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Sat 16 Aug, 2003 10:19 am
45-minute claim on Iraq was hearsay
Vikram Dodd, Nicholas Watt and Richard Norton Taylor
Saturday August 16, 2003 - The Guardian
Tony Blair's headline-grabbing claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order to do so was based on hearsay information, the Guardian has learned.
The revelation that the controversial claim is even weaker than ministers and officials have been saying will embarrass No 10, already reeling after the first week of the Hutton inquiry into the death of weapons expert David Kelly.
It came as the Hutton inquiry announced that Alastair Campbell, Downing Street's communications chief, will testify on Tuesday. Underlining the danger of the inquiry for the government, Lord Hutton has called virtually every member of the prime minister's inner circle.
The government has been under fire for including the allegation in a September 2002 dossier used to justify the war against Iraq.
The revelation that the 45 minute claim is second hand is contained in an internal Foreign Office document released by the Hutton inquiry. It had been thought the basis for the claim came from an Iraqi officer high in Saddam Hussein's command structure. In fact it came through an informant, who passed it on to MI6.
The document says the 45 minute claim "came from a reliable and
established source, quoting a well-placed senior officer" - described by intelligence sources as a senior Iraqi officer still in Iraq.
The government has never admitted the key information was based on
hearsay. On June 4, Tony Blair told the House of Commons: "It was alleged that the source for the 45 minute claim was an Iraqi defector of dubious reliability. He was not an Iraqi defector and he was an established and reliable source."
Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, said of the claim on May 29: "That was said on the basis of security service information - a single source, it wasn't corroborated."
The irony is that the government launched a furious attack on the BBC for broadcasting allegations that the dossier was "sexed up" based on a single, anonymous, uncorroborated source. That source was Dr Kelly.
Mr Campbell told the foreign affairs select committee: "I find it incredible ... that people can report based on one single anonymous
uncorroborated source."
In fact, the foundation for the government's claim was even shakier,
according to the document: a single anonymous uncorroborated source
quoting another single anonymous uncorroborated source.
The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Menzies Campbell, said the revelation damaged the government's credibility.
He added: "This is classic hearsay. It provides an even thinner justification to go to war. If this is true, neither the prime minister nor the government have been entirely forthcoming."
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The joint intelligence committee made a judgment on the basis of knowing everything about the nature of the source and the context."
Top Blair Aide Reveals Debate Over Iraq Threat
Top Blair Aide Reveals Debate Over Iraq Threat
Reuters - Monday, August 18, 2003; 12:20 PM
By Dominic Evans
LONDON (Reuters) - The dossier on which British Prime Minister Tony Blair justified war against Iraq contained no proof of any threat from Baghdad, according to an e-mail from a top Blair aide released on Monday.
The e-mail is the first public sign of debate within Blair's inner circle about the strength of intelligence used to justify a war that most Britons opposed.
"The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from (Iraqi President) Saddam (Hussein)," Blair's chief of staff and long-time confidant Jonathan Powell wrote to a senior intelligence official.
"It shows he has the means but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbors, let alone the West," Powell wrote in an e-mail one week before the controversial dossier was published on September 24, 2002, six months ahead of the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq.
Powell's comments, revealed in an inquiry into the suicide of weapons expert David Kelly, cast further doubt on Blair's own claim in the foreword to the dossier that Iraq's biological and chemical weapons program posed a "serious and current threat."
It made clear that the evidence alone would not turn skeptical public opinion, saying: "The dossier is good and convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced."
TRUST PLUNGES
Senior judge Lord Hutton's inquiry is a key test for Blair, whose public trust ratings have plunged over the government's handling of the Kelly affair and the failure to find any banned weapons in Iraq four months after Saddam's overthrow.
Kelly slashed his wrist after being named as the source for a BBC reporter who accused Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell of "sexing up" the dossier by inserting claims that Saddam could deploy banned weapons at 45 minutes' notice.
A poll last week showed 41 percent of the British public blame the government for Kelly's death and 68 percent think the government was dishonest over the Iraq war.
Powell, in his note to Joint Intelligence Committee chief John Scarlett, said the government should make clear "we do not claim that we have evidence that (Saddam) is an imminent threat." Many of Blair's own Labor Party parliamentarians, who only reluctantly backed military action, say the government did exactly that by playing up the 45-minute claims in the dossier.
Blair, currently on holiday in Barbados, is due to return to give evidence to Hutton's inquiry. Campbell is expected to take the stand on Tuesday and along with Powell, will be the closest of Blair's advisers to be questioned about the most damaging crisis of the Labor leader's six-year rule.
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