4.4 | The
search for WMD
“What we
hoped was that maybe a military unit would run into something. But
I also
remember
the figure for the number of unguarded Iraqi ordnance dumps across
Iraq,
and
strictly speaking, all of those should have been inspected, but it
was completely
134.
SIS4 told the
Inquiry what he had expected to be found when the search
began:
“It seemed
to me that we had to get a fire blanket over the proliferation
hazards, and
very
quickly indeed …
“Secondly,
while not expecting gleaming arrays of kit to be found, just
curiosity
meant that
we longed to get in there and find out what we had been tinkering
with.
“Lastly,
the Whitehall political question, ‘Well, SIS, you have been party
to this high
tension
pursuit of WMD. Where is it then?’
“So the
need to orchestrate immediate follow-up inside Iraq on all that we
knew, all
the leads,
seemed to me to be very, very, very important. I was concerned that
the
lead on
this was going to MOD and in America, and my anxieties were borne
out by
what
happened. There were ammo dumps in Iraq covering square kilometres
… It
was a huge
task, and it needed very, very skilful and dynamic generalship to
run the
follow-up.
I’m afraid that didn’t happen.”67
135.
Asked whether
SIS had a plan to deal with the situation, SIS4 said that
he
recognised:
“… it
wouldn’t be up to us. We didn’t have the staff. We didn’t have the
authority. But
I did make
the point repeatedly in conversations with people in Whitehall,
particularly
with the
military, that this needed gripping. The plan needed to be written,
and
command and
control put in place to make sure the plan was
implemented.
…
“Movement
inside Iraq was very tightly controlled by the military. People
were being
arrested.
My memory is that we did try to get access, but it was very muddled
…
We put
people on the ground quite quickly to be there to follow things up,
but I don’t
recall any
good coming out of it. At this time, of course, the military were
on the
ground in
Iraq. Force protection and military requirements, operational
requirements
136.
SIS4 expressed
surprise at the relative lack of concern about WMD after
the
military
operation ended: “deployments remained, things were put in place,
but they
weren’t
being driven from the very top”.69
66
Private
hearing, 13 July 2010, page 18.
67
Private
hearing, [undated], Part 2, page 21.
68
Private
hearing, [undated], Part 2, pages 21-22.
69
Private
hearing, [undated], Part 2, page 25.
451