The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
751.
Asked whether,
given that Mr Blair’s Foreword provided an interpretation of
the
evidence in
the dossier and other interpretations could have been made of the
same
evidence,
the interpretation and assessment should have been issued in
separate
documents,
Sir John Scarlett replied:
“Maybe,
yes. But I can’t honestly say that that point was in my mind and I
was
focused on
that issue or that risk at the time. If I had been, then I would
have
752.
Sir David
Omand, who had taken up his post as the Security and
Intelligence
Co‑ordinator
on 3 September 2002, told the Inquiry that his memory was that he
“didn’t
pay that
much attention to this [the Foreword] … which was a
mistake”.419
753.
Asked whether
the phrase “beyond doubt” had rung any “alarm bells”, Sir
David
replied
that he had:
“… totally
failed to spot the potential problem that would arise through the
disjunction
between the
statement of case being directly associated with the text of the
dossier.
We [the
JIC] were commenting on this as a document the Prime Minister was
going
to produce
under his own name, and he was convinced. So his saying so was
not
really very
exceptional.”
754.
The ISC report
in September 2003 stated that Mr Straw, Mr Blunkett,
the
Home Secretary,
and Mr Hoon had had the opportunity to comment on an
early draft
of the
dossier, but only Mr Straw did so.420
Private
Offices decided that the draft
“did not require
… the personal attention” of Mr Brown or Ms Short. The draft
was
also sent
to Ms Patricia Hewitt, the Trade and Industry Secretary. It
was not sent
to Mr John
Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister.
755.
The briefing
for Ministers produced by the Communications and Information
Centre
(CIC) on 24
September 2002 drew attention to the statements in Mr Blair’s
Foreword
about the
threat posed by Saddam Hussein and the belief that the assessed
intelligence
had
“established beyond doubt” that he has “continued to produce
chemical and
biological
weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear
weapons, and that
he has been
able to extend the range of his ballistic missile
programmes”.421
It also
set
out the
list of judgements from the Executive Summary of the
dossier.
418
Public
hearing, 8 December 2009, page 66.
419
Public
hearing, 20 January 2010, page 22.
420
Intelligence
and Security Committee, Iraqi
Weapons of Mass Destruction – Intelligence and
Assessments,
September 2003, Cm5972, paragraph 76.
421
Briefing
CIC, 24 September 2002, ‘CIC Ministerial Briefing’.
260