[A-List] UK state: Iraq crisis

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

Jones breaks cover again: Blair raised 'false expectations'
By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor
The Independent, 10 February 2004

Tony Blair undermined the global fight against weapons proliferation by
raising "false expectations" about Iraq's arsenal and by marginalising
intelligence experts, Brian Jones, the key witness of the Hutton inquiry,
has warned.

Dr Jones said there was a real danger that the failure to find chemical and
biological weapons would lead the public to conclude that Mr Blair's
justification for war was "a political sleight of hand".

In his first media interview, Dr Jones also told The Independent that
intelligence on the Government's 45-minutes claim was so threadbare that it
was impossible to know whether it referred to battlefield or strategic
weapons.

There were calls for the Prime Minister to resign last week after he
admitted he had not been briefed that the 45-minutes claim might refer only
to battlefield munitions. Dr Jones's revelation that the intelligence was
vague about the precise threat could ease the pressure on Mr Blair. But it
also undermines one of the key claims in the Iraq weapons dossier.

Dr Jones, the former head of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of
the MoD's Defence Intelligence Staff, made headlines when he told the Hutton
inquiry that he had formally complained about the dossier.

In today's interview, Dr Jones made it clear that his biggest fear wasthat
his life's work on the dangers of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
proliferation risked being undermined by the failure to find stockpiles in
Iraq.

He said: "There is a great danger that the whole Iraq issue is now muddying
that pond. People have been told to look in that direction; 'Here is
something to worry about'. Suddenly it appears that there was nothing.
Personally, I don't think they will find stockpiles in Iraq and have been
given a false expectation that they were there. So people will say WMD in
general was never a problem because the whole thing was a political sleight
of hand."

Dr Jones, who saw the intelligence assessment that included the 45-minute
claim, pointed out for the first time that it merely outlined "possible
scenarios" as opposed to any specific threat posed by Iraq.

"I think it was dealing with an attempt to think through possible scenarios.
It wasn't, I think, dealing with, 'This is the threat'. It was saying
something more like, 'If the threat we are worried about is there, how would
it work? How would it play in a more practical sense?'."

The controversy over which minister was told what about the 45-minute claim
had missed the real point. "The fact was that it was so nebulous that there
was nothing you could really hang your hat on," he said.

Dr Jones queried briefings given to ministers including Geoff Hoon, the
Secretary of State for Defence, and Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary
who resigned as Leader of the Commons, in which the 45-minute claim was
linked with battlefield weapons. "Who was giving the briefings? Where were
the experts? There were clearly no experts involved in those briefings. And
a great confusion reigns about WMD," he said.

He criticised the practice of giving ministers raw, unanalysed intelligence.
He said he and other intelligence analysts directly briefed ministers in the
last Tory government and were invited to sit in on Joint Intelligence
Committee (JIC) meetings. Successive governments had failed to fund analysts
to keep up with the increasing amount of material on worldwide security
threats, he said, and reorganisations left experts with less clout in
Whitehall. Mr Blair has constantly warned about the dangers of WMD
proliferation but it appeared that he was failing to fund the expert
analysts needed to combat it.

The growing threat of terrorism and proliferation meant that other arms of
intelligence seemed to get more funding for WMD "but this was not matched in
my part of the DIS", Dr Jones said. "I suppose everyone says this about
their own team, but mine wasn't big enough. Certainly I think there was an
imbalance in the WMD area, over the past five to 10 years. Latterly it did
not match increases elsewhere nor the increase in the volume of reporting
that there was to analyse."

Dr Jones said analysts used to have much more influence and access, both on
the JIC and on ministers. Sir Percy Cradock, a former JIC chairman, "would
invite experts to come along and sit in on a JIC meeting for the relevant
paper. Latterly that hasn't happened, certainly not in my area of
expertise."

Air Marshal Sir John Walker, who was chief of Defence Intelligence and
deputy chairman of the JIC, also allowed the experts more access. "Walker
used to say you go ahead, you brief the minister. I would say, are you
coming in too and he would say 'you don't need me, you're the expert'," Dr
Jones said.

-----


WMD expert's staff said: "We've been on the dossier. There are problems.''
By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor
The Independent, 10 February 2004

When Lord Hutton's inquiry into the death of David Kelly opened in August
last year, Brian Jones was putting his feet up in his garden, enjoying the
balmy days of the first summer of his retirement.

The former head of the Ministry of Defence's intelligence branch ­ covering
nuclear, biological and chemical weapons ­ had been shocked to hear of Dr
Kelly's apparent suicide a few weeks earlier.

The two men had known each other through work, but as the world's media
gathered at the Royal Courts of Justice, Dr Jones had no reason to suspect
that the public spotlight would ever fall on him.

That night's television news headlines were to prove him wrong. As he and
his wife, Linda, settled down to watch the BBC's 6 O'Clock News, the lead
story was that the inquiry had been stunned by a letter written by a
mysterious figure describing himself as "probably the most senior and
experienced intelligence community official working on WMD".

The letter revealed that the man had been "so concerned" about the
presentation of some intelligence in the Government's September 2002 dossier
on Iraq that he was moved to write formally "recording and explaining my
reservations".

It was the first document to be made public suggesting that some
intelligence chiefs had been unhappy with the dossier. Given that Andrew
Gilligan had been torn apart for reporting something similar, it was nothing
short of political dynamite.

But in the Jones household, the news was alarming. The MoD had not warned Dr
Jones that the letter, drafted by him in confidence to an intelligence chief
a few weeks earlier, would actually appear in evidence. "When the news came
on that night I guess that was the biggest shock for us," Dr Jones said.
"Despite the deletion of my name, it was immediately obvious to an awful lot
of people that it was me. In actual fact, it's the only time in the whole
process that I'd been momentarily worried about my health. I have a heart
problem and it missed a beat or two."

For Dr Jones, it was the beginning of the end not just of his jealously
guarded anonymity but his peaceful retirement. The media couldn't believe
their luck that here was a real, live "whistleblower" on the first day of
the Hutton inquiry. Within weeks he went one step further and gave evidence
in person, his evidence exposing the flaws in the Government's dossier.

Last week, Dr Jones hit the headlines again with an article for this
newspaper, drawing on his private witness statement and widening his public
criticism of the dossier and the lack of evidence for claims that Iraq
possessed weapons of mass destruction.

This self-contained man has been quoted in Parliament by Tony Blair and
Michael Howard, his words used as evidence both for and against the case for
war, for and against the resignation of the Prime Minister.

Dr Jones, 59, explained to The Independent for the first time the full story
of how he swapped obscurity for national near-celebrity status.

A working-class boy from Bristol, with Welsh roots, he was, like many of his
generation, the first in his family to go to university. After graduating,
he specialised in metallurgy and, after a variety of research jobs, found
himself heading the MoD's Naval Aircraft Materials Laboratory. His expertise
had not gone unnoticed in London and, one day in 1986, a senior official
approached him.

"He said there's a job going in London doing intelligence analysis," Dr
Jones recalled. "We think you should do it. Go up and talk to the people and
see if you'd like to do it. So I did. I was told, 'There's quite an
interesting job here. You might like to come and do it. But we can't
actually tell you what it is'."

The job was with the intelligence arm of the MoD, the Defence Intelligence
Staff or DIS as it is known to its friends. While MI6 (the Special
Intelligence Service), MI5 (the Security Service) or GCHQ all have a pretty
high public profile, the DIS is, in many ways, the Cinderella of the
intelligence community. Yet its role in analysing raw materials sent by the
other services is absolutely crucial, as Dr Jones never tires of explaining
and Tony Blair has latterly discovered.

In the mid-1980s, the issue of chemical and biological weapons was the
preserve of a tiny number of specialists. Dr Jones's job in the scientific
and technical section of the DIS eventually became the branch responsible
for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

He adapted quite smoothly to the secrecy that envelops the life of
intelligence officials. His neighbours, even his sisters, had no idea about
his job, other than the vague perception that he was something "in the MoD".
His mother, who died in 2000, never knew what he did.

"I was the only scientist in my family, so I didn't talk much about work at
home from the start. Questions weren't frequent, there was always this
distance about work if you like because of that," he said.

"One of my sisters said recently, since she has learnt exactly what I did,
'We never asked because we didn't want to embarrass you into having to be
evasive.' "

If it hadn't been for the Hutton inquiry, they would still not know. "I
didn't talk about my job," he said. "If I was in the pub or somewhere social
I would never ask someone what they did for a living because it invites the
reciprocal question."

The job of an intelligence analyst is understood by few in Whitehall, let
alone the public at large. While MI6 agents gather the raw intelligence and
that is in turn written up in so-called CX reports, it is the analysts who
check its veracity. They use a range of sources to help them, other secret
intelligence, but they also use media reports from around the globe,
textbooks and sheer experience.

"Our major job as analysts was to review what's come in. It's a bit like
triage in the medical sense really; things come in, you have to scan them
and then you have to put them in order of priority to deal with. This
patient is about to die ­ we'd better get him on the table and these can
wait, that sort of thing. That is a considerable art. You very often felt as
if you were flying by the seat of your pants because there's so much
information coming in, so much to deal with, judgements about how to
prioritise it, each analyst is doing it in his own little team every day.

"It's not a sexy part of the process, is it? It's not James Bond, it's the
backroom boys, it's the boys down in the engine room with the oily rag if
you like."

But in September 2002, it was the boys with the oily rags who nearly threw a
spanner in the works of the dossier's now notorious claim that Iraq's
military was able to deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45
minutes of an order.

While Dr Jones was on holiday, Tony Blair had announced that he would
publish a dossier giving unprecedented details of British intelligence on
the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's supposedly deadly arsenal.

When he returned from leave, Dr Jones was already thinking about taking
early retirement. But such thoughts were quickly put aside when he
discovered that his staff had made repeated but unsuccessful attempts to
modify sections of the dossier. As he toured his section, staff came up to
him. "They said: 'We've been doing nothing much other than this dossier and
there are real problems'." He looked at the claims himself and agreed.

He wrote a memo raising concerns about the dossier and mentioning two key
claims: the 45-minute claim and another that Iraq was continuing to produce
chemical weapons.

Acutely aware that parts of the DIS had been criticised in the Scott inquiry
into arms to Iraq, he was determined to ensure that it would not suffer the
same fate over the dossier. But his comments failed to influence his boss
and the dossier went out. As a result, it lacked the approval of the
Government's most senior expert on WMD intelligence.

Rumour in the DIS had been bubbling under about the pressure and influence
of Downing Street in the dossier drafting.

Dr Jones treated talk about the involvement of No 10 as "not much more than
gossip". He insists he had no evidence to disagree with Lord Hutton's
finding that Mr Campbell had done nothing improper in his handling of the
dossier.

But as the newspapers screamed in their headlines "45 minutes from attack"
(Evening Standard) or "45 minutes from doom" (The Sun), he shared with his
colleagues a wry amusement about the prominence given to the claim that he
had explicitly warned his bosses about. "That Alastair Campbell's bloody
good at his job, isn't he?" he said to colleagues.

The dossier soon receded from public attention and Dr Jones took early
retirement in January. He began to move away from the daily pressure and
strain of protecting the secrets that he carried in his head. Yet the
process of disengaging his mind from the world of Whitehall and its secrets
was to get much harder as the year progressed. In June, the failure to find
WMD in Iraq stimulated parliamentary inquiries and the whole David Kelly
affair.

Dr Jones did not hear Andrew Gilligan's 29 May broadcast but found out about
it in other news reports that day. The Gilligan claims made him sit up and
take notice. Nevertheless he had no idea that it had anything to do with him
or anyone he knew.

But the fact was that, while Dr Kelly was reporting second-hand the concerns
of the DIS, Dr Jones was the man formally expressing them. "That we had
concerns within the DIS wasn't a secret," he said.

His letter's dramatic impact on the first day of the Hutton inquiry was the
point when Dr Jones first realised that he might have to give evidence.

When Lord Hutton did call him, he made clear he was happy to accept
witnesses giving evidence unidentified. But after years working in
conditions of utmost secrecy, Dr Jones now considered the prospect of
appearing in public.

He was "very conscious" of Dr Kelly's difficult appearance before the
Foreign Affairs Committee and the fact that journalists had camped outside
the scientist's home.

But when he and his wife sat down to discuss it, they concluded that the
best way to avoid being hunted by the media was to appear in public. "Our
primary reasoning was that part of the story was 'Here is this mystery man'.
And I said no, I will go out and appear as me," Dr Jones said. "I'm now
retired. I've not done sensitive things like the guys from MI6 have. The
other factor was I thought that decision was coincident with what was trying
to be achieved in terms of transparency."

Yet he was aware of the strain the whole thing would put on his health. He
had had a heart bypass in 1998.

"One of the first things I did was go to my GP and said, 'Look, is this
something I should be doing?' and he said my condition is stable and under
control. He said, 'If you, at any point, feel under stress, walk away from
it and give them this letter.' I carried that throughout."

Dr Jones is keen to counter the common perception that he was a confident
and determined whistleblower. Instead, he was reticent and nervous. After
all, he was, as he put it, "being drawn out from behind the curtain of
secrecy where I had spent most of my professional life".

And when he gave evidence from the Hutton witness box, he weighed each word
just as he had done every time he analysed a piece of intelligence. His
sentences were full of caveats, qualifications, sub-clauses. The difference
between saying intelligence "indicates" or "shows" can be the difference
between life and death.

Nevertheless, he was upset when loyalist Labour MPs appeared determined to
belittle his evidence by claiming that he was some kind of pedant, a mere
"technical" type. Eric Joyce, the MP for Falkirk West, appeared on Newsnight
to say just that. Dr Jones said: "You get angry. My wife would have
throttled him."

Mrs Jones agreed. "They say he's the oily garage mechanic. But it's like
going to a garage and the mechanic saying, 'Sorry, your brakes are faulty',
only to find the office accounts manager coming in to say, 'Don't worry,
your car's fine, you can drive it away.' Who would you rather believe?"

It is important to stress that Dr Jones is full of praise for the way Tony
Blair has seized on the issue of nuclear, chemical and biological
proliferation. "I think he is one of the very few world leaders who has
really grasped this issue," Dr Jones said. "He uses a broad brush in using
the term WMD but I really do think it is probably, as he says, the security
concern of at least this part of the 21st century."

He is also wary of the dangers posed by inquiries such as that led by Lord
Butler. "There is an enormous potential for this inquiry over the period for
which it is operating to absolute cripple the ability to analyse
intelligence on WMD during what seems like a very critical period," he said.
"These guys are going to be pressed enormously to come up with the
information that the inquiry needs. The only guys who can do it are the guys
at the sharp end, pursuing these very important issues on Libya, on Iran and
North Korea."

But while he was full of praise for colleagues in the DIS, MI6 and GCHQ, he
was keen to emphasise that there are limits to what intelligence can provide
and those limits must be understood by the decision-makers.

"The other issue is of WMD itself ­ it still sticks in my craw, that phrase,
I want to spit it out. It's a lousy term. It causes all sorts of problems."

Moreover, almost everything to do with WMD is highly technical and
scientists are crucial to the intelligence effort. The danger is that
failure by successive governments to fund the scientific analysts is putting
that work in jeopardy.

Dr Jones, who will be called by the Butler inquiry, said he wanted to make
it "absolutely clear" that he made no comment about whether it was right to
go to war. But the case based on WMD was flawed and misleading. "There were
problems with the case that was made in terms of WMD, but I don't think it
is reasonable to say simply that that made it wrong. Like everyone else, I
have broader opinions on politics and things that I don't know about. But I
do know about WMD."