Can Sherlock Holmes restore the reputation of our bungling spies?

Top of the spooks' reading list is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story A Scandal In Bohemia, in which Holmes warns not to "twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts".

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Studying the story is a "light-hearted" part of a secret syllabus prepared by Tony Blair's former head of security and intelligence, Sir David Omand.

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He is running the ten-session course on the orders of the Cabinet Office in response to criticism of Whitehall's handling of intelligence on Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, which led to Mr Blair's infamous "dodgy dossier".

Officers from MI5 and MI6 and civil servants dealing with intelligence material are being sent on the course at King's College, London, where Sir David is a visiting professor.

The syllabus includes an analysis of the Piltdown Man case in 1953, in which the combined jaw of an orangutan and skull of a man fooled experts into believing they had discovered the remains of early man.

And there will be a detailed examination of the case of Curveball, the CIA codename for an alleged Iraqi chemical engineer who claimed that Iraq was creating biological agents in mobile weapons laboratories.

German intelligence officers later revealed that Curveball did not live in Iraq and described him as an out-of-control, mentally unstable alcoholic.

A Whitehall source said the course was in response to recommendations in the Butler Report, which criticised the Government's handling of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq.

"It will look at how anyone might be fooled by something without further investigation, impartiality and neutrality," said the source.