4.3 |
Iraq WMD assessments, October 2002 to March 2003
506.
The report of
11 September was used by Mr Scarlett and Mr Miller in
reaching
key
judgements about Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons
capabilities in the
Government
dossier published on 24 September.
507.
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
…”
508.
The way in
which the reporting was used in the preparation of the dossier and
the
decision
not to show it to the experts in the DIS is addressed in Section
4.2.
509.
The judgements
in the dossier 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.
510.
SIS issued a
second report from the same sourcing chain as the 11
September
report on
23 September.191
That stated
VX, sarin and soman had been produced at
Al‑Yarmuk,
and were loaded into a variety of “containers”, including “linked
hollow glass
spheres”.
The source commented that there had been “accelerated production of
CW
substances
at Al-Yarmuk for several years”.
511.
SIS described
the report as expanding and clarifying the intelligence in the
first
report, and
that it was “valuable intelligence”.
512.
The report was
sent to the same restricted group as the report on 11
September,
with the
addition of Mr Mark Bowman, Private Secretary to
Mr Gordon Brown, the
Chancellor
of the Exchequer.
513.
The Butler
Report stated that SIS had hopes that this source would become
a
major
asset.192
In
particular, the source had indicated to SIS that he would be able
to
provide
substantial and critical additional intelligence in the near
future.
514.
By December
2002, as set out earlier in this Section, doubts had emerged
within
SIS about
the reliability of the sourcing chain.
515.
SIS did not
inform No.10 or others that in mid-February 2003 the source had
been
revealed to
have been lying to SIS over a period of time and that it had
concluded by
early March
that there was no further material and that SIS would seek to make
direct
contact
with the sub-source.
516.
The reports
of 11 and 23 September were reissued to a wider
readership
on 3 April.
191
Report SIS,
23 September 2002, ‘Iraq Details of CW Production at Al
Yarmuk’.
192
Review of
Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction [“The
Butler Report”], 14 July 2004, HC 898,
paragraph
574.
381