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British experts protested iraq dossier { September 4 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22170-2003Sep3.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22170-2003Sep3.html
British Experts Protested Iraq Dossier
Officials Testify They Complained That Threat Was Inflated
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 4, 2003; Page A10
LONDON, Sept. 3 -- Experts working for Britain's defense intelligence agency complained last September that the government was exaggerating a public dossier on the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a Defense Ministry official testified today.
Chief among the experts' concerns was the reliability of the claim that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes' notice, according to Brian Jones, a retired senior official with the defense intelligence analysis staff. He said his staff of experts was wary of the fact that the claim was secondhand -- one unnamed Iraqi source quoting another unnamed senior military source -- that it did not differentiate between chemical and biological weapons, and that there was no collateral intelligence to back it up.
"We had not seen the weapons being produced," Jones told a public inquiry into the death of David Kelly, a British weapons expert caught up in the controversy over Britain's participation in the Iraq war. "We had no evidence of any recent testing or field trials and things like that. So that all cast some doubts in our mind on that particular piece of intelligence."
Jones, along with an unnamed witness, questioned other parts of the dossier as well, including the claim that Iraq was still developing chemical weapons after U.N. weapons inspectors left the country in 1998. While the experts believed such development was occurring, they saw no conclusive proof to back the claim, he said.
There was a tendency, Jones told the inquiry, to "shall we say, over-egg certain assessments in relation particularly to the production of [chemical warfare] agents and weapons since 1998 -- the difference between making a judgment that the production of CW agent had taken place as opposed to that judgment being that it had probably taken place or even possibly taken place."
But Jones said his staff's concerns were by and large ignored and not reflected in the final draft of the document, in a process he called "very unusual."
The other witness, a chemical weapons consultant identified only as "Mr. A," was more scathing. He said the dossier had mistakenly focused on an Iraqi plant producing phosgene, a chemical that can be used as a poison gas but is also used in plastics and pesticides, despite the fact there was no evidence Iraq was using it for weapons. It was, he said, "a stupid mistake for the British to make."
An e-mail sent by Mr. A to Kelly after the dossier was released on Sept. 24, 2002, said that another unnamed official had conceded "they were grasping at straws" in focusing on the phosgene plant, which Mr. A's e-mail called "another example supporting our view that you and I should have been more involved in this than the spin-merchants of this administration."
"The perception was that the dossier had been around the houses several times in order to try to find a form of words which could strengthen certain political objectives," said Mr. A, referring to different agencies of government. He testified from a secret room by videophone, without revealing his face.
Kelly apparently committed suicide in July after he was named as the likely source for a BBC report alleging the government had "sexed up" intelligence in the dossier and that a senior official had ordered the 45-minute claim inserted even though officials knew it was probably wrong.
A parade of government witnesses, including Prime Minister Tony Blair and the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Richard Scarlett, have insisted in testimony that the contents of the dossier were determined solely by the committee, although Blair's aides made suggestions about language and organization. They have also said they did not receive complaints from intelligence officials about material in the report.
Jones told the presiding judge, Brian Hutton, about the 45-minute claim: "We at no stage argued that this intelligence should not be included in the dossier. We thought it was important intelligence." But the language in the dossier, he said, had been "too strong."
Jones said Kelly believed the dossier was, in general, a "reasonable and accurate reflection of the intelligence that we had available to us at that time."
In the wake of the resignation last week of Blair's top aide, Alastair Campbell, the prime minister's office announced today it would reorganize its press operations to give less power to political appointees and more to senior civil servants. The move is an attempt to combat allegations that Blair's government is obsessed with political spin. It follows an independent study that reported what it called "a three-way breakdown in trust between government and politicians, the media and the general public."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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