The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
514.
Mr Scarlett
discussed handling of the ISG Interim Report with
Mr Tenet,
Mr Stephen
Hadley (Deputy National Security Advisor) and others in
Washington
515.
Mr Scarlett
reiterated to all those he met:
“… the
extreme political sensitivity of the issues in London and the need
to bear
UK
political interests in mind, even when partisan and interagency
tensions in
Washington
were high.”
516.
Mr Wood
reported that Dr Kay had stated publicly that he would need six to
nine
months’
work before he could begin to draw firm conclusions.
517.
Mr Wood
also commented on the tensions between senior members of
the
US Administration
about the responsibility for inserting a reference to yellowcake
into
President
Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech, which provoked “public
warfare” and:
“… looming
over the horizon, the potentially much more serious matter of
the
Congressional
Oversight Committees concluding after detailed review that
the
entire
October 2002 NIE was flawed. The potential for renewed, and more
serious,
internecine
warfare is very clear.”
518.
In his memoir,
Mr Tenet wrote:
“Collectively,
Kay’s interim testimony was a damning portrait of deception
and
dissembling
… Yet in the resulting headlines, the press stressed only what
Kay
had
not
found. None
of it, however was the ‘smoking gun’ that would justify our
NIE
519.
On
5 October, Sir Nigel Sheinwald sent Dr Rice a Note written by
Mr Blair for
President
Bush about their common political interest in addressing the
problems related
to
Iraq.284
The Note
and the wider background of the deteriorating position in Iraq
are
addressed
in Section 9.2.
520.
In relation to
WMD, Mr Blair wrote that the failure to find “enough on WMD”
and the
losses to
terrorist attacks meant the public was led to doubt whether the
invasion had
been:
“… worth
it, or even worse is persuaded we misled them. And in the
international
community
there is a sense of Schadenfreude …
“We need a
coherent strategy to get us back on the high ground and get the
public,
at home and
abroad, to focus on the big picture.”
282
Letter Wood
to Scarlett, 3 October 2003, ‘Iraq WMD: Public handling in the
months ahead’.
283
Tenet G
& Harlow B. At the
Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA.
HarperPress, 2007.
284
Letter
Sheinwald to Rice, 5 October 2003, [untitled], attaching Note
[Blair to Bush].
528