The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
692.
There were, of
course, other reasons why an insecure regime, convinced
that
past
inspections had been used for espionage and facing military attack,
would want to
limit the
conversations key personnel were having with foreigners while
military action
was threatened.
693.
Asked whether
the intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s strategy for dealing
with
inspections
reinforced the view that there really was something to hide, SIS1
told
the Inquiry:
“I think
they looked guilty as hell. In a way it’s a sort of spectacular
miscalculation,
and I think
it’s partly because of their paranoia about being open to hostile
scrutiny,
and partly
because they had stuff to hide, but not necessarily what the
inspectors
were
looking for. From military secrets to, as I mentioned before,
embargo breaking,
but on
things that would not have been prohibited as part of the
programmes.
“So there
was quite a lot of evidence of the unco-operative and mule-headed
and
crude
efforts to make the inspectors’ life more difficult.
Demonstrations, car crash,
you know,
traffic problems and heavy surveillance.
…
“Yes, and
it seemed to form part of a consistent picture, allowing for the
fact that
there was a
certain assumption in the first place about what that picture
was.”287
694.
From early
2003, the Government drew heavily on the intelligence
reporting
of Iraq’s
activities to deceive and obstruct the inspectors to illustrate
its
conclusion
that Iraq had no intention of complying with the obligations
imposed
in
resolution 1441.
695.
The
Government also emphasised the reliability of the
reporting.
696.
The briefing
provided by SIS1 for Mr Blair to use in his interview
on BBC’s
Breakfast with
Frost programme on
26 January was one instance. Much of the same
material
was used in the No.10 dossier published on 3 February.
697.
Mr Straw
set out similar arguments in his statement to the FAC on 4
March
in which he
referred to an “elaborate screen of concealment based on
intimidation
and deception”.
698.
In
conversations with key allies and public statements by both
Ministers and
senior
officials, including Sir Jeremy Greenstock’s presentations to the
Security Council
in February
and March 2003 and the visit by Sir David Manning and
Mr Scarlett to
Mexico and
Chile which are described briefly in this Section, the UK
emphasised that its
intelligence
on Iraq’s capabilities and intentions was reliable and well
sourced.
287
Private
hearing, 2010, page 56.
414