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A failure of intelligence

In his Iraq dossier, the Prime Minister said he believed the intelligence showed "beyond doubt" that Saddam Hussein was producing chemical and biological weapons. The intelligence was mostly wrong. So should the buck be passed to the intelligence services?

SOURCE FILE

PANORAMA 

A FAILURE OF INTELLIGENCE
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 07:11:04
........................................................................
Reconstructions in this film are based on public sources
and conversations with participants

JOHN WARE: This is the story of how the Prime Minister took Britain to war with Iraq on the basis of intelligence and just how thin that intelligence was. Mr Blair thought the intelligence was utterly convincing.

TONY BLAIR: What I believe the SS Intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons.

DR BRIAN JONES: We have not seen evidence that established that beyond doubt, and that it concerned us.

WARE: According to two of Whitehall's most experienced intelligence analysts Mr Blair also went too far when he said intelligence showed Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United Kingdom national interest.

BLAIR: I am in no doubt that the threat is serious and current.

JOHN MORRISON: Well I must say when I heard him using those words I could almost hear the collective raspberry going up around Whitehall.

WARE: As the Prime Minister prepared for war, intelligence analysts warned the raw material was thin. Much of the intelligence has since proved to be wrong. On Wednesday an inquiry by the former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Butler, should tell us what led to such a catastrophic failure. 

MICHAEL HERMAN: I think in some ways its most serious failure since the failure to predict the German offensive in the Ardennes at the end of 1944. There have been other intelligence failures but none of that in a way has left the British people feeling that it was sold a false parcel of goods.

WARE: So who is to blame, the intelligence services or the Prime Minister? Dr Brian Jones worked for the Defence Intelligence Staff in Whitehall. In September 2002 he and his team warned those writing the Iraq Dossier they were stretching the intelligence too far. This is his first television interview.

Dr BRIAN JONES
Defence Intelligence Staff (1987-2003)
I find myself wanting to speak to you because of, as I see it, the mistakes of a relatively few people at the senior end of the process. The real problem is that that mistake hasn't been acknowledged and it hasn't been explained exactly how that mistake came about.

WARE: Dr Jones was the top intelligence analyst on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in the county.

JOHN MORRISON
Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence 
(1995-1999)
When you're talking about weapons of mass destruction programmes the accepted centre of excellence which serves all of Whitehall is the Defence Intelligence Staff, and Brian Jones' section was at the heart of that looking at Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. I don't think there is anybody more expert.

Ministry of Defence

WARE: Dr Jones and his team at the Ministry of Defence were pivotal in putting together the intelligence picture on weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. The picture is made up not just from spies, but also from satellite photographs interception of signals and public sources. The Defence Intelligence Staff usually has access to all the significant pieces of intelligence from all the different sources.

JONES: It is perhaps a little bit like trying to do a jigsaw and trying to arrive at a feeling for what the picture really looks like from assembling little bits and pieces of that picture. And of course you never do, or very rarely, have enough pieces to form the entire picture.

Baghdad 

(Air raid siren)

WARE: The Iraq war was not the first time the Americans and British bombed Baghdad without UN support. This was Operation Desert Fox. For four days in December 1998 hundreds of bombs and cruise missiles rained down on Iraq. 

December 1998

BLAIR: [speaking in the House] The objectives of this military operation are clear and are simple. To degrade the ability of Saddam Hussein to build and use weapons of mass destruction. First reports from last night's operation suggest that they were successful and inflicted the kind of military damage we were seeking.

WARE: Your department was asked to provide information in respect of potential targets.

JONES: It was, yes.

WARE: Were targets actively involved in weapons of mass destruction, either producing the weapons or the agents or any part of those?

JONES: It's on the basis of the information available to us and the assessments that my branch undertook that we did not have a high degree of confidence that any of those.. that any of the facilities that we could suggest were active in the programme.

WARE: Reliable intelligence on where, or even whether, Saddam was still making weapons of mass destruction was sparse. Yet the defence intelligence staff was asked to sign up to a public statement declaring Desert Fox a success. It was a foretaste of pressures to come from the Blair Government on dispassionate intelligence officials to provide the certainty the government sought. 

MORRISON: At the end of it our conclusion was that it really hadn't done much harm at all. So we were being pressured to say that something had been effective when, in the long run we decided that it hadn't been particularly effective. Now that had never happened in my career before, and I didn't like it very much.

WARE: It's not clear how many Iraqi civilians and soldiers died or were injured. More cruise missiles fell on Iraq in four days than the whole of the first Gulf War. Who was applying the pressure on the Defence Intelligence analysts to declare the bombing an unqualified success. 

MORRISON: I have no knowledge of where it came from. I'm sure No.10 wanted it to be a success and I'm sure the MoD wanted it to be a success, but wanting does not make it so. After Dessert Fox, I actually sent a note round to all the analysts involved congratulating them on standing firm in the face of, in some cases, individual pressure to say things that they knew weren't true.

WARE: As bad as that? There was pressure to say things that they knew weren't true?

MORRISON: To say things weren't true in the sense that they didn't know whether they were true or not.

WARE: There were persuasive reasons for believing Saddam still had weapons of mass destruction in contravention of his undertaking to the UN. Iraq had not accounted for all the weapons they claimed to have destroyed after Gulf War One. Like most western intelligence agencies Dr Jones also suspected Saddam had retained sort of WMD programme. But there's a difference between suspecting and knowing.

I just want to try and get a snapshot from you of how big the gaps were in the coverage of intelligence from Iraq. Was it known which agents had been produced since Gulf War One?

JONES: No, it wasn't.

WARE: Was it known where or how the agents were being produced?

JONES: No.

WARE: Was it known whether agent had been stockpiled or consisted only of a small reserve?

Dr BRIAN JONES
Defence Intelligence Staff (1987-2003)
It was not known with certainty. There was a reasonable assumption that there may have been some stocks left over from the first Gulf War. If their had been any other production, then we have not identified that it had taken place.

WARE: Did you know where and how the weapons had been filled with agents?

JONES: No.

WARE: Was it known how the weapons and agent had been transported and deployed?

JONES: No.

WARE: Although both the Whitehouse and Downing Street still believed Saddam had some chemical and biological weapons, they also believed that the mix of sanctions and sporadic bombing was keeping the Iraqi dictator in his box. 

CNN February 2001
BLAIR: You know, this is a man that is a serial sinner when it comes to weapons of mass destruction and a threat to the external world, and I think it's important therefore that we take whatever steps are necessary to contain him, and our containment has basically been successful.

WARE: After 9/11 the Whitehouse changed its mind. No longer was the President prepared to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt. 

PRESIDENT BUSH: States like these and their terrorist allies constitute and axis of evil arming to threaten the peace of the world. 

WARE: Like the President the Prime Minister flexed his military muscles, but which way will he actually jump? As Mr Blair pondered his dilemma, in March 2002 an intelligence assessment on Iraq landed on his desk. It was from the Joint Intelligence Committee which is made up of the three chiefs of Britain's intelligence and security agencies and senior officials from the main government departments. 

MICHAEL HERMAN
Former Secretary 
Joint Intelligence Committee
The whole purpose of the Joint Intelligence Committee is to provide objective intelligence as a basis for policy. You have to have someone who has got a slightly fanatical interest in getting the facts right, getting the intelligence right and then putting it to ministers and essentially saying this is the best we can do for you, don't argue too much with this but you've got to decide what you do as a result of this.

WARE: With the war clouds gathering over Iraq the Joint Intelligence Committee, or JIC, advised the Prime Minister that: 

"Iraq may have retained some chemical and biological agents and munitions... March 2002"

WARE: ... from before the first Gulf War. Three weeks later the Prime Minister went a stage further when he spoke publicly in much stronger unqualified terms.

April 2002

BLAIR: We know that he has stock piles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons.

WARE: You were not aware of any intelligence that said quotes: "He has stock piles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons"?

JONES: I was not aware of that.

WARE: Was the intelligence available to you, the intelligence that was crossing the Prime Minister's desk?

JONES: I would expect it to be very similar.

WARE: If there had been a sea change, or indeed any significant change in the threat assessments from Intelligence, that would have crossed your desk.

JONES: I would have expected to be aware of such a change, certainly. 

WARE: And you weren't aware of such a change? 

JONES: I was not aware of such a change.

WARE: In the summer of 2002 word reached Whitehall that the Prime Minister planned to publish a dossier highlighting the intelligence and why he thought Saddam was a threat.

JONES: I recall that it was mentioned to me by a colleague in the margins of a meeting in Whitehall. I think our shared reaction was that that would be a considerable challenge because of the relatively sparse nature of the intelligence available on Iraq's WMD. 

WARE: So the worry was, what was going to go in it that was new, is that the point?

JONES: Yes, or what was.. what could be very definitive about it?

3 September 2002

WARE: But why now was Mr Blair singling Iraq out as a threat to Britain? It was a question that seems to have especially troubled his director of communications, Alistair Campbell, writing privately in his diary, making the case for the dictator two and a half thousand miles from London posed a threat, itself posed a presentational problem. "Why now?" wrote Campbell, "...was one of the toughest questions of all." At the Hutton Inquiry last autumn into the death of the weapons inspector David Kelly, the Prime Minister was asked this very question. 

Q: We have also heard that on the 3rd September you do announce that the dossier is going to be published.

BLAIR: Yes.

Q: What changed?

BLAIR: What changed was really two things which came together. First of all there was a tremendous amount of information and evidence coming across my desk as to the weapons of mass destruction and the programmes associated with it that Saddam had. There was also a renewed sense of urgency again in the way that this was being publicly debated. 

WARE: What do you think of the Prime Minister's response?

JONES: It confused me at the time.

WARE: Because you couldn't relate to it?

JONES: Because I couldn't relate to it.

WARE: Do you know anyone in the Intelligence community who could relate to it?

JONES: Certainly no one on my staff had any visibility of large quantities of intelligence of that sort.

WARE: Mr Blair did not seem confused about the intelligence. Back from holiday he announced the dossier was to be published. Again he brimmed with certainty. 

3 September
BLAIR: Right, well hello. Saddam Hussein is without any question still trying to develop that chemical biological potentially nuclear capability. The key objective for us is to deal with the threat. What is the threat? The threat is an Iraq that carries on building up chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capability. 

Downing Street 9 September

WARE: At the very pinnacle of the British Intelligence establishment is the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. John Scarlett was asked by Mr Blair to prepare the dossier based on his committee's assessment of Iraq's WMD capability. Alistair Campbell told John Scarlett he would assist with the Iraq dossier, though he said this would be confined to presentational advice.

Reconstruction based on evidence to Lord Hutton's Inquiry

IAN CAMPBELL: The new dossier must be seen to be the work of you and your team. Its credibility depends fundamentally upon that.

JOHN SCARLETT: I need to take ownership of the document. It goes without saying that nothing should published that you're not 100% happy with. I'll look at it from a presentational point of view and make some recommendations.

WARE: Public opinion in Britain was running against the war with Iraq. In his evidence to Lord Hutton Mr Blair categorically denied the dossier was intended as a propaganda tool to win round a sceptical public.

BLAIR: It is important to recognise that the September dossier was not making the case for war. It was making the case for the issue to be dealt with, and after a third alternative was indeed to deal with it through the United Nations route.

WARE: How did you and your colleagues in the Defence Intelligence Staff see the dossier?

JONES: It did cross my mind at the time that the dossier might have an influence ultimately on an invasion of Iraq. We had only previously contributed to one other document of this sort and that was shortly before the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11.

BLAIR: I sense that some of you believe we've taken all the key decisions but just haven't got round to telling you. That isn't the case. The position is this: there is constant dialogue and discussion, but I can and do promise that as the situation develops, the fullest possible debate will take place not just in the country but obviously in Parliament and elsewhere.

WARE: However, one key decision had been taken. That same month, September, the Prime Minister met President Bush at Camp David. There Mr Blair pledged British support if ultimately Saddam did not give the UN his fullest cooperation. And yet, there was still no smoking gun from Intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Behind the scenes an early version of the dossier was being prepared by the Cabinet Office. They had asked all Intelligence agencies for any new information. A short time later, MI6 said some new intelligence had come in. A source was reporting the claim that was to capture the headlines, that Saddam could deploy chemical and biological weapons in 45 minutes. However, the significance of this piece of intelligence was not to do with 45 minutes.

Dr BRIAN JONES
Defence Intelligence Staff (1987-2003)
I found it quite difficult to believe that there could exist a single piece of intelligence in which there could be such great confidence that provided all the missing pieces of the jigsaw that you were trying to assemble on Iraq's WMD capability. This, if you like, made me suspicious about it and about what was going on.

WARE: The concern amongst Dr Jones' staff was not about the timing of whether chemical or biological weapons could be deployed in 5 or 45 minutes, it was much more fundamental than that. 

JONES: It was transparently light what concerned us most was the absence of any firm intelligence on the production of chemical weapons, and we certainly thought if they had been produced there weren't many, and we were less than completely convinced on biological weapons as well. So that was the area of most concern. Of course, if agents hadn't been produced for these weapons, then you couldn't use a weapon within 45 minutes, could you.

WARE: The report to MI6 did not contain any details about whether the warheads were chemical or biological, their numbers, their size, their location, or even whether they were missiles or battlefield weapons like mortars. Nevertheless, the Joint Intelligence Committee, the JIC, hardened its assessment of Saddam's WMD capability. Now they say that intelligence:

"...indicated that the production of chemical and biological weapons was taking place. 9 September"

WARE: On the other hand, the assessment warned:

"Intelligence remains limited. Much of this paper is necessarily based on judgment and assessment.
9 September"

WARE: This warning was contained in the JIC assessment that landed on the Prime Minister's desk. 

11 September

The JIC staff drafting the dossier were also getting some of the presentational advice promised by Alistair Campbell. Campbell's team of spin doctors complained that the first draft lacked impact. One said it was: "Intelligence light." Another call from the JIC for more intelligence went out, the second in a month. This time, however, the JIC sounded a bit desperate. 

"No.10, through the Chairman, want the document to be as strong as possible within the bounds of available intelligence. This is, therefore, a last call (!) for any items of intelligence that agencies think can and should be included."

JOHN MORRISON
Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence 
(1995-1999)
I think it was fairly ill-advised in the sense that it does rather reek of scraping the bottom of the barrel to see whether we can get anything else out. I think that the dossier should have been, as it was, largely founded on the existing JIC assessments and that they shouldn't have been sort of rooting around at the last moment for extra bits to put in.

WARE: Responding to this second call for intelligence from the Joint Intelligence Committee MI6 checked with its agents in the field. That same day a report arrived that was to be central to the dossier. The JIC saw it as providing:

"Corroborative intelligence...."

WARE: On...

"recent production of chemical and biological weapon agent."

WARE: It also looked to be corroboration for MI6's earlier sketchy report that Saddam could deploy such weapons in 45 minutes. For if Saddam was continuing to produce deadly agent, it also suggested he had weapons to deploy.

What about the timing, the arrival of this new intelligence?

MORRISON: Well it was certainly very fortunate for the authors of the dossier to be given this reassurance. They must have had rather a war feeling.

WARE: Fortuitous and therefore suspicious that the agents, whoever were supplying this information, was telling MI6 what they believed they wanted to hear.

MORRISON: No, I don't think so. I think you've got to realise that the staff at MI6 are professionals. It's not in their interest just to believe what they're told. If they say they've got a good source, then they have got a good source. What they can't say is they guarantee that everything that source says is correct.

WARE: Which is why getting an assessment from the experts in the Defence Intelligence Staff would have been so important. The following day the Head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove - or 'C' as he's known in Whitehall - took what is believed to be the same intelligence straight to the Prime Minister and his inner circle. Sir Richard told Mr Blair it could be used to make assertions in the dossier. Four days later came the first draft of the Prime Minister's forward which contained the most assertive claim in the entire dossier. Commenting on the intelligence sources Mr Blair said:

"What I believe they established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons."

WARE: The Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, John Scarlett, also hardened up his language in the executive summary. His first draft had said only that Iraq:

"Has stocks of chemical and biological agents and weapons from before the Gulf War and probably from more recent production. 10 September"

WARE: Now John Scarlett judged that:

"...Iraq has continued to produce chemical and biological agents. 16 September"

WARE: Dr Jones' team, however, were unhappy with this degree of certainty about Saddam's chemical and biological capability, or CBW, because they hadn't seen the latest intelligence, and MI6 was refusing to let them see it.

MORRISON: Well I find this perhaps the most perplexing part of the whole story. The critical issue was, do they have a current CBW capability.. production capability or ability to go into production rapidly. We now have this item of very, very sensitive intelligence which apparently satisfies those who see it that this is indeed the case. Now I find it quite extraordinary that a critical item of intelligence, if that's what it was, was not shown to the experts as soon as possible. It was shown instead, it would appear, to those who were not experts. So nobody ever actually had the chance to say well, with all your wealth of expertise Brian, and your crew, can you make sense of this, is this convincing? So it's very, very peculiar.

WARE: It seems, however, that a key member of the Joint Intelligence Committee did not think it peculiar that the experts should be shut out of the assessment process. What's more, Tony Cragg was their boss. As Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence he was in charge of the MoD's analysts, and yet, without even seeing the new intelligence, Cragg accepted the judgement of MI6 and the dossier's drafters that it had dealt satisfactorily with his analysts concerns. However, that is not how Dr Jones and his team saw it.

Ministry of Defence 18 September

Recondstruction in this film are based on public sources and conversations with some participants

JONES: [arriving in office] Good morning.

COLLEAGUE: Morning. Brian, how was your holiday?

JONES: Wonderful, thank you. How's it been here?

COLLEAGUE: Oh it's gone mad. We've hardly done anything else since you left. They're not accepting what we're suggesting and we're still really concerned how it's all going to turn out.

JONES: Okay, I'll need to look at it all, in detail.

WARE: Dr Jones' staff still felt the dossier's language that Saddam was continuing to produce chemical and biological agents was too emphatic. 

3pm the same day

That same day the Joint Intelligence Committee held its final meeting on the Iraq dossier. John Scarlett has said he knew there were concerns from Dr Jones' team about the certainty of the language, but he assumed these had been resolved when he never heard anymore about the matter.

SCARLETT: First I'd like to thank everybody for their contributions to Monday's draft.

WARE: However, these concerns never reached this final meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee. The Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence had issued an instruction.

SCARLETT: ...so if anybody has any essential further comments on the new draft I will need to have them by 1500 tomorrow.

WARE: Dr Jones' team had been told by Tony Cragg they should make no further substantive comments about WMD production.

JONES: And so it was at that... 

WARE: That was an order?

JONES: Yes, on the basis...

WARE: "Shut up" basically.

Dr BRIAN JONES
Defence Intelligence Staff (1987-2003) 
Yes, on the basis of the intelligence that had become available that he had been assured was clinching, new information that eliminated any concerns we might have.

19 September

WARE: Dr Jones decided to make a final check that the trusted contact who had seen the new intelligence, MI6, was refusing to share with his analysts. Then he and the top chemical weapons expert in his team, each wrote formal letters to put their concerns on the record.

JONES: The advice I got from an individual who was familiar with it was that they advised me that I should still raise my objections. 

WARE: In other words, the new intelligence did not, in this colleague's judgment, dispose of the concerns that you and your colleagues had about the dossier. 

JONES: No, it didn't, it didn't dispose of our concerns, that's right. 

JOHN MORRISON
Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence 
(1995-1999)
For somebody actually to register, of Brian's seniority and experience, to register objections in writing would have been so unusual that I think that.. you know.. one would really have sat up and paid a bit of attention. To be told that there is important intelligence, and I'm speaking as former Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence, but I'm not allowed to see it and my experts aren't allowed to see it, just take it on trust guys, that would have been most unsatisfactory. 

WARE: It seems that the only person in the entire Defence Intelligence Staff who did see the new intelligence was the Chief himself, Air Marshal Sir Joe French. At the Hutton Inquiry the Air Marshall explained why he hadn't felt the need to inquire any further despite the concerns of his experts at the certainty of the judgments the dossier was now making.

Q: Having seen Dr Jones' memorandum, what did you do as a result of that?

FRENCH: We were on the 20th which was the final draft day and that ultimately I had to make the decision whether or not the DIS was content for the document to go to print, and I was content for it to go to print.

WARE: Like his deputy, Tony Cragg, Air Marshall Sir Joe French was also a key member of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Neither had had a career in intelligence analysis, and yet both signed up to the dossier's conclusion that Saddam was producing chemical and biological agents without canvassing their own expert analysts.

MORRISON: They had a peculiar situation at the time in which my successor had no background in intelligence, a very good chap but he didn't have that sort of instinctive reaction perhaps. I would not have wanted to sign off until I was either satisfied that Brian Jones' or anybody else's objections were ill-founded or that I was going to fight the good fight in the JIC.

WARE: Do you think the Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence, and indeed the Chief, let your side down?

JONES: I feel disappointed that they didn't support us, yes.

WARE: However, the Air Marshal and his deputy were just two members of the Joint Intelligence Committee. They all signed off on the dossier's judgment that Saddam could deploy WMD in 45 minutes and was still making them.

MICHAEL HERMAN
Former Secretary 
Joint Intelligence Committee 
I can only believe that they got too close to the problem it seems, or too sucked into the Whitehall consensus that something had to be done about Iraq. I suspect that if the Joint Intelligence Committee gets too close to ministers, then there is this temptation of providing intelligence to please.

WARE: Once again the Prime Minister went a stage further than the JIC. In the final draft of his forward he wrote that he believed it was beyond doubt that Iraq had a usable WMD capability and was expanding it. As a consequence, Mr Blair went on to make a second unqualified assertion. Saddam's weapons made him a serious and current threat to the United Kingdom's national interest.

MORRISON: We have a very clear understanding of what threat is. It has to have two elements: a capability and an intention. If you've got the capability, as we have had for example to nuke France but not the intention, we don't threaten France and vice versa. If some tin pot dictator would like to annihilate the British but has no capability to do so, he is not a threat. So a threat is made up of capability and intention. 

WARE: On the threat Mr Blair's conviction was unshakable.

BLAIR: I am in no doubt that the threat is serious and current, that he has made programme on WMD and that he has to be stopped.

MORRISON: I must say when I heard him using those words I could almost hear the collective raspberry going up around Whitehall. As a professional analyst I didn't recognise a threat in Iraq.

WARE: Well the Prime Minister would always say there was always a risk he might use them at least regionally and we would inevitably get sucked into such a conflagration and therefore he was a threat, to British interests anyway.

MORRISON: No, that's piling supposition upon supposition.

WARE: Mr Blair's Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, had spotted the lack of intelligence in the dossier about Saddam's intentions could be its Achilles' heel. He emailed the JIC Chairman, John Scarlett. 

"The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam. In other words, it shows he has the means but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours, let alone the west."

WARE: Powell wrote there was one section of the dossier in particular with which he had "a bit of a problem". The dossier, about to go the printers, was suggesting Saddam only intended to use his weapons in self-defence. 

"Saddam is prepared to use chemical and biological weapons if he believes his regime is under threat." Final Draft

WARE: Powell asks Scarlett to redraft it, so he did. The offending words were dropped.

"Saddam is willing to use chemical and biological weapons."
Published Dossier

WARE: Now the published dossier suggested Saddam might use his weapons of mass destruction even if he was not under threat. John Scarlett has said he made the last minute change because he found some intelligence to justify it. However, this related to Saddam's intentions against neighbouring countries, not against the West, and on that issue there doesn't seem to have been much, if any, intelligence.

JONES: I didn't see intelligence that suggested Saddam would use WMD pre-emptively. I can't recall seeing intelligence of that sort, of the sort that suggested Saddam would use his WMD offensively. 

20 September 

SCARLETT: Memo to Alistair Campbell. c.c. Jonathan Powell, David Manning, David Omand, JIC members, headed: Iraqi WMD Public Presentation of Intelligence Material.

WARE: With the dossier now lending support to Mr Blair's assertion that Saddam posed a threat, on behalf of the Joint Intelligence Committee the Chairman handed it over to No.10.

SCARLETT: I am content that the text now reflects as fully and accurately as possible the intelligence picture on Saddam's mass destruction weapons.

[Replay] ...content that the text now reflects as fully and accurately..... 

MORRISON: In moving from what the dossier said Saddam had, which was a capability possibly, to asserting that Iraq presented a threat, then the Prime Minister was going way beyond anything any professional intelligence analyst would have agreed.

WARE: When the dossier was published, the newspapers got the message: 

"45 minutes from attack"

"Saddam can strike in 45 minutes"

"He's got 'em. Let's get him"

"British servicemen and tourists in Cyprus could be annihilated by germ warfare missiles launched by Iraq it was revealed yesterday."

WARE: The dossier had been eagerly awaited by journalists and MPs in Westminster. 

Downing Street 24 September

WARE: The 45 minutes claim was mentioned four times. In fact it added nothing new to the intelligence assessment of Saddam's WMD capability from Gulf War One, but that of course was when we new he'd actually got one. 

26 September

Two day's later the American President highlighted the 45 minutes claim that the Prime Minister had highlighted in Parliament.

BUSH: The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing, and according to the British Government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order was given. 

11 October

WARE: Two weeks later a different country and a very different assessment of the intelligence.

PUTIN: Russia has no trustworthy data to support claims that Iraq possesses either nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction, nor have we received any convincing proof from our partners. 

WARE: The Prime Minister looked uncomfortable as the Russian President smiled wryly. 

BLAIR: Well there may be different perspectives on how sure we can be about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction but there's one certain way to find out, and that is to let the inspectors back in to do their job, and that is the key point upon which we're both agreed.

WARE: A reliable source has told us that also in October John Scarlett was being told privately of misgivings. A meeting he held with British intelligence personnel was also attended by the representative of an allied intelligence service who forcefully reminded him just how limited the intelligence from Iraq was. 

The sort of reservation that you made before the dossier was published were raised with John Scarlett after the dossier was published. Is that correct?

JONES: Yes, I know that to be the case.

WARE: You know that to be the case?

JONES: Yes.

WARE: The following month another assessment from the Joint Intelligence Committee landed on the Prime Minister's desk, it too seemed to undermine Mr Blair's claim that Saddam posed a threat to us and we should be ready to go to war. Now the JIC advised Mr Blair that there was:

"No intelligence to indicate that Iraq had considered using chemical and biological agents in terrorist attacks." 27 November

JOHN MORRISON
Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence 
(1995-1999)
All the evidence was, and this is what the intelligence community also said, that he had no links with Al-Qaeda and indeed had actively rebuffed their approaches. Now given that Saddam's main priority was survival, why on earth after September 11th should he risk that by having anything to do with the US' number one enemy Al-Qaeda. It is just inconceivable. 

WARE: Well is it inconceivable? Who is to say that at some stage someone in the administration in the Saddam administration might not have shared some of the know how or even agent or capability with Al-Qaeda?

MORRISON: Well, as I say, you can pass supposition upon supposition. But that still did not make him a current threat. It made him, if anything, a rather long shot to be a potential threat some time in the future, but there was absolutely no reason to take any action now.

WARE: Six weeks before the war the JIC advised the Prime Minister that not Iraq but:

"... al-Qaeda and associated groups continue to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to western interests." 10 February 2003

WARE: They also advised him:

"... that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq." 10 February 2003

15 February 2003
[anti-war marchers]

WARE: Time and again Mr Blair said he respected the views of those opposed to war, and he had promised the fullest possible debate. He said he was simply asking them to put themselves in his place, if they had been privy to the warnings about Saddam that he was getting from the Joint Intelligence Committee what would they have done?

BLAIR: Obviously it was vitally important when we got to Parliament and produced this document that I was able to stand up absolutely clearly and say: Look, this is the work of the Joint Intelligence agencies, they stand behind the intelligence that is here.

WARE: However, the Prime Minister's concern to share those Joint Intelligence Committee assessments with Parliament and the public was restricted to the one saying Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He did not share the assessment that Saddam showed no sign of teaming up with Al-Qaeda. This he excluded from his promise of a great nationwide debate.

BLAIR: Tonight British servicemen and women are engaged from air, land and sea. Their mission: to remove Saddam Hussein from power and disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.

WARE: In his broadcast to the nation Mr Blair mentioned Saddam and Al-Qaeda in the same breath. 

20 March 2003

BLAIR: Dictators like Saddam, terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda threaten the very existence of such a world. That is why I've asked our troops to go into action tonight.

WARE: The war has been over for 15 months. Iraqis have been liberated from a tyrant. But the military objective was to disarm him of his weapons of mass destruction. No weapons have yet been found. The cost has been countless injured and perhaps 11,000 dead. But already a key bit of the case for war has officially been withdrawn by MI6. We've been told by a reliable intelligence source whose identity we have to protect, that MI6 no longer trusts its report that underpinned the dossier's claim that:

"Iraq has continued to produce chemical and biological agents." 

WARE: This was also the intelligence that MI6 refused to let the expert analysts see. Withdrawing intelligence because it is considered unreliable is a rare step. We've asked the Chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, why his service put such faith in it. He has declined to comment. 

Dr BRIAN JONES
Defence Intelligence Staff (1987-2003)
I believe very strongly that unless there is some overriding reason why that intelligence can't now, under present circumstances, be made available to demonstrate clearly what exactly it was and what was going on, and then I believe it should be made available to us, to everyone, to the public in general. 

WARE: Last year the BBC reported that Downing Street had ordered intelligence into the dossier which they probably knew to be wrong against the wishes of the Intelligence services. The evidence does show No.10 was exerting pressure.

The day after the Dossier's publication

WARE: But it also shows that nothing happened against the wishes of the Intelligence chiefs who decided what went into the dossier - quite the reverse.

Mr Chairman may I propose a vote of thanks on behalf of the committee to you and your assessment staff for the way in which you've conducted a difficult exercise and the integrity with which it's been done. Is everyone in favour?

Here, here.

Thank you all. Well I think that concludes everything.

JONES: I am not sure exactly where the buck should stop, but there is no doubt in my mind that the one group that should accept responsibility, it is their responsibility, are the Joint Intelligence Committee of the day.

WARE: And what was the one question that the Joint Intelligence Committee, in your view, did not ask?

MICHAEL HERMAN
Former Secretary 
Joint Intelligence Committee 
I suspect it was the obvious question that we have very little intelligence here, and we know all our collecting agencies have been busting a gut for the last 15 years almost, and the assumption was that this was because Saddam Hussein was such a difficult target. I suspect that the question was not asked forcibly enough: could it be because there actually isn't any WMD there at all?

WARE: We've asked every member of the Joint Intelligence Committee if this question was ever seriously addressed. They've all declined to comment, so where does that leave their chairman? John Scarlett came to the JIC from MI6. Next month he's due to become the Chief of MI6. The Prime Minister has approved his promotion to succeed Sir Richard Dearlove who is retiring. This suggests Mr Blair believes the nations Chief Intelligence Officer has nothing to apologise for.

What about the role of the Chairman, does he not carry the major responsibility for this failure, John Scott?

HERMAN: I suppose that's true, but I... I suppose that's true but I am against this rather easy business of finding a scapegoat. If it was a failure, it does seem to have been a collective failure. 

WARE: So where does that leave the Prime Minister who went further even than John Scarlett by asserting his belief that the intelligence was beyond doubt that Saddam was producing weapons of mass destruction and that he posed a current and serious threat to us. Last week Mr Blair did seem to be coming to terms with one thing.

Last week

BLAIR: I have to accept that we haven't found them, that we may not find them. What I would say very strongly however is that to go to the opposite extreme and say therefore no threat existed from Saddam Hussein would be a mistake.

WARE: The Prime Minister seems to be saying that whatever was wrong about the intelligence, he is still right.

Next week on Panorama, how a vital care system for thousands of elderly people who are seriously ill is being undermined by delays, obstruction and injustice. If you want to comment on tonight's programme you can contact us at bbc.co.uk/panorama.

Copyright: BBC.