The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
484.
Access to Dr
Kay’s text before its release remained a concern. The Interim
Report
was likely
to be presented to Mr Tenet that day and Mr Howard
was:
“… expected
to have access to (but not copies of) the Report on
Monday
[22 September]
in Washington, and possibly a chance on Tuesday to help draft
a
summary to
be made public …”
485.
In the
meantime, No.10 would continue to ask the White House for a copy of
the
Interim
Report.
486.
The meeting
concluded that the Government’s position with the media
should
be neither
to heighten expectations nor to take a negative line in advance:
“The
key
question
was whether the Report disclosed additional evidence that the
Saddam
regime had
breached UNSCRs.” Additional
material would be needed on areas
expected to
feature in the Interim Report as breaches of UNSCRs: “ballistic
missiles,
nuclear
programme, UAVs, botulism”. That material should be presented in a
“facts-
based,
forensic manner”.
487.
Mr Howard
read the Interim Report in Washington on
22 September.268
488.
On
24 September, Mr Howard reported to a meeting of
officials in London, chaired
by
Mr Miller, that the aim was “to complete the drafting process
by the end of the week.
A copy
of the full Report would be sent electronically to C.” It was
likely that Dr Kay
would brief
the US oversight Committees the following week in private session,
following
which a
very short public statement would be made, probably by Dr Kay and
the
Committee
Chairs.
489.
Mr Howard
understood that:
“The US
were keen that the approach in the three countries [UK, US and
Australia]
was broadly
in line; there was currently no intention in the US for the
Administration
to lead on
presenting it … The UK and Australian preference was for a
fuller
executive
summary to be produced which could be put in the public
domain.
One possibility
was to make public the summary section of Kay’s Report
perhaps
accompanied
by a note of Iraqi breaches of UN resolutions (being prepared
by
the ISG)
and evidence such as photographs of targeted locations and
destruction.
This
approach would need to be agreed by Tenet and the White
House.”269
490.
Mr Rycroft
told Mr Blair:
•
The draft
ISG Interim Report was “a good, thorough, professional piece of
work”,
which,
helpfully, included a table setting out all the breaches of UN
resolutions.
•
The section
on BW included information on the “vials etc”.
268
Email
Howard to Miller, 23 September 2003, ‘ISG: interim report:
discussions with CIA’.
269
Minute
Church to Miller, 24 September 2003, ‘Note of a Meeting to
Discuss ISG Report –
24 September
2003’.
522