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Secret Iraq Dossier Published
The government has been forced to publish the secret first draft
of the Iraq WMD dossier written by a Foreign Office spin doctor
By Chris Ames
Read the draft
here
18/02/08 "New
Statesman" -- - The secret first draft of the Iraq WMD dossier written by Foreign Office spin doctor John Williams
has finally been published after a ruling back in January under
the Freedom of Information Act.
The document contains an early version of the executive summary
of the next draft, which was attributed to Intelligence chief
John Scarlett. The document places a spin doctor at the heart of
the process of drafting the dossier and blows a hole in the
government’s evidence to the Hutton Inquiry.
Last month the Foreign Office was ordered by the Information
Tribunal to hand over the Williams draft, which I first
requested under the Freedom of Information Act in February 2005.
From the time that the row first erupted over Andrew Gilligan’s
allegations that the dossier had been sexed-up, the government
has claimed that Scarlett’s draft, produced on 10 September
2002, was the first full draft and produced without interference
from spin doctors. But the Williams draft, dated a day earlier,
shows that spin doctors were sexing up the dossier at the time
the notorious 45 minutes claim was included.
Initially the government withheld the draft from the Hutton
Inquiry. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s director of
communications, denied its existence. But when Scarlett admitted
that Williams had done some early drafting, the BBC asked to see
it.
The government then supplied a copy of the draft to Lord Hutton
but told him that it was “not taken forward” because a “fresh
start” was made with Scarlett’s draft. Confirmation that
Scarlett took up elements of Williams’s drafting shows that the
government misled Hutton.
Williams did not include the 45 minutes claim in his draft but
it is now clear that he did not have access to the intelligence
on the claim at the time. However, it has recently been
confirmed that Williams attended the meeting that produced
Scarlett’s draft.
At this meeting, he and other spin doctors saw the intelligence
assessment that contained the claim. Scarlett’s draft then
included it for the first time. When he sent his draft to
Campbell, Scarlett wrote of “considerable help from John
Williams”.
The draft also shows that Williams was responsible for a number
of key changes that strengthened the dossier’s claims. His
executive summary claimed that Iraq had “acquired” uranium.
Previous versions only alleged the material had been “sought”.
Scarlett’s draft also alleged that Iraq had got hold of uranium,
stating that it had “purchased” it.
Williams appears largely to have been working on a version of
the dossier that was produced during the summer of 2002, before
Tony Blair announced in September of that year that a dossier
would be published.
He appears not to have made substantial changes to the body text
of the document’s section on Iraq’s “weapons of mass
destruction” (WMD) but it is clear that he was aware that this
section was being rewritten. In fact, the WMD section contains a
comment: “I don’t propose to rewrite this until I take delivery
of the new version.” This shows that Williams intended to
continue to rewrite the dossier.
Subsequent versions of the dossier show that the executive
summary expressed its claims about Iraq’s WMD more strongly than
the main text. In many cases, including the 45 minutes claim,
the main text was then brought into line with the executive
summary.
The involvement of spin doctors in drafting the summary process
suggests that they led the sexing up of the dossier.
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