The Report of the Iraq Inquiry

497. Reflecting concerns about source protection, the report was given a very limited

distribution to named senior officials.

498. The report did not make clear that SIS was not itself in contact with the source

whom it considered had direct access to Iraq’s programmes.

499. The detail of the reporting and Sir Richard Dearlove’s description of it in a

telephone call to Mr Scarlett on 11 September are set out in Section 4.2.

500. Sir Richard Dearlove briefed Mr Blair on the reporting on 12 September,

when he had:

“… underlined … the potential importance of the new source and what SIS

understood his access to be; but also said that the case was developmental and

that the source remained unproven.”185

501. SIS4 suggested that Mr Blair had already known about the intelligence before

the meeting between Mr Blair and Sir Richard Dearlove on 12 September, and that he

wanted to see the product.186

502. 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”.187

503. 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”.188 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”.

504. Asked whether 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.”189

505. 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”

as that.190

185 Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction [“The Butler Report”], 14 July 2004, HC 898,

paragraph 578.

186 Private hearing, Part 1, page 58.

187 Private hearing, 16 June 2010, page 53.

188 Private hearing, 13 July 2010, page 33.

189 Private hearing, 13 July 2010, pages 34-35.

190 Private hearing, 13 July 2010, page 35.

380