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The Hutton Inquiry
Blair’s Iraq
Policy on the Line
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Lord
Hutton’s photo on the inquiry’s official website |
The
UK media usually dubs August the “silly season.” As normal politics winds
down, and everyone goes on holiday, the news is taken over by stories of the
weather and the bizarre antics of British eccentrics, while hardened hacks long
for September and the return of a serious news agenda. But this August, the UK
news was anything but “silly”. Instead, it has been dominated by the suicide
of Dr David Kelly - a senior British weapons expert who found himself at the
center of a vitriolic dispute between the government and the BBC - and the
subsequent inquiry into the cause of his suicide.
The
fate of Dr Kelly hit the headlines when his body was found in woodland near his
Oxfordshire home on July 18, where he had taken his own life with an overdose of
painkillers and by slashing his wrists. But Kelly was already headline news:
that week he had finally been “outed” as the source for a controversial
story written by journalist Andrew Gilligan for the BBC. Gilligan’s story,
broadcast in May, quoted an unnamed source that claimed that a government
dossier written in September 2002 to provide evidence on the threat posed by
Iraq had been “sexed up” by Blair’s inner circle, notably by his
communications director Alistair Campbell. In particular, Gilligan’s source
cast doubt on the accuracy of a critical claim in the dossier: that Iraq had
chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) capable of being
deployed within 45 minutes – a key claim in the government’s case for war.
Campbell
was already under investigation by the Parliamentary foreign affairs select
committee for his role in the build up to the war on Iraq. In what was widely
seen as an attempt to divert the committee from focusing on substantive
questions about the way the case for war was made last autumn, Campbell attacked
the BBC for publishing uncorroborated allegations about his role in drafting the
September 2002 dossier. While initially treated as a minor issue by the
committee and the BBC, Campbell refused to let it go, and the pressure to name
the source of the story became overwhelming. By July 09, the government was
insisting to the BBC they confirm that Kelly – renowned microbiologist and
advisor to the Ministry of Defence – was Gilligan’s source. On July 15, he
was called to appear before the foreign affairs select committee, and by July
18, he was dead, taking his own life under what appears to have been a situation
of intolerable stress.
The
results of the inquiry have been highly damaging for the government. |
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In
pursuing Gilligan, the BBC and Kelly, the Blair government appears to have
scored a remarkable own goal. As a result of Kelly’s suicide, the government
were under pressure to call an inquiry into the circumstances of his death. Led
by Lord Hutton, the inquiry began its proceedings on August 1. Despite its
narrow remit (to examine the circumstances that led to Kelly’s death), it has
called a wide range of witnesses and unearthed an extraordinary amount of
material on the circumstances in which the September dossier was written, as
well as on the events that led Kelly to take his own life. The results so far
have been highly damaging for the government, as substantive inconsistencies in
their policy of building the case against Iraq, as well as in the ways they
sought to cover this up by “naming and shaming” Kelly, have emerged.
Firstly,
the evidence uncovered by the inquiry has exposed the process by which the
September dossier was actually written. The decision to publish an existing
dossier on Iraqi WMD was taken in early September 2002 – as Bush began to pile
the pressure on the international community for “action” in Iraq. The
dossier appears to have gone through several rewrites before the final version
was presented to Parliament on September 24, 2002. John Scarlett, head of the
Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), has testified to the inquiry that he, and
not Number 10, was solely responsible for the final version of the dossier in
which the 45-minute claim was made. However, evidence has revealed that there
was a frantic amount of communication between Number 10 and the JIC on revising
the document from the decision to publish the dossier to its eventual
publication.
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Dr.
Kelly objected to some of the dossier’s content |
For example, the inquiry has seen emails from Campbell to Jonathon Powell, Tony
Blair’s chief of staff, dated September 5, 2002, urging that the first draft
of the report was not strong enough and needed substantial rewriting “as per
TB’s [Tony Blair’s] discussion” - to make the case against Iraq more
convincing.1 An email from a senior member of
the JIC to unnamed intelligence assessment staff written on September 11, 2002,
expresses an urgent need to find more intelligence on Iraqi WMD programmes in
order to give the dossier more weight.
This
desperate search for adequate evidence prompted a government advisor on Iraq’s
weapons programs, known only as Mr A., to testify to the inquiry that “the
perception was that the dossier had been round the houses several times in order
to try and find a form of words that would strengthen certain political
objectives.” This “political” activity was reflected in the differences
between the first draft and the final version of the dossier. In the original
document, the assessment of the threat from Iraqi WMD was that it was no greater
than it had been a year earlier, but in the revamped version, the introduction
– written by Campbell - asserted that Iraq presented a “current and
serious” threat and included the claim that Iraq could deploy chemical and
biological weapons within 45 minutes.2
Perhaps
crucial to the timing of this, Blair met George Bush on a weekend visit to Camp
David on September 8, 2002. Although vehemently denied by Blair, many believe
that the decision to attack Iraq was taken at this meeting. That same week the
US began putting together a military headquarters in the Gulf, and moving
thousands of tons of military equipment to the region. It is hard not to imagine
how the “political” pressures on the UK government to produce a convincing
dossier on the Iraqi threat included those imposed by the US administration.
Campbell
urged that the report needed rewriting to make the case against Iraq
more convincing. |
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It
has also emerged at the Hutton inquiry that the final draft of the dossier may
not have been presented for authorisation to the JIC in full, but was put into
the public domain on the authority of Scarlett alone, effectively preventing
those in the intelligence community and within government who were critical of
the dossier’s claims from voicing their views.
In
a genuinely whistle-blowing performance, Dr Brian Jones, a top scientific
weapons analyst in the Defense Intelligence Staff (DIS) has testified that
members of DIS had serious reservations about the quality of the intelligence
material used in the final dossier, most notably the 45-minute claim. Jones has
argued that the intelligence source for the 45-minute claim was not only single
(i.e. uncorroborated), but also secondary, whose purpose, he suggests, may have
been to “influence rather than inform” British intelligence services. Jones
has testified that he, and other members of DIS (including Dr Kelly) had serious
misgivings about the strength of the 45-minute claim, and would struggle to
place any of the chemical and biological weapons that Iraq may have possessed
into the category of WMD. According to Jones, members of the DIS raised a number
of specific concerns about the dossier on September 19, 2002, but none were
accepted by the JIC.
In
perhaps one of the most startling revelations, Scarlett also testified to the
inquiry that the 45-minute claim did not in fact refer to Iraqi missiles at all,
but to “battlefield mortar shells or small calibre weaponry.”3
Apart from the implications this raises about how far the intelligence presented
in the dossier was misleading, it also raises major questions about the UK’s Causus
Belli, since going to war because a country is capable of deploying such
munitions in the field within 45 minutes would raise serious problems under
international law.
The
role of government seems to have fared little better in the inquiry’s
examination of the process leading to Kelly’s suicide. In yet further twists,
it appears that both Geoff Hoon, the Defense Secretary, and Tony Blair directly
contradicted themselves in relation to their responsibility in naming Dr Kelly
as Gilligan’s source. While Hoon assured the inquiry that he had no role
whatsoever in the process that led to the Ministry of Defense naming Kelly,
Richard Taylor, Mr Hoon's special adviser, said that Hoon was in fact present at
a key Ministry of Defense meeting on July 9 where it was decided that Kelly’s
name should be given to the press.4
When Blair appeared before the inquiry he took full responsibility for the
decision to name Kelly himself. Yet, when the story of Kelly’s suicide first
broke, Blair was on a plane to Tokyo. As soon as he landed he faced the
world’s press and stated that he had no responsibility whatsoever for naming
Dr Kelly; a claim he has now directly undermined by the evidence he has
submitted to Hutton.
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Campbell,
accused of manipulating the truth to call for war
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Many
commentators believe that in narrowing the terms of the inquiry to focus only on
Kelly’s suicide, and by attempting to pass the buck on the key issues of
responsibility for both the September dossier and the naming of Kelly, the
government will get off relatively lightly when Hutton reaches his conclusions.
But the inquiry has uncovered too much substantive evidence that suggests that
not only had Kelly been hounded by the government in an attempt to pursue its
vendetta with the BBC, but that his original charge that the 45-minute claim in
the September dossier was embellished for political reasons was correct.
Latest
reports indicate that Bush and Blair are now attempting to back track on the
claim about Iraqi WMDs and offer entirely new explanations of why they went to
war in Iraq. The US-led Iraq Survey Group, sent out to Iraq in May to search for
WMDs, is soon expected to report that it has found no WMD hardware, nor even any
sign of active programs. As a result, the US administration is now saying war
was justified on the basis that it was clear Iraq had the capacity to restart a
WMD programme at any time. Blair meanwhile is now arguing that it is sufficient
to have achieved regime change in Iraq, because it will deliver democracy and
prosperity to the beleaguered country. This however is in direct contradiction
with his statement to the Commons on 18 March, the day MPs voted to endorse the
decision to go to war. Then Blair asserted, "I have never put the
justification for action as regime change."
Scarlett
testified that the 45-minute claim did not refer to Iraqi missiles,
but to “battlefield mortar shells or small calibre weaponry.” |
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As
the government’s capacity to contradict itself becomes ever more evident, it
is little wonder that only 6% of the British public now believe what Blair says.
If Hutton limits his judgments to those responsible for their role in Kelly’s
suicide, the calls for a full-scale inquiry into the reasons the UK went to war
with Iraq will become unstoppable. Now even more isolated than ever, Blair is in
an extremely difficult position. Unable to re-establish his political
credibility until there is accountability for the war in Iraq and why it was
fought, this credibility will become even harder to maintain if the truth -
half-glimpsed at the Hutton inquiry - fully comes to light.
Full
coverage of the Hutton Inquiry and original documents and testimonies can be
found at:
The Guardian Special Report: The
Hutton Inquiry
and: The
Hutton Inquiry website.
Kate
Prendergast is a British freelance researcher and journalist with a
Particular interest in African politics and development.
1-
For all original documents cited, go to: Guardian Unlimited’s David
Kelly.
2-
MacAskill, Ewen. “Two
weeks that pushed Britain to war.” The Guardian, August 20, 2003
3-
Jeffery, Simon. “John
Scarlett.” The Guardian, August 29, 2003.
4-
Norton-Taylor, Richard and Vikram Dodd. “Aide
exposes Hoon's role in naming of Kelly.” The Guardian, September 5, 2003.
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