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'CIA helped draw up dodgy Iraq war dossier for No 10'
Last updated at 23:55pm on 06.09.08
Help: John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, looked abroad for help with the 'dodgy' dossier
Secret advice from a foreign power, thought to be America, helped to shape the dossier that said Saddam Hussein could attack within 45 minutes and set out the case for war in Iraq.
MI6 chief John Scarlett, then chairman of the Government's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), turned to the foreign country as final touches were put to the now discredited dossier, it has emerged.
The document, which the Government is accused of ‘sexing up’ in the weeks before it was made public, contained a string of claims that later proved false.
These included the warnings that Saddam could launch weapons of mass destruction ‘within 45 minutes’ and that it was ‘beyond doubt’ that he was developing nuclear weapons.
Both claims were the key to convincing the public and Parliament of the threat posed by Iraq and were essential to putting together the legal case for war.
Now it has been revealed that Mr Scarlett canvassed foreign help – which sources claim came from America's CIA – in the days before the dossier was published.
The disclosure is contained in the Government's arguments about why it cannot reveal further details of the discussions that led to the erroneous contents of the final document.
On September 16, 2002, a week before the dossier was published, Mr Scarlett sent members of the JIC a draft copy of the report.
In an accompanying note he wrote: ‘The text is still subject to further revision depending on your comments...’
But the rest of this key sentence was blacked out by Government censors when it was about to be made public by the Hutton Inquiry, the judicial probe into the affair.
Now the Government has told the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas that the second half of the sentence cannot be revealed because it would damage Britain's relations with a foreign state, making its disclosure exempt under the Freedom of Information Act.
This is the first direct admission by the Government that Mr Scarlett showed the draft to a foreign power and asked for its input as the JIC, which includes the heads of MI5, MI6 and the GCHQ spy centre, was giving its final approval to the report.
Disclosure: Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has ordered parts of the dossier be released
The disclosure came last week as Mr Thomas dismissed much of the rest of the Government's case that comments made by officials during the drafting process could not be revealed on national security grounds.
The move came after a three-year battle to make the comments public under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Government now has several weeks to release the material or make a further appeal to the Information Tribunal.
Mr Thomas has ordered the disclosure of material that could provide ‘evidence that the dossier was manipulated to present an exaggerated case’.
It has previously been revealed that Tony Blair’s spin-doctor Alastair Campbell suggested 11 changes to the draft which were all adopted.
The debate over the dossier led to a furious row between the Government and BBC after it reported that the material had been manipulated.
Government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly killed himself after being named as the source of quotes used by then BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan claiming the Government had ‘sexed up’ the dossier. This led to the setting up of the Hutton Inquiry, which cleared the Government while the BBC was strongly criticised, leading to the resignation of the BBC’s chairman and director-general.
A book by journalist Bob Woodward, who helped expose the Watergate scandal, says the CIA warned Britain against using the ‘45-minute’ claim.
Then CIA Director George Tenet referred to it as the ‘they-can-attack-in-45-minutes s***’.
He believed the source for MI6's claim was questionable. He also assumed, correctly, that the claim was misleading because it referred to battlefield munitions, not ballistic missiles.
Reader views (10)
Another traitor who placed US, Israeli agendas and policies above those of Britain and the British people leading to the betrayal of our servicemen leading them into an illegal war and the horrific death toll of innocent men, women and children because of it.
How does Mr Scarlett feel to have the blood of anything up to a million on his hands...?
When are we going to be rid of these catspaws and turncoats? When are we going to get politicians and civil servants who work for us, putting Britain 1st, 2nd and 3rd everytime.
Personally I think that with Blair and any other of these who helped make this debacle happen be charged with the conspiracy and wilful murder of our servicemen who have died as a result of these people.
It is time that Britain moved out of the unholy threesome, cut the puppet strings from Washington and stop being America's lapdog or should I say b*tch once and for all, America can go to hell in a hatbasket as far I am concerned but I will be damned if they drag us down into the same black hole with them.
- Ian Watson, United Kingdom
I agree that the `foreign power`is more than likely Israel, but then why would MI6 then seek confirmation from the Zionist state, if it knew the dossier was all bulls*it. In the pre-invasion propaganda, the US had to muzzle Israel not to give the game away, or all the Arab states would be up-in-arms.
I don`t know what the British Government wants to save, certainly not face, honour, morality or any of the human characteristics, because there are none left. It is about time, ordinary citizens learned the truth about perhaps the most shameful episode in modern British history.
- Miroslaw Szychowski, Queanbeyan/NSW/Australia
One doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that the "secret" foreign power was Israel.
The US would be quite capable of making their own announcements whereas it is perfectly understandable that releasing information pointing to Israel as the source would create a furore.
Many politicians get confused about whose national security they are more concerned with.
- Peter Morris, New Zealand
USA created false intelligence on Iraq to invade.
- Mary Marie Taylor, Bellingham, WA, USA
I live on a dot on this Island, and I knew they were all liars and potential war criminals. The saddest thing though they have destroyed the worlds oldest civilization and murdered 1.2 million women children babies unborn and aliveThey have to be punished. The British people must see to it to save face.
- August Abraham, Trinidad&Tobago
Just to put a bit of perspective in all of this -
Of COURSE allied intelligence information would be asked for. It would be kind of stupid NOT to ask for such information. If the best available information suggested one thing and it turned out to be wrong, then - bad luck - it was wrong. Life really can go sour on us at times. It’s not as though they could go knocking on Saddam's palace door and asking him to verify the reports, for goodness sakes. He HAD been researching WMDs. His reputation for using chemical warfare against dissidents of his own country, not to mention the documented and unanswerably proven propensity of his government for unrestrained viciousness, not least in his own sons, gave serious credence to the belief that he WAS working on WMDs - just consider how easy it was to convince everyone it was true! He was certainly interested in them, else why would he try to get the materials he needed for them, along with all sorts of other weapon systems?
The 'anti-' types who hate anything to do with America; who loathe George Bush – that’s allowed (if a little bit hysterical - in every sense of the word - at times). This current storm in a teacup is designed solely for those people - along with anyone else who doesn't choose to sit down and actually think before they go off on a rant.
- Rogan, DFW TX
Oh so slowly, the tapestry of the New World dis-Order appears.
Please, good citizens of the UK, don't waste funds building any more new jails.
We have an expensive new super-secure high-tech correction facility in every town in the USA. I might add here that we have no new schools, and the ones we have are now blatant 'retardation centers' serving the NWO of Israel and the secret world government that we call the 'Bilderbergers'.
Our various, oppressed countries, can easily house your black-hearted rascels, our black-hearted rascels, and those from Canada, France, Germany, and elsewhere in existing facilities around the globe; when the world courts is finally ready to act.
Let us pray for 'God's speed' in the great liberation of our 'blue-jewel' planet from these bloody war-mongering, poisonous ground oil guzzlin' ignoramuses.
- Mary Bell, Oklahoma, USA
Of course the CIA helped draw up dodgy Iraq war dossier for No 10 . . . Is this supposed to be NEWS or a history lesson?
- Fraser, Telford Park
Does this now clear the way for hauling Blair, Brown, Campbell, Hoon and the others in that motley crew off to the Hague for charges of war crimes. An illegal war is, after all, illegal no matters whose interests are being represented. Perhaps Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & co can share a cell - a true "coalition of the willing".
What about the protesters who have vociferously challenged this war as illegal, & who have been vilified by the mainstream media? Do they now get the praise and recognition of their courage in going against the state machine in the name of universal justice - something our democracy purports to support?
I'm gonna bet though, that neither of these options will pan out.
- Philip Bowery, Grantham, UK
If anyone actually needed any proof that the UK government and its security services are in the power of a foreign government, this is it. This is called high treason.
Do fellow Britons really want to live in a country where our leaders and security services act to further the interests of that foreign country and not our own citizens?
This is outrageous.
This follows on from what should have been a scandal of the highest order, when it was revealed by Richard Norton-Taylor in the Guardian on
07 August 2008, that the British government "does not want to reveal what Britain's security and intelligence agencies knew about the US secretly transporting "enemy combatants" to places where they were likely to be tortured" which means that "only by being subservient to the US can Britain defend its national security".
So, the same Kafkaesque argument: "Now the Government has told the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas that the second half of the sentence cannot be revealed because it would damage Britain's relations with a foreign state". So to protect these traitors, everything is made secret.
Whatever happened to British independence?
- David Sketchley, Seville, Spain
