The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
33.
Mr Chaplin
rejected the suggestion that he had made no attempt to fill gaps
in
the UK’s
knowledge base on Iraq, highlighting the multiple sources of
information that
were
available.
34.
Mr Simon Webb,
Ministry of Defence (MOD) Policy Director from 2001 to
2004,
told the
Inquiry he felt he had a very good feel for Iraq’s military
capability, but not
for what
was happening within Saddam Hussein’s administration, the state of
Iraq’s
infrastructure,
or the mood of the population in the South:
“If we had
thought that we were going to play a big role in reconstruction,
and
we’d been
asked to gather that information, I suspect we could have had
a
35.
Mr Webb agreed
that the Government could have made more use of “open
source”
reporting
and analysis, including from academia, think-tanks and
NGOs.
36.
In early
February 2003, the Government established the Iraq Planning Unit
(IPU)
to focus on
post-conflict Iraq. The IPU was an inter-departmental
(FCO/MOD/DFID)
unit, based
in the FCO and headed by a former member of MED. In the FCO, the
IPU
reported to
the Director Middle East and North Africa.
37.
The origin and
purpose of the IPU are addressed in more detail in Section
6.5.
38.
Mr Dominick
Chilcott, Head of the IPU from February to June 2003, told the
Inquiry
there was
“a lot of expertise” he could draw on, in particular from FCO RA,
Iraqi exiles
and FCO
posts in the region.24
39.
The JIC was
(and continues to be) responsible for:
“...
providing Ministers and senior officials with co-ordinated
intelligence
assessments
on a range of issues of immediate and long-range importance
to
national
interests, primarily in the fields of security, defence and foreign
affairs.”25
40.
The JIC is
supported by Assessments Staff analysts seconded to the Cabinet
Office
from other
departments. The Assessments Staff’s draft assessments were (and
still
are)
subject to formal inter-departmental scrutiny and challenge in
Current Intelligence
Groups
(CIGs), which bring together working-level experts from a range of
government
departments
and the intelligence agencies. In the case of Iraq between 2001and
2003,
the CIG
brought together the desk-level experts from the FCO (including MED
and RA),
23
Private
hearing, 23 June 2010, pages 79-81.
24
Public
hearing, 8 December 2009, page 50.
25
Cabinet
Office, National
Intelligence Machinery, November
2010, pages 23-24.
120