The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
517.
A minute of 2
April recorded that a SIS Requirements officer had been
telephoned
the
previous night about the two reports produced in September 2002.
Mr Scarlett had
asked
“about the reliability of the sourcing” and for a copy as he no
longer had access to
518.
The SIS
Requirements officer had given “only the briefest details (that
we
obtained
the material via another source, with whom we were no longer in
contact, and
that we
were still trying to contact the original source)”.
519.
The SIS
Requirements officer also wrote:
“Despite
the problems over the … sourcing chain, there could be some merit
in at
least
widening the extremely limited readership of these two reports. We
cannot (yet)
discount
their content and, topically … [the report of 11 September]
provides useful
support for
… [another report]. The case is no longer as sensitive and we
could
usefully
re-circulate the two reports, with some additional
commentary.”
520.
The SIS
Requirements officer provided a draft letter for SIS4 to send to
Mr Scarlett.
521.
Another SIS
Requirements officer commented that there had been “no public
use
of the
material; what it was used for was to give assurance to the
assessment in the
‘dossier’
that Iraq continued production of CW after 1998”. The DIS would
“welcome” the
downgrading
of the restricted marking on the reports and it would “need to see
these
reports
whenever a review of the Iraq WMD story is
commissioned”.194
522.
SIS4 wrote to
Mr Scarlett on 3 April 2003 providing copies of the two
reports of
11 and
23 September 2002.195
523.
The letter
stated that the reports were “not drawn upon for either the dossier
or for
the Prime
Minister’s subsequent statements. And of course it [the material]
post-dated
… [the JIC
Assessment of 9 September 2002, ‘Iraqi Use of Chemical and
Biological
Weapons –
Possible Scenarios’].” SIS4 also wrote that Sir Richard Dearlove
had briefed
Mr Blair:
“… on the
background to the case (and on what else we hoped it might deliver)
but
for speed
the reports were issued to other readers without a full briefing.
This was to
have
followed but, as there was no further reporting, we did not bother
you with this.”
“You may
therefore wish to know something of the background to the case.
The
material
came from an Iraqi sub-source who was working within the CW
programme
[via SIS
source]. We are still endeavouring to establish direct contact with
him [the
sub-source];
until we succeed in this we shall not be able to verify fully the
details
193
Minute SIS
Requirements officer, 2 April 2003, ‘JIC Chairman Enquiry:
[Codeword] CX’.
194
SIS record,
2 April 2003.
195
Letter SIS4
to Scarlett, 3 April 2003, ‘Reporting on CW Production in
Iraq’.
382