Perhaps the most important criticism from former army chief Sir Richard Dannatt in the Sunday Telegraph’s extensive coverage of his book comes in the interview he has given the paper:

Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the Iraq war had done little to convey how “the pips were squeaking” in the Armed Forces.

“In front of Chilcot, Brown said ‘They were given everything the generals asked for.’ Well, yes, narrowly that’s right. Under operational requirements protocol, the Treasury is absolutely obliged to pay for the additional costs of operations. But we certainly weren’t being given everything we asked for in the wider sense.

Given the detail in which the Inquiry has examined the issue of funding, this is surprising. But the point has been made here and elsewhere that Brown’s claim to have paid for all requests under urgent operational requirements is not the point, particularly as the military are often discouraged from making requests in the first place.

In an extract from his book, Dannatt describes not just what the pre-war intelligence looked like to him but the government’s duplicitous – he calls it schizophrenic – approach to regime change:

Life in London during 2002 had something of a schizophrenic quality to it. On the one hand, and officially, Iraq did not pose a threat to the United Kingdom. While it was abundantly clear that the Americans wanted to achieve regime change, it was no part of British policy at the time to become entangled in such an enormous and risk-laden venture. On the other hand, and at the level at which it could be officially denied, it was growing increasingly likely that the United States would once again lead a coalition into Iraq.

There was also growing focus on the intelligence that underpinned the case for war with Iraq. This has been well documented by the Butler Inquiry, but my abiding recollection of the intelligence to which I was privy is just how thin it was. The UK’s case for war was based on the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, as regime change was, apparently, not an objective that the UK could support, at least officially. But I found the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction most uncompelling, and could only assume that the really key stuff was kept for the eyes of the most senior people. But who were they? I was seeing the intelligence as the Assistant Chief because periodically I stood in for Mike Walker at the chiefs of staff meetings. So if the chiefs were not seeing the killer intelligence, who was – if it actually existed at all?

This will add to the growing weight of opinion from former insiders that will make it difficult for the Inquiry merely to parrot the line given to it by the majority of government witnesses.

In the Observer today, Jamie Doward and I reveal that in March 2002 Tim Dowse, then head of the Foreign Office’s Non-Proliferation Department, wrote a memo to a special adviser to Jack Straw in which he said that the early draft dossier on Iraq’s alleged wmd would have to be “reviewed” so that it did not contradict a false statement the special adviser had made in a briefing paper to the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). I have posted the memo here and the PLP paper is here.

The memo is very significant in showing how, six months before the dossier was published, officials were prepared to bring it into line with claims by spin doctors that they knew to be false. But its disclosure is just as much of an embarrassment for the Inquiry. Former diplomat Carne Ross referred to the memo in his written evidence to the Inquiry in July. In a subsequent article for the Observer he alleged that a Foreign Office official, acting on instruction from the Cabinet Office had asked him to remover the reference, even though, as its disclosure shows, it contains nothing genuinely secret. The Inquiry did not publish the memo.

Ross also pointed out that Dowse made no reference to the memo when he gave evidence in December. Neither was the memo published at that time. A spokesperson for the Inquiry told me that it does not only ask for documents to be declassified where witnesses have asked for this. This means that the Inquiry could – and should – have published the memo then and questioned Dowse about it. It also means that Sir John Chilcot’s observation that Ross had not asked for any documents to be declassified was a red herring.

Interestingly, after he gave evidence, Dowse wrote to the Inquiry to insist that “the officials who worked on the text [of the dossier] did so in good faith” and had “every reason not to present a consciously exaggerated picture”. If offering to sex-up the dossier to match false claims by spin doctors is his idea of good faith…

The Inquiry spokesman also told me that “The Inquiry will not be giving a running commentary on why individual documents are or are not published or questions asked.” It is hard to reconcile this with Chilcot’s claim in February that “We are committed to being open and transparent about how we are approaching our task and the information we are receiving.”

The disclosure of the Dowse memo follows the publication on Friday of another highly significant document – an early draft dossier – that the Inquiry has failed to publish. As I observed here, the Inquiry risks being left behind by publications under freedom of information. Its collusion with the Foreign Office in suppressing the Dowse memo puts it in danger of being seen as part of the cover-up.

As Brian has explained, only the talk was on the record and not the questions afterwards.

Following this morning’s publication of a previously unseen draft of the September 2002 Iraq dossier, I have posted this piece on Comment is Free, arguing that Sir John Chilcot is very complacent in saying that:

“We have a very detailed account in the Hutton inquiry report of the construction of the dossier, almost line by line, and I don’t think there is any need for this inquiry simply to rehearse that.”

I am today publishing a previously unseen draft of the September 2002 Iraq dossier, which was produced in June 2002 by the CIC, the propaganda unit that wrote the February 2003 “dodgy dossier”.

This is another document that the Iraq Inquiry has concealed.

Read more on the website of Index on Censorship.

This is the lecture that I gave at the Royal United Services Institute yesterday to launch my book Failing Intelligence: How Blair led us into war in Iraq.

In the year or so following my retirement in early 2003, I gave evidence on intelligence and WMD to two of the four inquiries on Iraq – namely Hutton and Butler.

I was less than completely satisfied with what emerged from these, and indeed the other two inquiries, by the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee, so through 2004 I wrote a number of articles and gave a number of interviews trying to clarify what I believed had happened and what had been missed.

Going in to 2005, I was becoming increasingly frustrated with what I saw as the failure of my attempts to explain, in the space or time available, the whole complex of issues that lay behind the mistake that had been made on Iraq and WMD.

These issues include:

• the weird, sometimes wonderful, and often frustrating world of intelligence

• the confusing practices and processes of the Whitehall machine and the governance that emanates from it, and

• the technically complicated subjects of nuclear, chemical and biological agents and weapons which are quite different one from another in terms of their utility, potential and control.

It was then I decided it would take a book to do all these things properly and that is where most of my energies on this subject went to after that.

Is it not ironic, then, that now, five years later, I have come full circle and stand here with just 25 minutes to talk to you about it all?

Well, at least now I have, thanks largely to Michael Smith, a book to point you at and so that is what I intend to do with the first part of this talk.

I will then focus on one issue I think was central to what went wrong and develop that theme in a little more detail to give you a flavour of the depth of the book.

I have divided my book into four parts:

I CONTEXT
II DECEPTION
III COVER-UP, and
IV CONCLUSION

I use the CONTEXT to try and explain the background to some of the issues I mentioned a moment ago, using the experience of my own introduction to them to aid my description .

Then I spend some time in the period 1990- 2000, discussing the intelligence background to the first Gulf War and the difficulty of establishing that Iraq had disarmed.

I also raise the issue of whether it was ever the intention of the US to let Saddam off the hook by allowing that he had disarmed. In other words would that eventuality ever have been in line with the US Liberation Act that President Clinton signed in 1998 and some believe had been unofficial US policy since the administration of George Bush Sr in the early 1990s.

The impact of 9/11 in 2001 is an obvious element in the overall context since it ignited “the war on terror”, Afghanistan and “enabled” the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. But I also say a little about the impact of the “anthrax letters” that followed closely on 9/11 and had a great effect on Washington. Some of the witnesses to the Chilcot inquiry have drawn attention to the importance of this incident.

In DECEPTION I look at the events of 2002 starting with the State of the Union address in January, the flurry of papers that followed it in Whitehall before the Crawford summit in April, and finishing with the Secret Downing Street meeting of 23 July.

I then discuss the events surrounding the generation of the September 2002 dossier which, depending on who you listen to, was or was not making a case for war. I will return to one aspect of this in a few minutes.

It was in the period between to dossier and the war that I retired in January 2003. There were several important developments in that period – a fascinating meeting I attended in the Cabinet Office, Bush’s UN speech followed by Resolution 1441, Alistair Campbell’s dodgy dossier, Colin Powell’s speech at the UN and important resignations from the government on the eve of war.

It is at this point that I discuss how I felt at the time about our participation in the war. There was no justification in terms of Iraq’s immediate WMD capabilities because we simply could not be sure they were there. But if you set that aside, I was prepared to admit there could be a “big picture” case for it – not so much based on Iraq’s future WMD capabilities, which now seems to be a favourite fall- back position for Mr Blair and his former staff at No 10, but for a number of other reasons which I discuss in the book and we might talk about later.

I suspect those concerned, both politicians and officials, knew they were taking a risk when they made Iraq’s “current” possession of WMD the overwhelming justification for war. I believe the decisions were taken with the best of intentions by all concerned, and I am not advocating a witch-hunt or the attribution of blame.

But it has been the failure of those involved to acknowledge, in any substantial way, that the risk they took failed, that prompted me to devote a major part of my book to the COVER-UP of what happened.

Not least because none of the 4 inquiries completed so far has looked at this aspect, and I see little evidence that this is something the Chilcot Inquiry has pursued.

Why is it important?

Because it has obstructed the identification of some important lessons about how things went so horribly wrong, and was a factor in Whitehall choosing to ignore some others that were identified, mainly by the Butler review.

It meant that the line the government wanted to draw under the matter could not be drawn, and has still to be drawn.

It created the impression of a nation complicit in and supportive of a war that lacked legitimacy, even after it became clear that the WMD justification was without foundation.

And it undermined confidence in our politics and governance even before the Expenses Crisis dealt it yet another fearsome blow.

And I CONCLUDE my book by discussing the impact I believe all of this is likely to have had on three issues that remain high profile:

Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons proliferation and arms control, terrorism, and intelligence.

Turning now to the issue I want to focus on in a little more detail.

If it was to get the support that would be needed for probable military operations, the government had to convince the public and parliament of an imminent threat from Iraq’s WMD that was significant enough for British troops to die for.

A fundamental requirement for this was that Iraq had to have significant quantities of chemical or biological weapons to pose such a threat. Intelligence did not allow such an assessment until at least the end of August 2002 when up popped a number of intelligence reports that some thought seemed to fit the bill.

These arrived in the middle of the assessment process for a JIC paper which was due for approval on 4 September. As it considered the draft assessment the JIC was told of the important new intelligence and it told the Assessments Staff to include some of this before the report was issued. It was finally issued a few days later on 9 September.

In fact, the new intelligence was so weak the Assessments Staff struggled to use it. In the end they incorporated one sentence,

“Intelligence also indicates that biological and chemical munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 20-45 minutes”

We can discuss why this is such a weak statement later if you wish, but if it had been true it would not only show that Iraq had both chemical and biological munitions, but it also had them in sufficient quantities for such deployment. We had no other credible evidence that this was the case.

But the statement in the JIC assessment was not strong enough for the PM’s dossier which was being hurriedly drafted at the same time.

The drafters, who had been under no pressure to soften the JIC assessment, tried to harden it up for the dossier.

The analysts said no. There was deadlock.

But suddenly, obviously too late for the JIC on 9 September, up pops something else. No 10 is told about it on 12 September, although on the basis of his evidence to Chilcot, the PM doesn’t seem to recall it. Conveniently the intelligence says, I think, that production of agent or weapons or both has indeed taken place. Unfortunately, its from a new source said to be on trial and, as far as I can gather, there was never any collateral.

I call this report, Report X. X the unknown, because only a very few people knew what was in it. It was not shown the expert intelligence analysts – too sensitive – but it was enough the break the deadlock.

The analysts were overruled. The JIC could sign off on a dossier, and did not argue with the PM’s assertion that it left no doubt that Iraq had WMD.

Despite not being mentioned in the dossier or, I think, in any JIC assessment, it was the single most important element in the government’s case for war.

We know a remarkable amount about the 45 minute intelligence report, perhaps even enough to hazard a good guess at its source. But clearly it was not strong enough to stand alone. It needed to be stood up by Report X.

But seven years and four inquiries on, we know very little about what was in Report X. When the experts finally saw it – probably shortly after the war – I understand they dismissed it very quickly.

The Foreign Affairs Committee Inquiry did not know about it.

It was kept out of Hutton until I mentioned it in my evidence, well into the Inquiry. And Hutton was never shown the actual report. In fact it had been withdrawn even before Hutton started seeing witnesses – although neither he nor I knew that until six months after he reported.

Reading between the lines of its report, it appears that the government tried to keep Report X away from the Intelligence and Security Committee, but they did eventually get to see it, and knew of its withdrawal. The ISC did not mention its withdrawal or any uncertainty about its sourcing in its report. .

The Butler review saw Report X.

The ISC said this of Report X.

“We were told that there was further intelligence of a nature so sensitive that it was only released on a very restricted basis. We have seen that intelligence and understand the basis on which CDI and the JIC took the view they did.”

Now that sounded to me like an endorsement of Report X, but when I discussed it with a member of the ISC a few months later, I was told the statement was intended to be obviously Delphic in nature and, whilst the Committee did not endorse the view, it could understand how others might

The Butler report describes it as being from “a new source on trial” and about “Iraqi production of chemical and biological agents” which “had been accelerated by the Iraqi regime, including through the building of further facilities throughout Iraq”.

Butler acknowledges that it provided significant assurance to those drafting the dossier that agent was actively being produced but does not go so far as to explain the context of it breaking a deadlock associated with the approval of the dossier by the DIS. The withdrawal of Report X in July 2003 is described as being about sourcing – there does seem to have been another sub-source involved.

However, there is nothing about the quality of the intelligence contained in the report – how much sense did it make, how specific was it
- did it identify the agents involved?
- did the source say anything about how they were produced? or
- where they were produced?
- was there significant collateral for what was said?
- Was collateral sought and found between September 2002 and March 2003?

Of the reporting up to the JIC paper of 9 September, Butler commented that “we were struck by the relative thinness of the intelligence base supporting the greater firmness of the JIC’s judgements on Iraqi production and possession of chemical and biological weapons”.

Butler expressed no view on whether it believed Report X added significant depth to the intelligence base.

I suspect it did not. Parliament and the public should be told more about that and the retrospective analysis that surely must have been done on that report because that will tell us something about the qualities of those who obviously decided it added something significant.

The whole subject of Report X raises important issues about how our intelligence machine worked at that time. Butler identified a lot, but not all of the problems.

The implementation of the Butler recommendations left a few important ones out and I don’t think it has resolved the major flaws in the system.

I identify what I believe are these flaws and discuss them, and suggestions for their resolution in some detail in the book.

But, perhaps it is now time to give you some bottom lines – focusing on the general outcomes rather than the specific details of the war.

I think the Iraq war has set back the cause of nuclear, biological, chemical arms control and non-proliferation.

It, and other aspects of the “war on terror” may arguably have pushed some elements of the threat from international terrorism to the right, but I respect the judgements of the former head of MI5, Baroness Manningham-Buller on this. She recently gave them to the Iraq Inquiry. In particular, the war appears to have unleashed something in UK that might otherwise have been kept in check.

And finally, I think British intelligence has yet to recover from the credibility it lost over Iraq and if our Foreign and Defence policy outlook is not to change, and intelligence remains a high priority for the nation,

I suggest the intelligence machine should be subjected to a thorough, independent review. I believe that may show major top-end organisational changes are needed and that the constitution and even the existence of the JIC as we know it called into question.

The papers have of course been through Tony Blair’s memoirs. On Chilcot and Iraq, I find the Telegraph’s brief account most revealing:

Mr Blair says he was angry at being asked when giving evidence to the Iraq Inquiry led by Lord Chilcot earlier this year if he regretted anything. He writes that he took a conscious decision to give an answer that was incomplete so he would avoid a headline, ‘Blair apologises for war’.

Blair justifies giving a public inquiry an incomplete answer because he was concerned about the headlines. Very Blair. But if you justify acting in that way for that reason, why would anyone believe anything else that you said?

The Guardian has a bit more of an explanation for Blair’s “anger” and perhaps he has a point:

Blair recounts how he told the inquiry that he took responsibility, an answer that he admits was incomplete. “The anger was at being put in a position in an inquiry that was supposed to be about lessons learned, but had inevitably turned into a trial of judgment, and even good faith; and in front of some of the families of the fallen, to whom I wanted to reach out, but I knew if I did so, the embrace would be immediately misused and misconstrued. But the anger was selfish, trivial – comparatively at any rate – and transient.”

But the Telegraph also has what is perhaps the most revealing explanation of all, relating to what Blair did in 2003 when it became apparent that UN weapons inspectors were not going to find Weapons of Mass Destruction:

But on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blair maintains that if Saddam had survived and the UN had backed off or the inspectors had concluded that the Iraqi president had given up his WMD ambitions, it would have stored up trouble.

He says that it would have been impossibly hard to reapply pressure to a regime that would have been “cleared”. Saddam would then have had the intent; know-how; and with a rising oil price, enormous purchasing power, he writes.

Digesters may be interested to know that Dialogue have just published my book, FAILING INTELLIGENCE: The true story of how we were fooled into going to war in Iraq.

It is available online and should be in the book shops this week. It got a mention in this week’s Sunday Express and was reviewed in the Sunday Times.

The work that has been required to produce it explains why my contributions to the Digest have been so sparse in recent months.

Although readers of the Digest are amongst the most knowledgeable on this subject, I hope those of you who find the time to read it will be informed by it, at least on a few things. My main objective has been to try to join all the dots I have in my archive to form a comprehensive, coherent and comprehensible picture of the road to war and the subsequent attempts to cover-up what happened, and to explain some of the lessons I believe we should draw from the episode. One of the main problems has been that the some of the most important dots have not appeared in the right chronological sequence, which has made it necessary to revisit evidence that appeared earlier and to adjust the picture retrospectively to take account of the “new” information. I am sure there are still things I have missed.

I would be most interested to see any comments readers of the Digest can find the time to make.

Coincidentally, as Tony Blair’s book is being launched on 1 September, I will be giving a short talk and answering questions at a members event chaired by Michael Mates at the Royal United Services Institute.

NGO Iraq Body Count (IBC) has slammed the Inquiry for paying insufficient attention to Iraqi casualties and focusing on the British side of the story:

“Earlier official Inquiries into the war have been criticised for having too narrow a remit. In contrast, the Chilcot Inquiry has evidently been given one so broad and indeterminate that it has been able to obsess minutely over the ‘war at home’ to the detriment of everything else. Indeed one would almost think that the Iraq war largely took place in Britain.”

IBC has published correspondence with the Inquiry going back to the Inquiry’s launch last summer:

“Almost a year after it was announced, and as it nears its completion, we ask how carefully the UK’s official Iraq Inquiry has considered the deadly effects of the war on those affected most pervasively and in the greatest number – ordinary Iraqis.

As if they were of little importance, is the short answer.”

The Iraq Inquiry invites veterans to a meeting with the Committee

11 August 2010

Sir John Chilcot has written to UK military personnel who served in Iraq between 2003 and 2009 inviting them to attend an event at Tidworth Garrison on 14 September. The open letter has been circulated to military personnel via Service Organisations, Ex-service Organisations and Regimental Associations. A full copy of the invitation can be found here.