6.4 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, mid-2001
to January 2003
MOD
(including the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS)), Cabinet Office
and the intelligence
agencies,
and any other department with an interest in the issue being
considered.
41.
The JIC agrees
most assessments before they are sent to Ministers and
senior
officials,
although some papers, including urgent updates on developing
issues, are
issued
under the authority of the Chief of the Assessments
Staff.
42.
The current
JIC Terms of Reference make clear that it is expected to draw
on
“secret
intelligence, diplomatic reporting and open source
material”.26
43.
Iraq was
regularly considered by the JIC in 2000 and 2001, with the focus
on
weapons of
mass destruction (WMD), sanctions and the implications of the
No-Fly
44.
Sir John
Scarlett, JIC Chairman from 2001 to 2004, considered that Iraq had
been
one of the
top priorities for the JIC for most of his time as
Chairman.28
45.
Sir John told
the Inquiry that, with the limited resources available to
the
Assessments
Staff, the breakdown, decay and decrepitude of Iraq’s civilian
infrastructure
was “not a
natural intelligence target”.29
He
added:
“That kind
of information and that kind of understanding of the fragility of
the
structures
of the State … could have been … presented or understood from a
whole
range of
sources, not necessarily from intelligence.”
46.
Sir John later
told the Inquiry that the JIC had not been asked to look at Iraqi
civilian
infrastructure
and institutions, other than Saddam Hussein’s power
structures:
“If we had
been, I think almost certainly my response would be: that’s not for
us.
Why should
that be an intelligence issue? I wouldn’t quite be able to
understand
how
intelligence would help. I would see it as fundamentally something
which in the
first
instance advice would need to come from the Foreign Office … Of
course, if we
had been
asked, we would have said can you identify or can we between us
work
out what
would be particularly susceptible to an intelligence view or
consideration?
And
I think it would have been quite narrow. I don’t quite see how
secret intelligence
would have
particularly helped.”30
47.
Mr Julian
Miller, Chief of the Assessments Staff from 2001 to 2003, told the
Inquiry
that
intelligence available to the JIC gave some peripheral indications
on issues such as
Iraq’s
civilian infrastructure and the state of its institutions, but was
not focused on those
areas.31
In
retrospect, he believed that if the UK had wanted to find out more,
it might
26
Cabinet
Office, National
Intelligence Machinery, November
2010, page 26.
27
Public
hearing Webb, Ricketts, Patey, 24 November 2009, pages
51-54.
28
Public
hearing, 8 December 2009, page 10.
29
Public
hearing, 8 December 2009, page 51.
30
Private
hearing, 5 May 2010, pages 65-66.
31
Private
hearing, 5 May 2010, pages 63-64.
121