House of Commons - Foreign Affairs

Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Ninth Report

The September Dossier

20. The September dossier was not the first of its kind. In Reports published during the last two years, we have praised the Government for placing in the public domain information derived from intelligence and other sources, which assisted Parliament, the press and public in understanding the complex issues which have to be dealt with as part of the war against terrorism. Last July, we recommended that

… the Government follow the precedent which it set in the period leading up to military action in Afghanistan, and publish the fullest possible documentation on the need for any further military action, before such action is seriously contemplated. While nothing should be published which might compromise sources or methods of intelligence, the Government must try to secure the widest possible support in Parliament and among the British people if it is proposing to risk the lives of British servicemen and women as part of a further phase of the war against terrorism.[26]

21. We see the September dossier as part of the Government's response to that recommendation, and for that reason we welcomed it in a further Report, published in December 2002.[27] In that Report and elsewhere, we have recognised there is a balance to be struck between maintaining the integrity of sources and the need to inform public and parliamentary opinion. Dame Pauline Neville Jones recognised the difficulty of maintaining this balance:

It is not easy to ask people to send their sons and husbands into military conflict on the basis of evidence which the Government says, "it is too secret for me to be able tell you what I know". I think that is a very difficult proposition in a democracy. It did seem to me at the time that a way did have to be found for material of which the Government disposed, which had clearly convinced it there was a real threat, could be made available so that the rest of us could understand what that was and why we were being told this was so serious. The issue at the time certainly seemed to me how you did that in a manner compatible with the protection of the sources … . That is so far as I know an unprecedented thing to try and do.[28]

The genesis of the September dossier

22. In early 2002, reports in the press suggested the Government was about to release a dossier setting out its case on Iraq.[29] Before this Committee on 23 April, the then FCO Minister Ben Bradshaw said "We will put more evidence in the public domain and we will publish in whatever form we think is the most effective. ... When we feel the time is right."[30] On 2 May, the FCO told us that "A joint paper, in consultation with No. 10, is being considered, but no firm date has yet been set for publication."[31] We now know that these reports related to a JIC assessment of Iraq's WMD capability. Peter Ricketts, Director General Political at the FCO, told us that "In March a draft was produced drawing on JIC material with other material as well, much less detailed than the eventual September dossier but it was decided not to publish at that time and to build up a fuller picture, which eventually emerged in the September dossier."[32] That draft, we were told by a FCO member of the JIC, William Ehrman, was put together by the Cabinet Office Assessments Staff.[33] However, at the time, Jack Straw suggested that "publication of a dossier … is held up only by difficulties in determining whether intelligence should be made public."[34]

23. Mr Ricketts' comments lend credence to the view that the March paper did not provide as full a picture as the Government would have wished, that it was a bit thin. Recently, however, there have been allegations that the March paper was "suppressed". It has been suggested that the Government decided not to publish, because the paper did not support its case against Iraq.[35] As a former Chairman of the JIC, Dame Pauline Neville Jones had not experienced anything of this kind: "I can certainly confirm to the best of my recollection so far as I know no piece of paper, no assessment that we put up [to Ministers] was subsequently put in a locker and not circulated."[36]

24. We asked the FCO to respond to the charge. They told us

No JIC assessments were suppressed. The Assessments Staff, in coordination with the intelligence agencies, DIS and policy departments, including the FCO, prepared a paper in March on WMD in Iraq intended for possible publication.[37]

We also note that on 1 May, the Government published information which it can safely be assumed came from the March assessment.[38]

25. We conclude that the March 2002 assessment of Iraq's WMD was not "suppressed", as was alleged, but that its publication was delayed as part an iterative process of updating and amendment, which culminated in the September dossier.

The process of compiling the dossier

26. We were told that the early drafts of the WMD paper which became the September dossier were produced in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.[39] On 3 September, a decision was taken to publish the paper, broadly in the form it eventually took, and responsibility passed to the Chairman of the JIC,[40] who then "pulled together work from a number of different JIC assessments."[41] There followed a process of consultation with departmental officials, Ministers and special advisers.[42] A meeting was held on 9 September; a draft was produced on 10 September; a further draft appeared on 17 September; and a final draft followed on 19 September, followed by publication five days later.[43]

27. Handing responsibility for the dossier to the Chairman of the JIC was a prudent and necessary step for production of a document which relied to a great extent on intelligence material, but it does confer a degree of ambiguity on the term "first draft" as it applies to the dossier. Because the Government has refused to allow us sight of the drafts, we have been unable to make a firm judgment as to whether the paper produced in March, the subsequent papers produced as part of what the Foreign Secretary told us was an "iterative process",[44] and the JIC-produced drafts vary materially. We entirely accept, as we state in relation to a specific case below,[45] that as material came in it was legitimate to assess and, where appropriate, to insert it. We also appreciate the Foreign Secretary's candour in reading to us in private session limited extracts from the JIC assessment of 9 September 2002. It would, we believe, have been in the Government's interest to have given us sufficient information to allow us to state with complete confidence that nothing of substance was added between March and September, other than new information as it came to light, but they did not do so.

28. The process for compiling and approving the dossier involved a number of people as well as the JIC and the intelligence agencies, including the Prime Minister, Foreign Office Ministers, Special Advisers and officials. But apart from the foreword, the document—including the executive summary—was written by the Chairman of the JIC,[46] and it was he who signed it off.[47] Although there has been much press speculation on this point, no substantiated evidence has been put before us that Mr Scarlett or any other senior intelligence official dissented from the contents of the dossier; indeed, the bulk of the evidence is to the contrary.[48]

Claims made in the dossier

29. We start by dealing briefly with a claim which was not in the September dossier, but which has gained such currency that we find it necessary to explain it. Contrary to what is sometimes suggested, it is a matter of fact that the dossier never claimed that the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "imminent" or "immediate". The Foreign Secretary told us that

… neither the Prime Minister nor I or anybody acting on our behalf has ever used the words "immediate or imminent" threat, never used those words, in relation to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. What we talked about in the dossier was a current and serious threat, which is very different. … We did say there was a current and serious threat, and I stand by that judgment completely.[49]

And in the House on 24 September the Prime Minister answered the question "Why now?" by saying "I agree that I cannot say that this month or next, even this year or next, Saddam will use his weapons."[50]

30. It is a matter of judgment whether a "current and serious threat" is "very different" in public perception from an "imminent" or "immediate" one, particularly when coupled with the Government's statement in its September 2002 dossier that "Intelligence indicates that the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so."[51] It is also notable that the danger of delaying military intervention in Iraq, including to Britain's own security, was a central theme of the Prime Minister's speech in the House of Commons of 18 March 2003—on the eve of war.

31. We now consider the accuracy of a number of claims which were made in the dossier.

Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capability

32. The September dossier made some strong claims about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capability:

As a result of the intelligence we judge that Iraq has:

continued to produce chemical and biological agents;

military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, including against its own Shia population. Some of these weapons are deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them.

command and control arrangements in place to use chemical and biological weapons … ;

developed mobile laboratories for military use, corroborating earlier reports about the mobile production of biological warfare agents;

pursued illegal programmes to procure controlled materials of potential use in the production of chemical and biological weapons programmes.[52]

There was, however, no indication of the scale and scope of Iraq's present arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, although the dossier did set out the quantities of precursors and biological and chemical agents which remained unaccounted for when UNSCOM inspections ceased in 1998.[53]

33. These claims were supported by Terence Taylor, former UNSCOM inspector, who told us:

From all the information available, I think it would be very surprising if they did not have operational biological and chemical weapons, very surprising indeed. They certainly had all the capability to do that. They never satisfactorily accounted for all the munitions, filled and unfilled, and they never satisfactorily accounted for all the material by a long way. We are not talking about marginal differences, we are talking about hundreds of kilograms, we are talking about hundreds of munitions, that is things like 155 mm artillery rounds and 122 mm rockets, air delivered bombs.[54]

34. Gary Samore was less confident than he had been at the time he produced the IISS dossier in September 2002.

To the extent that there has been a surprise, I think it involves chemical and biological weapons, and in particular I think there was a genuine expectation that Iraq would at least deploy in the field and probably use whatever chemical or biological weapons it possessed in the course of the war. If they had actually deployed such weapons it is likely that coalition forces would have stumbled across them just as they have stumbled across abandoned tanks and artillery pieces and so forth, so it does not appear to me likely that Iraq actually deployed chemical or biological weapons. Of course, it is still possible that there are hidden caches of such weapons and the Iraqi forces collapsed so quickly that they never really had a chance to move them into the field.[55]

35. Dr Tom Inch thought that chemical residues would remain at key sites:

If a site had been declared as a chemical weapons producing site, or if the original inspectors at the end of the Gulf War knew it was a site, you would not find out the information, but if there was intelligence pointing to quite new production facilities that were being denied as production facilities by the Iraqis, then I believe that the trace analysis and so on of certain residues would probably give confirmation of whether or not that was a correct statement.[56]

We put this point to the FCO, who responded that "In general, we agree that post-event chemical analysis of sites may be able to confirm assessments, although it should be recognised that Iraq carried out a large campaign of site sanitation."[57]

36. Andrew Gilligan quoted his anonymous source as saying that

"I believe it is 30 per cent likely that there was a CW (Chemical Weapons) programme in the six months before the war and, more likely, that there was a BW (Biological weapons) programme, but it was small because you could not conceal a larger programme. The sanctions were actually quite effective, they did limit the programme."[58]

Robin Cook, too, felt that the policy of containment had been successful.[59]

37. A no less sceptical approach was taken by Dr Tom Inch, who picked up on the statement in the dossier that "In mid-2001 the JIC assessed that Iraq retained some chemical warfare agents, precursors, production equipment and weapons from before the Gulf War. These stocks would enable Iraq to produce significant quantities of mustard gas within weeks and of nerve agent within months.":

… I would have thought that to be able to make that kind of statement in terms of weeks for mustard gas and months for nerve agents, that there must have been some pretty good intelligence that suggested where and how those two time scales were going to differ. That would be a question that I would want to ask: how good was that?[60]

38. We asked the FCO to respond to this comment. They told us that the assessment was based, not on intelligence, but on a "judgment".[61] This illustrates the range of sources for the conclusions reached in the dossier, some of which do not rely on specific intelligence information.

39. The fact that chemical precursors and other substances have not been accounted for does not mean that they exist. Mr Hans Blix, the Chairman of UNMOVIC, on more than one occasion specifically warned the UN Security Council about the danger of jumping to the conclusion that because proscribed items were unaccounted for, they exist. Presenting his 13th quarterly report to the Security Council on 5 June 2003 he said: "The first point, made in paragraph 8 of the report, is that the Commission has not at any time during the inspections in Iraq found evidence of the continuation or resumption of programmes of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items - whether from pre-1991 or later. I leave aside the Al-Samoud 2 missile system, which we concluded was proscribed. As I have noted before, this does not necessarily mean that such items could not exist. They might—there remain long lists of items unaccounted for—but it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for."[62] Moreover, chemical precursors and other chemical and biological weapons substances degrade at varying rates over time, but some of them degrade quite swiftly, as the IISS pointed out in its dossier.[63] None of this detracts, of course, from the central fact that Saddam Hussein did not comply with the requirements of numerous, binding resolutions of the UN Security Council.

40. Coalition forces carried CBW protection equipment when in theatre. The suits are cumbersome and detract from the operational efficiency of the wearer. We do not believe that military chiefs would have tolerated this without having good reason to do so. We are confident that the only reason chiefs would have asked their troops to fight so encumbered would have been because they took very seriously indeed the threat of CBW attack. As Dame Pauline Neville Jones put it: "I do not think you send your soldiers out to exercise in chemical suits if you are trying to pull a fast one."[64] Some Iraqi forces also apparently had access to such gear, presumably for good reason.

41. We conclude that it is too soon to tell whether the Government's assertions on Iraq's chemical and biological weapons will be borne out. However, we have no doubt that the threat posed to United Kingdom forces was genuinely perceived as a real and present danger and that the steps taken to protect them taken were justified by the information available at the time.

42. We recommend that in its response to this Report the Government set out whether it still considers the September dossier to be accurate in what it states about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programmes, in the light of subsequent events.

Iraq's long-range missile capability

43. The dossier makes the following claim about Iraq's long-range missile capability:

According to intelligence, Iraq has retained up to 20 Al Hussein missiles, in breach of UN Security Council Resolution 687. These missiles were either hidden from the UN as complete systems, or re-assembled using illegally retained engines and other components. We judge that the engineering expertise available would allow these missiles to be maintained effectively, although the fact that at least some require re-assembly makes it difficult to judge exactly how many could be available for use. They could be used with conventional, chemical or biological warheads and, with a range of up to 650km, are capable of reaching a number of countries in the region including Cyprus, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel.[65]

The claim that the missiles could strike British military bases on Cyprus is repeated in the executive summary, and is illustrated in the dossier with a map.

44. Following reports that CBW protection equipment had been withdrawn from British forces in Cyprus as war approached, we asked the FCO whether this reflected a reassessment of the missile threat. Confirming that self-injection 'combopens' had indeed been moved—although as "a normal part of the logistics process"—they replied that there was "no change to our assessment of the threat from Iraqi ballistic missiles, including to Cyprus."[66]

45. The IISS, whose report relied on public sources, had similarly concluded that the Iraqis had probably retained "a dozen or so" of the al-Hussein modified Scuds.[67] Both the Government[68] and the IISS judged that Iraq was some way from developing a new long-range system, as Dr Gary Samore pointed out:

… our dossier argues that Iraq was still years away from being able to build longer range systems, something that could hit Cyprus. Of course, that would not prevent them from doing research on longer range systems, including testing engines and so forth. I thought the evidence about the test stand was pretty compelling evidence to show that the Iraqis harboured plans to eventually build longer-range systems, but in terms of how long it would take them to get there it was still at a pretty early stage.[69]

46. Prior to the conflict, UNMOVIC inspectors discovered that Iraq's Al-Samoud 2 ballistic missiles violated the range limit imposed on Baghdad by UNSCR 687 in 1991. The Saddam Hussein regime had previously claimed that it was developing only 'legal' missiles. Taken with the unaccounted for Al Hussein missiles highlighted in the Government's September dossier and the IISS dossier, it would appear that the regime was intent on retaining and developing ballistic missiles with ranges prohibited under UN Security Council resolutions.

47. We note that the Iraq Survey Group is now deploying in Iraq. We recommend that, in its response to this Report, the Government give its current assessment of the status of the Al Samoud 2 missile infrastructure. We further recommend that in its response to this Report the Government set out whether it still considers the September dossier to be accurate in what it states about Iraq's ballistic missile programme generally, and the retained al-Hussein missiles in particular, in the light of subsequent events.

Iraq's nuclear weapons programme

48. The September dossier claimed that

Intelligence shows that the present Iraqi programme is almost certainly seeking an indigenous ability to enrich uranium to the level needed for a nuclear weapon. It indicates that the approach is based on gas centrifuge uranium enrichment, one of the routes Iraq was following for producing fissile material before the Gulf War. But Iraq needs certain key equipment, including gas centrifuge components, and components for the production of fissile material before a nuclear bomb could be developed.[70]

49. The dossier continued:

… we know that Iraq retains expertise and design data relating to nuclear weapons. We therefore judge that if Iraq obtained fissile material and other essential components from foreign sources, the timeline for production of a nuclear weapon would be shortened and Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon in between one and two years.[71]

50. The IISS dossier, produced two weeks before the Government's, was more alarming still, as Terence Taylor reminded us:

This dossier said that, if they managed to get the fissile material from somewhere else, in other words not through their own means of enrichment, they could have an operational weapon in less than a year, maybe in a few months. That was always something that worried those of us who thought about these issues. We worried about it all the time during the 1990s and I can remember … many meetings thinking and pondering over this when I was actually in the position of a commissioner. It is a real challenge to find that [non-nuclear] part of a nuclear programme. That is very difficult to find.[72]

Dr Gary Samore, the author of the claim that Iraq might be only one year away from building a nuclear device, reminded us that it was "speculation".[73] We also note that the head of the International Atomic Weapons Authority, Dr Mohammed El-Baradei, said in March 2003 that "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq."[74]

51. The question of how close Iraq was to building a viable nuclear device turned on two questions: whether it could obtain the necessary fissile material from abroad; or whether it could produce it indigenously. The former possibility would have required the co-operation of a government with a developed nuclear programme of its own, or the co-operation of organised criminals or disgruntled personnel with access to such a programme. The latter approach would have required the acquisition of raw uranium—'yellow cake'—and a set of specialised facilities to convert and then enrich this material to weapons grade. The Government claimed in its September dossier that Iraq was seeking to acquire enrichment-related technology from abroad:

Iraq has also made repeated attempts covertly to acquire a very large quantity (60,000 or more) of specialised aluminium tubes. The specialised aluminium in question is subject to international export controls because of its potential application in the construction of gas centrifuges used to enrich uranium, although there is no definitive intelligence that it is destined for a nuclear programme.[75]

52. We asked Dr Samore whether he thought the tubes might be intended for use in a uranium enrichment programme. His reply was

If you look at the tubes, the dimensions are too small to be very efficient as centrifuges although they are the right dimension for the rockets which the Iraqis claimed they were buying them for. At the same time, some of the precision of the tubes and finish of the surfaces is really inappropriate for rockets and much more useful for centrifuges, so I think we are left with a real technical mystery about why they were buying these tubes, was it for rockets, was it for centrifuges, was it for both? I do not think we will get the answer to that until the Iraq Survey Group has done a very thorough job of interviewing the scientists who did the work.[76]

A similarly sceptical line on the suitability of the tubes for use in a centrifuge programme has been taken by Dr El-Baradei.[77] Andrew Wilkie claimed that the IAEA had shared its doubts with Western intelligence agencies as early as 2001.[78]

53. We conclude that the accuracy of most of the claims in relation to Iraq's nuclear weapons programme can only be judged once the Survey Group has gained access to the relevant scientists and documentation.

The uranium from Africa claim

54. On one aspect, however—whether Iraq sought to import uranium from Africa for the purposes of enrichment—more serious doubts have been raised as to the accuracy of the claims made in the September dossier. In the dossier a bald claim was made, that "there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant amounts of uranium from Africa." The FCO told us that

This reference drew on intelligence reporting from more than one source. We understand that the IAEA acquired documents on this subject in February 2003. At no stage prior to the publication of the dossier did the UK possess or have sight of these documents. The IAEA have confirmed that the documents were not provided by the UK, contrary to some media reporting. Since the publication of the dossier, we have had the opportunity to examine the documents. Some of these documents are forgeries, others are still under consideration.[79]

President Bush referred to the claim in his State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."[80] Condoleezza Rice has also cited it.[81]

55. We are puzzled by this explanation. If the United Kingdom did not supply the documents—some of them now known to have been crude forgeries—on what did it base the claim in the dossier? Andrew Gilligan said that his source regarded the claim as being "unreliable."[82] Andrew Wilkie suggested that "the fact that that uranium claim was false would have been known by the British intelligence services months before this document went to press."[83] Yet the claim is lent some credibility by the fact that Niger is known to have supplied uranium to Iraq previously.[84]

56. The FCO has not yet informed us of the date when it learned from the US administration that some of the documents relating to the claim had been forged. They have stated that the documents were first seen in October 2002, but it remains unclear whether the FCO was aware of their existence and of their forged status before the dossier was published.

57. As has been widely reported,[85] and not denied by the US Government, the CIA in February 2002 sent a retired US ambassador to Niger to investigate claims that Iraqi officials had been seeking to buy uranium in Niger. The ambassador reported to the CIA that the claims were false and that the documents relating to them may have been forged. The Independent on Sunday reported on 29 June 2003 "The retired US ambassador said that it was all but impossible that British intelligence had not received his report—drawn up by the CIA—which revealed that documents, purporting to show a deal between Iraq and the West African state of Niger, were forgeries." When the Foreign Secretary was asked "What was the date on which the British intelligence community were informed by the CIA that this forged documentation existed" he replied: "We will find out."[86] We recommend that the Foreign Secretary provide the Committee with the date on which the British intelligence community were first informed by the CIA that forged documentation in relation to Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger existed, as soon as he has found this out.

58. The FCO told us that "the reporting (of this claim) post dated the last JIC assessment of Saddam's nuclear programme. But the language used in the document was approved by the JIC."[87] This too is puzzling, because we were also informed that the dossier was written by the Chairman of the JIC,[88] and Alastair Campbell has told us that "the draft [dated 17th September] said Iraq had sought to secure uranium."[89]

59. Jack Straw said "there was other evidence, which was available, which was the background to the claims made in this document of 24 September",[90] and when the Prime Minister was asked by Robin Cook about the claim, he replied that

There was intelligence to that effect. I shall not go into the details of the particular intelligence, but at the time it was judged by the Joint Intelligence Committee to be correct. Until we investigate properly, we are simply not in a position to say whether that is so.[91]

Finally, in a recent interview, the United Kingdom's Ambassador to the United Nations, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, confirmed that there is "perfectly usable evidence" which supports the claim.[92]

60. We conclude that it is very odd indeed that the Government asserts that it was not relying on the evidence which has since been shown to have been forged, but that eight months later it is still reviewing the other evidence. The assertion "… that Iraq sought the supply of significant amounts of uranium from Africa …" should have been qualified to reflect the uncertainty. We recommend that the Government explain on what evidence it relied for its judgment in September 2002 that Iraq had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. We further recommend that in its response to this Report the Government set out whether it still considers the September dossier to be accurate in what it states about Iraq's attempts to procure uranium from Africa, in the light of subsequent events.

26 Seventh Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee, Session 2001-02, Foreign Policy Aspects of the War against Terrorism, HC 384, para 233 Back

27 Second Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee, Session 2002-03, Foreign Policy Aspects of the War against Terrorism, HC 196, para 96 Back

28 Q 361 Back

29 See, for example, Allied dossier links Saddam to al-Qa'eda, Daily Telegraph, 9 March 2002 Back

30 Seventh Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee, Session 2001-02, Foreign Policy Aspects of the War against Terrorism, HC 384, Qq 293-294 Back

31 Ibid., app 10 Back

32 Q 742 Back

33 Q 1239 Back

34 HC Deb, 16 April 2002, col 444 Back

35 The Independent, 9th June 2003 Back

36 Q 356 Back

37 Ev 54 Back