The Report of the Iraq Inquiry

634. The JIC Assessment of 9 September stated:

“Iraq has probably dispersed its special weapons, including its CBW weapons.

Intelligence also indicates that chemical and biological munitions could be with

military units and ready for firing within 20-45 minutes.”347

635. In response to a series of questions intended to elicit whether the “assessors”

should have had regard to the fact that they did not know to which munitions the report

referred, where they were, and that the information was second-hand, albeit relayed

through a reliable intermediary, Mr Scarlett replied:

“You are talking as if the assessors … operate in a vacuum. They do not. They are

assessing individual reports against the background of their knowledge. This was

a point of precision, to an assessment which already existed about the capability

of the Iraqi armed forces in this area.”348

636. Mr Scarlett subsequently stated: “The sentence in the [JIC] Assessment was

referring to the intelligence report … It was not looking at it in the wider context.”

That was “taken into account in the main body of the text” but the judgement in

the Executive Summary “was a different point”; it did “not just confine itself to one

intelligence report”.

637. The Iraq Inquiry wrote to Air Chief Marshal Sir Joe French, Mr Cragg, and

Dr Roper asking a number of specific questions about whether they had seen or been

briefed on the report of 11 September, and with whom they had discussed the issues

that arose.

638. In his statement, ACM French confirmed that he had seen the 11 September

report but he “did not receive any further briefing on it”.349 He had not discussed the

distribution of the report with either Mr Cragg or Dr Roper and could not “remember

receiving any advice or briefing” on it from them. Nor could he “remember detail of

the discussion” at any JIC meeting.

639. Asked whether he had asked for the report to be made available to the relevant

experts in the DIS for their assessment, ACM French wrote:

“Given the way the compilation of the dossier was being handled with the

involvement of the specialists/experts from across the intelligence community,

including the DIS, I would have expected them to [be] given the background to

this intelligence if not access to the report itself. This was a regular occurrence

where intelligence initially on limited distribution would be shared at the experts

347 JIC Assessment, 9 September 2002, ‘Iraqi Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons –

Possible Scenarios’.

348 The National Archives, 28 January 2004, Report of the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the

Death of Dr David Kelly [“The Hutton Report”], paragraph 214.

349 Statement, 9 June 2011.

236