SO WHAT happened to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which have been so conspicuous by their absence these past months? We may find out at last. This week, both London and Washington announced inquiries into why their intelligence on Iraq’s WMD appears to have been so flawed.
Let’s hope these investigations yield more balanced results than those delivered last week by Lord Hutton into another, very British, intelligence scandal. The judge was charged with exploring events leading up to the death of David Kelly, who committed suicide after finding himself at the centre of a political storm. Kelly, a government scientist and expert on biological and chemical weapons, sparked the row by telling a BBC journalist at a secret meeting that he had doubts about an intelligence dossier on Iraq’s WMD published by the government in September 2002. Last week, Hutton rightly castigated the BBC for its flawed reporting yet, mysteriously to many, he exonerated the government of just about any wrongdoing.
Hutton did criticise Ministry of Defence officials for letting Kelly’s name be known to reporters without warning him first. But testimony to the inquiry revealed plenty of other questionable behaviour that put Kelly under pressure. Though he had been told his name would not be made public, the MoD led reporters to his name through a bizarre question-and-answer game. The government argued, and Hutton agreed, that this was legitimate to fend of accusations of a cover-up, and to ensure that other weapons experts were not hounded by reporters. Yet Hutton missed an equally compelling reason for Kelly to be “outed”: Kelly did not think the BBC had fairly represented what he had said. This helped the government a good deal in restoring its good name.
Advertisement
Kelly – who had come forward voluntarily and was not on trial for any offence – was paraded before two parliamentary committees, even though MoD officials said this was excessive for a man not used to “being thrust into the public eye”. At the same time he was belittled by officials, who described him as “a bit weird”, “a show-off” and “eccentric”. A warning that Kelly was “feeling the pressure” and did “not appear to be handling it well”, was forgotten. We do not know why Kelly took his life, but it is easy to see how such thoughtless treatment could have contributed.
That same thoughtless disregard for anything other than winning the political game emerges in the way the 2002 dossier was created. Intended for MPs and the public, the dossier contained an assessment of Iraq’s weapons, and was compiled by the UK intelligence services. In a foreword, prime minister Tony Blair argued that Iraq was “a current and serious threat to the UK national interest”. After the BSE scandal of the 1990s, the government accepted that the public deserves two things when faced with a threat: the facts, and any uncertainties related to those facts. The dossier fails both tests.
Indeed, with every new draft that was produced, uncertainties disappeared. Worse, other changes altered its fundamental message. One passage about Saddam Hussein’s willingness to use chemical and biological weapons included the rider “if he believes his regime is under threat”, but that qualifying phrase disappeared entirely. So did a sentence pointing out that Iraq could not attack London. The much-quoted statement that Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons could be deployed in 45 minutes started life referring to “munitions” – that is, battlefield projectiles and not long-range missiles that everyone later assumed.
Hutton was satisfied that the dossier represented the view of the intelligence officials who drafted it. Yet it is what is missing that is most worrying. The changes made turned the dossier into a blatant advert for going to war – and never mind what it did for public trust in government.
The inquiries announced this week should reveal whether the intelligence on which the whole case for war was built was shaky from the start. There is, of course, another possibility: that neither Blair nor US president George Bush asked tough enough questions of the intelligence they were given – to reveal where the uncertainties lay. It would be tragic if this essential step was curtailed by their political ambitions.
