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The Hutton Enquiry

The Hutton Enquiry has been looking into the events that led up to the death of Dr David Kelly, subsequent to revealing certain information to Andrew Gilligan on BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme on 29th May 2003.

Visit the Hutton Enquiry Web Site for full details of everything, including transcripts of the proceedings and email and other evidence.

A call to arms, a troubled scientist and the unravelling of a mysterious death

By Paul Vallely

From The Independent

11 August 2003

Almost a year has passed since Tony Blair's Government issued its first fateful dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.  This was not what became known as the "dodgy dossier".  That came later.  But, as it happened, the controversy surrounding the first dossier on the threat from Saddam Hussein was far more grave.

Dr David Kelly, a former Porton Down scientist and UN weapons inspector in Iraq, was among those involved in compiling it.  He had worked for the Ministry of Defence as an expert on biological warfare for the past four years.  The dossier was published on 24 September 2002.  It contained the portentous warning that Saddam Hussein had chemical or biological weapons ready to use within 45 minutes of the order being given.

We now know that David Kelly was expressing reservations about this core claim.  We know this - even before the Hutton Inquiry takes its first evidence today - because since Dr Kelly's body was found near his Oxfordshire home on 18 July a stream of intriguing new details have emerged.

In October 2002, Dr Kelly gave a slide show and lecture about his experiences as a weapons inspector in Iraq to a small almost private gathering of the Baha'i faith, which aims to unite the teachings of all the prophets.  Dr Kelly had converted to the religion three years earlier, while in New York on attachment to the UN.  When he returned to England he became treasurer of the small but influential Baha'i branch in Abingdon near his home.

Roger Kingdon, a member, recalls: "He had no doubt that [the Iraqis] had biological and chemical weapons.  It was clear that David Kelly was largely happy with the material in the dossier, but he was not so happy with how the material had been interpreted."

Several months later - the date is unclear - Dr Kelly bumped into Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State and confronted him, a meeting which the politician later claimed to forget.  Exactly what was said will probably never be known.  But conversations between Dr Kelly and his friend, Tom Mangold, the television journalist, suggest that while he was broadly supportive of the document's content he was sceptical of the "45-minutes" claim.

"We laughed about that," Mr Mangold said later.  "He reminded me it would take the most efficient handlers at least 45 minutes just to pour the chemicals or load the biological agents into the warheads.”  A precise man, Dr Kelly was irritated by inaccuracy; he believed the dossier exaggerated intelligence for effect.

He said as much on 7 May when he spoke by telephone to Susan Watts, the science editor of BBC2's Newsnight - a conversation which, though he did not know it, she was recording.  And Dr Kelly voiced the same reservations, it is claimed, when the pivotal meeting in the whole sorry affair occurred - with Andrew Gilligan, the defence correspondent of the Today programme, two weeks later on 22 May.

Seven days after that, on 29 May, Mr Gilligan told the Radio 4 audience, "one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the September dossier said the Government probably knew the 45-minute figure was wrong even before it decided to put it in".  He quoted him as saying: "Downing Street, a week before publication, ordered it to be sexed-up, to be made more exciting and ordered more facts to be discovered".  The intelligence services were unhappy because the end product did not reflect their considered view.

Later that day another reporter became involved.  Gavin Hewitt, working for BBC1's News at Ten O'Clock, rang Dr Kelly in an attempt to substantiate Mr Gilligan's story.  He did not realise he was speaking to Mr Gilligan's source.

Mr Hewitt that night broadcast: "In the final week before publication some material was taken out and some put in.  Some spin from No 10 did come into play.”  But he also added: "Even so the intelligence community remains convinced weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq."

Two days later Susan Watts phoned Dr Kelly again and discussed the "45-minutes" claim.  That Sunday, 1 June, Mr Gilligan wrote a piece in The Mail on Sunday in which he went further than on radio.  He said the man responsible for the exaggeration was Alastair Campbell, the Government's director of communications and strategy.

The next night Susan Watts was on Newsnight again.  She told viewers she had spoken to a senior official intimately involved with the process of pulling together the dossier.  She said: "Our source made clear that in the run-up to publishing the dossier the Government was obsessed with finding intelligence on immediate Iraq threats, and the Government's insistence that the Iraqi threat was 'imminent' was a Downing Street interpretation of intelligence conclusions."

She quoted the source as saying: "While we were agreed on the potential Iraqi threat in the future there was less agreement about the threat the Iraqis posed at the moment.  That was the real concern, not so much what they had now but what they would have in the future, but that unfortunately was not expressed strongly in the dossier because that takes the case away for war to a certain extent."

Of the "45-minute" claim, the source added: "It was a statement that was made and it just got out of all proportion.  They were desperate for information, they were pushing hard for information that could be released.  That was one that popped up and it was seized on, and it is unfortunate that it was.  That is why there is the argument between the Intelligence Services and No 10, because they picked up on it, and once they had picked up on it you cannot pull it back from them."

Looking back there is an interesting additional element.  Though the Government issued a rebuttal to Mr Gilligan's original report, that was all.  About a week later Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell had dinner with BBC executives, including the editor of Today.  They discussed various things, but not the Gilligan affair.  The Government, it appeared, became angry in retrospect - on the day of Alastair Campbell's appearance before the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

A fortnight later, on 19 June, Andrew Gilligan gave evidence to the foreign affairs committee.  He maintained his line and refused to name his source.  The next week, on 25 June, Mr Campbell appeared before the same MPs.  He admitted he had been intimately involved in the dossier's presentation, suggesting amendments to the Joint Intelligence Committee - he had even chaired some meetings.  But he denied adding material to the dossier.  He upped the stakes by demanding an apology from the BBC.

It was now that Dr Kelly began to feel uncomfortable.  Back in the office the following Monday, 30 June, Dr Kelly's colleagues were talking about the foreign affairs committee hearings.  The turning point came when a colleague pointed to Mr Gilligan's claim that his source had said it was "30 per cent likely" that Iraq had a chemical weapons programme in the six months before the war, and that though it was "more likely" there were biological weapons, it would have been reduced "because you could not conceal a larger programme.  The sanctions were actually quite effective; they did limit the programme.”  These were, the colleague noted, the precise phrases used by Dr Kelly in discussions with colleagues.

David Kelly realised the game was up.  He confessed to his bosses that he might be the source for some of the information - but not all of it.  And not the damaging detail on the "45-minute" claim.  It was a high risk strategy, but being accused by someone else would have been worse.  He might have been charged with violating the Official Secrets Act.  His career was at risk.  And so, possibly, a year from retirement, was his pension.  They might prevent him from going to Iraq that weekend to join the Iraq Survey Group which was hunting for evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Dr Kelly wrote that day, 30 June, to his immediate boss, and said he thought he might have been the source of some, but crucially not all, of the Gilligan story.  His letter said he had met the BBC reporter whose description of his meeting with his source "in small part matches my interaction with him, especially my personal evaluation of Iraq's capability".  But that was all.

He wrote: "I can only conclude one of three things.  Gilligan has considerably embellished my meeting with him; he has met with other individuals who truly were intimately associated with the dossier; or he has assembled comments from both multiple direct and indirect sources for his articles."

Almost as soon as the letter was received government ministers were briefed.  Detailed discussions took place.  On 4 July Dr Kelly was interviewed by his line manager and by Richard Hatfield, the personnel director of the MoD.  According to the MoD, Dr Kelly was told to go away for the weekend and "think over his options".  He returned to work on 7 July, to more questioning.  That day, the foreign affairs committee pronounced that Alastair Campbell was not guilty of "sexing-up" the dossier.

Dr Kelly was told he would have to appear before the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee to discuss his meeting with Mr Gilligan.  The meeting would be in camera and Dr Kelly was promised anonymity.  But the MoD broke that understanding.  Exactly who did is unclear.  Lord Hutton will be quizzing, on that subject, Alastair Campbell, Geoff Hoon, Sir Kevin Tebbit, the MoD's most senior civil servant, Richard Hatfield, its personnel chief, and Pam Teare, its head of news.  But whoever made the decision, what is clear is that the MoD fixed on a highly unusual strategy of agreeing to "confirm or deny" any guesses put to it by journalists.

On 8 July, Geoff Hoon wrote to Gavyn Davies, the chairman of the BBC, enclosing a statement which the MoD were going to issue that day saying that Mr Gilligan's mole had come forward.  He was not to be named, but he was not a senior intelligence source nor was he involved in the preparation of the dossier, as the BBC had claimed.  Mr Hoon offered to tell Mr Davies the name "in confidence, on the basis that you would then immediately confirm or deny that this is indeed Mr Gilligan's source".  The BBC refused.  The MoD issued the statement citing an anonymous official who believed he was Mr Gilligan's source for some of his report.  The inference was that the rest was made up.

The emotional temperature rose higher.  Tony Blair justified Downing Street's ferocious pursuit of the BBC on the grounds that Andrew Gilligan's allegations were just about "the most serious charge" anyone could level against a Prime Minister.  On 9 July, Guto Harri, the BBC political correspondent, spoke of Tony Blair doing "some BBC-bashing."

That day the MoD personnel director wrote to Dr Kelly stating that his "behaviour had fallen well short of the standard he expected from a civil servant of his standing and experience", but that "it would not be appropriate to initiate formal disciplinary proceedings".

His punishment was to be different.  The same day Downing Street and MoD officials began leaking details of Dr Kelly's career, designed to assist journalists to identify him.  Two were told Dr Kelly's name.

The pressure on Dr Kelly was growing.  He was asked if he wanted to take his wife to Jersey, where a Foreign Office house would be made available.  Dr Kelly declined.

On 10 July a number of newspapers named Dr David Kelly as the official behind the Gilligan story.  They quoted government sources triumphantly insisting Dr Kelly was a middle-ranking official, not a "senior and credible source", and that he had no access to intelligence briefings - both claims are untrue.  They said he had only provided some input for a background section on UN weapons inspections for the dossier, that he was not a member of the intelligence services, had not seen the key material relating to the "45-minute" claim, and was not in a position to know if Downing Street had wanted to "sex-up" the document.

The BBC countered that Dr Kelly was an "intelligence source" in the broadest sense because he knew a lot about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and would have seen secret material.  But the BBC still refused to confirm Dr Kelly as its source.  That day Dr Kelly, who was holidaying in Cornwall, received a summons to appear before the foreign affairs and the intelligence and security select committees on 15 July.

His appearance at the foreign affairs committee was televised.  There, he was read a transcript of the Susan Watts Newsnight interview and said: "I do not recognise those comments.”  Asked if he had had any conversations with Gavin Hewitt, he replied: "Not that I am aware of, no.  I am pretty sure I have not.”  Questioned on whether he had been critical of Mr Campbell to Mr Gilligan he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and closed his eyes before saying: "I cannot recall using the name Campbell in that context, it does not sound like a thing that I would say."

At the end of the 176-question grilling the Labour-dominated committee concluded that Dr Kelly could not have been the BBC's main source.  To many commentators Dr Kelly came across as uneasy and evasive; and we now know at least one of his answers was untrue.

The next day, 16 July, Dr Kelly gave evidence in private to the intelligence and security committee and then, friends and family have since revealed, went home to Oxfordshire, deeply upset and unhappy.  Some reports said he felt he had been humiliated by the committee, others that he felt his MoD bosses had put him in an impossible position, others that he was uncomfortable at discrepancies in his testimony.

Something now seems to have snapped for David Kelly.  Had he felt - or been told - his performance hadn't been good enough?  Did he fear losing his job, or calculate that his family would do better financially if he died in service?  Did he fear what Mr Gilligan might say when he reappeared before the foreign affairs committee that day?  Might he have learned that the BBC had a tape of his conversation with Susan Watts?

Or might he have felt he had compromised his integrity?  The Baha'i faith is strong on veracity; one of its scriptures says: "The individual must be educated to such a high degree that he would rather have his throat cut than tell a lie, or think it easier to be slashed with a sword or pierced with a spear than to utter calumny."

On the face of it everything seemed normal the next morning, 17 July.  Dr Kelly finished a report for the Foreign Office.  And though he e-mailed a journalist on The New York Times and wrote of "dark actors" at work around him he sent up-beat e-mails to Alistair Hay, a fellow scientist, and Roger Kingdon.  "Hopefully it will soon pass and I can get to Baghdad and get on with the real job," he wrote to Mr Hay.  To Mr Kingdon, his co-religionist, he wrote: "I'm hopeful things will be calming down in a week or so and I'll be going back to Baghdad."

He never did.  That afternoon at 3pm - almost the exact time Mr Gilligan was again before the foreign affairs committee - David Kelly left home, telling his wife he was going for a walk.  He did not return.

Just before midnight his wife alerted the police, and the next morning, 18 July, at 9.20, police found his body at Harrowdown Hill, a few miles away from his home.  A post-mortem found the cause of death was bleeding from wounds to his left wrist.  The fact that several incisions had been made - and that his watch appeared to have been removed whilst blood was already flowing, together with the removal of his spectacles - suggested suicide, experts said.

Not everyone agreed.  Some doctors pointed out that slashing one wrist was an unreliable method of suicide.  The fact that four electrocardiogram electrode pads were found on his chest aroused some people to suggestions of murder, though cardiologists said, most likely, Dr Kelly had earlier been wearing a portable monitor to diagnose a possible heart problem.

Two days later, on 20 July, the story took a new twist.  The BBC acknowledged that Dr Kelly had been the primary source of its report.  Andrew Gilligan came under renewed fire.  Even if it was true, as seemed clear from the supporting evidence of Susan Watts and Gavin Hewitt that Dr Kelly had strong views about the "45-minute" claim, Mr Gilligan had gone further.  He had quoted his source as asserting that "the Government probably knew that the 45 minute figure was wrong even before it decided to put it in".  Critics pronounced that "sexed-up" was a phrase more to the taste of Andrew Gilligan than David Kelly.

Mr Gilligan was further damned a week later by a leak of the unpublished transcript of evidence he had given to the foreign affairs committee on his second appearance, after which he had been publicly criticised by Donald Anderson, the chairman.  It purported to show that Mr Gilligan had admitted that Dr Kelly had not actually said Mr Campbell had inserted the "45-minutes" claim, but that Mr Gilligan had "inferred" it from their conversation.  Mr Gilligan denied this was what he had meant, but it seemed the pressure had now shifted primarily onto the BBC.

Yet the twists were not over.  News then broke that Susan Watts' conversation with Dr Kelly had been recorded.  Richard Sambrook, the corporation's director of news, was said to have smiled broadly after listening to it.  Some insiders said Dr Kelly mentioned Mr Campbell there too.  The BBC has refused to say, but has passed the tape to Lord Hutton.  Then came an admission from the Ministry of Defence that documents relating to the Government's media strategy on Dr Kelly had almost been incinerated.  Unofficial reports suggested the MoD police had been called by a security guard after a senior official was discovered hurriedly shredding material.  To cap it all, on the eve of David Kelly's funeral, came the tasteless and preposterous attempt by a senior No 10 official, to suggest that Dr Kelly, the Government's foremost expert on chemical and biological weapons, was a "Walter Mitty" style fantasist.

Yesterday there was yet another turn.  It was reported that a two weeks ago, before Dr Kelly's apparent suicide - Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, described the man as "eccentric and unreliable."

He even went so far as to circle the side of his head, a gesture suggesting madness.  And he did so at a private dinner with James Robbins, the BBC's diplomatic editor.

The Hutton inquiry takes its first evidence today.  Though the story of Dr David Kelly's final days is already a lot clearer there are still plenty of questions for Lord Hutton to ask. 

Diplomat who blew the whistle on falsified evidence

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

From The Independent 9th July 2003

When Joseph Wilson got the call from Vice-President Dick Cheney's office asking for assistance, the former diplomat had no qualms.

The request related to a disturbing report from Italian intelligence suggesting Iraq was buying uranium from Niger and trying to restart its nuclear weapons programme.

In February 2002, the CIA asked Mr Wilson to go to Niger as soon as possible, speak to the contacts he developed there as ambassador between 1976-78, and establish whether the reports were true.  "I had been asked to look into whether it was feasible that Niger had entered into an agreement to sell uranium to Iraq," he told The Independent on Sunday.

Mr Wilson, recently retired, was ideal for the job.  He knew Niger; he knew Africa from his time on the National Security Council when Bill Clinton was President, and having been chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, he was the last US official to speak to Saddam Hussein.

Having received clearance from the State Department ("I don't do covert, I do discreet.") he left for Niger in March 2002 where he was met by the US ambassador, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick.  Mr Wilson spent just eight days in the capital, Niamey, but he was able to dismiss the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium.

Because of how the uranium business in Niger operates, the consortium that runs the mines would have learned of Niger's efforts to mine more uranium than normal and that increase would have been noticed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).  There was no such trail and Mr Wilson concluded the documents must have been fake.  Having reported to Ms Owens-Kirkpatrick, Mr Wilson returned to Washington, where he was debriefed the same day by the CIA and the next day by the State Department.  "My report was very unequivocal," he said.

Mr Wilson thought nothing more of his trip until 24 September 2002, when the Blair government published its dossier on Iraq, claiming that intelligence suggested Iraq was seeking "significant quantities of uranium from Africa".  He advised the CIA of the error and asked them to call London.

Whether the CIA did so is not clear.  Mr Wilson is convinced - and CIA officials have confirmed this - that his report had circulated in the highest circles of the US and British governments.  "We have a very close working relationship between the intelligence services," he said.  "It's hard for me to fathom ...  as close as we are and preparing for a war based on [claims of] weapons of mass destruction, that we did not share intelligence of this nature."

But not only was the British claim not corrected, it found its way into a State Department "fact sheet" issued in December that stated that the African country in question was Niger.  The next month, President George Bush again repeated the erroneous claim in his State of the Union address, quoting almost verbatim the claim in the September dossier that Iraq was seeking "significant quantities of uranium from Africa".

That lie was finally nailed in March 2003 when the documents on which the Italian report was based were given to the US and then to the IAEA, whose experts quickly found them to be bogus.  In a presentation that hugely embarrassed the US and Britain, the IAEA's director general, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council: "Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents - which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger - are in fact not authentic.  We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded."

One document was a letter discussing Iraq's plan to buy 500 tons of uranium, dated July 2000 and apparently signed by the Niger President, Tandja Mamadou.  Experts quickly spotted that it was not his real signature.  Another letter, dated 1999, was signed by someone who was replaced as foreign minister in 1989.

Mr Wilson, in both The Independent on Sunday and The New York Times last weekend, dismissed White House claims that no one knew of his report.  Of the claim by the US National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that it was only known by "someone ...  down in the bowels of the agency", he replied that it was her job to know such information, as the US was preparing for war on such evidence.  Yet it was only after the two articles and the report by the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that the White House would admit that its claims were false.

"The question is: who did [my] report go to?" asked Mr Wilson.  "How did they continue to make statements [claiming they had proof] that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his weapons programme when clearly they did not?"

URANIUM STRETCHING CREDULITY

The claim: Documents purporting to show that Saddam Hussein sought to import uranium from Niger were exposed as forgeries, but Britain insists that its information came from "separate sources".  Tony Blair repeated this assertion before a Commons committee yesterday.

The verdict: The alleged information from "separate sources" has never been made public.  A senior Foreign Office official told the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, had been briefed about the additional intelligence.  Yesterday, however, a source close to the IAEA told The Independent that the only information the agency had ever seen was the Niger documents.  When the Americans handed them over in March this year, after months of pressure, the IAEA realised within minutes that they were crude forgeries.

Unless more details are disclosed, the suspicion will remain that the claim of "separate sources" was designed to prevent embarrassment to President Bush.

The claim: The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, told the Foreign Affairs Committee that the Niger forgeries did not come from British sources.

The verdict: Regardless of their provenance, the US was suspicious enough of the documents to send a senior retired diplomat, Joseph Wilson, to make inquiries in Niger.  He says he never saw the forgeries, but reported back that the supposed evidence they contained was false.

The claim: Mr Straw said the British intelligence community was unaware of the Niger forgeries "at the time when [the September dossier] was put together".

The verdict: This leaves unanswered the question of whether or when the British agencies saw the documents.  We know they came into the possession of the Americans, because they eventually handed them over to the IAEA.  Given the close relationship between London and Washington, is it conceivable that the British were never given copies?  The IAEA says it took a simple internet search to establish that the documents were fake.  Britain's spies would presumably have seen through them equally quickly.

The claim: Senior White House officials claim Mr Wilson's findings never reached them.

The verdict: Mr Wilson says his mission came at the request of the Vice-President, Dick Cheney.

Bush Claim on Iraq Had Flawed Origin, White House Says

By DAVID E.  SANGER

From The New York Times 8th July 2003

WASHINGTON, July 7 — The White House acknowledged for the first time today that President Bush was relying on incomplete and perhaps inaccurate information from American intelligence agencies when he declared, in his State of the Union speech, that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium from Africa.

The White House statement appeared to undercut one of the key pieces of evidence that President Bush and his aides had cited to back their claims made prior to launching an attack against Iraq in March that Mr.  Hussein was "reconstituting" his nuclear weapons program.  Those claims added urgency to the White House case that military action to depose Mr.  Hussein needed to be taken quickly, and could not await further inspections of the country or additional resolutions at the United Nations.

The acknowledgment came after a day of questions — and sometimes contradictory answers from White House officials — about an article published on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times on Sunday by Joseph C.  Wilson 4th, a former ambassador who was sent to Niger, in West Africa, last year to investigate reports of the attempted purchase.  He reported back that the intelligence was likely fraudulent, a warning that White House officials say never reached them.

"There is other reporting to suggest that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Africa," the statement said.  "However, the information is not detailed or specific enough for us to be certain that attempts were in fact made."

In other words, said one senior official, "we couldn't prove it, and it might in fact be wrong."

Separately tonight, The Washington Post quoted an unidentifed senior administration official as declaring that "knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech." Some administration officials have expressed similar sentiments in interviews in the past two weeks.

Asked about the statement early today, before President Bush departed for a six-day tour of Africa, Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said, "There is zero, nada, nothing new here." He said that "we've long acknowledged" that information on the attempted purchases from Niger "did, indeed, turn out to be incorrect."

But in public, administration officials have defended the president's statement in the State of Union address that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

While Mr.  Bush cited the British report, seemingly giving the account the credibility of coming from a non-American intelligence service, Britain itself relied in part on information provided by the C.I.A., American and British officials have said. 

But today a report from a parliamentary committee that conducted an investigation into the British assertions also questioned the credibility of what the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair had published. 

The committee went on to say that Mr.  Blair's government had asserted it had other evidence of Iraqi attempts to procure uranium.  But eight months later the government still had not told Parliament what that other information was.

While Mr.  Bush quoted the British report, his statement was apparently primarily based on American intelligence — a classified "National Intelligence Estimate" published in October of last year that also identified two other countries, Congo and Somalia, where Iraq had sought the material, in addition to Niger.

But many analysts did not believe those reports at the time, and were shocked to hear the president make such a flat, declarative statement.

Asked about the accuracy of the president's statement this morning, Mr.  Fleischer said, "We see nothing that would dissuade us from the president's broader statement." But when pressed, he said he would clarify the issue later today.

Tonight, after Air Force One had departed, White House officials issued a statement in Mr.  Fleischer's name that made clear that they no longer stood behind Mr.  Bush's statement.

How Mr.  Bush's statement made it into last January's State of the Union address is still unclear.  No one involved in drafting the speech will say who put the phrase in, or whether it was drawn from the classified intelligence estimate. 

That document contained a footnote — in a separate section of the report, on another subject — noting that State Department experts were doubtful of the claims that Mr.  Hussein had sought uranium. 

If the intelligence was true, it would have buttressed statements by Mr.  Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that Saddam Hussein was actively seeking a nuclear weapon, and could build one in a year or less if he obtained enough nuclear material.

In early March, before the invasion of Iraq began, the International Atomic Energy Agency dismissed the uranium reports about Niger, noting that they were based on forged documents. 

In an interview late last month, a senior administration official said that the news of the fraud was not brought to the attention of the White House until after Mr.  Bush had spoken.

But even then, White House officials made no effort to correct the president's remarks.  Indeed, as recently as a few weeks ago they were arguing that Mr.  Bush had quite deliberately avoided mentioning Niger, and noted that he had spoken more generally about efforts to obtain "yellowcake," the substance from which uranium is extracted, from African nations.

Tonight's statement, though, calls even those reports into question.  In interviews in recent days, a number of administration officials have conceded that Mr.  Bush never should have made the claims, given the weakness of the case.  One senior official said that the uranium purchases were "only one small part" of a broader effort to reconstitute the nuclear program, and that Mr.  Bush probably should have dwelled on others.

White House officials would not say, however, how the statement was approved.  They have suggested that the Central Intelligence Agency approved the wording, though the C.I.A.  has said none of its senior leaders had reviewed it.  Other key members of the administration said the information was discounted early on, and that by the time the president delivered the State of the Union address, there were widespread questions about the quality of the intelligence.

"We only found that out later," said one official involved in the speech.

From Guardian Unlimited 7th July 2003

Dossier report clears Campbell

Matthew Tempest and agencies
Monday July 7, 2003
The Guardian

Downing Street's communications director, Alastair Campbell, was today cleared by MPs of exerting "improper influence" on the drafting of the government's intelligence-led dossier on Iraq. 

The Commons foreign affairs committee's report said he played no role in including a controversial section saying Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were deployable within 45 minutes. 

But the MPs - who cleared Mr Campbell of the first charge only on the casting vote of the committee's chairman - also attacked the government over its handling of the affair. 

And the committee was scathing in its criticism of a second dossier, published in February, with the MPs saying Tony Blair had "misrepresented its status" to MPs. 

Following publication of today's report the government renewed its attack on the BBC, whose Today programme originally ran the allegations against Mr Campbell.  The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said: "I believe that the BBC should now apologise."

A statement from the corporation was unrepentant.  "The BBC believes today's report from the foreign affairs committee justifies its decision to broadcast the Today programme story of May 29," it said. 

The row between the BBC and Alastair Campbell was dubbed a "sideshow and a distraction" by Sir John Stanley, an independent-minded Tory member of the committee, pointing out that the report's conclusion on the decision to go to war on intelligence alone was that "the jury is still out". 

The committee said that in the first dossier, published last September, the 45-minute claim was given undue prominence and said the language used was "more assertive than that traditionally used in intelligence documents". 

But the MPs cleared any minister of misleading parliament. 

The MPs said it was "too soon to tell" whether the government's assertions on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would be borne out. 

But they also concluded that it was wrong for Mr Campbell or any special adviser to have chaired a meeting on intelligence matters and said the degree of independence given to his Iraqi Communications Group contributed to the affair of the February "dodgy dossier". 

The committee makes 33 recommendations in its 54-page report. 

Of the first dossier in September, which Mr Campbell and No 10 were accused of "sexing up" by the BBC, relying on a senior intelligence source, the MPs said: "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.  We recommend that the government explain why the claim was given such prominence. 

"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 the 45-minute claim, in the light of subsequent events. 

"We conclude that Alastair Campbell did not play any role in the inclusion of the 45 minutes claim in the September dossier. 

"We conclude that it was wrong for Alastair Campbell or any special adviser to have chaired a meeting on an intelligence matter, and we recommend that this practice cease." This was a reference to a planning meeting on the dossier on September 9, which Mr Campbell had chaired. 

The MPs also said: "We conclude that on the basis of the evidence available to us, Alastair Campbell did not exert or seek to exert improper influence on the drafting of the September dossier."

This was the crucial exoneration sought by Mr Campbell.  But it was included in the report only on the casting vote of the committee's Labour chairman, Donald Anderson. 

Splits

Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay voted with the lone Liberal Democrat and the three Tories against five Labour colleagues on the 11-member committee to replace that conclusion with a paragraph stating the committee could not "resolve this matter satisfactorily" without access to all relevant papers and witnesses. 

Mr Anderson cast his chairman's vote to include the statement clearing Mr Campbell.  In his press conference to launch the report, he denied his committee was "toadying" to the government. 

But he clarified that although the prime minister "misrepresented" the February "dodgy dossier" to parliament, claiming it was intelligence material, this was not the same as misleading parliament - a possible resignation charge - since it was unintentional. 

However, the Tories instantly jumped on this charge, saying Mr Blair should now apologise for misleading parliament, whether intentionally or not. 

Michael Ancram, the shadow foreign secretary, said: "On this occasion he must come urgently to parliament and clear this up."

He reiterated Conservative calls for an independent judicial inquiry. 

The MPs divided on strict party lines to conclude that "in the absence of reliable evidence that intelligence personnel have either complained about or sought to distance themselves from the contents of the [September] dossier, allegations of politically-inspired meddling cannot credibly be established". 

The Tory MPs had wanted that sentence dropped from the report. 

Presentation

But the committee was more hostile to the government in concluding that the language of that first dossier "was in places more assertive than that traditionally used in intelligence documents". 

The MPs recommended that future reports retained instead "the measured and even cautious tones which have been the hallmark of intelligence assessments". 

And they said that "continuing disquiet and unease about the claims made in the September dossier are unlikely to be dispelled unless more evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme comes to light". 

On the February "dodgy dossier", which contained an unattributed internet thesis, originally handed to reporters then used by Mr Blair in the Commons, the MPs were also hostile. 

They said: "The effect of the February dossier was almost wholly counter-productive.  By producing such a document the government undermined the credibility of their case for war and of the other documents which were part of it. 

"We further conclude that by referring to the document on the floor of the house as 'further intelligence', the prime minister - who had not been informed of its provenance, doubts about which only came to light several days later - misrepresented its status and thus inadvertently made a bad situation worse. 

"We conclude that it is wholly unacceptable for the government to plagiarise work without attribution and to amend it without either highlighting the amendments or gaining the assent of the original author."

The MPs said it was "fundamentally wrong" to allow such a document to be presented to parliament and made widely available without a minister being in charge of its production. 

Intelligence services

The committee called for an investigation into Mr Gilligan's "alleged contacts" and a review of links between the security and intelligence agencies, the media and parliament - although it left unclear who would conduct such an inquiry. 

The MPs were frustrated at not being able to summon intelligence agency witnesses.  All MPs regretted that John Scarlett, the chair of the joint intelligence committee, would not give evidence to them. 

And they pointedly remarked: "We recommend that ministers bear in mind at all times the importance of ensuring that the joint intelligence committee is free of all political pressure."

They also urged that the intelligence and security committee, which usually meets in private and is responsible to the prime minister, be reconstituted as a proper select committee of the Commons. 

It too is conducting an inquiry into the build-up to war on Iraq. 

Although the MPs said the "jury is still out" on the evidence about WMD contained in the September dossier, they added: "Consistent with the conclusions reached elsewhere in this report, we conclude that ministers did not mislead parliament."

That was also included on the casting vote of Mr Anderson, MPs lining up as before, with the rebels wanting to say simply that "there was no intention to mislead parliament". 

There will be enough material in the report for both sides in the bitter dispute between the government, led by Mr Campbell, and the BBC - protecting its Today programme defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan - to take comfort. 

The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Menzies Campbell, said: "This report raises as many questions as it answers.  The committee has done its best in the four weeks available to it, but a more rigorous inquiry is necessary. 

"The case for an independent inquiry chaired by a senior judge is overwhelming."

‘There is not a single fact in either dossier that is actually disputed’

So said Tony Blair yesterday.  Well then, what about ...

From The Independent 26 June 2003

1.  The 45-minute warning

As Tony Blair struggled last September to convince the public and his own party of the need to confront Saddam Hussein, Downing Street published an unprecedented dossier on the threat posed by Iraq.

One of its main claims, referred to four times in the document, highlighted in Mr Blair’s foreword and later used by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, was that Saddam could deploy a chemical and biological capability within 45 minutes.

Yesterday, in a three-hour quizzing by a Commons inquiry into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war, Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair’s director of communications, rounded on the BBC for alleging he pressurised security chiefs to insert the claim.  Mr Blair had earlier said that not a single fact in that dossier, or a second, published in February, was in dispute.

Mr Campbell went on the offensive, demanding an apology from the BBC over its “totally untrue” allegation.  The corporation issued a statement standing by its story.

Many ministers are distancing themselves from the 45-minutes claim.  Mr Straw said this week that “it was not my claim”, putting the ball firmly in the court of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which produced the dossier.  Mr Straw also said the claim was “not central” to the case against Saddam andpointed out that it did not refer to actual missiles, only “deployment”.

Yet it lay behind the Government’s implication at the time: Iraq posed an urgent threat because it could very quickly launch an attack.  The biggest problem for Mr Blair remains: if weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes, why were they not used and why have they not been found? 

2.  The Niger connection

Questions on the Government’s claims that Saddam Hussein attempted to acquire uranium from the African state of Niger for his nuclear weapons programme were still unanswered last night.

MPs asked Mr Campbell why the claim was said by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to be based on “blatant forgeries”.  The claim formed an important part of the Government’s dossier on Saddam’s arsenal, providing evidence that the Iraqi dictator was attempting to build nuclear weapons that could pose a threat to the West.

The Government has stood by reports that Iraq “sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa”.  British officials say the intelligence was based on multiple sources, despite the IAEA’s verdict.  Mr Campbell said yesterday that the questions could only be answered by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).

He said: “This is probably something best raised with the JIC itself, the JIC say it does not necessarily negate the material that they put forward.  Whilst I understand there is this issue to do with forgeries ...  my understanding is that that is not British intelligence material that is being talked about.” Only access to the secret intelligence briefings seen by Mr Blair and his senior colleagues will clear up questions on the claims.

But the issue will remain a thorn in the sides of governments on both sides of the Atlantic.  Critics in the United States are also angry that President George Bush may have misled Congress over the affair. 

3.  The propaganda

Downing Street has also been accused of demanding that the September dossier be “sexed up”.  Although Mr Campbell vigorously denied that charge yesterday, he did make clear for the first time that he had a role in amending the early drafts.

In a memo to the committee he revealed the nature of his input.  “I had several discussions with the chairman of the JIC on presentational issues arising from the dossier, and, in common with other officials, made drafting suggestions as the document evolved,” he said.

Mr Campbell stressed that he had tried to “sex down” the dossier, rejecting some of the more emotional language about Iraq’s human rights record.  He said he had recommended stylistic changes and ideas for graphics, and claimed his input had “not very much” impact on the final shape of the document.  But as a result of his failing to give details of the changes, he has left in the air the precise nature of any amendments he suggested.

Perhaps more troubling, as Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary, writes in today’s Independent, is that ministers seemed to back off several of the assumptions made in the September dossier.

Mr Cook says: “I have long been puzzled that its more alarming claims were not repeated in the March debate.  There was no reference then to weapons ready within 45 minutes, to a nuclear weapons programme that had been restarted, or to the purchase of uranium from Niger.

“All of these threats were expressed in September but suppressed in March, although the Government by then was desperate to convince a majority in Parliament to back war.”

4.  The terrorist links

The second, so-called dodgy dossier, which No 10 now prefers to be known as a “briefing paper”, plagiarised an article on Iraq’s security apparatus by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a Californian PhD student.

Mr Campbell revealed the exact process by which Mr Marashi’s work was woven into the dossier without attribution.  He said he and Mr Blair had been unaware of the “mistake” but both were convinced its contents were still accurate.

After an unnamed official within the Downing Street Communications Information Centre (CIC) lifted whole sections of the academic article, intelligence experts then changed sections on Iraq’s threat to the stability of other countries.  As a result, the words “aiding opposition groups” were changed to “supporting terrorist organisations”.  Mr Campbell said the intelligence agencies had wanted the change because they were more, not less, accurate.  A “lifted” section on Iraq’s secret police said their duties included “monitoring foreign embassies”.  This was changed to “spying on foreign embassies”.

Mr Blair told the Commons on 3 February that the second dossier was an “intelligence report”.  Mr Campbell pointed out yesterday that the report’s front page said it drew “on a number of sources including intelligence material”.  But the MPs made plain they felt that this was disingenuous.

Mr Campbell’s main defence was that the February dossier had not tarnished the overall case.  Yet it seems that is exactly what it has done.