Memorandum from Dr David Morrison
1. The purpose of this submission is to
describe a number of instances when, in my opinion, the Government
presented inaccurate or incomplete information to Parliament in
the period leading up to military action in Iraq. These instances
are primarily concerned with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
ERRORS OF
FACT IN
SEPTEMBER DOSSIER
2. There are two errors of fact in the dossier
Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British
Government published on 24 September 2002. Both are in Part
2 of the dossier (History of UN Weapons Inspections).
3. First, on page 34, paragraph 5, on UNSCOM
access to presidential sites:
"In December 1997 [the head of UNSCOM] Richard
Butler reported to the UN Security Council that Iraq had created
a new category of sites, `Presidential' and `sovereign', from
which it claimed that UNSCOM inspectors would henceforth be barred.
The terms of the ceasefire in 1991 foresaw no such limitation.
However, Iraq consistently refused to allow UNSCOM inspectors
access to any of these eight Presidential sites. [my emphasis]
Many of these so-called `palaces' are in fact large compounds,
which are an integral part of Iraqi counter-measures designed
to hide weapons material."
4. In document S/1998/326 on the UNSCOM
website, there is a report by Charles Duelfer, which says:
"The initial entry to the eight presidential
sites in Iraq . . . was performed by mission UNSCOM 243 during
the period from 25 March to 4 April 1998. . . .
"Co-operation from Iraqi counterparts was
satisfactory. The presence of senior diplomatic observers worked
out generally well. Of particular note was the constructive presence
of [Iraqi] Presidential Secretary Mr Abid Hamoud and Lt General
Amer Rashid, the Minister for Oil, during the visits."
5. In other words, contrary to what the
dossier says, access was allowed to all 8 sites. This was confirmed
by the Foreign Office in a written answer to Paul Flynn MP on
4 February:
"Paul Flynn: To ask the Secretary of State
for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether UNSCOM 243 entered
Iraqi presidential palaces between March and April 1998. [94724]
6. This error is of some importance, since
the alleged exclusion of the inspectors from these sites gives
credence to the view that Iraq was hiding something there that
it didn't want inspectors to see. To reinforce this proposition,
the next page of the dossier (p 35) contains a map of an unnamed
presidential site with Buckingham Palace and its grounds superimposed
on it to the same scale. The purpose of the map was, I presume,
to convey the impression that there is more to this presidential
site than just serving the needs of a head of state. And there
are eight presidential sites in Iraq. Of course, had an outline
of Balmoral been superimposed instead, the impression would have
been entirely different.
7. The Government has known about this error
at least since early January, when I wrote to the Foreign Secretary
suggesting that a correction be published. A copy of my letter
is in Annex A. I did not receive a reply and, to the best of my
knowledge, the Government made no effort to publicise a correction.
8. Of itself, this error is not of great
importance in the argument for or against war, but if the authors
of the dossier did not manage to get known facts right it doesn't
inspire confidence that they are expert at assessing intelligence.
9. The second error of fact is on page 39,
paragraph 13. There the dossier speaks of "the effective
ejection of UN inspectors" from Iraq in December 1998. The
inspectors were not ejected by Iraq: they were withdrawn by Richard
Butler at the request of the US Government because of the imminence
of Desert Fox, the four-day US/UK bombing campaign on Iraq, as
the following extract from his book Saddam Defiant shows:
"I received a telephone call from US Ambassador
[to the UN] Peter Burleigh inviting me for a private conversation
at the US mission. . . . Burleigh informed me that on instructions
from Washington it would be `prudent to take measures to ensure
the safety and security of UNSCOM staff presently in Iraq.' .
. . I told him that I would act on his advice and remove my staff
from Iraq." (p 224)
10. This is one of the many instances in
the lead up to war, in which the Government misrepresented what
happened in December 1998 to cause the UN inspectors to leave
Iraq. Another example was the Prime Minister's interview with
Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight on 6 February 2002.
(Alistair Campbell stated categorically on Channel
4 News on 27 June that: "There were no errors of fact in
the WMD dossier in September 2002". Clearly, that was not
an accurate statement.)
THE EVIDENCE
OF GENERAL
HUSSEIN KAMEL
11. The final UNSCOM report in January 1999
emphasises the importance to its work of the defection of General
Hussein Kamel, the former director of Iraq's Military Industrialisation
Corporation, in charge of Iraq's weapons programme. Referring
to him it says:
". . . the overall period of the Commission's
disarmament work must be divided into two parts, separated by
the events following the departure from Iraq, in August 1995,
of Lt General Hussein Kamal. This resulted in the provision to
the Commission of an extensive cache of documents on Iraq's prohibited
programmes."
12. He was interviewed by a joint UNSCOM/IAEA
team in Amman on 22 August 1995, but it was not until February
2003 that a transcript of the interview became public knowledge,
thanks to Dr Glen Rangwala (see www.casi.org.uk/info/unscom950822.pdf).
13. In the interview, Kamel says:
"I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons.
All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were
destroyed" (p 13).
Earlier (p 7), he described anthrax as the "main
focus" of Iraq's biological programme and when asked "were
weapons and agents destroyed?", he replied: "nothing
remained".
Of missiles, he said: "not a single missile
left but they had blueprints and molds [sic] for production.
All missiles were destroyed." (p 8)
14. The Government's dossier mentions the
importance of the defection of Hussein Kamel, but it does not
mention that he told UN inspectors that, on his orders, all of
Iraq's proscribed weapons were destroyed. In my opinion, the information
presented by the Government on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
was therefore incomplete.
UNACCOUNTED FOR
MATERIAL
15. Ministers rarely if ever made clear
that weapons and weapons-related material, which UN inspectors
could not account for, did not necessarily exist. As Hans Blix
said to the Security Council on 5 June 2003:
". . . it is not justified to jump to the
conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted
for."
16. For example, in his statement on the
September dossier to the House of Commons on 24 September, the
Prime Minister said:
"As the dossier sets out, we estimate on
the basis of the UN's work that there were up to 360 tonnes of
bulk chemical warfare agents, including 1.5 tonnes of VX nerve
agent; up to 3,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals; growth media
sufficient to produce 26,000 litres of anthrax spores; and over
30,000 special munitions for delivery of chemical and biological
agents. All of this was missing and unaccounted for."
17. In my opinion, most people reading that
would conclude that we had it on UN authority that on 24 September
2002 Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, plus material
for making more, when all the UN inspectors have ever said is
that such weapons and material have not been accounted for.
18. On 18 March, the Prime Minister told
the House of Commons:
"When the inspectors left in 1998, they
left unaccounted for 10,000 litres of anthrax; a far-reaching
VX nerve agent programme; up to 6,500 chemical munitions; at least
80 tonnes of mustard gas, and possibly more than 10 times that
amount; unquantifiable amounts of sarin, botulinum toxin and a
host of other biological poisons; and an entire Scud missile programme.
We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years—contrary
to all history, contrary to all intelligence—Saddam decided
unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim
is palpably absurd."
19. Think about that: the Prime Minister
is saying that Iraq must have proscribed weapons now, since it
is palpably absurd to claim that Saddam Hussein destroyed them
since 1998—even though according to the first sentence they
were merely unaccounted for in 1998. Obviously, there is no distinction
in the Prime Minister's mind between being unaccounted for and
existing.
20. These are but two of the many examples
in which Ministers gave the impression that UN inspectors had
said that weapons and weapons-related material actually existed,
when they had merely said they were unaccounted for.
21. I submit that, by failing to distinguish
between weapons and weapons-related material being unaccounted
for and actually existing, the information presented by the Government
was at best incomplete, and at worst profoundly misleading.
22. It is difficult to work out whether
the authors of the dossier itself made the jump that Hans Blix
warned about—because the sources of the claims in it, and
sometimes the claims themselves, are often obscure. This applies
particularly to the core claims in paragraph 2 of the Executive
Summary, which says:
"Much information about Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction is already in the public domain from UN reports
and from Iraqi defectors. This points clearly to Iraq's continuing
possession, after 1991, of chemical and biological agents and
weapons produced before the Gulf War. It shows that Iraq has refurbished
sites formerly associated with the production of chemical and
biological agents. And it indicates that Iraq remains able to
manufacture these agents, and to use bombs, shells, artillery
rockets and ballistic missiles to deliver them."
That paragraph is extraordinarily opaque.
23. The first sentence seems to place the
same value on information from defectors as information from UN
reports, which cannot be intended given the well-known unreliability
of defectors.
24. The meaning of the second sentence is
unfathomable. Is it saying that Iraq continued to possess these
agents and weapons after 1991, which is a well-established fact
attested to by UNSCOM? Or is it saying that it is well-established
fact that Iraq continued to possess these agents and weapons right
up to September 2002? Or is it merely an intelligence judgment
that Iraq possessed these agents and weapons in September 2002?
Likewise, are sentences 3 and 4 saying that it is a well-established
fact that Iraq has reconstituted its production facilities, or
merely an intelligence judgment?
25. To add to the confusion, in Part 3 of
the dossier (Iraq under Saddam Hussein) page 46, paragraph 16,
it says:
"Some twenty thousand Iranians were killed
by mustard gas and the nerve agents tabun and sarin, all of which
Iraq still possesses."
26. Is this categorical statement that Iraq
possesses chemical agents a well-established fact, or is it based
on intelligence judgment? Or perhaps the authors have jumped to
the conclusion that Hans Blix warned against.
THE DEGRADATION
OF AGENTS
27. All of Iraq's unaccounted for chemical
and biological agents were manufactured before the Gulf War. The
dossier said nothing about the possible degradation of these agents,
despite much independent evidence that many of them would no longer
be useful as warfare agents by now.
28. The International Institute for Strategic
Studies (IISS) published a report on Iraq's proscribed weapons
on 9 September 2002, which the Government's dossier refers to
approvingly in its Executive Summary as "an independent and
well-researched overview".
29. It comments on the possible deterioration
of nerve agents manufactured prior to the Gulf War. Here, we are
talking about so-called G-agents (tabun, sarin and cyclosarin)
and V-agents (VX). The IISS assessment is as follows:
"As a practical matter, any nerve agent
from this period [pre-1991] would have deteriorated by now . .
." (p 51)
"Any VX produced by Iraq before 1991 is
likely to have decomposed over the past decade . . ." (p
52)
"Any G-agent or V-agent stocks that Iraq
concealed from UNSCOM inspections are likely to have deteriorated
by now." (p 53).
30. And as regards botulinum toxin, the
IISS dossier concluded:
"Any botulinum toxin produced in 1989-90
would no longer be useful" (p 40).
None of this was mentioned in the Government's
dossier.
31. Before military action began, UNMOVIC
published (on 6 March 2003) a 173-page document entitled "Unresolved
Disarmament Issues". The Prime Minister quoted from it in
the House of Commons on 18 March. In the course of that speech
(see quote above), he spoke of sarin as a potential threat, but
he did not mention the following UNMOVIC assessment about sarin:
"There is no evidence that any bulk Sarin-type
agents remain in Iraq—gaps in accounting of these agents
are related to Sarin-type agents weaponized in rocket warheads
and aerial bombs. Based on the documentation found by UNSCOM during
inspections in Iraq, Sarin-type agents produced by Iraq were largely
of low quality and as such, degraded shortly after production.
Therefore, with respect to the unaccounted for weaponized Sarin-type
agents, it is unlikely that they would still be viable today."
(Unresolved Disarmament Issues, p 73)
32. The Prime Minister mentioned VX as a
potential threat on 18 March (again, see above). This VX was produced
in 1990 by what UNMOVIC called "route B". According
to UNMOVIC:
"VX produced through route B must be used
relatively quickly after production (about one to eight weeks),
which would probably be satisfactory for wartime requirements."
(ibid, p 82)
33. The Prime Minister also mentioned botulinum
toxin as a potential threat on 18 March (again, see above), but
he did not mention the following UNMOVIC assessment on botulinum
toxin:
"Any botulinum toxin that was produced and
stored according to the methods described by Iraq and in the time
period declared is unlikely to retain much, if any, of its potency.
Therefore, any such stockpiles of botulinum toxin, whether in
bulk storage or in weapons that remained in 1991, would not be
active today." (ibid, p 101)
34. I submit that the Government's failure
to present any information about the possible degradation of Iraq's
chemical and biological agents meant that Parliament was given
an incomplete and misleading picture of the state of Iraq's proscribed
weapons.
WHAT UN INSPECTORS
FOUND
35. In the limited time they were allowed,
the IAEA inspectors confirmed that Iraq had not revived its nuclear
weapons programme, which had been dismantled by UNSCOM. They also
went close to disproving all of the claims in the September dossier
that Iraq was trying to revive it. The documentation from British
sources "proving" that Iraq had recently tried to import
uranium from Niger was easily identified as a forgery. And the
inspectors accepted that the aluminium tubes, which Iraq was trying
to import, were for rockets, not to build centrifuges for uranium
enrichment, as was claimed.
36. The September dossier named about eight
sites suspected of producing chemicals, which could be used for
the production of proscribed chemical agents. Before the end of
January, all these sites had been visited by UN inspectors and
nothing suspect has been found. Replying to a question from Labour
MP. Harry Cohen, in the House of Commons on 22 January, Foreign
Office Minister, Mike O'Brien, was forced to admit:
"We understand from published information
from UNMOVIC and the IAEA inspectors have visited all of the sites
identified in the UK dossier. They have not reported uncovering
any signs of weapons of mass destruction, or programmes for their
production at the sites."
37. That doesn't entirely rule out that
proscribed activity was going on at these sites last September
as claimed in the dossier, but by January it was no longer going
on.
38. The Government never attempted to draw
to public attention any of this information, which modified the
assessment in the September dossier. On the contrary, the Government
constantly derided anything the inspectors discovered as unimportant.
THE FRENCH
POSITION
39. In my opinion, the Government misrepresented
the French position on military action against Iraq. For example,
the Prime Minister told the House of Commons on 18 March:
"Last Monday [10 March], we were getting
very close with it [the second resolution]. We very nearly had
the majority agreement. If I might, I should particularly like
to thank the President of Chile for the constructive way in which
he approached this issue.
"Yes, there were debates about the length
of the ultimatum, but the basic construct was gathering support.
Then, on Monday night, France said that it would veto a second
resolution, whatever the circumstances."
40. It is quite untrue to say that President
Chirac ruled out military action in all circumstances on 10 March:
on the contrary, he specifically ruled it in, if the inspectors
reported that they couldn't do their job, as the following extract
from his TV interview on 10 March shows:
"The inspectors have to tell us: `we can
continue and, at the end of a period which we think should be
of a few months'—I'm saying a few months because that's
what they have said—`we shall have completed our work and
Iraq will be disarmed'. Or they will come and tell the Security
Council: `we are sorry but Iraq isn't cooperating, the progress
isn't sufficient, we aren't in a position to achieve our goal,
we won't be able to guarantee Iraq's disarmament'. In that case
it will be for the Security Council and it alone to decide the
right thing to do. But in that case, of course, regrettably, the
war would become inevitable. It isn't today."
(see English translation of the interview at
http://special.diplomatie.gouv.fr/article—gb91.html)
[For some of the above information I am indebted
to Claims and evaluations of Iraq's proscribed weapons by Dr Glen
Rangwala at middleeastreference.org.uk/iraqweapons.html]
Dr David Morrison
30 June 2003
Annex A
Letter from Dr David Morrison to the Foreign
Secretary, January 2003
On 3 January the Guardian reported that:
"Foreign Office sources said that all the
sites in the British dossier on Iraq had now been seen by UN weapons
inspectors."
I assume that this refers to sites in Iraq,
such as the Castor Oil Production Plant at Fallujah, which at
the time the dossier was written the Government was concerned
were being used for the production or storage of WMD.
Have all the sites of concern mentioned in the
dossier been visited by UN inspectors?
If so, have your suspicions about these sites
been allayed? In other words, are you now content that these sites
are not being currently used to produce or store WMD?
If so, do you intend to publish an update to
the dossier?
The dossier as it stands contains an error of
fact: on page 34 it says:
"Iraq consistently refused to allow UNSCOM
inspectors access to any of these eight Presidential sites."
This is not true: all eight sites were visited
between 25 March and 4 April 1998, under the arrangements in the
Memorandum of Understanding negotiated between Kofi Annan and
Tariq Aziz on 23 February 1998. I have read the reports in document
S/1998/326 which is on the UNSCOM website. The report written
by Charles Duelfer says:
"The initial entry to the eight presidential
sites in Iraq . . . was performed by mission UNSCOM 243 during
the period from 25 March to 4 April 1998. . . .
"Cooperation from Iraqi counterparts was
satisfactory. The presence of senior diplomatic observers worked
out generally well. Of particular note was the constructive presence
of [Iraqi] Presidential Secretary Mr Abid Hamoud and Lt General
Amer Rashid, the Minister for Oil, during the visits."
This error of fact should be corrected in any
update to the dossier.
Dr David Morrison
January 2003
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