Who's Afraid Of Saddam Hussein

Contemporary British History Vol. 22, No. 3, September 2008, pp. 407–426

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Who’s Afraid of Saddam Hussein? Re-examining the ‘September Dossier’ Affair Steven Kettell

The controversy surrounding the September 2002 dossier on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction has been pivotal in the decline of trust in the New Labour Government. The absence of a comprehensive, detailed and diachronic analysis of this episode therefore stands out as an issue that needs to be addressed. In doing so, this paper diverges from conventional narratives of the ‘September dossier’ affair in several respects. It argues that New Labour’s desire for regime change in Iraq pre-dated the rise of the neo-conservative Bush administration and the events of 9/11; that the British Government were fully willing and active participants in the policy of regime change and that the production of the dossier was one of the key components of a broader political strategy designed to achieve this aim. Keywords: September Dossier; Iraq; Weapons of Mass Destruction; Intelligence; Spin; New Labour

Introduction: The ‘September Dossier’ Explained? When the history of New Labour comes to be written, two inextricably linked issues will undoubtedly define its legacy: spin and Iraq. Throughout the chronic erosion of trust that has accompanied the final years of the Blair Government, the controversy over the September 2002 dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) stands out, more than any other single cause, as a decisive, totemic turning point in its fortunes. Amidst the failure to find any WMD following the invasion of March 2003, Steven Kettell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Dirty Politics? New Labour, British Democracy and the Invasion of Iraq (Zed, 2006). He is also a founder and Co-Executive Editor of British Politics (Palgrave Journals). Correspondence to: Steven Kettell, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, Warwickshire, CV4 7AL, UK. Email: [email protected] ISSN 1361-9462 (print)/ISSN 1743-7997 (online)/08/030407-20 q 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13619460701731939

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and with intense controversy surrounding the war ever since (not least concerning the integrity of the intelligence that was used to justify military action), the ‘September dossier’ affair has since entered the annals of national life as the epitome of New Labour spin and manipulation. While all those involved in the production of the dossier were subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing during the course of four separate inquiries into various issues relating to the conflict, and although not all observers would subscribe to an account of dishonest practice on the part of senior officials, for most, the impression of governmental deceit nevertheless remains pervasive. Given the importance of this episode to political developments in Britain during the early twenty-first century, it is therefore surprising to note (still more so given the wealth of primary material that has now been uncovered on the issue) that an in-depth and comprehensive examination of the process by which the dossier came to be produced remains conspicuous by its absence. Scholarly treatment of the affair, for example, has been largely incidental; regarding the dossier, with varying degrees of brevity, as but a means to explain a variety of other issues, such as the work of the British Intelligence Agencies, the activities of the Hutton and Butler inquiries, the nature of government ‘spin’, the internal machinations of New Labour itself, the state of the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the United States, and the post-war dispute over the politicisation of intelligence material.1 Broader narratives covering Blair’s leadership and Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war more generally are also comparatively thin on the issue, devoting, at best, a handful of pages to their examination of the relevant events, and, in the main, being published before much of the information on the case became available.2 Unsurprisingly, the September dossier affair has also attracted a high degree of attention from both media and online resources. Yet here too, the absence of any panoptic analysis is discernible. Though informative, by its very nature the formal structure of media reporting offers a concise and synchronic examination of events as they unfold on a day-to-day basis, a format which leaves little room for a more expansive, overarching and diachronically contextualised examination. A similar limitation also bedevils online analyses of the dossier. Typically providing a series of short and generalised snapshots, usually polemic in nature, relating to specific aspects of the case (such as the infamous ‘45-minutes’ warning), these too have yet to provide more than a rudimentary and partial account of events.3 Beyond this, coverage of the dossier from the official inquiries set up to deal with the various issues of controversy to have emerged in the aftermath of the war has also been circumscribed. The limitations of the inquiries conducted by the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee are obvious, given that they were both completed before most of the information on the production of the dossier came to light, and given that they were unable to question the key figures involved in the process. The Hutton and Butler inquiries, despite having access to this material, fared little better. Completed before most of the information relating to the strategic decisions to go to war which framed the background context for the production of the dossier became available, these inquiries were also constrained in their treatment of the affair by their narrow terms of reference, which focused, respectively, on the circumstances surrounding the death of

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Dr David Kelly (the Government Scientist whose suicide prompted the establishment of the Hutton inquiry), and on the discrepancies between the pre-war intelligence and the post-war findings on Iraq’s WMD. Moreover, none of the inquiries either sought or were able to examine the production of the dossier in relation to the longer term and broader political context of government policy towards Iraq.4 Analyses of the September dossier to date have thus failed to provide the kind of fully comprehensive, in-depth and diachronic analysis that its political significance warrants. The end result is that, for all the information that has now entered the public domain on the matter, anybody wishing to understand this episode in a full and rounded way is essentially faced with the task of piecing together the material for themselves. That this is an undertaking likely to deter all but the most ardent of explorers provides the first rationale for this paper, namely to provide an analysis of the ‘September dossier’ affair that brings together the key details of the process by which the dossier was constructed, with those concerning the government’s geo-strategic and political decision-making in relation to Iraq. Importantly too, however, its content differs from the various narratives outlined above in several key respects. Typically, examinations of the September dossier tend to fall into one of two categories. The first of these posits the construction of the dossier as a well-intentioned act in which officials sought, in good faith, to highlight the need to deal with the new security threats that had been exposed by the events of 9/11—namely the combined dangers of WMD, rogue states and international terrorism. Though accepting that the intelligence contained in the dossier turned out to be wrong, and even that those involved in its production may have tended at times towards a stronger presentation of the case against Iraq than caution might have advised, it is not therefore doubted that their motivations in doing so were sincere, nor that their convictions were real.5 The second, and far more widespread, interpretation, however, maintains that the New Labour Government (and the Prime Minister in particular) acted, in varying degrees, as ‘poodles’ to the neo-conservative regime in Washington in its post-9/11 pursuit of US global hegemony. The general belief in this case is that the senior officials involved in the construction of the September dossier wilfully misrepresented and deliberately misused intelligence material in order to hype the danger posed by Iraq’s WMD, and to thereby manoeuvre Britain into a war in support of the United States.6 The case presented here diverges from the above in three main respects. First, it is argued that the dossier was not designed as a response to new security threats emerging from 9/11, but was part of a longer-term policy of producing regime change in Iraq as a strategic means of projecting British power and influence on the World stage. Second, given that the policy of regime change pre-dated the election of George W. Bush to the American Presidency, it is also argued that the British Government did not act out of any subservience to the United States on the question of Iraq, but, rather, were active, enthusiastic and willing participants throughout the entire process. Finally, while concurring with the view that intelligence material was exaggerated for political ends, it is also maintained that the events surrounding the construction of the September dossier thus need to be broadly contextualised, as part of a more concerted, deliberate and

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wider-ranging strategy for ensuring the overthrow of Saddam Hussein than has typically been acknowledged.

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Genesis 9/11? The strength of consensus that surrounds the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 is such that their transformative impact on global security concerns has now become axiomatic. Triggering an indefinite ‘war on terror’ designed, at least rhetorically, to eliminate the dangers posed by WMD, rogue states and international terrorism, the events of 9/11 are also widely pinpointed as having been a central trigger for the subsequent invasion of Iraq. Presenting this as the one place, after Afghanistan (currently sheltering al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11), where the confluent perils of the new age were united, the governments of the United States and Britain duly posed the removal of the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, as a necessary part of the campaign to restore international peace and stability. As Tony Blair explained during a press conference with President Bush in July 2003, four months after the start of the war: [W]hen you lead countries, as we both do, and you see the potential for this threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction to come together, I really don’t believe that any responsible leader could ignore the evidence that we see, or the threat that we face. And that’s why we’ve taken the action that we have, first in Afghanistan, and now in Iraq.7

Yet to locate the origins of the war in the events of 9/11 is to overlook a cardinal fact; namely, that insofar as the British Government was concerned, the antecedents of regime change pre-dated the attacks by some margin. Indeed, New Labour had assumed power determined to exercise a strong and decisive influence on international affairs. Central to this was the pursuit of a ‘transatlantic bridge’ strategy, based on the assumption that positioning Britain as a ‘pivotal power’ between Europe and America would enable its influence within each sphere to be mutually reinforcing, thus elevating its ability to shape the course of world events. In November 1997, these ambitions were readily discernible as Blair made his first major foreign policy speech as Prime Minister. Outlining his intention to ‘make the British presence in the world felt’ by combining a ‘strong defence’ capacity with Britain’s pattern of ‘historic alliances’, Blair declared that the government’s overriding foreign policy objective was to maintain Britain’s position as ‘a global player’, and warned that ‘we must not reduce our capability to exercise a role on the international stage’. That the question of Iraq would be an issue of some concern in all of this was also apparent. Seen as a major, if potential, node of instability within the international system, Tony Blair (whose own view was that Iraq, the Middle East, and by extension the world, would be far better off without Saddam Hussein), insisted that the government’s commitment to enforcing Iraq’s compliance with the demands of the United Nations on WMD disarmament was ‘unshakeable’.8 Although the chief cipher of intelligence material for the British Government, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), believed that the ‘the vast majority’ of Iraq’s WMD

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had been successfully eliminated since the Gulf war of the early 1990s,9 in February 1998 the Prime Minister informed the House of Commons that military action to secure regime change was being ruled out by the government not on a matter of principle, but on the grounds of its legal, political and logistical impracticality. As Blair explained, the problem with setting a military objective to remove Saddam Hussein ‘was that there was not the authority to do so’ and that such action would require ‘a massive commitment’ of military force.10 Ten months later, following the final breakdown of the United Nations inspections regime, Britain and the United States launched a four-day campaign of air strikes known as Operation Desert Fox, ostensibly designed to degrade Iraq’s WMD capacity. While maintaining that the overthrow of the Iraqi President was not ‘a specific objective’ of the operation, Blair nevertheless maintained that ‘a broad objective of our policy is to remove Saddam Hussein’, and that ‘[i]f we can possibly find the means of removing him, we will’.11 The government’s objectives towards Iraq in the wake of Desert Fox were set out in a joint memorandum produced by the Foreign and Defence Secretaries, Robin Cook and George Robertson, in May 1999. This stated that the short-term aim was ‘to reduce the threat’ posed to the Middle East by Saddam’s ‘WMD programmes’ (as opposed to his actual weapons), and that the longer-term ambition was to reintegrate Iraq ‘as a law abiding member of the international community’. To this end, the paper highlighted the ‘disadvantages’ of the current policy of containment, pointing out that this was expensive, diplomatically and militarily cumbersome, did not ‘produce rapid or decisive results’, and was ‘not always easy to justify to public opinion’. That said, no viable alternatives were thought to be available. While abandoning containment would leave Saddam Hussein free to pose ‘a major threat to regional security and British interests’, a policy ‘of trying to topple Saddam’ was also rejected, though again, not on the grounds that it would be unlawful or unsafe, but on the basis that it ‘would command no useful international support’. The considered view, then, was that containment, for all its imperfections, remained ‘the only usable option for achieving our policy objectives’.12 The election of George W. Bush to the US Presidency, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, effectively dismantled these barriers to the pursuit of regime change. Providing senior hawks in the Bush administration with the pretext for launching an aggressively expansive foreign policy under the rubric of the ‘war on terror’, and now enabling them to pursue their own long-standing desire to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the events of 11 September 2001 also presented Tony Blair with a major opportunity for using British influence to shape the direction of the new global order. Insisting that the terrorist attacks had ‘opened the world up’, and emphasising the need to ‘reorder the world around us’, Blair insisted that active engagement was now ‘the only serious foreign policy on offer’, and, in a scantly observed aside, added that it was now time ‘for the Saddam-induced suffering of the Iraqi people to be ended’. The initial military response against the Taleban regime in Afghanistan was thus conceived as the opening act of a much larger saga. ‘The first phase’, the Prime Minister augured, ‘is the action in Afghanistan. The next phase is against international terrorism in all its forms’.13

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In March 2002, the government’s hardening strategy towards Iraq was further outlined in a top-secret options paper compiled by the Cabinet Office Overseas and Defence Secretariat. This argued that the policy objectives set out in the Cook – Robertson paper could not be achieved ‘with Saddam Hussein in power’, and that the only way of removing him would be ‘to invade and impose a new government’. Also noting, however, that regime change had ‘no basis in international law’, the paper maintained that such action would require the express authorisation of the UN Security Council, and that this would only be obtained if Iraq refused to readmit (or subsequently expelled) United Nations weapons inspectors or if ‘incontrovertible’ proof of ‘large-scale’ WMD activity could be presented. Given that the current state of the intelligence was ‘insufficiently robust to meet this criterion’, however, the paper concluded by recommending a multi-faceted strategy. This envisioned upholding containment as ‘the least worst option’, while adopting ‘a staged approach’ based on ‘establishing international support’ and initiating a renewed UN inspections process backed by ‘the risk of military action’. Importantly, a means of ‘sensitising the public’ would also have to be devised, namely a concerted ‘media campaign to warn of the dangers that Saddam poses and to prepare public opinion both in the UK and abroad’.14 ‘Very Carefully Done’ Despite the government’s hardening stance towards Iraq, the JIC’s assessment of its WMD capacity during the early months of 2002 remained distinctly negative. While now noting that Iraq ‘may’ have retained some stocks of chemical and biological agents and the ability to produce ‘significant quantities’ within weeks and months respectively, the Committee also pointed out that the intelligence on the subject was ‘sporadic and patchy’, and that there was ‘very little evidence’ to suggest that any active chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programmes were being pursued. In addition to this, it was also felt that Saddam Hussein would not use any WMD he might possess pre-emptively, but only ‘if his regime were threatened’.15 Nonetheless, leaked documents outlining high-level talks between British and US officials reveal much about the manner in which the government’s Iraq policy was now developing. On 14 March 2002, Sir David Manning, Blair’s foreign policy adviser, dispatched a memo to the Prime Minister describing his discussions with Condoleeza Rice, a US National Security Advisor, during which he had set out the current position on Iraq. In this, Rice was reassured that Blair ‘would not budge’ in his support for regime change, but was warned that the Prime Minister would need to ‘manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States’, and that, as such, the pursuit of this policy needed to be ‘very carefully done’.16 Four days later, Manning himself received a similar memo from Sir Christopher Meyer, the British Ambassador to the United States. Detailing his discussions with Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, this also warned that regime change would be ‘a tough sell’ and advised that the British Government would need to develop an ‘anti-Saddam strategy’ as a means of public persuasion. ‘We backed regime change’,

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he explained, ‘but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option’.17 These difficulties were further emphasised by Peter Ricketts, the Political Director of the Foreign Office. Setting out his concerns in a memo to the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, on 22 March, Ricketts pointed out that there were as-yet ‘no clear and compelling objectives’ for military action against Iraq, since even the best surveys of its WMD capacity would ‘not show much advance in recent years’. The stark dilemma facing the government, then, was that:

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To get public and Parliamentary support for military options we have to be convincing that the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for.18

These concerns were subsequently echoed by the Foreign Secretary himself. In a memo to the Prime Minister three days later, Straw warned Blair that there was ‘a long way to go’ before Labour MPs would be convinced about the need for action, insisted that the rationale for a military campaign would need strengthening and suggested that Iraq’s breach of UN resolutions should form ‘the core of a political strategy’. To this effect, Straw also warned that the pursuit of regime change ‘could form part of the method of any strategy, but not a goal’ and pointed out that while it would be legally and politically beneficial to argue that changing the Iraqi regime was essential in order to remove the threat of WMD, the latter objective itself would nonetheless have to be the stated end.19 In early April, the Prime Minister convened with Bush for a summit at the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. According to a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, Blair then informed the President ‘that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change’ on condition that the United States sought to deal with the issue through the United Nations, a move seen by British officials as a vital prerequisite for establishing legal cover and for persuading domestic opinion as to the legitimacy of taking firmer measures.20 However, while assenting to this request, the vociferous nature of Bush’s rhetoric towards Iraq remained undiminished. At the ensuing press conference, the President averred that ‘the world would be better off ’ without Saddam Hussein and described the policy of the US Government as to ‘support regime change’. Blair too, though mindful of his proscribed legal and political boundaries, remained close behind. Proffering to ‘know’ that Iraq had been ‘developing’ WMD, the Prime Minister warned that ‘all the options’ were open for dealing with the matter.21 Further assertions to this effect were made by Blair throughout the spring. In some of the most notable examples, the Prime Minister told the House of Commons that Iraq was ‘developing’ WMD which posed a threat ‘not just to the region, but to the wider world’, told journalists that Iraq had actually ‘acquired’ WMD and that the threat was ‘not in doubt at all’, and told the American television channel NBC that Iraq was in possession of ‘major amounts of chemical and biological weapons’. For good measure, in May Blair told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that the removal of Saddam ‘would be highly desirable’, and affirmed that ‘I certainly endorse the policy of doing everything we can to get rid of Saddam Hussein if at all possible’.22

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Yet while the government’s Iraq policy was now developing at pace, the decisionmaking process itself was not being conducted in a clearly structured and collective manner. Instead, this was driven by an informal, secretive and highly centralised cabal based around No. 10, Downing Street. Although the question of Iraq was discussed in Cabinet more than any other topic from spring to autumn, such discussions effectively amounted to little more than oral briefings by the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and the Prime Minister, which were described by Clare Short (the International Development Secretary) as a mere series of ‘updates’ on the situation rather than a rigorous process of collective engagement.23 Furthermore, while small groupings of ministers were briefed on the outlines of the intelligence by the Chairman of the JIC, John Scarlett, the Cabinet itself did not engage in any substantive discussion either of the underlying risks or of the various alternative diplomatic and military options available, did not discuss the merits or otherwise of the intelligence material in any detail and was not privy to any of the papers and discussions that had been informing the government’s approach.24 The centralised nature of policy-making on Iraq was clearly apparent as the strategic plan for war was formalised at a meeting of senior officials at Downing Street on 23 July 2002. The central purpose of this meeting, as outlined in the accompanying briefing paper, was to develop ‘a realistic political strategy’ for dealing with Iraq centred around the United Nations, the issue of WMD and a concerted ‘information campaign’. The key to all of this, it was observed, would be to focus on the weapons issue, since, as Straw had pointed out, focusing on Iraq’s possession of such weapons would offer an indirect means of legitimising any invasion. While regime change was ‘not a proper basis for military action under international law’, the paper explained, it could nevertheless be presented as ‘a necessary condition for controlling Iraqi WMD’. In strategic terms, then, focusing on the removal of Iraq’s WMD would facilitate the removal of Saddam Hussein himself with fewer legal and political risks than would otherwise be the case.25 The necessity for such an approach was also becoming readily apparent. In a YouGov survey conducted at the beginning of July, more than half the respondents declared themselves to be opposed to any military action against Iraq, almost half claimed that they did not trust the Prime Minister on the issue and twothirds felt that Blair was acting as Bush’s ‘poodle’.26 The meeting itself began with a summary of the intelligence on Iraq. John Scarlett reiterated that the only way to overthrow Saddam ‘was likely to be by massive military action’, while Sir Richard Dearlove (the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6) informed those assembled of his belief that, following his discussions in Washington, the Bush administration now considered military action to be ‘inevitable’, and that the justification for this was going to be ‘the conjunction of terrorism and WMD’. ‘[T]he intelligence and facts’, he maintained, ‘were being fixed around the policy’. Following this, Jack Straw remarked that the case against Iraq was ‘thin’ and re-emphasised the need to focus on renewed weapons inspections in order to ‘help with the legal justification’. While the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, readily concurred, explaining that the use of force could only be justified on the grounds of self-defence, humanitarian

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intervention or UN authorisation, and that the first two options were not applicable ‘in this case’, it was also pointed out that relying on previous UN resolutions for the requisite authority for an invasion would prove to be ‘difficult’. The expressed view of the Prime Minister, however, was also in accord with the need for a UN-based approach, observing that ‘it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors’. Further maintaining that ‘[i]f the political context were right, people would support regime change’, the Prime Minister concluded that: ‘The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work’. The meeting itself was concluded on the working assumption ‘that the UK would take part in any military action’.27

‘Drafting Changes’ By the time the government’s Iraq strategy was being finalised, the process of compiling the September dossier was already underway. This had been initiated in mid-February with the production of a paper by the Overseas and Defence Secretariat focusing on WMD proliferation in four countries (including Iraq), although this was not deemed to be suitable for public consumption and in mid-March the decision was made to limit its focus to Iraq.28 In mid-June a further document prepared by the Assessments Staff combined three existing internal papers on Iraq’s WMD programmes, its history of UN weapons inspections and Saddam Hussein’s human rights abuses. On 3 September 2002, Blair announced that the government’s assessment of Iraq’s WMD would be published in a matter of weeks.29 The official line on the rationale for producing the dossier was that it was driven by the open, transparent and responsive nature of the government on a central issue of public concern. As Blair put it, the purpose was ‘to respond to the call to disclose the intelligence that we knew’. The dossier was not designed to make ‘the case for war’, he explained, but was merely ‘making the case for the issue to be dealt with’.30 Accordingly, the motives for disclosing the intelligence were presented as having derived from a combination of the ‘tremendous amount of information and evidence’ on Iraq’s WMD flowing across the Prime Minister’s desk, and from ‘a renewed sense of urgency’ in the way in which the issue was being ‘publicly debated’. However, while Jack Straw also insisted that the aim of the dossier ‘was to meet the demand for intelligence-based information about Iraq and to make a case for the world to recognise the importance of the issue’, further comments by the Foreign Secretary lend credence to an interpretation that seems more consistent with the government’s internal discussions on the question of Iraq thus far. As he put it: if we were going to be able to make out a case for war against Iraq, we were going to have to publish the material . . . otherwise we would have just faced day in and day out a constant complaint that we had no basis, that we had no proper reason.31

While the Prime Minister later asserted that the reason the dossier, as it currently stood, had not yet been published was that such a move would have sent the issue

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of Iraq ‘rocketing up the agenda’,32 a more pertinent reason was that the dossier as yet lacked the necessary gravitas for convincing domestic opinion as to the need for adopting a militaristic stance. Peter Ricketts, for instance, later revealed that publication had been delayed so that the government could ‘build up a fuller picture’, while John Scarlett disclosed that publication had been held back because the dossier lacked sufficient ‘detail and information to explain the assessment judgements which were in it’. A further, more mundane, reason was also flagged up by Alastair Campbell, the government’s Director of Communications and Strategy, who noted simply that the dossier was ‘not terribly good’.33 Production on what would prove to be the final version of the dossier began in earnest in early September. Two days after Blair’s initial announcement, an informal, unminuted and ad hoc gathering of intelligence officers and government officials met to discuss ‘presentational’ aspects relating to the project. Chaired by Campbell, whose own view was that the existing dossier would need a ‘substantial rewrite’ to make it suitable for public consumption, the meeting charged Scarlett with the task of drawing up an entirely new version.34 At a further meeting on 9 September, Campbell insisted that it was ‘fundamentally’ important for the credibility of the dossier that it must be seen to be the work of the JIC. At the same time, however, the Director of Communications was also acutely aware that the publication needed ‘to be revelatory’. As he later explained, ‘we needed to show it was new and informative and part of a bigger case’.35 But the intelligence picture on Iraq’s WMD had changed relatively little during the summer. In August, the JIC noted that there had been ‘little intelligence’ on Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons since 1998, maintained that Saddam Hussein would face difficulties in using such weapons due to the availability of sufficient material and questions over ‘the loyalty of his commanders’, and restated its view that the preemptive use of WMD by Iraq was unlikely since it would provide ‘a justification for US action’.36 While new intelligence received at the end of August indicated that Iraq could possibly launch a chemical or biological weapons attack within an average timescale of between 20 and 45 minutes, this information (a second-hand claim made by a single unverified source), remained vague, was far from certain and was secretly withdrawn by the intelligence agencies in July 2003 on the grounds of its unreliability.37 While a JIC assessment of 5 September 2002 duly observed that intelligence ‘indicates’ that chemical or biological weapons could be ready for firing within 45 minutes,38 the view among analysts was that the information referred to battlefield weapons as opposed to large-scale WMD (a distinction that Blair later purported to have been unaware of despite it being common knowledge to virtually all other senior officials involved in the production of the dossier).39 As Scarlett himself later told the Hutton inquiry, the accepted view in intelligence circles was that the information (which he omitted to mention had recently been withdrawn) ‘related to munitions, whichwe had interpreted to mean battlefield mortar shells or small calibre weaponry, quite different from missiles’.40 Moreover, while another JIC assessment produced on 9 September maintained that Iraq had WMD, the capacity to produce more and the ability to fire chemical and biological munitions within 45 minutes, this also pointed out that the intelligence remained

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‘limited’, and emphasised that many of the JIC’s claims on Iraq’s WMD were ‘necessarily based on judgement and assessments’. To complicate matters still more, the JIC further maintained that Iraq had ‘probably dispersed’ any ‘special weapons’ that it might possess, thereby hampering the effectiveness with which they could be used.41 The following day Scarlett produced his first draft version of the dossier, which, in his words, had now been ‘significantly recast’ and was ‘more assertive in its language’.42 Belying the lack of any new and substantive intelligence material, this now espoused a more forceful line than any of the JIC’s previous reports, noting that intelligence ‘confirms’ that Iraq has ‘a usable chemical and biological weapons capability’, that it was ‘able to add to this capability despite sanctions’, and that it was continuing ‘to work on developing nuclear weapons’ (adding too that uranium for this purpose ‘has been procured from Africa’). The draft also maintained that Iraq possessed banned ballistic missiles and was developing longer-range versions, that its military planning specifically envisioned the use of chemical and biological weapons and that intelligence had ‘suggested’ that it could fire WMD within 45 minutes. Importantly, too, the draft dossier also contained none of the qualifications and caveats about the generally limited nature of the intelligence and made no mention of the JIC’s view that a pre-emptive attack by Iraq was unlikely.43 Yet despite this linguistic hardening in comparison with previous JIC assessments, New Labour apparatchiks harboured deep concerns about the dossier’s suitability as a tool of public persuasion. One of the Prime Minister’s official spokesmen, Godric Smith, for instance, maintained that it was ‘a bit of a muddle’, while his counterpart, Tom Kelly, argued that it required a ‘more direct argument on why containment is breaking down’, did not do enough to ‘differentiate between capacity and intent’ and needed to show more convincingly that Saddam intended to use WMD ‘aggressively rather than in selfdefence’.44 More colourfully, Phillip Bassett (a senior special advisor working for Alastair Campbell) maintained that the dossier was ‘too journalistic’, ‘intelligence-lite’ and read like a series of ‘unevidenced assertions’. Calling for the use of ‘more convincing material’, for example ‘by printing some of it . . . with names, identifiers etc. blanked out’, Bassett concluded that the dossier needed ‘more weight’ and that the government were ‘in a lot of trouble’ as it presently stood.45 A similar view was held by Daniel Pruce, a Government Press Officer, who complained that much of the evidence in the dossier was ‘largely circumstantial’ and that some ‘drafting changes’ would be useful in order to ‘convey the impression’ that Iraq had been actively pursuing WMD. Like Bassett, Pruce also suggested using ‘copies of original documentation, if necessary with parts blanked out, to add to the feeling that we are presenting real evidence’.46 Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, were also critical of the dossier. The former called for the inclusion of ‘a killer paragraph’ on Iraq’s defiance of the United Nations in order to bolster the case against Saddam, while Hoon later explained that ‘in a political sense’ the draft was ‘insufficiently dramatic to make our case as strongly as I would have liked it to be made’. Although Alastair Campbell later dismissed such comments as nothing more than ‘office chatter’, the government’s Director of Communications himself was now placed in charge of a team to supervise the production of the dossier ‘from a presentational point of view’, and to make

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‘recommendations and suggestions’ to Scarlett about ways in which it could be improved. With the publication of the dossier also designed to coincide with the production of a similar document in the United States, Campbell further noted that it needed to be one ‘that complements rather than conflicts’ with the assessments of the US Government.47

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‘A Major Problem’ With Campbell in place, the search for useful information to go in the dossier was intensified. On 11 September 2002 those involved in its production were issued with ‘a last(!) call for any items of intelligence that agencies think can and should be included’, and were reminded in a circular email that No. 10 wanted the dossier ‘to be as strong as possible’. According to John Morrison, a former Deputy Chief of the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), this was now a clear sign that the government were ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ in their bid to strengthen the case against Iraq. Or as Dr David Kelly put it, the officials involved ‘were desperate for information’.48 As luck would have it, however, right on cue a piece of new intelligence duly arrived. Notwithstanding the fact that this came from a highly sensitive and ‘trial’ source within Iraq, the new information was taken to support the view that Saddam’s WMD programme was now accelerating and to uphold the veracity of the 45-minute claim.49 The following day, Richard Dearlove visited Tony Blair in person to inform him of the new development, though added that the source was ‘unproven’ and that the case remained ‘developmental’.50 On 16 September, Scarlett produced a new draft version of the dossier, entitled Iraq’s Programme for Weapons of Mass Destruction. Again claiming that Iraq possessed ‘a usable chemical and biological weapons capability’, and that it was attempting to develop nuclear weapons (though now only alleging that Iraq had ‘sought’ to acquire uranium from Africa), the dossier also maintained that intelligence ‘shows’ that Iraq attached ‘great importance to the possession of WMD’, and that it had plans to use them militarily. Despite acknowledging, in line with the previously stated JIC view about the lack of a pre-emptive danger, that Saddam Hussein would use his WMD ‘if he believes his regime is under threat’, the executive summary now asserted that Iraq ‘could’ fire WMD within 45 minutes, a claim that was substantially stronger than the main text, which merely asserted that it ‘may’ be able to do so.51 By this time, the process of constructing the dossier was proving to be a source of distinct unease within the intelligence community. An unnamed complainant from the DIS had already remarked that the 10 September dossier had ‘a lot of spin on it’,52 while a further complaint from within the DIS about the executive summary for the latest draft pointed out that its claims about Iraq’s continued production of chemical and biological agents were ‘too strong’ and that the 45-minute claim was ‘rather strong’ given the single-sourced nature of the intelligence.53 David Kelly, too, observed that many analysts were now concerned about the way in which comments on earlier drafts had ‘largely not been reflected in the later drafts’, while Dr Bryan Jones, the head of the nuclear, chemical and biological warfare division of the DIS, was even more critical.

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Complaining that the claims being made about Iraq’s possession of WMD were ‘far too strong’, and deriding the 45-minute claim as ‘nebulous’ and ‘vague’, Jones later attested that the intelligence services ‘did not have a high degree of confidence’ in the evidence concerning Iraq’s WMD, and that Blair’s claim to ‘know’ that they were in possession of such weapons ‘was simply not true’. As Morrison put it, the Prime Minister’s promulgations were being greeted throughout Whitehall by a ‘collective raspberry’.54 Such misgivings though were summarily dismissed by senior officials. Geoff Hoon, for instance, later claimed that the concerns related merely to ‘technical amendments’, while Blair proposed that the linguistic nuances used to present the government’s claims about Iraq’s WMD were of ‘hardly earth shattering significance’.55 More importantly still, on 20 September Bryan Jones was informed by his line manager that ‘other intelligence’ that effectively neutralised his concerns had now come to light, but that his team would not be permitted to see it due to its highly sensitive nature. Jones was assured, however, that the evidence had been thoroughly assessed by Richard Dearlove and his Deputy, Martin Howard (despite what he described as their lack of high-level experience in chemical and biological weapons analysis), and that the intelligence had been judged to be satisfactory. On this basis, Jones was told that no further complaints were now to be submitted and that the matter was effectively closed.56 For all these concerns, though, senior figures still deemed the dossier to be insufficiently persuasive. As Jonathan Powell (the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff) remarked, while the dossier was ‘good and convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced’, the main problem was the continued absence of any compelling evidence to show that Saddam constituted an immediate danger. ‘[I]t shows he has the means’, he explained, ‘but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours let alone the west’. ‘The threat argument’, he warned, ‘will be a major problem’.57 Likewise, both Blair and Campbell also harboured concerns. According to the Director of Communications, the Prime Minister felt that Scarlett had ‘done a very good job’ and that the dossier was ‘convincing’, but that it could still benefit from ‘a little rewriting’. Chapter three, on the development of Iraq’s WMD capability since 1998, for example, was thought to need some reordering ‘to build towards the conclusions through details’, and Blair also wondered whether the dossier could contain ‘more pictures’ and ‘more on human rights’ in order to drive home the nature of the Iraqi regime. Both Campbell and Blair also expressed concerns about the way in which ‘the nuclear issue’ was being presented, with the Prime Minister keen to make more of the ‘no civil nuclear point’ in order to highlight the suspicious nature of Saddam’s attempted acquisition of nuclear-related material, and with Campbell wanting the dossier to emphasise the view that ‘with help’ the Iraqi President could obtain a ‘radiological device’ in months and a nuclear weapon in one or two years. In addition to this, Campbell also presented Scarlett with a list of suggested revisions to the current text of the dossier. Among these, he observed that it would be useful to ‘make more’ of Saddam’s ‘current concealment plans’, that the executive summary ‘would be stronger’ if it could be emphasised that Iraq had ‘made real progress’ on WMD despite the policy of containment, and that the dossier as a whole would

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be improved if it could be stated (as per the earlier version) that Iraq had actually ‘secured’, rather than sought, uranium from Africa for possible use in a nuclear weapons programme. The head of the JIC was also informed that the dossier would be stronger if it could be ‘more explicit’ about the details of the intelligence reports given to the Prime Minister, clearer on the distances by which Saddam was attempting to extend Iraq’s ballistic missile range, could provide more clarity on the amount of Iraq’s illicit earnings and if it could contain more details on the quantities of shells that Iraq was believed to have available for delivering chemical and biological agents. Campbell also put it to Scarlett that the use of the word ‘might’ in relation to claims about Iraq’s production of VX nerve gas read ‘very weakly’, asked if it would be possible to change the word ‘could’ to ‘capable of being used’ in a line referring to the capacity of dual-use facilities to ‘support the production of chemical agent’, wondered if it would be possible to drop the word ‘probable’ from a reference to Iraq’s renovation of a vaccination plant, and queried the use of the word ‘may’ to describe Iraq’s ability to deploy WMD within 45 minutes. Although Campbell later claimed that in all of this he was ‘not actually making a suggestion’ but was simply ‘making an observation’, Scarlett’s view was that the recommendations were of a more pressing nature. Campbell, he believed, was ‘making requests, really, for changes’, and was asking if, ‘on the basis of the intelligence could it be strengthened?’58 The following day, in his response to Campbell, Scarlett informed the Director of Communications that he had been unable to incorporate a number of his suggestions into the dossier. Blair’s request for a reworking of Chapter 3, for example, had been rebuffed since the restructured text had ‘less impact than the original’, his desire for more pictures had been turned down since the intelligence agencies had ‘nothing that adds usefully to the text’ and Campbell’s references to ‘an improvised nuclear device’ had also been dropped because there was ‘no intelligence’ to support the claim. The government’s chief spin doctor was further informed that ‘the agreed interpretation of the intelligence’ on the procurement of uranium from Africa would only allow the use of the word ‘sought’, that more precise figures on the quantity of shells available for delivering chemical and biological agents could not be listed since ‘we do not have intelligence’ allowing this, and that the dossier ‘cannot improve on the use of the word “might”’ concerning the production of VX nerve gas.59 On the other hand, however, Scarlett was able to confirm that ‘in most cases’ Campbell’s requests had been taken up ‘along the lines proposed’ at the expense of some of the more cautious suggestions that had now been fed in by the DIS. Among the various changes, he noted, the absence of a civil nuclear capacity in Iraq had been given a ‘much improved’ impact by the use of box and bullet points, the issue of human rights had been given ‘a little more prominence in the executive summary’, and a figure on the procurement of aluminium tubes being presented by the government for use in a nuclear weapons programme had also been included. In addition, the new dossier contained more clarity on missile ranges and on Iraq’s illicit earnings, the word ‘probable’ had been removed from the reference to the renovated vaccine plant, the proposal to replace ‘could’ with ‘capable of being used’ in relation to dual-use facilities

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had been incorporated and, as Scarlett put it, the language concerning the 45-minute claim had ‘been tightened’, with references to ‘may’ having now been expunged. With these changes in place, the JIC met on 18 September to formally (albeit briefly) discuss the dossier for the last time, and a final draft version was circulated to its members the next morning.60

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Conclusion: ‘Perfectly Justified’ At the same time, however, Jonathan Powell was raising further concerns about the dossier in an email to Campbell and Scarlett. Reminding Campbell of the need to consider the kind of headline they wished to see in the London Evening Standard following publication of the dossier, Powell recommended a further change in its content. According to the Chief of Staff, the dossier’s current description of Saddam’s willingness to use WMD ‘if he believes his regime is under threat’ was still ‘a bit of a problem’, since it would support the argument that there was in fact no prevailing WMD threat and that ‘we will only create one if we attack him’. As such, Powell’s suggestion that Scarlett should ‘redraft’ the relevant paragraph was subsequently taken up, and by the time the final version of the dossier had been produced the next day the offending text had been duly struck out. For good measure, a concluding section admitting that the government’s knowledge of the situation in Iraq was ‘partial’, and that Saddam Hussein would only use WMD ‘to protect his power and eventually to project it when he feels strong enough to do so’ was also dropped. The title of the dossier, too, was changed, from Iraq’s Programme for Weapons of Mass Destruction to the more assertively named Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Although none of these changes were brought to the attention of, let alone discussed by, the JIC, Richard Dearlove later insisted that none of this amounted to any ‘substantive changes’, and, thus concluded, ownership of the document duly passed over to No. 10.61 On 24 September 2002, the dossier was finally published. This claimed that Iraq’s possession of WMD had been ‘established beyond doubt’, that Iraq had ‘existing and active military plans’ for their use and that some of these were deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them, a point that was reiterated no less than four times and which was later described by Charles Duelfer, the head of the post-war Iraq Survey Group, as the ‘most striking intelligence’ contained in the dossier.62 In addition, the dossier also alleged that Iraq was potentially just one or two years away from producing a nuclear weapon, that it had tried to obtain a significant amount of uranium from Africa for this purpose, that it was concealing its ballistic missiles while actively developing longer-range versions, and, despite offering no supporting evidence, asserted that Iraq placed ‘great importance’ on the possession of WMD. Insisting that Saddam Hussein ‘does not regard them only as weapons of last resort’, the threat, as Blair insisted in the dossier’s foreword, was ‘serious and current’.63 On the same day these claims were repeated by Blair in an emergency session of Parliament. The Prime Minister declared that the intelligence picture contained in the dossier was ‘extensive, detailed and authoritative’, that Iraq’s WMD programme had been

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shown to be ‘active, detailed and growing’ and that the policy of containment was therefore clearly no longer working. Drawing attention to Iraq’s ongoing concealment efforts, the Prime Minister warned that any failure to act would now undermine the credibility of the ‘international community’ at the risk of global instability and insisted that there was no way in which Saddam ‘could begin a conflict using such weapons and the conflict not engulf the whole world’. The ‘history and the present threat’, he posed, were both very real.64 As seen, however, such apocalyptic visions did not quite convey the full picture. Some of the specific claims, especially those concerning ‘uranium-from-Africa’ and the ability to fire WMD within 45 minutes, were subsequently found to have been based, at best, on deeply flawed intelligence. The International Atomic Energy Agency dismissed the former as having derived from forged documentation, and although the government has continued to insist that it had other and more credible intelligence to support the claim, the evidence for this has yet to be produced despite the lack of any national security rationale for continuing to withhold it.65 The latter assertion, roundly criticised by the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Hutton report and the Butler review, also formed one of the key bases for the post-war controversy about the alleged misuse of intelligence material. Adding to this sensation was the fact that the final version of the dossier incorporated none of the qualifications, caveats, and uncertainties that had been highlighted by the JIC in its intelligence assessments, but instead presented the material as being definitive and incontrovertible. Further still, the close involvement of the JIC with the production of the dossier was later criticised by the Butler inquiry as having put its members under ‘strain’, and as having made it more difficult for them ‘to maintain their normal standards of neutral and objective assessment’. This, Butler concluded, had ultimately led to the creation of a dossier purporting to contain ‘fuller and firmer intelligence behind the judgements than was the case’. While the Prime Minister has insisted that the government ‘described the intelligence in a way that was perfectly justified’, Lord Butler’s view was that the intelligence on which the dossier was based was characterised by ‘relative thinness’ (with around two-thirds of MI6 reports having derived from just two main human inputs), had been taken to the ‘outer limits’ and subjected to ‘more weight . . . than it could bear’.66 Even the notoriously circumspect Hutton report later acknowledged that John Scarlett and the JIC could have been ‘subconsciously influenced’ by Blair’s desire to have a dossier that ‘was as strong as possible’ and to have thus made its wording ‘somewhat stronger’ than that contained in a normal JIC report.67 Nevertheless, despite a flurry of media headlines, the dossier was widely criticised for failing to provide any new information, and the majority of public and parliamentary opinion remained convinced that war would only be justified with the express authorisation of the United Nations. Of course, as history now records, in the event the weight of public opinion proved to be no barrier to Britain’s participation in the invasion, and virtually all the claims made by the dossier concerning Iraq’s WMD proved to be spectacularly wrong. Within a matter of months, the government’s prewar strategy for securing regime change, based around the issue of WMD, the United

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Nations and a concerted ‘media campaign’ designed to ‘sensitise the public’, had been superseded by an equally concerted post-war campaign designed to breathe some legitimacy into the war by redefining it as a battle for ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’. With the fallout from conflict still plaguing the government on what is now an almost routine basis, however, the issues raised by the September dossier affair have continued to resonate for far longer than anyone could have anticipated. While New Labour’s ultimate legacy still remains to be seen, the shadow cast upon it by these events will undoubtedly endure for long after the Blair Government has gone.

Notes [1] See Bluth ‘The British Road to War’; Doig and Pythian, ‘The National Interest’, 368– 76; ‘The Hutton Inquiry’, 104– 8; Dumbrell, ‘Working with Allies’, 452– 72; Freedman, ‘War in Iraq’, 7– 50; Glees, ‘Evidence-Based Policy’, 138– 55; Humphreys, ‘The Iraq Dossier’, 156– 70; McLean and Patterson, ‘A Precautionary Approach’, 351– 67; Pythian, ‘Hutton and Scott’, 124– 37, ‘Still a Matter of Trust’, 653– 81; Ramsay and Cliffe, ‘Comment’, 349– 59; Riddell, Hug Them Close; Williams and Roach, ‘Security, Territorial Borders . . . ’, 1– 23; Yeung, ‘Regulating Government Communications’, 53– 91. [2] For instance see Coates and Krieger, Blair’s War; Kampfner, Blair’s Wars; Naughtie, The Accidental American; Seldon, Blair; Stephens, Tony Blair; for an exception see Kettell, Dirty Politics? [3] Among the most notable websites include: j-n-v.org (justice not vengeance); spinwatch.org; labouragainsthewar.org.uk; stopwar.org.uk (stop the war coalition); impeachblair.org; and iraqwatch.org [4] Foreign Affairs Select Committee, The Decision to Go to War in Iraq, Ninth Report of Session 2002– 03, HC 813 (hereafter FAC Report), HMSO, London; Intelligence and Security Committee, Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction: Intelligence and Assessments, Cm.5972 (hereafter ISC Report). HMSO, London; Report of the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Dr David Kelly, Lord Hutton, January 2004, HC 247, (hereafter Hutton Report), HMSO, London; Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction, HC 898, (hereafter Butler Report), HMSO, London. [5] See for example Bluth, ‘The British Road to War’, 851– 72; Coates and Krieger, Blair’s War; Glees, ‘Evidence-Based Policy’, 138– 55; Hoggett, ‘Iraq’, 418– 28; Kampfner, Blair’s Wars; Riddell, Hug Them Close; Seldon, Blair. [6] See for example Cook, Point of Departure; Rangwala and Plesch, A Case to Answer; Sands, Lawless World; Short, An Honourable Deception?; Yeung, ‘Regulating Government Communications’, 53– 91. [7] Press Conference with George W. Bush, 17 July 2003. [8] Tony Blair speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, 10 November 1997. [9] Butler Report, section 5.2. [10] Tony Blair statement in the House of Commons, 24 Feburary 1998. [11] Remarks by Tony Blair in the House of Commons, 17 December 1998. [12] Cited in the Butler Report (2004), paras 213– 17. [13] Tony Blair speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, 17 November 2001; Interview in the Observer, 14 October 2001. [14] Iraq: Options Paper, 8 March 2002. [15] Butler Report, sections 5.3, 5.4 and Annex B. [16] Memo. from Manning to Blair, 14 March 2002.

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[17] [18] [19] [20]

Memo. from Meyer to Manning, 18 March 2002. Memo. from Ricketts to Straw, 22 March 2002. Memo. from Straw to Blair, 25 March 2002. Iraq: Conditions for Military Action, Cabinet Office briefing paper, 21 July 2002. Reprinted in The Sunday Times, 12 June 2005. Joint Press Conference by George W. Bush and Tony Blair, 6 April 2002. Tony Blair Statement to the House of Commons, 10 April 2002; Joint Press Conference with Dick Cheney, 11 March 2002; Interview with NBC, 4 April 2002; Interview for Newsnight. BBC2, 15 May 2002. Short, An Honourable Deception?, 150. Oral evidence from Clare Short to the Inquiry of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (hereafter FAC Evidence), 17 June 2003. The Hutton Inquiry (hereafter ‘THI’) FAC2/1– 50. Iraq: Conditions for Military Action, Cabinet Office briefing paper, 21 July 2002. Reprinted in The Sunday Times, 12 June 2005. J. Hardy, ‘Blair in the Doghouse’, Daily Mirror, 3 July 2002. Memo. from Matthew Rycroft to Manning. Published in The Sunday Times, 1 May 2005. ISC Report, 23. R. Norton-Taylor and J. Borger, ‘Secrets of Saddam’s Hidden Arsenal’, The Guardian, 5 September 2002. Oral Evidence from Tony Blair to the Hutton Inquiry (hereafter THI Evidence), 28 August 2003, para 17. Ibid., paras 1, 2, 9, 17; Butler Report, para 316. Remarks by Tony Blair to the House of Commons Liaison Committee, 16 July 2002. Remarks to the FAC Inquiry by Ricketts, 24 June 2003. THI:FAC2/208 – 248. Q.742; THI Evidence (Campbell), 19 August 2003, para 88; and (Scarlett), 26 August 2003, para 33. S. Powell (on behalf of Campbell) to J. Powell, 5 September 2002. THI:CAB11/17. The draft dossier as it presently stood was entitled: Iraqi Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Programmes— the Current Threat. THI:CAB23/5 – 14. THI Evidence (Campbell) 19 August 2003, paras 10, 123; Campbell to Scarlett 9 September 2002. THI:CAB6/2– 4. Government Briefing Papers on Iraq, 20 June 2002. THI:CAB23/16 – 67; JIC Extracts. THI:CAB17/2 – 5; Butler Report, paras 289– 307, and Annex B. ISC Report, paras 49 – 57; Butler Report, section 6.5; JIC Papers. THI:CAB17/2 –5; THI Evidence (Dearlove) 15 September 2003. JIC Papers for Lord Hutton. THI:CAB17/2 – 5. See THI Evidence (Hoon), 22 September 2003, paras 80 – 1; (Dearlove), 15 September 2003; FAC Evidence (Cook), 17 June 2003. THI:FAC2/1– 50. THI Evidence (Scarlett), 26 August 2003, para 144. JIC Assessment, 9 September 2002. Extracts cited in the Butler Report, Annex B. THI Evidence (Scarlett) 26 August 2003, paras 58– 60; Scarlett to Campbell, 10 September 2002. THI:CAB23/2. Draft Dossier, 10 September 2002. THI:DOS2/2 – 57. Smith to Pruce and Campbell, 11 September 2002. THI:CAB11/23 – 24; Kelly to Campbell 11 September 2002. THI:CAB11/27. Bassett to Smith, Pruce, and Campbell, 11 September 2002. THI:CAB11/23 – 26. Pruce to MM, 10 September 2002. THI:CAB11/21; Pruce to Campbell, 11 September 2002. THI:CAB11/25 – 26. Sedwill to various, 11 September 2002. THI:CAB11/34; Campbell to Scarlett, 9 September 2002. THI:CAB6/2– 4; THI Evidence (Campbell) 19 August 2003.

[21] [22]

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[23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34]

[35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]

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[48] Anonymous email, 11 September 2003. THI:CAB23/15; Morrison in A Failure of Intelligence, Panorama. BBC1, 11 July 2004; David Kelly Conversation with Susan Watts, 30 May 2003. THI:BBC1/58 – 63. [49] BBC News, 11 July 2004; THI Evidence (Anthony Cragg, former Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence), 15 September 2003, passim. [50] Butler Report, paras 573– 8. [51] Draft Dossier, 16 September 2002, THI:DOS2/58 – 106; draft executive summary, 16 September 2002. THI:CAB11/141 –143. [52] Anonymous memo. 10 September 2002, THI:CAB3/21. [53] Unnamed DIS Document, 17 September 2002. CAB33/116. [54] David Kelly Conversation with Susan Watts, 30 May 2003. THI:BBC1/58 – 63; Note on Iraq Dossier (unnamed), 20 September 2002. THI:CAB33/114– 115; Anonymous document, 19 September 2002. THI:MOD22/1 – 2; Bryan Jones interviews in the Independent, 4 Feburary 2004, 10 Feburary 2004; Panorama. BBC1, 11 July 2004. [55] THI Evidence (Hoon), 22 September 2003, para 85; Blair Remarks in the House of Commons, 4 Feburary 2004. [56] Panorama. BBC1, 11 July 2004; Bryan Jones interviews in the Independent, 4 Feburary 2004, 21 July 2004. [57] Powell to Scarlett, 17 September 2002. THI:CAB11/69; Powell to Campbell and Manning, 17 September 2002. THI:CAB11/53; Powell to Campbell and Scarlett, 18 September 2002. THI:CAB11/77. [58] Campbell to Scarlett, 17 September 2002. THI:CAB11/66 – 68; THI Evidence (Campbell), 19 August 2003; (Scarlett), 26 August 2003, paras 75, 82– 4. [59] Scarlett to Campbell, 18 September 2002. THI:CAB11/70 – 71. [60] Ibid. and 19 September 2002. THI:CAB23/1; Draft Dossier, 19 September 2002. THI:CAB3/22 – 78. [61] Powell to Campbell and Scarlett, 19 September 2002. THI:CAB11/103; THI Evidence (Dearlove), 15 September 2003, para 95; Iraq’s Weapons of Mass destruction, final draft dossier, 20 September 2002. THI:CAB33/56 –113. [62] N. Watt, ‘Weapons Claim: The Dossier, the PM, and the Headlines’, The Guardian, 6 Feburary 2004. [63] Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, 24 September 2002. [64] Tony Blair Statement to House of Commons, 24 September 2002. [65] N. Rufford, and N. Fielding, ‘Tracked Down: The Man Who Fooled the World—And was Duped Himself ’, The Sunday Times, 1 August 2004. [66] THI Evidence (Blair), 28 August 2003, para 16; Butler Report (2004), paras 225, 304, 327, 331. [67] Hutton Report, para 228.

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Dumbrell, John. ‘Working with Allies: The United States, the United Kingdom, and the War on Terror’. Public and Policy 34, no. 2 (2006): 452– 72. Freedman, Lawrence. ‘War in Iraq: Selling the Threat’. Survival 46, no. 2 (2004): 7– 50. Glees, Anthony. ‘Evidence-Based Policy or Policy-Based Evidence? Hutton and the Government’s Use of Secret Intelligence’. Parliamentary Affairs 58, no. 1 (2005): 138 –55. Hoggett, Paul. ‘Iraq: Blair’s Mission Impossible’. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 7 (2005): 418– 28. Humphreys, James. ‘The Iraq Dossier and the Meaning of Spin’. Parliamentary Affairs 58, no. 1 (2005): 156 –70. Kampfner, John. Blair’s Wars. London: Polity, 2004. McLean, C., and A. Patterson. ‘A Precautionary Approach to Foreign Policy? A Preliminary Analysis of Tony Blair’s Speeches on Iraq’. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 8, (2006): 351 –67. Naughtie, James. The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency. London: Macmillan, 2004. Phythian, Mark. ‘Hutton and Scott: A Tale of Two Inquiries’. Parliamentary Affairs 58, no. 1 (2005): 124 –37. ———.‘Still a Matter of Trust: Post-9/11 British Intelligence and Political Culture’. International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence 18 (2005): 653 –81. Ramsay, M., and L. Cliffe. ‘Comment: War on Iraq: An “Honourable Deception”?’. Contemporary Politics 9, no. 4 (2003): 349– 59. Rangwala, G., and D. Plesch. A Case To Answer: A First Report on the Potential Impeachment of the Prime Minister for High Crimes and Misdemeanours in Relation to the Invasion of Iraq. London: House of Commons, 2004. Riddell, Peter. Hug Them Close: Blair, Clinton, Bush and the Special Relationship. London: Politicos, 2004. Sands, Phillipe. Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules. London: Allen Lane, 2005. Seldon, Anthony. Blair. 2nd ed. London: Free Press, 2005. Short, Clare. An Honourable Deception? New Labour, Iraq, and the Misuse of Power. London: Free Press, 2004. Stephens, Philip. Tony Blair: The Price of Leadership. London: Politicos, 2004. Williams, J., and T. Roach. ‘Security, Territorial Borders and British Iraq Policy: Buying a Blair-Way to Heaven?’. Geopolitics 11 (2006): 1 – 23. Yeung, Karen. ‘Regulating Government Communications’. Cambridge Law Journal 65, no. 1 (2006): 53 – 91.