---

Iraq Dossier (September 2002)

Let us remember why this document is so important. It is the first full draft of the dossier—a dossier that was instrumental in convincing this country to go to war. The first full draft should, in my view, be made public, but my view is perhaps less important than that of the Information Commissioner, who has already adjudicated on the matter and believes that it is in the public interest to make the document available to the public. In answer to my parliamentary questions, the Foreign Secretary talked on 23 April 2007 at column 914W of Hansard about ““prejudicing national security””, but those concerns about national security hardly make sense, as the John Williams document was a draft document intended for publication—that was its purpose—and previous and subsequent drafts have already been made public. Certainly the importance of the document was downplayed by the Government during the Hutton inquiry. During his evidence session, Alastair Campbell was asked very straightforwardly:"““Do you recall whether or not at 9th September there was a dossier?””" He answered: ““No, there was not.”” John Scarlett, in his evidence, acknowledged Williams’s role in ““some additional drafting””, but downplayed its significance. He said that Williams was working ““on his own initiative””. However, when circulating his own draft in September 2002, Scarlett referred to"““considerable help from John Williams””." We know, from new evidence from the Information Commissioner, that Williams’s draft"““was requested by the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee””," hence its importance. In his own evidence to the inquiry, John Williams failed to refer either to his draft document or to his presence at the drafting meeting on the afternoon of 9 September. No wonder the Hutton inquiry did not focus on the Williams document and the report did not even mention it. I have recently been told in a letter from the Foreign Secretary that the Williams draft was indeed submitted to the Hutton inquiry on 12 September 2003. However, I have seen no evidence that its significance was appreciated, and it has not been made public on the inquiry’s website. We do not even know that Lord Hutton was made aware of the authorship of the document and its place in the chronology of the dossier. The Minister will remember that at FCO questions recently I asked him about the Williams draft. He replied that Lord Hutton was given the opportunity to see the dossier because"““Both John Scarlett and John Williams referred to the draft dossier in their evidence sessions.””—[Official Report, 1 May 2007; Vol. 459, c. 1361.]" We now know that that is incorrect. Why did not the Minister—I believe him to be a very straightforward individual—simply confirm to me what the Foreign Secretary had stated in her letter? That long trail of smoke and mirrors in the downgrading of the importance of the John Williams draft is consistent with Government policy generally on downplaying the role of press officers in the drafting process. However, let us move on. What about the idea that the JIC was given an opportunity to approve or sign off the final dossier? Ultimately, Lord Hutton saw the sexing up of claims in the dossier as the legitimate redrafting of existing intelligence assessments because he believed that the JIC had the power to reject or endorse any suggestions that were made. It is important here to distinguish between the JIC, the JIC assessment staff—the secretariat—and the committee’s chairman, John Scarlett. The dossier was always in the hands of Scarlett, whom Alastair Campbell commissioned to produce it, but I have seen no direct evidence that the JIC as a whole was asked to approve the dossier. The final draft was circulated among individual members for comment, but John Scarlett signed it off. Indeed, there is little evidence that the Committee even debated it. During the Hutton inquiry, Dr. Brian Jones of the Defence Intelligence Staff said:"““What was unusual or what did not follow the normal practice was that this was not a paper that was going through the process by which it was examined and argued over at a full meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee””." Essentially, the JIC was commenting on a document issued in the name of the Government, not the JIC. After all, the dossier included the words ““The Assessment of the British Government”” in its title and was written in the first person, with the JIC referred to in the third person. In addition, we know that Campbell tried to describe the dossier as"““the work of the JIC””," but Scarlett would not allow it and insisted on the words"““based, in large part, on the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee””." Had the dossier been written exclusively by the JIC, Scarlett could have had no objection to Campbell using the words that he had proposed. At the time, the grey area between the assessment of the Government and that of the intelligence community did not seem important. However, we now know that it was because the dossier upgraded or exaggerated assessments made by the JIC. In summary, our understanding of the Iraq dossier must now fundamentally change. The idea that we had was that spin doctors stood outside the drafting process, making suggestions that could be endorsed or rejected by the JIC as a whole. We now know that spin doctors were inside the process, drafting material and shaping decisions about content. The JIC appears not to have been given the opportunity to approve the final dossier. When we understand that, the scope for sexing up appears much greater. Let us briefly look at some examples. First, there is the notorious 45-minute claim. The claim appeared in the standing JIC assessments, but was not thought important enough to be included in the parallel draft dossiers of 5 and 9 September. The Government have always stated that the 45-minute claim appeared in the first draft dossier, but we now know that that is in incorrect, courtesy of a recent letter to me by the Foreign Secretary. Even when the claim did appear, there was a significant change in the wording. According to the assessment:"““Intelligence...indicates that chemical and biological munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 20-45 minutes.””" The final dossier rendered that as:"““The Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons within 45 minutes””—" a much stronger statement. Secondly, let us take the changes that were made between the draft documents of 10 and 16 September. In the first, the executive summary makes a clear division between one set of bullet points, which are described as judgments, and a second set, which represent what recent intelligence was said to indicate. In the later document, the two sets of bullet points were merged, and all the points that had previously been described as indications were upgraded to judgments. The Cabinet Office has been unable to identify the person who wrote the executive summary. Thirdly, there is the nuclear claim. It was claimed that if sanctions had been removed and Saddam Hussein had acquired fissile material from abroad, he could have produced a nuclear weapon within one to two years. The Prime Minister was careful not to attribute that claim directly to the JIC, and now we know why: the JIC assessment was significantly different, saying that it would take Saddam less than five years to produce a nuclear weapon. During the drafting process, that changed to ““at least two years”” and then, finally, to ““one to two years””. Again, further new evidence shows that the Cabinet Office has been unable to substantiate that claim. Some weeks ago, I asked the Prime Minister on the Floor of the House to explain the justification for that timetable, but he was unable to answer. It appears to have been quite simply an exaggeration of the assessment provided by the intelligence experts. Those three examples are serious enough, but the dossier is littered with others. In many places, a phrase such as ““intelligence indicates”” was replaced with one such as ““intelligence confirms””. Even the title of the dossier was changed at the last minute from ““Iraq’s Programme For Weapons of Mass Destruction”” to ““Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction””—one suggesting that Iraq wanted WMD, the other implying that it already had them. The Hutton and Butler inquiries acknowledged those facts, but the role of spin doctors and the marginalisation of the JIC must now be re-examined. In the light of the new evidence, will the Minister answer the following questions? First, what is in the John Williams draft of 9 September and why are we not allowed to see it? What are the Government hiding? Secondly, if the Williams draft was submitted to the Hutton inquiry, what form did it take? Was Lord Hutton fully informed of its authorship and the document’s place in the chronology of the dossier? Why is there no evidence of it on the inquiry website? Thirdly, who were the members of the drafting group supporting John Scarlett, and who, in particular, wrote the executive summary? Fourthly, in what meaningful sense, if any, did the JIC approve the dossier? Surely it was John Scarlett, the chairman, acting independently of the committee and reporting back to Alastair Campbell, who signed off the dossier, not as a JIC document, as we have heard, but as the Government’s assessment. The case for addressing such concerns is overwhelming. On Monday, our future Prime Minister said that lessons should still be learned about the role of intelligence in presenting the case for military intervention. The Chancellor would not have said that if he believed that the Hutton and Butler inquiries had been exhaustive. British servicemen and Iraqi civilians are still dying in Iraq. The Prime Minister is leaving office this month, and the war is his legacy. We must never again go to war on a false premise, and the questions that I have put to the Minister must therefore be answered.