The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
427.
Sir Richard
Dearlove told the Inquiry that “it would have been very rare” for
him
to have
talked to Ministers or Mr Blair “about our source
base”.207
428.
Asked about
Mr Blair’s reaction, Sir Richard told the Inquiry that Sir
David Manning
had asked
him to give Mr Blair a briefing “which would give him
[Mr Blair] more of a
flavour for
what was actually going on on the ground”.208
Mr Blair
“had an appetite for
that sort
of briefing which was a pretty rare event”, and had had a “fair
amount of general
discussion”
with SIS9 “about the difficulties and problems we were
facing”.
429.
Asked whether,
as some witnesses had suggested, he had been
precipitate
in going
to Ministers with the report so quickly, Sir Richard
replied:
“I think in
the circumstances, I don’t agree … because if you issue a report
like that
in the
middle of a crisis, you’re going to get a phone call from a
Ministerial office
within a
short period of time.”209
430.
Sir Richard
also stated that in the circumstances it would have been
“impossible”
not to
issue the report; SIS could not “sit on something as potentially
important”
431.
The SIS
report of 11 September was used by Mr Scarlett and
Mr Miller
in reaching
key judgements about Iraq’s chemical and biological
weapons
capabilities
included in the Government dossier published on 24
September.
432.
Specifically
it provided the assurance for the judgements that Iraq
had:
•
“continued
to produce chemical and biological agents”;
•
“military
plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons
…”
433.
The
judgements on Iraq’s production of chemical and biological
weapons
and the
circumstances in which they could be used became the baseline
for
subsequent
advice to Ministers and public statements on the threat posed by
Iraq.
434.
The Butler
Report concluded that the intelligence report (of 11 September) had
“a
major
effect on the certainty of the statements in the Government’s
dossier of September
2002 that
Iraq possessed and was producing chemical and biological
weapons”.211
435.
The Butler
Report added that the SIS report had provided “significant
assurance
to those
drafting the … dossier that active, current production of chemical
and biological
agent was
taking place”.212
207
Private
hearing, 16 June 2010, page 53.
208
Private
hearing, 13 July 2010, page 33.
209
Private
hearing, 13 July 2010, pages 34-35.
210
Private
hearing, 13 July 2010, page 35.
211
Review of
Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction [“The
Butler Report”], 14 July 2004, HC 898,
paragraph
401.
212
Review of
Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction [“The
Butler Report”], 14 July 2004, HC 898,
paragraph
405.
194