests under operational
paragraph 13 the Security Council had warned Iraq that they faced
further serious consequences.
Q769 Mr Illsley: At the end of the
day I think you said the same thing, that the two tests, the two
key issues, were disclosure and non-cooperation, as opposed to
the evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Straw: If you look at the resolution
of the House that was agreed by a very big majority on 18 March,
it was carefully drafted, as it were, to take people through a
series of propositions. We recalled the terms of 1441, the fact
that it posed this threat, we noted that 130 days since 1441 Iraq
had not co-operated as required and was, therefore, in further
material breach and had rejected the final opportunity to comply,
and then we went on to deal with other issues. That was the sequence.
Inevitably, as an argument evolves the current issue changes.
What is crucial here, Chairman, is whether Saddam had capacity,
was rebuilding his capacity, for chemical and biological weapons
production and was seeking to re-establish his nuclear programme
was simply not an issue by this date, the Security Council had
accepted that. I attended five successive Security Council debates
and that was not an issue. France and Russia did not stand up
and say, "Oh, they have not got this stuff". When President
Chirac gave his celebrated interview on 10 March he accepted that
they had chemical and biological programmes, that was not an issue.
The issue by the beginning of March was what do we do about the
fact that—again, it was not an issue—he was in further
material breach of 1441 and it then became an argument about containment
versus military action, that is what it came down to.
Q770 Mr Illsley: Just coming back
to the intelligence evidence and a very general question. How
satisfied were members of the Government with the intelligence
that they had in relation to Iraq? I ask this because one of the
themes which seems to run through the evidence we have received
so far is that there were requests for the evidence to be "sexed-up",
there were perhaps suggestions that some of this evidence was
quite old and, in fact, the `dodgy dossier' had been initially
written based on materials available in 1991. That was an historically
based document. How happy were ministers with the quality of the
raw intelligence data and the assessments from that data?
Mr Straw: First of all, let me
make it clear that there was never any request for the so-called
"sexing-up" of either dossiers, certainly not of the
first dossier, none whatever.
Q771 Mr Illsley: Is there any truth
in the fact that it was sent back six or seven times to the intelligence
community to be rewritten?
Mr Straw: To give you chapter
and verse on it, and I have been doing the same thing with the
Intelligence and Security Committee, to give you exact numbers
I would have to come back with the information on Friday. It is
not about these things being sent back, it is an iterative process
where various drafts are shared. All the time documents go through
all sorts of drafting. I made comments, other ministers made comments,
officials made comments. It is not a question of anybody saying,
"This must go back. This will not do", the process was
not remotely like that. It was here is a document, does it present
the best case on the evidence which was being sourced and adjudicated
by others, namely the JIC? That was the process. Was I satisfied
with the intelligence?
Q772 Mr Illsley: Were you happy to
use it?
Mr Straw: I was satisfied that
the available intelligence justified the judgments that were made.
Would I, in an ideal world, have preferred more intelligence?
For sure, because the only reason we had to rely on intelligence
was because of the highly secretive and mendacious nature of the
Iraqi regime. That meant that we were reliant on a series of sources,
but let me say, and again I will go into more detail about this
on Friday, from time to time I would say in respect of a piece
of intelligence that I had received, "What is the background
to this? I want to know more about the nature of the source".
On occasions, I would talk to the seniors of those people directly
involved and so on. I think I have been reading and taking account
of intelligence now for long enough, and anyway have a questioning
mind, not just to take stuff that is put in front of me. Can I
put this last point which is a really important part of our system.
The reason why we have a Joint Intelligence Committee which is
separate from the intelligence agencies is precisely so that those
who are obtaining the intelligence are not then directly making
the assessment upon it. That is one of the very important strengths
of our system compared with most other systems around the world.
Mr Ricketts can tell you more about that because he was Chairman
of the JIC until two years ago.
Q773 Mr Illsley: Just coming back
to the 45 minutes claim, and I know this has been done to death
over the last few days. You said yourself that this has taken
on a life of its own. I think one of the reasons for that is the
prominence given to it by the Prime Minister in the foreword where
it is highlighted in a very vague way, and this is why I come
back to the quality of the intelligence, that weapons could be
deployed in 45 minutes. There is no explanation of which weapons,
whether they were weaponised, whether the weapons would have to
be weaponised, what the term "deployment" means, whether
that means deployed on a battlefield or from the battlefield or
transported to the battlefield. There is a complete vagueness
there. At the end of the day the suggestion is that if weapons
could be deployed in 45 minutes they could be found pretty quickly
during a battle or during the investigations afterwards. It has
been suggested to us that the reliance on this 45 minutes claim
tends to suggest that it would have been very easy to find such
weapons if they actually existed, if they could be deployed in
such a short space of time.
Mr Straw: With respect, Mr Illsley,
I think that is with the benefit of some hindsight. People reading
this document when it came out treated the 45 minutes claim in
the way which was intended, as part of the evidence, but in no
sense the whole burden of the case, not remotely. I would just
refer to the fact that when the BBC's Mr Andrew Gilligan gave
a report on this document on, I think it was, the Today
programme, he said "To be honest, the document is rather
sensibly cautious and measured in tone as a whole". He then
goes on to say "There are a couple of sexy lines designed
to make headlines for the tabloids, like the fact he can deploy
within 45 minutes if the weapons are ready and he could reach
British bases on Cyprus", both of which we actually knew,
so they were not deployed because they were sexy lines. What Mr
Gilligan was saying here was that in any event this information
was known. I personally did not know it but then, of course, my
sources are not quite as good as Mr Gilligan's it turns out.
Q774 Mr Illsley: I am coming on to
that.
Mr Straw: It was news to me. Historians
looking at this—I guarantee—when they go from September
through to March, the decision to go to war, will make a judgment
about what was in the minds of people and as at each stage people
were shifting their opinions, in this particular example I gave
in favour of going to war, and they will say, "Look, the
fact that he had developed weapons, some of which were deployable
within 45 minutes, was part of the overall case but in no sense
the absolutely key element for it", not at all. The key element
for me was much bigger than whether he could deploy them in 45
minutes, 60 minutes or 15 minutes. In any case, if he has got
the weapons—it is a statement of the obvious—they
are deployable within a certain period. The key thing for me was
this guy had developed chemical and biological weapons and a nuclear
programme against the will of the international community, he
had used chemical weapons against his own people, he had hidden
a biological and nuclear programme and then stayed in defiance
effectively having pushed out the inspectors at the end of 1998,
even though there remained this much unanswered business for the
inspectors. Having done that, there was important evidence that
he had not stopped his programmes but used that pause in terms
of surveillance by the international community to build up his
programmes. That was the argument, and then we gave him chance
after chance after chance before we took military action to comply
peacefully, and he failed to take those chances.
Q775 Mr Illsley: Finally, Foreign
Secretary, were you concerned about the evidence the Committee
received recently about the easy accessibility journalists seemed
to have to intelligence sources?
Mr Straw: The first thing I would
say is that our intelligence services, the security service and
the secret intelligence service—MI5, MI6 and GCHQ—have
people at every level in them of the highest integrity and professionalism,
and I have no evidence whatsoever to suggest that anybody in those
agencies is other than totally loyal to the Crown and committed
to their job.
Q776 Chairman: That was not the question.
Mr Straw: I thought it was, I
am sorry.
Chairman: The question was are you satisfied—
Andrew Mackinlay: Telephone numbers of
journalists, that sort of thing.
Q777 Mr Illsley: It is the ease of
access that journalists have to intelligence sources. I am not
questioning the loyalty of intelligence services or whatever,
although that is obviously a question.
Mr Straw: It remains to be seen,
I would rather not speculate about Mr Gilligan's sources, but
that was the answer to the question.
Chairman: We will pursue that further
in private.
Q778 Mr Maples: Can I take you back
for a couple of minutes to the so-called "dodgy dossier"
and when that was first published on the internet. The names of
the authors were given and I would like to take you through who
they were and what their functions were. They were somebody called
Alison Blackshaw, who is Alastair Campbell's PA; is that correct?
Mr Straw: I am sorry?
Q779 Mr Maples: There were four authors
named in the file when the document was first put onto the internet.
They were taken off pretty quickly afterwards but I want to take
you through who they are and establish what their functions are.
Alison Blackshaw was named as one. Is it correct that she is Alastair
Campbell's PA?
Mr Straw: She is Alastair Campbell's
PA, sure.
4 Ninth Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee,
Session 2002-03, The Decision to go to War in Iraq, HC
813-II, Ev 72. Back
5
Ninth Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee, Session 2002-03,
The Decision to go to War in Iraq, HC 813-II, Ev 72. Back
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