4.2 |
Iraq WMD assessments, July to September 2002
“Experienced
readers would have seen these warnings in the original
JIC
Assessments
and taken them into account … But the public … would not
have
known … The
dossier did include a first chapter on the role of intelligence,
as
an
introduction for the lay reader. But rather than illuminating the
limitations of
intelligence
… the language of this Chapter may have had the opposite effect
…
Readers
may, for example have read language in the dossier as implying that
there
was fuller
and firmer intelligence behind the judgements than was the case:
our
view,
having reviewed all the material, is that judgements in the dossier
went to
(although
not beyond) the outer limits of the intelligence
available.”353
664.
The Butler
Report also stated that the dossier:
“… did not
refer explicitly to the JIC’s uncertainty about the size of stocks
of sarin
and VX
precursors, and hence Iraq’s ability to produce these agents. Nor
did it, like
the JIC
Assessments, refer explicitly to the lack of intelligence on the
location of
facilities
for producing biological and chemical agent, although it did draw
attention
to the
difficulty of assessing the use made of ‘dual-use’
facilities.”354
665.
The Butler
Report concluded that: “Partly because
of inherent difficulties”,
including
the complications created by dual-use programmes, the JIC
assessments of
Iraq’s
chemical and biological programmes were “less
assured” than the
assessments
of Iraq’s
nuclear capabilities, and that they:
“… tended
to be over cautious and in some areas worst case. Where there
was
a balance
of inference to be drawn, it tended to go in the direction of
inferring the
existence
of banned weapons programmes. Assessments were as a
consequence
less
complete, especially in their considerations of alternative
hypotheses, and used
a different
burden of proof.”355
666.
The Butler
Report stated:
“The
intelligence community will have had in mind that Iraq had not
only
owned but
used its chemical weapons in the past. It will inevitably have
been
influenced
by the way in which the Iraqi regime was engaged in a
sustained
programme to
try to deceive United Nations inspectors and to
conceal from
them
evidence of its prohibited programmes. Furthermore, because SIS did
not have
agents with
first-hand knowledge of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological or
ballistic
missile
programmes, most of the
intelligence reports on which assessments
were being
made were inferential. The Assessments Staff and JIC
were
353
Review of
Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction [“The
Butler Report”], 14 July 2004, HC 898,
paragraphs
330-331.
354
Review of
Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction [“The
Butler Report”], 14 July 2004, HC 898,
paragraph
337.
355
Review of
Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction [“The
Butler Report”], 14 July 2004, HC 898,
paragraph
454.
241