MI6
boss ' tried to sex up' Iraq study
Antony Barnett, public affairs editor
05/15/05 "The
Observer" - - Sir John Scarlett, head of MI6, has
been accused of trying 'to sex up' a report by the Iraq Survey
Group, the body charged with finding weapons of mass destruction
after Saddam Hussein was toppled.
In an exclusive interview, Dr Rod Barton, a
former senior weapons inspector in Iraq, has revealed
extraordinary details of how Scarlett and a top Ministry of
Defence official intervened in a report by the ISG early last
year.
Barton, who has worked for Australian intelligence for more than
20 years, was a special adviser to the ISG in 2004 as it prepared
to report that they had found no WMD or any programmes to build
them. Such a report would have been politically damaging in London
in the aftermath of the David Kelly affair.
Speaking from Canberra, Barton describes how in
January last year he received a visit in Baghdad from Martin
Howard, deputy chief of defence intelligence at the MoD. Howard
had been criticised for helping to 'out' Kelly as the source of
Andrew Gilligan's BBC story alleging Downing Street had 'sexed up'
the September dossier on Iraq's WMD.
Barton alleges Howard 'spelt out' that Britain's
preferred option was that a proposed 200-page ISG interim report
should not be published at that stage. Barton claims the CIA
overruled their UK counterparts. He alleges that after this
Scarlett, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, tried
to get 'nuggets' placed into a shorter report to imply that Saddam
did have a WMD programme.
According to Barton, these were based on old
evidence that had been investigated and shown to be false. It is
understood to include suggestions that Saddam was developing a
smallpox weapon and using research to create a nuclear programme.
Barton added: 'The US has finally come to terms
with the fact they got it dead wrong. The UK is lagging far
behind. They still haven't come to terms with it.'
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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