2 |
Decision-making within government
79.
Sir David
added that when, in crises, time was very short, there was a
“tendency”,
if a
message was being passed through an Agency, for that Agency to
deliver it.49
80.
Asked if the
Agencies were being drawn into giving policy advice without
necessarily
having the
experience fully to occupy that role, Sir David responded that they
did
“give more
policy advice than in the past”.50
Because of
the way the process had
changed
they had “found themselves almost being sucked into giving that
advice
from time
to time”. They had found themselves more in a “policy influencing
role,
than was traditional”.
81.
Asked for the
perspective from No.10 on whether SIS had oversold what it
could
deliver,
Sir David Manning told the Inquiry: “I can only say, looking back …
that the fact
was the
intelligence does feel as though it delivered more than it actually
did. I think
quite
quickly after the invasion it became clear that some of them felt
that too.”51
82.
In relation to
Sir Richard Dearlove’s role, Sir David Omand said
that:
“SIS were
very much in the inner council. They had proved their worth to the
Prime
Minister in
a number of really very, very valuable pieces of work, not just
delivering
intelligence,
but … conducting back channel diplomacy, and that, I’m sure
weighed
heavily on
the Prime Minister’s calculation that, ‘These are people I should
be
listening
to.’
…
“… it is
quite tempting to comment if you are the confidant of the Prime
Minister –
and you can
go back to Churchill and his intelligence advisers … to find this
in the
role of the
then Chief of the SIS in Churchill’s inner council. It is quite
tempting to go
over that
line and start expressing an opinion on the policy itself. I wasn’t
there to
know if
that happened … I’m making a more general point.”52
“I think
there were certainly people in the intelligence community, and
there are still
some, who
believe that something will turn up in Syria, and I am certainly
not going
to break my
own rules and say categorically that won’t happen. We could all
still be
surprised.
But there was a sense in which, because of past successes – very,
very
considerable
successes supporting this government, that SIS overpromised
and
underdelivered,
and when that became clear that the intelligence was very hard
to
find … they
really were having to bust a gut to generate the
intelligence.
“I think
the Butler Committee really uncovered that the tradecraft at that
point
wasn’t as
good as it should have been for validation… that’s one of the
background
49
Private
hearing, 24 June 2010, page 46.
50
Private
hearing, 24 June 2010, pages 46-47.
51
Private
hearing, 24 June 2010, pages 120-121.
52
Public
hearing, 20 January 2010, pages 61-62.
281