4.2 |
Iraq WMD assessments, July to September 2002
218.
Mr Williams
produced a draft executive summary for the dossier
over
the weekend
of 7 to 8 September.
219.
Mr Williams
wrote to Mr Campbell on 6 September saying that he had
spoken
to Mr Straw
and Sir Michael Jay about the “the media-friendly editorial job
that will need
to be done
when John Scarlett and his team have produced the
dossier”.102
They
were
“happy” for
him “to devote whatever time necessary” to work on the draft and he
would
be able to
work full time on it (from the week beginning 16
September).
220.
Mr Williams
added that it would, in his view, “be good for the Foreign Office
if
we could do
it that way”. He also offered a press officer with a “very good eye
for the
kind of
material which works with the media”, to work with Mr Scarlett
and his team
“on producing
the right kind of material”.
221.
In his
statement for the Inquiry, Mr Williams wrote that at
Mr Campbell’s meeting
on 5
September:
“It was
clear that no decision had been taken about who would produce the
dossier.
John
Scarlett said that intelligence had no experience of writing
documents for
publication
and would need the help of a ‘golden pen’. He turned to me.
Alastair
Campbell
did not take this up. At the end of the meeting I asked Alastair
what
his
intention was. He said he was inclined to give the task to the
No.10 Strategic
Communications
Unit.
“When I
reported this … to the Foreign Secretary and Michael Jay, they were
clear
that the
dossier must be produced by the Foreign Office, not No.10, and I
should
222.
Mr Williams
added that he was “still sceptical of the whole idea”, but the
“dossier
was going
to happen”. He was about to accompany Mr Straw to the UN
General
Assembly in
New York, so he asked Mr Scarlett:
“… if he
would like to give me the material he intended to use, so that I
could show
him how to
produce it in publishable form. I did this over the weekend. It was
a
routine job
of taking the strongest points and putting them in an executive
summary,
while
taking care to reflect their content accurately, and introducing
them with the
sort of
language that was familiar from speeches and interviews given by …
[Mr Blair
and
Mr Straw].”
223.
Mr Williams
stated that the “result was underwhelming”, that there was
“nothing
much new”,
and that his “feeling that this was not a good idea
persisted”.104
He
had
been
“relieved” when he heard that No.10 had decided that
Mr Scarlett would write
the dossier.
102
Minute
Williams [John] to Campbell, 6 September 2002,
[untitled].
103
Statement,
December 2010, paragraphs 16-17.
104
Statement,
December 2010, paragraph 17.
153