[A-List] UK state: Iraq crisis

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Spy chief denies row with No 10

Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday June 3, 2003
The Guardian

John Scarlett, ex-MI6 officer and chairman of Whitehall's joint intelligence
committee (JIC), let it be known yesterday he had no "bust up" with Downing
Street over the dossier the government published last September on Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction.

There was "no diversity or animosity" between the intelligence agencies and
Downing Street, he said.

But he admitted there was a "debate" about what should go in the dossier,
adding that how ministers chose to use the dossier was up to them.

It is unprecedented for a senior official in such a sensitive position to
comment directly on any current controversy, let alone one stirring up such
a fierce political storm. The government's decision to publish its dossier
last September was also unprecedented.

It is no secret that the dossier provoked deep unease inside the
intelligence community. The previous spring Tony Blair abandoned plans to
release an intelligence dossier because it failed to show that the threat
from Baghdad had increased significantly since the end of the Gulf war in
1991.

Mr Scarlett is not a complete stranger to controversy. In 1994 he was
expelled from Moscow for allegedly recruiting a spy in Russia's defence
ministry. The Russians named him as MI6's station chief attached to the
British embassy.

He joined MI6 from Magdalen college, Oxford, in 1971 after winning a first
class degree in history. He was appointed chairman of the JIC in 2001 and
has since provided Mr Blair and his senior cabinet colleagues with weekly
intelligence assessments.

Members of the JIC include Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of MI6, David Pepper,
the new director of GCHQ, Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5,
and Air Marshal Joe French, chief of defence intelligence.

If Mr Scarlett could live with the September document, he was less sanguine
about the dossier released in February after being written by Alastair
Campbell, Mr Blair's aide.

It was claimed to be based on the work of Mr Scarlett's committee but was a
mishmash of material. The intelligence community's anger over the dossier
raises serious questions about Mr Blair's claim that "every single piece of
intelligence that we presented was cleared very properly by the joint
intelligence committee".

-----

Double trouble from old rivals

Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt
Tuesday June 3, 2003
The Guardian

An unlikely, uncoordinated lethal double act is making Tony Blair's postwar
life a misery. Clare Short and Robin Cook, who both resigned from the
cabinet over Iraq, are hardly great political allies and are not
synchronising their blasts against the prime minister's conduct of the war.

But the combined effect of their now daily interventions is to keep alive
the explosive issue of whether Downing Street or the intelligence services,
individually or collectively, misled the British public over the legality of
the war.

The pair differ on whether the intelligence services blundered in asserting
that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction, or fell victim to a conspiracy
to hype the threat, a conspiracy masterminded by Alastair Campbell, Mr
Blair's communications director.

Mr Cook, in public at least, doubts the intelligence services were sucked
into a conspiracy. He respects their work.

However, Ms Short and Mr Cook agree that the intelligence services allowed
aspects of the work to be highlighted by politicians, especially the
immediacy of the threat posed by Saddam in the spring. They both believe Mr
Blair was willing to ramp up the threat due to the surprising lack of
popular support for the war.

The allegation that Downing Street "sexed up" last September's dossier on
Iraq's banned weapons was seized on by Ms Short over the weekend as one of
three "deceits" perpetrated by the prime minister. Her criticisms echoed Mr
Cook's warning in cabinet that there was little evidence that Iraq had the
capability to launch weapons.

Ms Short alleged in her second "deceit" that Mr Blair falsely told the world
that Jacques Chirac, the French president, had said he would veto any second
UN resolution authorising war. Ms Short took issue with Mr Blair's
characterisation of Mr Chirac's intervention by pointing out that the French
president said he would support war if the UN inspectors failed.

Downing Street insists that Mr Chirac did wield the "unreasonable veto",
because Mr Chirac subsequently told the prime minister that he would not
accept any resolution that contained any ultimatum or deadline by which time
Saddam had to comply.

The final "deceit" was that Mr Blair had made a "secret" agreement to go to
war with President Bush last September - and then told the cabinet privately
that he was acting as a constraint on the US.

Mr Cook would agree with Ms Short's allegation that the prime minister had
lied because he suspects Mr Blair promised to fight, so long as Bush went
down the UN route. Joint military planning was under way by the autumn.