In this latest freedom of information act case, I asked the Cabinet Office to state who re-wrote the dossier’s executive summary between the drafts of 10 and 16 September 2002. It initially claimed that evidence to the Hutton Inquiry by Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) chairman John Scarlett covered this, but the Tribunal rejected that claim. Scarlett had told Hutton that he and his team of JIC assessments staff had been responsible for compiling the dossier but did not state that they had done all the drafting.
The Tribunal stated that it is clear “that substantial changes were made” between the two drafts and suggested that it was common ground that officials outside the JIC “may have gone as far as proposing particular forms of words”. These officials included Williams and other spin doctors such as Alastair Campbell, the government’s former director of communications.
The dossier’s executive summary included “judgements”, which Tony Blair presented to Parliament as having been “made by the JIC alone”. The judgements in the 10 September draft were themselves revealed to have originated in John Williams’ document. But the next version included a number of new ones. The government’s inability to account for these changes raises the possibility that none of the judgements in the published dossier originated from within the JIC machinery.
Campbell later had a further “judgement” added to the summary, after the JIC’s oversight of the document had ended. This was the claim that Saddam would use weapons of mass destruction against his own Shia population.
The Tribunal accepted the Cabinet Office’s case that it had no record either of who had drafted the summary or who had made changes to it. But in doing so, it criticised the absence of a proper audit trail, particularly given the significance of the dossier. In its ruling it observed: “we are not very impressed by the quality of the record keeping… this was on any view an extremely important document and we would have expected, or hoped for, some audit trail revealing who had drafted what.”
The dossier formed the basis of the government’s case to Parliament for invading Iraq. It subsequently emerged that Iraq did not have WMD at that time and that the dossier’s claims were expressed with significantly more certainty than the intelligence on which they were said to be based.
The new judgements included the claim that Iraq could deploy WMD within 45 minutes and another false claim that it was continuing to produce chemical and biological agents. Both were opposed by intelligence experts at the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS). The Butler Inquiry later criticised the government’s failure to make the intelligence behind the latter claim available to the DIS: “The fact that it was not shown to them resulted in a stronger assessment in the dossier in relation to Iraqi chemical weapons production than was justified by the available intelligence.”
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey told the New Statesman: “The absence of any audit trail for the substantial changes to the Iraq dossier is perhaps not surprising. The government’s spin doctors must have known what they were doing was dodgy and would not be approved by the intelligence experts. No wonder they left no fingerprints.”
NewStatesman
source[25/4/08
Campbell did redraft Iraq dossierCampbell did redraft Iraq dossier
http://www.sundayherald.com/36214
Alastair "I was deranged" Campbell to Tony "when I say 'emphaically not' I mean yes" Blair "... contaminate the success you had as a war leader in Iraq."
Hutton releases 6000 pages of documents which show Blair's spin chief actively involved in rewriting case for war
By Neil Mackay and Stephen Naysmith
A STAGGERING 6000 pages of documents released yesterday afternoon by the Hutton Inquiry include e-mails from Number 10 and briefing papers that confirm Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's communications chief, had been actively involved in discussions on the compilation of the Iraq dossier with John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC). Campbell wrote: "I had many 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 through various drafts."
That contradicts the evidence he gave to the inquiry last week, when Campbell had been at pains to play down the role he and other officials played in compiling the dossier, stressing that it was essentially the work of the JIC. He had said that he had "no input, output or influence" on the dossier at any stage and that his own contributions had been "observations" rather than "suggestions" while e-mails from other officials commenting on the dossier had been no more than "office chatter".
In another note to Blair, he emphasised that the "intelligence judgments" in the dossier were entirely the work of the JIC and that there was "no question of interference with them" by Downing Street. "The allegations that I 'sexed up' the document and in so doing abused intelligence is one that I reject entirely, and I have the support of the chairman of the JIC, and the head of the SIS [the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6] in so doing," he said.
The note is apparently a draft because he adds in parentheses: "John, are you happy with this (and can you check that Richard is)". John presumably refers to Scarlett while Richard is Sir Richard Dearlove, the chief of SIS.
In an e-mail to Scarlett, dated September 18, 2002 " days before the dossier was published " Campbell appeared to acknowledge the degree of pressure coming from Number 10.
"Sorry to bombard on this point, but I do worry that the nuclear section will become the main focus and as currently drafted is not in great shape," he said.
An e-mail the following day from the Downing Street chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, expressed concern about the proposed wording of the Prime Minister's forward to the dossier. "I don't like the first
sentence which makes him sound a bit James Bondy. Can we discuss"" he said.
In a speed-read of the documents published yesterday, the Sunday Herald has also found:
Downing Street was sent into panic over what Dr David Kelly might tell the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) when he appeared before MPs to answer questions about his conversations with BBC reporters.
Kelly was "briefed" and "prepared" by government officials and told not to give the FAC his views on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme.
A summary of Kelly's evidence, given in private to the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, showed that Kelly believed there was only a "30% probability" that the Iraqis had usable weapons.
Kelly said the claim in the Prime Minister's September dossier that Saddam could deploy WMD in just 45 minutes was "unwise" and was included for "impact".
The documents also reveal Campbell urged Tony Blair to be "more combative" in dealing with criticism of the plans for war.
In a lengthy briefing note from Campbell to Blair telling the Prime Minister how to handle critics, Campbell accuses the BBC of trying to "contaminate" Blair's success as a war leader.
The documents also include a second note from Campbell to the Prime Minister urging Blair to allow him to give evidence to the FAC because of his role in chairing a key committee involved in compiling the government's dossier on Iraqi weapons.
The first note dated June 3 - five days after the BBC report claiming the Government had "sexed up" its dossier on Iraqi weapons - was intended to prepare Blair for Prime Minister's Questions and a Commons statement the following day.
In it, Campbell said that the Prime Minister's aim should be to "calm the frenzy" following the BBC story and rebuild support for the government's basic position on Iraq.
"A week of denials has not taken us very far forward because the media, particularly the BBC, are trying to create a 'no smoke without fire' atmosphere," he wrote.
"As to the manner in which you deal with it, it must be calm, confident, explanatory and thorough. But when you go on to the broader issues, in particular reporting back on Iraq, I think you should display a more combative approach."
Campbell warned Blair that he was facing rising opposition to the war on all sides. "What is clearly happening here is that the relatively more sober coverage of the war is giving way to the more usual frenzied media, and the aim of our opponents is to contaminate the success you had as a war leader in Iraq," he said.
"So those who opposed you then want to justify the opposition then " that goes for some of our MPs, BBC, the left-leaning press. Those who supported you, like the right-wing press, want to look for reasons to regret their support and detach you from Bush."
In the second note, dated June 22, Campbell spells out to Blair why he should be allowed to give evidence to MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee because of his "own personal role" in events.
"I believe there are legitimate questions to ask and that I am well placed to answer them, having chaired the Iraqi Communications Group in the run up to conflict," he said.
The documents also suggest that even as the Ministry of Defence was preparing to confirm Kelly's name to journalists, there were concerns in Whitehall that he may not have been the source of the BBC story by Today programme journalist Andrew Gilligan.
Powell noted in an e-mail to Scarlett dated July 9: "A source in the BBC has told us that Gilligan's source is in fact in the Cabinet Office. This might well be a blind. But is there any reason to think there could be any truth in that? Have phone logs been looked at etc?"
The Hutton Inquiry
24 August 2003
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