The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
178.
The Chairman
of the JIC is “responsible for the broad supervision of the
work
of the JIC”
and “specifically charged with ensuring that the Committee’s
warning
and monitoring
role” was “discharged effectively”. He also has direct access to
the
Prime Minister.
179.
Sir John
Scarlett told the Inquiry that the JIC was designed to be at the
interface
between
intelligence and policy.107
The
Chairman of the JIC played a key role:
“… to
represent the views, which are very thoroughly considered, of the
JIC itself.
He doesn’t
have a separate status, separate from the Committee itself. He
carries
his
authority, because he is carrying the authority of the Committee
and he is
representing
those views.”
180.
Sir John
Scarlett told the Inquiry that he was “answerable” to Sir David
Omand “for
the
efficient functioning of the Committee and the Secretariat”, but he
was “responsible
for the
presentation of intelligence assessment to
Government”.108
181.
The JIC is
supported by the Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO), including
the
Assessments
Staff, comprising analysts seconded to the Cabinet Office from
other
departments.
The JIO is “responsible for drafting assessments of situations and
issues
of current
concern”, taking “into account all sources of information,
including intelligence
reports
produced by the Agencies, diplomatic reporting and media
reports”.
182.
The
Assessments Staff’s draft Assessments are subject to formal
inter-
departmental
scrutiny and challenge in Current Intelligence Groups (CIGs),
which
bring
together working-level experts from a range of government
departments and the
intelligence
agencies. In the case of Iraq between 2001 and 2003, the CIG
brought
together
the desk-level experts from the FCO (including MED and RA), MOD
(including
DIS), the
Cabinet Office and the intelligence agencies, and any other
department with
an interest
in the issue being considered.
183.
The JIC’s
terms of reference from 2001 to 2005 included responsibilities
to:
•
“monitor
and give early warning of the development of direct or indirect
foreign
threats to
British interest, whether political, military or
economic”;
•
“on the
basis of available information, to assess events and situations
relating to
external
affairs, defence, terrorism, major international criminal activity,
scientific,
technical
and international economic matters”;
•
“keep under
review threats to security at home and overseas and to deal
with
such
security problems as may be referred to it”;
•
“bring to
the attention of Ministers and departments, as
appropriate,
assessments
that appear to require operational, planning or policy
action”:
107
Public
hearing, 8 December 2009, page 12.
108
Public
hearing, 8 December 2009, page 4.
296