The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
151.
Asked what had
led to his change of mind in early September and the
decision
to publish
the dossier, Mr Blair told the Hutton Inquiry:
“What
changed was really two things which came together. First … there
was
a tremendous
amount of information and evidence coming across my desk
as
to the weapons
of mass destruction and the programmes … that Saddam
had.
“There was
also a renewed sense of urgency, again, in the way that this was
being
publicly
debated …
“President
Bush and I had a telephone call towards the end of that [August]
break
and we
decided … we really had to confront this issue, devise our strategy
and get
on with it
and I took the view … that we really had to disclose what we knew
or as
much as we
could of what we knew.”65
152.
Mr Blair
added: “The aim of the dossier was to disclose the reason for our
concern
and the
reason why we believed this issue had to be
confronted.”
153.
Sir David
Manning told the Inquiry that Mr Blair:
“… wanted
to publish information as he saw it was because he thought it
was
important
that the public were as aware as possible of the pressures that he
had
seen coming
across his desk.”66
154.
Mr Campbell
told the Inquiry that the decision to bring forward the publication
of
the dossier
was a way of trying to calm the situation.67
Mr Blair
had wanted “to set out
for the
public, in as accessible a way as possible, the reasons why he had
become more
concerned”
about Iraq.
155.
In his memoir,
published in 2010, Mr Blair wrote:
“One other
rather fateful decision was taken at that time. Reasonably
enough,
people
wanted to see the evidence on Saddam and WMD. This evidence
was
contained
in intelligence. It was not practice, for obvious reasons, to
disclose
intelligence.
We decided we had to do it. Many times afterwards, I regretted
the
decision.
The ‘dossier’, as it was called, later became the subject of the
most vicious
recrimination
and condemnation. In reality, it was done because we could see
no
way of
refusing it, given the clamour for it. The very unprecedented
nature of it was,
however,
part of the problem. Both opponents and supporters of the war were
urging
us to share
with the public the evidence we had.”68
65
The Hutton
Inquiry, public hearing, 28 August 2003, pages 2-3.
66
Public
hearing, 30 November 2009, page 64.
67
Public
hearing, 12 January 2010, pages 66-67.
68
Blair
T. A
Journey.
Hutchinson, 2010.
142