Memorandum on the Foreign Affairs Select
Committee Report on the Decision to go to War in Iraq
1. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee
published the report of its inquiry into The Decision to go to
War in Iraq on 7 July 2003. The objective of the inquiry was to:
"consider whether the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office, within the Government as a whole, presented accurate and
complete information to Parliament in the period leading up to
military action in Iraq, particularly in relation to Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction".
The Committee found the Government not guilty:
"The central charge has been that Ministers
misled Parliament . . . Consistent with the conclusions reached
elsewhere in this Report, we conclude that Ministers did not mislead
Parliament." (paragraph 186)
2. The Committee found the Government not
guilty without considering most of the publicly available evidence.
The Committee examined for accuracy and completeness only one
source of Government information to Parliament—the dossier
published on 24 September 2002—and concluded that the Government
hadn't made exaggerated claims in it. The Committee felt able
to do so, even though it was denied access to the intelligence
on which these claims were based and to the personnel responsible
for assessing the intelligence and drawing up the dossier.
3. The Committee ignored almost everything
else the Government said on Iraq in Parliament and elsewhere in
the lead up to war, within which there were, in my opinion, numerous
examples of the Government providing inaccurate and/or incomplete
information to Parliament. For example:
(1) The Government misrepresented President
Chirac's words on 10 March 2003, claiming that he said that France
would never support military action against Iraq, when he said
no such thing.
(2) The Government failed to mention that
Hussein Kamal, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, told UN inspectors
in 1995 that he had ordered the destruction of all of Iraq's proscribed
weapons.
(3) The Government continually distorted
UN inspectors' findings that weapons were "unaccounted for"
to imply (or assert) that the weapons actually existed.
(4) The Government failed to mention that
many of Iraq's chemical and biological agents produced before
the Gulf War would be ineffective as warfare agents a decade later,
if they hadn't already been destroyed.
(5) The Prime Minister "sexed up"
the September dossier in presenting it to Parliament on 24 September
2002, when he stated as an absolute fact that Iraq had "active,
detailed and growing" weapons programmes, producing agents
and weapons today, and that the problem was not just a matter
of cleaning up the "old remains" from before the Gulf
War.
(6) In the ensuing months, and without any
public explanation, the Government ceased mentioning any current
agent or weapons production, let alone "active, detailed
and growing" programmes, and based its case that Iraq was
a threat on the existence of the "old remains" from
before the Gulf War, much of which, if they did exist, would have
degraded and no longer be effective as warfare agents.
(7) The Government misrepresented the contents
of the UNMOVIC report Unresolved Disarmament Issues published
on 6 March 2003, implying that it confirmed that Iraq had vast
quantities of proscribed weapons, but failing to mention that
it confirmed that many agents produced before the Gulf War would
be ineffective as warfare agents, if they existed at all.
4. These examples are detailed in Appendix
A below. None of them is examined in the Committee's Report, which
in my view renders it both inaccurate and incomplete, and casts
doubt on the Committee's not guilty verdict.
5. All of the above were in the public domain
when the Committee's inquiry was taking place. Since then, the
Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) Report and the Hutton
Inquiry have brought into the public domain other instances where
there are grounds for concluding that the Government failed to
provide Parliament with accurate and complete information. For
example:
(1) In the autumn of 2002, the CIA assessed
that the likelihood of Saddam Hussein using chemical and biological
weapons was "low" if he didn't feel threatened, but
would be "pretty high" if the US attacked Iraq. The
Government's September dossier said something similar until just
before it was cleared for publication, when it was changed at
the instigation of the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff. He e-mailed
the compiler of the dossier, John Scarlett, saying that he (and
presumably the Prime Minister) had "a bit of a problem"
with this since it backed up the argument that "there is
no CBW [chemical and biological weapons] threat and we will only
create one if we attack him". As a consequence, the implication
that Saddam Hussein would use these weapons only as a defensive
measure was removed from the dossier.
(2) The 45-minute claim in the September
dossier was manifestly incomplete since it did not specify that
it applied to battlefield weapons only, and not to missiles capable
of striking UK bases in Cyprus, information that was known to
the Government at the time (ISC Report, paragraphs 49-57 and 84-86).
(3) Despite knowing it to be wrong, the Government
made no effort to correct the widespread interpretation of the
45-minute claim in the press on 24-25 September 2002 as applying
to such missiles.
(4) Nowhere in the dossier was it made clear
that the most likely chemical and biological munitions to be used
against Western forces were battlefield weapons rather than strategic
weapons. The first draft of the Prime Minister's foreword contained
the sentence: "The case I make is not that Saddam could launch
a nuclear attack on London or another part of the UK (He could
not).", but this was absent from the published dossier (ISC
Report, paragraph 83).
(5) The dossier's bald claim that Iraq "continued
to produce chemical and biological weapons" was not warranted
by the intelligence, since the JIC did not know what had been
produced and in what quantities—it had merely assessed,
based on intelligence, that some production had taken place (ISC
Report, paragraphs 110). This contrasts starkly with the Prime
Minister's confident assertion to the House of Commons on 24 September
2002 that Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes were "active,
detailed and growing" and producing chemical and biological
weapons.
(6) The Government failed to inform Parliament
that there was no intelligence evidence that Iraq had considered
using chemical and biological agents in terrorist attacks or had
passed such agents on to al-Qaida, and that the JIC had assessed
that any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk
of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding
their way into the hands of terrorists (ISC Report, paragraphs
125-7).
(7) The Government failed to inform Parliament
that the JIC assessed that al-Qaida and associated groups continued
to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests,
and that the threat would be heightened by military action against
Iraq (ISC Report, paragraph 126).
6. These examples where it appears that
the Government gave inaccurate and/or incomplete information to
Parliament have come to light since the Committee completed its
inquiry and are detailed in Appendix B below. If the Committee
is to restore its reputation for scrutinising the Executive's
conduct of Foreign Affairs it should reopen its inquiry and consider
these and the other issues I have mentioned.
Dr David Morrison
31 October 2003
APPENDIX A
A1 THE SEPTEMBER
DOSSIER
1. The key question in respect of the September
dossier was whether claims made in it about Iraq's proscribed
weapons were justified by the intelligence available to the Government
at that time.
2. At the time of its inquiry, it was impossible
for the Committee to answer that question, because the Government
denied it access to the intelligence on which the dossier was
based, and to the personnel responsible for assessing that intelligence
and drawing up the dossier
3. The Committee honestly recognised this
in paragraph 90 of its report, which said:
"We conclude that without access to the
intelligence or to those who handled it, we cannot know if it
was in any respect faulty or misinterpreted."
4. Despite this, the Committee devoted nearly
half of its Report to this dossier (paragraphs 20 to 107) and
drew several sweeping conclusions about whether its contents were
soundly based on the available intelligence. For example:
(1) "We conclude that the 45 minutes
claim did not warrant the prominence given to it in the dossier,
because it was based on intelligence from a single, uncorroborated
source." (paragraph 70)
(2) "We conclude that the claims made
in the September dossier were in all probability well founded
on the basis of the intelligence then available, although as we
have already stated we have concerns about the emphasis given
to some of them." (paragraph 86)
(3) "We conclude that the September dossier
was probably as complete and accurate as the Joint Intelligence
Committee could make it, consistent with protecting sources, but
that it contained undue emphases for a document of its kind."
(paragraph 184)
5. So, by its own admission, the Committee
could not know if the intelligence on which the September dossier
was based was "in any respect faulty or misinterpreted".
Nevertheless, it drew these wide-ranging conclusions that the
intelligence was not misinterpreted. It doesn't say how it achieved
this impossible feat.
6. Furthermore, conclusion (3) is sell-contradictory:
if the dossier had not contained the "undue emphases"
complained of, it would clearly have been more "accurate
and complete".
7. Leaving that aside, it is simply untrue
that "the September dossier was probably as complete and
accurate as the Joint Intelligence Committee could make it".
As I pointed out in my memorandum to the Committee, the September
dossier contains at least two errors of fact:
(a) that UNSCOM inspectors were denied access
to presidential sites (page 34, paragraph 5), and
(b) that UNSCOM inspectors were thrown out
of Iraq in December 1998 (page 39, paragraph 13).
8. The dossier was therefore manifestly
inaccurate in at least these two respects, but the Committee did
not point out these inaccuracies.
A2 WHAT PRESIDENT
CHIRAC ACTUALLY
SAID
9. The Government motion passed by the House
of Commons on 18 March 2003 contained a reference to the behaviour
of France:
"That this House . . . regrets that despite
sustained diplomatic effort by Her Majesty's Government it has
not proved possible to secure a second Resolution in the UN because
one Permanent Member of the Security Council made plain in public
its intention to use its veto whatever the circumstances."
10. In proposing the motion, the Prime Minister
identified the Permanent Member as France, which he said had undermined
support for a second resolution:
"Last Monday [l0 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."
11. In fact, France said no such thing.
On the contrary, in the interview that Monday night, President
Chirac made it very clear that there were circumstances in which
France would not veto a resolution for war. Early in the interview,
he identified two different scenarios, one when the UN inspectors
report progress and the other when the inspectors say their task
is impossible—in which case, in his words, "regrettably,
the war would become inevitable". That portion reads:
"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 http://special.diplomatie.gouv.fr/articlegb9l.html)
12. From that, it is plain as a pikestaff
that there were circumstances in which France would not have vetoed
military action, namely, if the UN inspectors reported that they
couldn't do their job.
13. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion
that the Prime Minister misinformed the House of Commons on 18
March about the position of France.
A3 DID KAMAL
HUSSEIN TELL
THE TRUTH?
14. At one point, it looked as though the
Committee was going to look seriously at the possibility that
Iraq had destroyed all its proscribed weapons and weapons-related
material, as it said it had done, and that the material deemed
by UN inspectors to be unaccounted for in reality no longer existed.
15. A briefing note prepared for the Committee
by Tim Youngs of the House of Commons Library (and published as
Appendix 1 of the Report) said:
"It is also possible that Iraq did destroy
its stocks and weapons unilaterally, but sought to protect the
technical expertise and the capability required to reconstitute
its WMD capability at relatively short notice, once UN sanctions
had been eased or lifted." (page 76)
16. In support of this, Tim Youngs cites
the testimony of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, to
UN inspectors in August 1995, when he told them that all of Iraq's
proscribed weapons had been destroyed on his orders (see UNSCOM/IAEA
transcript of the interview at www.casi.org.uk/info/unscom950822.pdf).
17. In this interview, Kamal said:
"I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons.
All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were
destroyed" (page 13).
18. Earlier (p7), he described anthrax as
the "main focus" of Iraq's biological programme and
when asked "were weapons and agents destroyed?", he
replied: "nothing remained".
19. Of missiles, he said: "not a single
missile left but they had blueprints and molds [sic] for production.
All missiles were destroyed." (page 8)
20. In the months before military action
was taken, the Government continually cited Kamal as an extremely
valuable source of information about Iraq's proscribed weapons
programmes, and as proof that interrogation of Iraqis who participated
in these programmes, rather than detective work by UN inspectors,
was the way to acquire a comprehensive picture of them.
21. For instance, the Prime Minister told
the House of Commons on 18 March 2003:
"In August [1995], it [Iraq] provided yet
another full and final declaration. Then, a week later, Saddam's
son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to Jordan. He disclosed a
far more extensive biological weapons programme and, for the first
time, said that Iraq had weaponised the programme—something
that Saddam had always strenuously denied. All this had been happening
while the inspectors were in Iraq.
Kamal also revealed Iraq's crash programme to
produce a nuclear weapon in the 1990s. Iraq was then forced to
release documents that showed just how extensive those programmes
were."
22. But the Prime Minister did not inform
the House of Commons that Kamal also told UN inspectors that,
on his orders, "all weapons—biological, chemical, missile,
nuclear were destroyed".
23. Given the failure to find any proscribed
weapons in Iraq, one might have thought that the possibility that
Kamal was telling the truth deserved examination by the Committee.
The unanswered question is: why does the Government regard Kamal
as a credible witness about Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes,
except when he says that all of Iraq's proscribed weapons were
destroyed on his orders. Regrettably, the Committee left that
question unanswered.
A4 UNACCOUNTED FOR
MATERIEL
24. Paragraph 39 of the Committee's Report
does raise the possibility that unaccounted for material did not
exist. Hans Blix's remarks to the Security Council on 5 June 2003
are quoted:
"The first point . . . 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."
25. But the Report makes no reference to
the fact that, time and time again in the lead up to military
action, the Government jumped to this conclusion that Hans Blix
warned against, and gave the impression that we had it on UN authority
that Iraq had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons and
weapons-related material, when all the UN inspectors had said
was that material was "unaccounted for".
26. Most crucially, the Prime Minister told
the House of Commons on 18 March 2003:
"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."
27. There, the Prime Minister obviously
jumped to the conclusion that Hans Blix warned against. He assumed
that proscribed weapons and weapons-related material, which according
to UN inspectors were merely unaccounted for in 1998, must have
existed in 1998, and must still exist in 2003 (since, he said,
it is palpably absurd to claim that Saddam Hussein unilaterally
destroyed them in the meantime).
A5 THE DEGRADATION
OF AGENTS
28. Paragraph 39 of the Committee's Report
mentions that chemical and biological agents may degrade over
time, saying:
". . . 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 [International
Institute for Strategic Studies] pointed out in its dossier."
29. But nothing more is said about the degradation
of chemical and biological agents, even though any degradation
lowers the threat posed by Iraq—and therefore the justification
for military action against Iraq.
30. The IISS dossier was published on 9
September 2002 (and was referred to approvingly in the Government's
September dossier as "an independent and well-researched
overview"). 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 . .
." (page 51)
"Any VX produced by Iraq before 1991 is
likely to have decomposed over the past decade . . . " (page
52)
"Any G-agent or V-agent stocks that Iraq
concealed from UNSCOM inspections are likely to have deteriorated
by now." (page 53).
31. And as regards botulinum toxin, the
IISS dossier concluded:
"Any botulinum toxin produced in 1989-90
would no longer be useful" (page 40).
32. The Government's dossier, published
a couple of weeks later, gives (on page 16) a list of chemical
and biological weapons and weapons-related material that were
deemed unaccounted for by UNSCOM in 1998. On page 23, the dossier
says that Iraq has:
"chemical and biological agents and weapons
available, both from pre-Gulf War stocks and more recent production"
33. But nowhere in the dossier does it say
that any pre-Gulf War stocks of G-agents (tabun, sarin and cyclosarin)
and V-agents (VX) and of botulinum toxin would have degraded by
September 2002.
34. It is therefore seriously misleading
about pre-GuIf War stocks of these agents.
A6 HOW THE
GOVERNMENT "SEXED
UP " THE
DOSSIER IN
PARLIAMENT
35. Since the Committee regarded the September
dossier as the key document for their inquiry, one might have
thought that it would have examined how the Government presented
the dossier to Parliament.
36. The dossier made extravagant claims,
not only that Iraq possessed proscribed material left over from
before the Gulf War, but also that it had re-established manufacturing
facilities and was trying to re-establish its nuclear weapons
programme. In other words, Iraq had currently operational production
facilities for agents and weapons and not just remnants left over
from the old programmes dismantled by UNSCOM in the 1990s.
37. However, the claims in the dossier about
the re-establishment of production facilities were not expressed
as known facts, but as judgements based on intelligence. But,
when the Prime Minister presented the dossier to the House of
Commons on 24 September 2002, he left no doubt that these programmes
were operational and producing agents and weapons:
". . . [Saddam Hussein's] chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons programme is not an historic left-over from
1998. The inspectors are not needed to clean up the old remains.
His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed
and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The weapons
of mass destruction programme is not shut down; it is up and running
now."
"On chemical weapons, the dossier shows
that Iraq continues to produce chemical agents for chemical weapons;
has rebuilt previously destroyed production plants across Iraq;
has bought dual-use chemical facilities; has retained the key
personnel formerly engaged in the chemical weapons programme;
and has a serious ongoing research programme into weapons production,
all of it well funded."
"In respect of biological weapons, again,
production of biological agents has continued; facilities formerly
used for biological weapons have been rebuilt; equipment has been
purchased for such a programme; and again, Saddam has retained
the personnel who worked on it prior to 1991."
38. Those assertions by the Prime Minister
have a certainty about them that isn't present in the dossier
itself. He overstated the dossier's more tentative claims that
after 1998 Iraq had reconstituted production facilities (claims
which the ISC have now said were themselves not justified by intelligence,
see paragraph 110 of its Report).
39. And so did the Foreign Secretary when
he opened the adjournment debate that followed. There he declared
without a hint of uncertainty:
"Since then [1998], Iraq has continued to
produce chemical and biological agents and their means of delivery.
. . . "
40. Adam Ingram was equally certain when
he closed the debate:
"He [Saddam Hussein] has continued to produce
chemical and biological weapons; tried covertly to acquire technology
and materials that could be used in the production of nuclear
weapons; sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,
despite having no active civil nuclear programme that would require
it; recalled specialists to work on his nuclear programme; commenced
a comprehensive weapons development programme across a range of
capabilities to deliver his future and current weapons of mass
destruction."
41. This certainty about the re-constitution
of Iraq's production facilities is not justified by the dossier.
The Government "sexed up" the dossier in presenting
it to Parliament.
A7 NO LONGER
"ACTIVE, DETAILED
AND GROWING"
42. The Committee does not comment on the
fact that the Government's message on Iraq's proscribed weapons
shifted dramatically in the period leading up to war. To be specific,
the Government stopped claiming that Iraq was currently manufacturing
chemical or biological agents and weapons.
43. To the best of my knowledge, the Government
never repeated the Prime Minister's confident assertion of 24
September 2002 that Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction programme
is active, detailed and growing" and producing agents and
weapons, and that it is not just a matter of inspectors cleaning
up the "old remains" from previous programmes.
44. Certainly, you will search in vain in
the Prime Minister's speech in the House of Commons on 18 March
2003 for any hint that Iraq had operational production facilities
in March 2003. All he spoke about then was "old remains"
manufactured before the Gulf War, which UN inspectors deemed unaccounted
for in December1998.
45. Since the Prime Minister was no longer
saying that Iraq was manufacturing new agents and weapons, this
was a much less threatening picture of Iraq's capabilities than
the one he described six months earlier, particularly since the
shelf life of much of the "old remains" was over long
ago.
46. Why did the Prime Minister feel unable
to restate in March 2003 his certainty of six months earlier that
Iraq had current production facilities and not merely "old
remains" from previous programmes? That is a very interesting
question, which regrettably the Committee did not examine.
47. Most or all of the sites named in the
September dossier as possibly being used for agent production
were visited by journalists shortly after the dossier was published
and were found to be derelict or near derelict. My guess is that
after that the Government took a decision to cease claiming that
Iraq was producing agents.
48. UNMOVIC inspectors visited these sites
in December and January and found no evidence of current, or recent,
production activity, which made it even more difficult for the
Government to claim that Iraq was still producing agents. The
inspectors' findings didn't rule out the possibility that proscribed
activity was going on at these sites in September 2002 as claimed
in the dossier, but by January it was no longer going on, and
the information in the dossier was therefore out of date.
49. One might have thought that this change
would have merited a Prime Ministerial statement to Parliament
revising his confident assertion of the previous September that
Iraq had "active, detailed and growing" weapons programmes
and was currently producing agents and weapons. But no such statement
took place: he merely ceased making the claims, and justified
military action against Iraq because it allegedly possessed a
few "old remains" from the early 1990s, "old remains"
which, if they existed at all, were in many instances no longer
effective warfare agents.
A8 UNRESOLVED DISARMAMENT
ISSUES
50. On 6 March 2003, UNMOVIC published a
173-page document entitled Unresolved Disarmament Issues: Iraq's
Proscribed Weapons Programmes. This originated as an internal
working document prepared by UNMOVIC identifying the "key
remaining disarmament tasks" that Iraq had to complete. The
preparation of such a document was a requirement of paragraph
7 of Security Council Resolution 1284, under which UNMOVIC was
established in December 1999. Unusually, for such a document,
it was declassified and published.
51. The document contains a comprehensive
survey of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes (apart from its
nuclear programme, which was the business of the IAEA) and the
subsequent use and/or destruction of weapons and weapons-related
material, based on information assembled by UN inspectors from
1991 onwards. It ends with an assessment of unresolved issues
for each agent and weapon, and a statement of what Iraq needs
to do to resolve them.
52. Like the UNSCOM report of January 1999,
it does not claim that Iraq possesses proscribed weapons or weapons-related
material, merely that in the opinion of UNMOVIC certain proscribed
items are unaccounted for. Nor does it suggest that Iraq has currently
operational agent or weapon production facilities. As such, the
document hardly merits the adjective "chilling", which
Jack Straw applied to it at the Security Council on 7 March.
53. As of early March this year, this was
the most comprehensive and authoritative statement in existence
about Iraq's proscribed weapons (apart from nuclear weapons).
It goes without saying, therefore, that a serious inquiry into
whether the Government had presented "accurate and complete
information" to Parliament would need to examine whether
the Government made Parliament aware of the key information in
this document. It is a measure of the seriousness of the Committee's
inquiry that its Report does not contain a single reference to
this document.
54. A serious inquiry into the matter would
have concluded that, although the Prime Minister and the Foreign
Secretary referred to this document regularly, they misrepresented
its contents, and crucially failed to mention what it said about
the degradation of agents.
55. In the House of Commons on 18 March,
the Prime Minister described it as a "remarkable document"
and quoted from it, for example, on mustard gas:
"Mustard constituted an important part .
. . of Iraq's CW arsenal . . . 550 mustard filled shells and up
to 450 mustard filled aerial bombs unaccounted for"
56. It would be more accurate to say he
misquoted from it. You will indeed find those words on page 76
of the document, but they do not give the sense of the text from
which they were extracted. That text is as follows (with the Prime
Minister's extract underlined):
". . . Judging by the quantities produced,
weaponized and used, Mustard constituted an important part (about
70%) of Iraq's CW arsenal.
"There is much evidence, including documents
provided by Iraq and information collected by UNSCOM, to suggest
that most quantities of Mustard remaining in 1991, as declared
by Iraq, were destroyed under UNSCOM supervision. The remaining
gaps are related to the accounting for Mustard filled aerial bombs
and artillery projectiles. There are 550 Mustard filled shells
and up to 450 mustard filled aerial bombs unaccounted for since
1998. The mustard filled shells account for a couple of tonnes
of agent while the aerial bombs account for approximately 70 tonnes.
According to an investigation made by the Iraqi `Depot Inspection
Commission', the results of which were reported to UNMOVIC in
March 2003, the discrepancy in the accounting for the mustard
filled shells could be explained by the fact that Iraq had based
its accounting on approximations."
57. That gives a very different impression
to that conveyed by the Prime Minister's extract, and his other
extracts are also misleading.
58. More crucially, he told the House of
Commons that day:
"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."
59. But he did not mention that the remarkable
UNMOVIC document made it clear that any unaccounted for sarin,
VX and botulinum toxin would no longer be effective as warfare
agents:
"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, page 73)
"VX produced through route B [the method
used by Iraq in 1990] must be used relatively quickly after production
(about 1 to 8 weeks), which would probably be satisfactory for
wartime requirements." (ibid. page 82)
"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, page 101)
60. Without that information, the Prime
Minister's list of unaccounted for warfare agents is highly misleading.
APPENDIX B
B1 THE INTERVENTION
OF THE
PRIME MINISTER'S
CHIEF OF
STAFF
1. The September dossier contains on page
19 an assessment of what it calls "Saddam's willingness to
use chemical and biological weapons". Until just before the
dossier was published, this said:
"Intelligence indicates that Saddam is willing
to use chemical and biological weapons if he believes his regime
is under threat. We also know from intelligence that as part of
Iraq's military planning, Saddam is willing to use chemical and
biological weapons against an internal uprising by the Shia population."
(Hutton reference BBC/29/00 19)
2. While that formulation by the Chairman
of the JIC, John Scarlett, does not exclude the possibility that
Saddam Hussein would use these weapons aggressively, it gives
the strong impression that he would in all probability use them
only if his regime were under threat. In other words, Saddam Hussein's
Iraq was little or no threat to his neighbours and even less to
Britain or the US.
3. This is consistent with a CIA assessment
provided to the US Congress a few weeks later, which was that
if Saddam Hussein didn't feel threatened, the likelihood that
he would use these weapons was "low", but if the US
attacked him the likelihood would be "pretty high".
This assessment was contained in a letter dated 7 October 2002
from the CIA to Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee. The letter (see Annex 1) declassified a small portion
of CIA evidence to Graham's committee at a closed session on 2
October, which read:
Senator Levin: . . . If (Saddam) didn't
feel threatened, did not feel threatened [sic], is it likely
that he would initiate an attack using a weapon of mass destruction?
Senior Intelligence Witness: . . . My
judgment would be that the probability of him initiating an attack—let
me put a time frame on it—in the foreseeable future, given
the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would
be low.
Senator Levin: Now if he did initiate
an attack you've . . . indicated he would probably attempt clandestine
attacks against us . . . But what about his use of weapons of
mass destruction? If we initiate an attack and he thought he was
in extremis or otherwise, what's the likelihood in response to
our attack that he would use chemical or biological weapons?
Senior Intelligence Witness: Pretty high,
in my view.
4. The assessment of "Saddam's willingness
to use chemical and biological weapons" quoted above was
contained in 11 September draft of the dossier, and met with no
objection from the intelligence professionals on the JIC, including
Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6. It was repeated in the
drafts of 16 and 19 September, again without objection from any
JIC member.
5. But, just before the dossier was cleared
for publication, this assessment was changed dramatically at the
instigation of the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell,
who e-mailed John Scarlett on 19 September in the following terms:
"I think the statement on page 19 that `Saddam
is prepared to use chemical and biological weapons if he believes
his regime is under threat' is a bit of a problem. It backs up
the . . . argument that there is no CBW threat and we will only
create one if we attack him. I think you should redraft the para
. . ."
6. The Prime Minister's Chief of Staff definitely
had a "bit of a problem", since it was difficult to
reconcile the Prime Minister's assertion in the dossier's foreword
that Iraq was "a current and serious threat to the UK national
interest" with the assessment that, in all probability, Saddam
Hussein would use chemical and biological weapons only if his
regime was under threat.
7. As a consequence of Powell's intervention,
the paragraph was redrafted by John Scarlett to remove the impression
that "there was no CBW threat and we will only create one
if we attack him". The amended assessment, which appears
in the published dossier, is:
"Intelligence indicates that as part of
Iraq's military planning Saddam is willing to use chemical and
biological weapons, including against his own Shia population."
8. It is difficult to see how this dramatic
change in the dossier at the instigation of the Prime Minister's
Chief of Staff can be reconciled with the Prime Minister's assurance
to the House of Commons on 4 June 2003:
"I want to make it clear to the House—I
have spoken and conferred with the chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Committee—that there was no attempt, at any time, by any
official, or Minister, or member of No. 10 Downing Street staff,
to override the intelligence judgments of the Joint Intelligence
Committee."
9. John Scarlett claimed in evidence to
the Hutton Inquiry on 23 September that the change was made after
a reassessment of existing intelligence. But that begs three very
large questions:
(a) At least three drafts of the dossier
had, apparently, contained a highly inaccurate assessment of "Saddam's
willingness to use chemical and biological weapons", and
if it hadn't been for Jonathan Powell's last minute objection
this assessment would have been published as the official assessment
of the British Government. Why did none of the intelligence professionals
on the JIC, who read the drafts, not notice that this assessment
was highly inaccurate?
(b) Why was the revised assessment of "Saddam's
willingness to use chemical and biological weapons" significantly
different to the CIA assessment given to the US Congress a couple
of weeks later, which was that if Saddam Hussein didn't feel threatened,
the likelihood that he would use these weapons was "low",
but if the US attacked him the likelihood would be "pretty
high"? In other words, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was little or
no threat to anybody.
(c) Was it sheer coincidence that John Scarlett's
reassessment of existing intelligence happened to get rid of the
Prime Minister's "bit of a problem" that the original
text "backs up the . . . argument that there is no CBW threat
and we will only create one if we attack him"?
10. The Committee should seek answers to
those questions.
B2 THE 45-MINUTE
CLAIM
11. The dossier claimed that Iraq was "able
to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of
an order to do so". It wasn't until John Scarlett gave evidence
to the Hutton Inquiry on 26 August 2003 that there was official
confirmation that the claim referred to battlefield weapons, and
not to strategic weapons capable of hitting, say, Cyprus.
12. The September dossier was therefore
manifestly incomplete since it did not specify that the 45-minute
claim applied to battlefield weapons only, information which was
known to the Government at the time, but which it chose not to
divulge.
13. The Government also chose not to divulge
that the intelligence on which the claim was based was so imprecise
that it did not identify the weapons system to which it was said
to apply, or even what was meant by the word "deploy".
As the ISC report said:
"The JIC did not know precisely which munitions
could be deployed from where to where . . ." (ISC Report,
paragraph 57).
14. That is another example of the Government
giving Parliament incomplete information.
15. Objectively, the 45-minute claim amounted
to very little. As the ISC said:
"That the Iraqis could use chemical or biological
battlefield weapons rapidly had already been established in previous
conflicts and the reference to the 20-45 minutes in the JIC Assessment
added nothing fundamentally new to the UK's assessment of the
Iraqi battlefield capability." (ibid, paragraph 56).
16. The fact that a claim which "added
nothing fundamentally new" appeared four times in the dossier
is proof positive that objectivity was not uppermost in the mind
of the compilers of the dossier. They were much more concerned
with producing newspaper headlines implying an imminent threat
from Iraq.
B3 THE MISREPORTING
OF THE
45-MINUTE CLAIM
17. When the 45-minute claim was widely
reported in the press on 24-25 September as referring to strategic
weapons capable of hitting Cyprus, the Government made no effort
to correct this misinterpretation, which it knew to be wrong.
This was in stark contrast to the huge amount of time and energy
applied in attempting to correct the reporting of Andrew Gilligan
on the claim.
18. Giving evidence to the Hutton Inquiry
on 20 September, Geoff Hoon admitted that he personally knew that
the 45-minute claim referred to battlefield weapons, but that
he had not made any effort to correct press reports that it referred
to missiles. Of the Government's failure to correct the misinterpretation,
he said:
". . . I was not aware of whether any consideration
was given to such a correction. All that I do know from my experience
is that, generally speaking, newspapers are resistant to corrections.
That judgment may have been made by others as well."
19. The proposition that the Government
did not attempt to correct the misleading press reports because
the press would not carry such a correction is risible. A press
statement in the Prime Minister's name carrying a correction to
the reporting of the Government's dossier would have been headline
news, not only in Britain, but around the world.
20. Why did the Government fail to correct
what it knew to be wrong? Because it was happy to have the threat
from Iraq exaggerated, in order to enhance the case for taking
military action against Iraq? Because issuing a correction would
be an admission that the dossier was open to misleading interpretations,
which would have undermined public confidence in the dossier?
The Committee should investigate this.
21. Or was it because the misinterpretation
came from the Prime Minister's Communications Directorate in the
first place, which made it impossible for the Government to correct
it? There was a remarkable uniformity in the press reports of
the dossier on 24-25 September 2002. In most reports, the following
key points were identified:
(a) Iraq has the ability to hit British bases
in Cyprus with chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes
of Saddam Hussein giving the order to do so, and
(b) that Iraq could have nuclear weapons
in between one and two years.
22. The dossier did not say that the 45-minute
claim applied to strategic missiles rather than battlefield weapons,
so either the newspapers all guessed the same way or they were
all steered the same way by Downing Street. (b) is not mentioned
in the Prime Minister's foreword to the dossier, nor in its Executive
Summary; it is mentioned once, and only once, on page 27—which
makes it highly unlikely that so many newspapers would have picked
it out as a key point without a steer from Downing Street.
23. In any event, Parliament and the public
were given misleading information, which the Government knew to
be wrong but failed to correct.
B4 IRAQI DELIVERY
SYSTEMS
24. The September dossier gave the impression
that Iraq had strategic chemical and biological weapons systems
capable of attacking British bases in Cyprus, and perhaps even
London.
25. As the ISC report pointed out, nowhere
in the dossier was it made clear that the most likely chemical
and biological weapons to be used against Western forces would
be battlefield rather than strategic. It was not made clear that
Iraq had at most 20 al Hussein missiles capable of delivering
munitions to Cyprus—this was the number deemed unaccounted
for by UN inspectors—but, if they existed at all, these
missiles had been hidden away since 1991, and therefore there
was a question mark over their operability.
26. The ISC report reveals (paragraph 83)
that the first draft of the Prime Minister's foreword contained
the sentence: "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 inclusion of that sentence would have put Iraq's
military capability—as assessed by intelligence in September
2002—into perspective to some extent. But it was absent
from the published dossier.
27. The September dossier claimed (page
22) that Iraq had a variety of delivery systems for chemical and
biological agents, including free-fall bombs delivered from aircraft
and aircraft/helicopter borne sprayers. But, given the US/UK domination
of the skies over Iraq, there was no possibility of munitions
of any kind being delivered from the air. Nowhere, in the dossier
does it make that clear either.
28. All of this painted an exaggerated picture
of Iraqi capabilities.
B5 PRODUCTION
OF CHEMICAL
AND BIOLOGICAL
WEAPONS
29. The ISC report also criticised the bald
claim in the Prime Minister's foreword that "Saddam has continued
to produce chemical and biological weapons" (paragraph 110).
This could give the impression that "Saddam was actively
producing both chemical and biological weapons and significant
amounts of agents", the report said.
30. In fact, according to the ISC, the JIC
did not know what agents had been produced and in what quantities,
and what quantities, if any, had been put into weapons (in paragraph
58, the report says that "there was no evidence of munitions
being filled with chemical agents since the first Gulf Conflict").
The JIC had merely assessed, based on intelligence, that production
of some kind had taken place.
31. This contrasts starkly with the Prime Minister's
confident assertion to the House of Commons on 24 September 2002
that Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction programme is active,
detailed and growing" and continuing to produce chemical
and biological agents.
B6 AL -QAEDA
CONNECTIONS
32. A major part of the Prime Minister's case
for taking military action against Iraq was that there was a "real
and present danger" that chemical and biological weapons
would find their way from Iraq to al-Qaida or associated groups.
For example, on 18 March 2003 he told the House of Commons:
"The key today is stability and order. The
threat is chaos and disorder-and there are two begetters of chaos:
tyrannical regimes with weapons of mass destruction and extreme
terrorist groups who profess a perverted and false view of Islam".
"Those two threats have, of course, different
motives and different origins, but they share one basic common
view: they detest the freedom, democracy and tolerance that are
the hallmarks of our way of life. At the moment, I accept fully
that the association between the two is loose—but it is
hardening. The possibility of the two coming together-of terrorist
groups in possession of weapons of mass destruction or even of
a so-called dirty radiological bomb-is now, m my judgment, a real
and present danger to Britain and its national security."
33. When he said that, the Prime Minister
was aware that there was no intelligence evidence that Iraq had
considered using chemical and biological agents in terrorist attacks
or had passed such agents on to al-Qaida. He was also aware that,
in the judgment of the JIC, any collapse of the Iraqi regime would
increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology
or agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists, whether
or not as a deliberate Iraqi regime policy (see ISC Report, paragraphs
125-7).
34. But the Prime Minister chose not to
divulge that information to Parliament, understandably so, since
it would have destroyed an important element of his case for taking
military action. That is a clear case of the Government failing
to provide Parliament with complete information on which to base
its judgment about taking military action.
35. The JIC also judged that al-Qaida and
associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest terrorist
threat to Western interests, and that threat would be heightened
by military action against Iraq (see ISC Report, paragraph 126).
The latter view was advanced by most opponents of military action
against Iraq. The Prime Minister chose not to divulge to Parliament
that the intelligence services shared their view.
36. The ISC say (paragraph 128) they discussed
these risks with the Prime Minister, who said that he had exercised
his judgment and time will tell if he was right. That is, of course,
beside the point: for better or worse, he devolved the decision
about taking military action to Parliament, and therefore he was
under an obligation to tell Parliament all the intelligence assessments
relevant to that decision, not just the ones that bolstered his
case. Had he provided Parliament with accurate and complete information
about the relevant intelligence assessments, it might not have
voted to take military action.
Annex 1
CIA LETTER TO US SENATE COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
7 OCTOBER 2002
In response to your letter of 4 October 2002,
we have made unclassified material available to further the Senate's
forthcoming open debate on a Joint Resolution concerning Iraq.
As always, our declassification efforts seek
a balance between your need for unfettered debate and our need
to protect sources and methods. We have also been mindful of a
shared interest in not providing to Saddam a blueprint of our
intelligence capabilities and shortcoming, or with insight into
our expectation of how he will and will not act. The salience
of such concerns is only heightened by the possibility for hostilities
between the US and Iraq.
These are some of the reasons why we did not
include our classified judgments on Saddam's decision making regarding
the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in our recent unclassified
paper on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Viewing your
request with those concerns in mind, however, we can declassify
the following from the paragraphs you requested:
Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line
short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW
against the United States.
Should Saddam conclude that a US-led attack could
no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained
in adopting terrorist actions. Such terrorism might involve conventional
means, as with Iraq's unsuccessful attempt at a terrorist offensive
in 1991, or CBW.
Saddam might decide that the extreme step of
assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD attack against
the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance
by taking a large number of victims with him.
Regarding the 2 October closed hearing, we can
declassify the following dialogue:
Senator Levin: . . . If (Saddam) didn't feel
threatened, did not feel threatened, is it likely that he would
initiate an attack using a weapon of mass destruction?
Senior Intelligence Witness: . . . My judgment
would be that the probability of him initiating an attack—let
me put a time frame on it—in the foreseeable future, given
the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would
be low.
Senator Levin: Now if he did initiate an attack
you've . . . indicated he would probably attempt clandestine attacks
against us . . . But what about his use of weapons of mass destruction?
If we initiate an attack and he thought he was in extremis or
otherwise, what's the likelihood in response to our attack that
he would use chemical or biological weapons?
Senior Intelligence Witness: Pretty high, in
my view.
In the above dialogue, the witness's qualifications—"in
the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now"—were
intended to underscore that the likelihood of Saddam using WMD
for blackmail, deterrence, or otherwise grows as his arsenal builds.
Moreover, if Saddam used WMD. it would disprove his repeated denials
that he has such weapons.
Regarding Senator Bayh's question of Iraqi links
to al-Qa'ida, Senators could draw from the following points for
unclassified discussions:
— Our understanding of the relationship
between Iraq and al-Qa'ida is evolving and is based on sources
of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received
comes from detainees, including some of high rank.
— We have solid reporting of senior
level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade.
— Credible information indicates that
Iraq and al-Qa'ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression.
— Since Operation Enduring Freedom,
we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qa'ida members,
including some that have been in Baghdad.
— We have credible reporting that al-Qa'ida
leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD
capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided
training to al-Qa'ida members in the areas of poisons and gases
and making conventional bombs.
— Iraq's increasing support to extremist
Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship
with al-Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will
increase, even absent US military action.
George J Tenet
Director of Central Intelligence
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