The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
496.
Mr Wood
told Mr Scarlett on 25 September that President Bush’s
critics were:
“… primed
to portray the Kay Report as more bad news from Iraq for
the
Administration.
Leaks will get worse next week when the Report is circulated
…
The media
focus will inevitably be on the failure to find weapons. The more
of
Kay’s
Report is in the public domain, the less freedom critics will have
to engage in
inaccurate
speculation.
“There may
be more bad news round the corner in Congress, where … the
Senate
Intelligence
Committee may be coming to the conclusion that the judgements on
Iraq
WMD in the
US National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002 were not
justified by
the raw
intelligence.”274
497.
SIS3 responded
to No.10’s request [for additional material needed before
the
publication
of the ISG Interim Report] on 26 September. SIS
recognised:
“… the need
to bolster Kay’s Interim Report on publication but … the release of
any
of our
material on the Iraqi ballistic missile programme into the public
domain would
give us
severe difficulty. This is a matter not just of source protection
in relation to
individual
items, but of SIS being perceived by Iraqis and others to have
received
material in
confidence and then been involved in releasing it in raw form to
the
press. This
could damage SIS’s reputation and make it even harder, in
already
adverse
circumstances, to induce Iraqis to reveal the hard core secrets of
the former
regime’s
WMD programmes.”275
498.
On
29 September, Mr Wood reported that:
“… despite
pressing hard … we have not been able to get any further clarity
from
the NSC or
CIA on what the Administration plan to make publicly available
of
David Kay’s
Report or of his testimony to Congress”.276
499.
Mr Wood
explained that the Iraq WMD story was “now running full-bore in the
US
media”.
Democratic sources in Congress had leaked a letter from the House
Intelligence
Committee
to Mr Tenet arguing that the judgements on Iraqi WMD in the US
National
Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) of October 2002 were based on outdated, fragmentary
and
circumstantial
evidence. Mr Wood added that “the media … understand that this
is
something
of a bombshell, and will not let this one drop.”
500.
On
30 September, Mr Miller reported that the classified
Interim Report would
be handed
to the UK later that day. US intentions on handling the
unclassified text
274
Letter Wood
to Scarlett, 25 September 2003, ‘Iraq WMD: the Mood in
Washington’.
275
Letter SIS3
to Cannon, 26 September 2003, ‘ISG: Material Need [sic] Ahead
of Publication’.
276
Letter Wood
to Scarlett, 29 September 2003, ‘Iraq WMD: Latest
Developments, 29 September’.
277
Minute
Miller to Scarlett, 30 September 2003, ‘ISG interim
report’.
524