Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1360-1379)
RT HON
JACK STRAW
MP, MR PETER
RICKETTS, CMG AND
MR WILLIAM
EHRMAN, CMG
27 JUNE 2003
Q1360 Mr Illsley: At a very senior
level.
Mr Straw: But my best judgment
again, Mr Illsley, not on the basis of evidence but trying to
put two and two together, reading through his transcripts and
so on, is that the person concerned is unlikely to have been centrally
involved in the preparation of the dossier in any event, but I
cannot be certain about that. What I can be certain about is that
the key allegations which he made are simply wrong, they are literally
and palpably untrue. I made that point in open session, to some
interest from the left. The other point I keep making from the
point of view of the history that you are writing is (because
it would be very serious if it were wrong) is, as I have said,
that the 45 minutes was part of the argument but it was not the
totality of it.
Mr Ricketts: It was very striking
reading the transcript of Mr Gilligan appearing before you in
answering Sir John his insistence that the underlying intelligence
referred to missiles, where it does not. There is a material point
there, he was very insistent and he was wrong.
Q1361 Mr Illsley: Has the intelligence
continued to come out of Iraq? Do we still continue to get intelligence
assessments from Iraq and do they indicate that the weapons are
still there or the chemicals are still there? Is there any information
coming out of Iraq now to say, "We have got it wrong, chaps,
we cannot find it."
Mr Ehrman: *** What needs to be
borne in mind is that in the immediate aftermath of the war the
priority task for the forces was security and starting reconstruction.
So there were these exploitation teams that went to these sensitive
sites and we have mentioned the number of sites that they have
gone to, but I think that the Iraq Survey Group, that was deployed
inter-country, are now going to put more emphasis on intelligence-led
investigations and not simply going round the sites when those
sites were on a list with UNMOVIC so of course the Iraqis knew
about them. So, yes, a great deal of evidence is being put into
getting intelligence after the war as before it.
Mr Straw: If the point of your
question has been have we had any clear proof that claims made
in this document were wrong then no. I think I gave you a list
in one of the earlier sessions. Some of the claims/assessments
in here have been proved to be correct and there are others that
have not been disproved. There is quite an issue about the missile
engines because what we are facing not in this Committee but often
outside is people pocketing the things that prove this. On the
missile engines it is quite an interesting story. Iraq declared—and
do not forget one of the things we know *** is that the Iraqi
government took rather an interest in this dossier—
Q1362 Mr Pope: I bet they did.
Mr Straw: We made claims about
missiles in here, not in relation to 45 minutes but others. They
claimed they had 151 Volga missile engines in their December 2002.
An UNMOVIC inspection in January 2003 *** discovered 231 engines.
The Iraqis then admitted, having been found red-handed—to
have illegally imported a further 149 and an Iraqi engineer told
UNMOVIC they had imported 567. A little vignette of how information
had to be dragged out of the Iraqis. Since they had these hundreds
of missile engines, which could, I gather, have a wide range of
uses, and given everything else we knew, I think we were quite
right to be worried. Evidence as it emerged was corroborating
what was in here, not the reverse.
Q1363 Mr Illsley: You have absolutely
no doubt in your mind that the evidence that this country received
in relation to Iraq's weapons was good evidence?
Mr Straw: No, I have not.
Q1364 Mr Illsley: It was good intelligence?
Mr Straw: If you want my own personal
experience of this, this is self-evidently the most serious matter
I have ever had to deal with, and deciding to embark on the strategy
as we did and then follow it through, conscious from an early
stage that if we judged in the circumstances it was necessary,
we would recommend to the Commons that military action was taken,
was a very heavy responsibility so we had to think about these
things very, very carefully. Moreover, I had to go into all of
this in immense detail, first of all because of the intense discussions
that were taking place with other members of the Security Council.
Some days you get down to arguing about a certain passage. I remember
one day I must have made 15 or 20 phone calls and I spoke to Powell
seven times and twice to Ivanoff all on the same day. This is
one illustration. Then of course post-441 we had these very, very
intensive discussions inside the Security Council and I had discussions
with Blix as well. I became more and more convinced about the
case against Iraq, not less. ***
Q1365 Chairman: Before I call John,
one quick question, has there been intelligence of destruction
or concealment of WMD on the part of the Iraqis that has come
to light since as a reason why we cannot find any?
Mr Ehrman: ***
Q1366 Chairman: Is there any intelligence
on that?
Mr Ehrman: Perhaps I could say
most of the sites known to have been associated with the programmes
and the ones that have been visited have been looted to some extent,
and some looting and destruction has been very specific, which
might indicate an effort to conceal proscribed activity. Most
ministry buildings in Baghdad were extensively looted and some
evidence may have disappeared, as President Bush suggested.
Q1367 Chairman: Is there evidence
from our own contacts that the Iraqi regime deliberately sought
to destroy evidence of WMD prior to the conflict?
Mr Ehrman: ***
Q1368 Sir John Stanley: Could I have
written answers, non-classified, to the questions which I put
to you on uranium? The questions are on the public record. I would
like to have written answers. I just want a written response on
the timing of the forged documents, getting knowledge of those
going to the British intelligence community, and whatever your
response is on a non-classified basis about the question I put
to you as to whether Britain had fulfilled its UN obligations
to put the substantive material. Answer it in whatever terms you
can but I would like a written response.
Mr Straw: I will provide as much
as I can unclassified, some of it will have to be classified.
Q1369 Sir John Stanley: I would be
grateful for whatever you can do on a classified or non-classified
basis.
Mr Straw: We always do.
Q1370 Sir John Stanley: Thank you.
There are a number of points I would like to put to you. You very
helpfully read out the summary of the JIC assessment *** Does
that raise any questions in your mind about the other areas of
assessment?
Mr Straw: ***
Q1371 Sir John Stanley: It would
be very helpful if you could read out again the wording in the
Executive Summary.
Mr Straw: ***
Q1372 Sir John Stanley: ***
Mr Straw: ***
Q1373 Sir John Stanley: I know. All
you can do is on the best you have got, I understand that. I am
not making a criticism but it is an important fact.
Mr Straw: ***
Q1374 Sir John Stanley: That is a
different point. What the military do is a different point. I
am talking about the intelligence assessment.
Mr Ehrman: Can I just say one
thing. *** I think it is true to say we do not know yet the reason
why they did not use it on the battlefield. We hope we may find
out but at the moment I think it is fair to say we do not know
the reason. For the longer range missiles, post this assessment,
post the dossier, there was information that they might have been
seeking to conceal some of their long-range missiles from UNMOVIC,
and may have even disassembled them into parts and hidden them,
and then between UNMOVIC leaving and the war there was very little
time so there may have been a physical constraint on getting those
missiles into shape to fire, but for the battlefield munitions
we do not know why.
Q1375 Sir John Stanley: There would
be no such constraints, and I am coming to the battlefield munitions
in a moment, but I just register that fact—
Mr Ricketts: ***
Q1376 Sir John Stanley: Yes, but
with respect, the 45 minutes is not just an assessment of capability,
it is also an assessment of the command and control systems relating
to those weapons of mass destruction, and certainly in terms of
the presentation which the Government made publicly there is a
very real degree of suggestion of intention.
Mr Straw: Sure, we can speculate
as to why Saddam did not use it.
Q1377 Sir John Stanley: I have covered
that point. The next point I want to cover is that the assessment
suggested—and you repeated it in public and it is also in
the JIC assessment—that production of BW and CW is taking
place. Now there is a lot of reference to capability but in the
public statement made by the Prime Minister he said on 24 September:
"Saddam has continued to produce them"—that is
chemical and biological weapons—and you have confirmed to
us today that the JIC assessment absolutely underpinned what the
Prime Minister said to the House. The question on that is here
we are, we have been all over Iraq, I know all about that it is
quite easy to conceal BW production, but it is not so easy to
conceal any significant scale of CW production. The assessment
was that CW and BW were in production and it raises quite serious
questions in my mind why so far not a stitch of those on-going
production facilities have been uncovered.
Mr Straw: Of course we want to
get the best evidence we can. Where we are at the moment is the
point where we have reached. Mr Taylor explained in some detail
the explanations for the delay in getting the Survey Group going.
One of them to which I think he referred is that there had been
an assumption in terms of military planning, based on best intelligence
assessment, that the Iraqis would indeed use some of their chemical
and biological capability and therefore we would not need to have
a Survey Group afterwards because it would have been obvious they
had used them. In the event they decided not to. To come back
to the point there is nothing in here which has been disproved
and there is a good deal already which has been effectively corroborated.
Q1378 Sir John Stanley: I do not
think on this particular issue, Foreign Secretary, you can rest
on not disproving. The case was made in very specific, positive
terms in terms of capabilities, possession of weapons systems
and the scale of possession and so on. There is a very, very real
wish and expectation that positive expectations were raised in
terms of what Saddam Hussein had would be somehow fired. I have
to put it to you if a year from now, let alone two years from
now, nothing has turned up I do not think the Government is going
to find it at all easy to rest on nothing has been disproved on
the basis nothing was found.
Mr Straw: I note what you say.
Can I also say with respect that the judgment that you will be
wanting to make in producing your report on the decision to go
to war is not a judgment based on 20/20 vision. It is a judgment
based on whether what we were saying to the House and to the country
between September and March was based on the best available evidence,
the most objective analysis and the best and most rational judgment
that we could bring to bear, and I believe that in all of those
we satisfied the tests.
Q1379 Sir John Stanley: Yes, but
there will be issues as to whether the intelligence supporting
it justified the public position that the Government took.
Mr Straw: So long as we have not
been able to find 10,000 litres of anthrax people who were in
any case opposed to the war are going to say, "There you
are." What they fail to take into account is the threat that
was shared across the international community. ***
Sir John Stanley: There is the non-use
and the CW and BW production and the third area which at the moment
appears to have been basically disproved by events is the wording
which you have now very helpfully shared with us that your source
of the 45 minutes said that CBW munitions could be moved into
place within 45 minutes. I am assuming the definition of "in
place" is to weapons system or to artillery positions. Mr
Ehrman is nodding. We do now know as a matter of fact, as I understand
it, that no CW or BW storage sites have been found anywhere near
the forward positions that the Iraqis had.
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