The Report of the Iraq Inquiry

prevailed with concern about force protection primary. The work of XTF-75 was

therefore aimed at discovery of possible WMD locations (to eliminate a threat), not

the compilation of evidence to build a picture of what happened to the weapons

and programs.

“This early approach, perhaps logical if the goal was simply to find hidden weapons,

undermined the subsequent approach of piecing together the evidence of the Iraqi

WMD programs such as they existed. In fact, combined with the chaos of the war

and the widespread looting in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, it resulted in

the loss of a great amount of potentially very valuable information and material for

constructing a full picture of Iraqi WMD capabilities. Sites were looted. Documents

were either ignored or collected haphazardly or burned by either the Regime or

Coalition forces.”62

130. In his memoir, Mr George Tenet, the US Director of Central Intelligence (DCI),

wrote that a lot of time had been lost by the time the ISG was established:

“… the Iraqis had been deliberately destroying records … government files were

being seized by the truckload by groups such as the Iraqi National Congress …

raising questions about the validity of any information that might later be discovered

in these documents”.63

131. Lieutenant General Sir Robert Fry, Deputy Chief of Joint Operations during the

invasion, told the Inquiry:

“We certainly had special processes: Sensitive site exploitation … and as the

conventional advance went on there were a series of sites that were pre-identified

that were then searched for evidence of WMD.”64

132. Asked what proportion of the military operation was geared to finding WMD,

Lt Gen Fry said:

“It was small … subordinate to decisive manoeuvre. Getting to Baghdad, winning the

conventional phase was what it was all about and this was very much a subtext, but

an important subtext.”65

133. Sir Richard Dearlove told the Inquiry:

“I think that some of us expected that there would be some finds relatively quickly,

you know, whilst the trail was still hot. So it was very frustrating, in the early

weeks after the military conflict finished, when there was absolutely no progress

made at all.

62 Central Intelligence Agency, 30 September 2004, The Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to

the DCI on Iraq’s WMD.

63 Tenet G & Harlow B. At the Centre of the Storm: My Years at the CIA. HarperPress, 2007.

64 Public hearing, 16 December 2009, page 69.

65 Public hearing, 16 December 2009, page 68.

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