Jonathan Powell’s “bit of a problem”
How Prime Minister’s right hand man
“sexed up” the September dossier
The September dossier
contains on page 19 an assessment of what it calls “Saddam’s willingness to use
chemical and biological weapons”.
Until just before the dossier
was published, this assessment gave the strong impression that these weapons
would only be used for defensive purposes – which amounted to saying that
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was no threat to anybody.
But just before the dossier
was cleared for publication, the assessment was changed to remove this strong
impression and, by so doing, give the impression that Saddam Hussein might use
these weapons for aggressive purposes – which implied that Saddam Hussein’s
Iraq constituted a threat of some kind to the outside world.
This was a fundamental change
in the dossier’s message about the level of threat from Saddam Hussein’s
Iraq. It is of much greater importance
than the 45-minute claim about which there has been so much controversy. It was essential for making the case for
taking military action against Iraq.
The change was made at the
instigation of the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell.
How this change came about was revealed at the Hutton inquiry on 23
September 2003, when John Scarlett,
the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), was cross-examined by
the BBC’s barrister, Andrew Caldecott (see transcript here).
In the 11 September draft of
the dossier, prepared like other drafts under Scarlett’s direction, the
assessment of the circumstances under which Saddam would use chemical and biological
weapons was as follows:
“Intelligence indicates that Saddam is
willing to use chemical and biological weapons if he believes his regime is
under threat. We also know from
intelligence that as part of Iraq’s military planning, Saddam is willing to use
chemical and biological weapons against an internal uprising by the Shia
population. Intelligence indicates that
the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45
minutes of an order to do so.” (Hutton reference BBC/29/0019)
While that formulation does not exclude the
possibility that Saddam Hussein would use these weapons aggressively, it gives
the strong impression that it was much more likely that he would use them as a
defensive measure, that is, if his regime was under threat from either external
or internal opposition. In other words,
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was little or no threat to his neighbours, and even less
to Britain.
One doesn’t need to be possessed of great
intelligence (of either kind) to see that this was true in September 2002, and
had been true since the end of the Gulf War – since Saddam Hussein knew that an
aggressive act of any kind would be used by the US/UK as an excuse to overthrow
his regime.
This 11 September draft was
circulated to members of the JIC, on which sit the most senior intelligence
figures in the land, including the head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. None of them objected to this assessment
that Iraq was no threat to anybody. So
it was repeated in the 16 September draft and in the draft of 19 September,
without objection from any JIC member at either stage.
When the official deadline
for comment on the dossier passed at 15:00 on 19 September, this assessment was
still in place. But 45 minutes later at
15:45, John Scarlett received an e-mail, not from a member of the JIC, but from
the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell. The e-mail was copied to Alistair Campbell and David Manning
(Blair’s foreign policy adviser).
Powell wrote:
“I think
the statement on page 19 that ‘Saddam is prepared to use chemical and
biological weapons if he believes his regime is under threat’ is a bit of a
problem. It backs up the … argument that there is no CBW threat and we will
only create one if we attack him. I
think you should redraft the para. My memory of the intelligence is that he has
set up plans to use CBW on Western forces and that these weapons are integrated
into his military planning." (CAB/11/0103)
Note that Powell did not challenge the assessment on
the grounds that it was objectively wrong, but on the grounds that it was “a
bit of a problem”, in other words, politically inconvenient for his
master. How could Parliament be
persuaded to support military action against Iraq if it was no threat to
anybody?
Powell was absolutely right: the current assessment,
far from making a case for taking military action against Iraq, made a case for
leaving Iraq alone. Furthermore, it was
incompatible with Blair’s assertion in the foreword to the dossier that Iraq
was “a current and serious threat to the UK national interest”.
This was not the first time Powell had expressed worries
that the dossier didn’t show that Iraq was a threat. Two days earlier, he had e-mailed Scarlett saying:
“ … the
document does nothing
to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam Hussein. In other words, it shows he has the means
but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours, let
alone the west.” (CAB/11/0077-78)
When he first gave evidence to the
inquiry on 26 August 2003, Scarlett denied making any changes to the dossier as
a result of receiving this e-mail.
However, two days later, he was effectively ordered to make a change,
and he did: he made Powell’s “bit of a problem” go away, by the simple
expedient of removing any suggestion that Saddam Hussein would use chemical and
biological weapons only if he was attacked.
(Of course, Powell merely
expressed the opinion that the paragraph should be redrafted, but when the
Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff says he has “a bit of a problem” he wants
fixed, which means the Prime Minister has “a bit of a problem” he wants fixed,
it is prudent to treat it as an order).
The amended assessment, which
appears in the published dossier, is:
“Intelligence indicates that as part of
Iraq’s military planning Saddam is willing to use chemical and biological
weapons, including against his own Shia population. Intelligence indicates that
the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45
minutes of an order to do so.”
The Prime Minister assured
the House of Commons on 4 June 2003:
“I
want to make it clear to the House—I have spoken and conferred with the
chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee—that there was no attempt, at any
time, by any official, or Minister, or member of No. 10 Downing Street staff,
to override the intelligence judgments of the Joint Intelligence Committee.”
If there was a political
opposition worthy of the name in Britain, the Prime Minister would be dead in
the water now that it has being revealed that his right hand was responsible
for making a major change in the dossier.
True, the Prime Minister’s words were carefully chosen on 4 June 2003:
no member of the Downing Street staff had attempted “to override the
intelligence judgments of the Joint Intelligence Committee”, he said, knowing
that Scarlett could be relied upon to say that everything in the dossier was
based on his intelligence judgement, even if it was inspired by Downing Street
staff.
Cross-examined on 23 September
2003 by Caldecott for the BBC about Powell’s request for redrafting, Scarlett
performed heroically on the Prime Minister’s behalf. Caldecott asked him:
“The
suggestion there, is it not, is that the dossier should be redrafted to remove
an express suggestion that Saddam Hussein is a defensive threat? … And leave an
implication that, in fact, he is an offensive threat; is that right?”
Scarlett replied:
“No. It is
not right. It is not to leave the implication that he is an offensive threat,
it is to take away the explicit, as it were, limitation that it is a defensive
-- not a defensive threat, but it is a defensive sort of point. …
“This e-mail did prompt me
and the assessment staff to look again at that particular passage. Now, we were
acting under the instructions from the JIC to keep what we were writing in line
with standing JIC assessments and also with recent intelligence.
“As I recall this particular
paragraph -- obviously this particular paragraph was under the heading of what
recent intelligence was showing. Now, there had been an intelligence report
which made that point, I mean a recent intelligence report which is why it was
phrased like this.
“When we looked at it again,
we also realised two things: first of all, that there was no standing JIC
assessment which made it clear whether we were defining Saddam's threat, if you
like, as defensive or CW posture as defensive or offensive. More to the point,
there was recent reporting, in addition, which was not reflected here, but
which was quite clear reporting, which placed his attachment to CBW and the
importance that he placed on it very much in the context of his perception of
his regional position, his plans to acquire and maintain regional influence
and, as one report, and maybe more, put it: dominate his neighbours. In other
words, the recent intelligence was more complex than that phrase implied. Bearing those points in mind, we concluded
that this was not right, the way this was phrased; and therefore we took that
out. That is what I did.”
So there you have it: Powell
didn’t “override” any of the judgements of the JIC. His e-mail merely prompted Scarlett to look again at the existing
intelligence – and he found that the existing intelligence justified removing
the suggestion that Saddam Hussein would use chemical and biological weapons
only as a defensive measure. By sheer
coincidence this change made Powell’s “bit of a problem” go away: Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq was a threat after all.
That’s what Scarlett is
asking us to believe. He’s also asking us to believe that the
members of the JIC, and their staff in the intelligence agencies, read at least
three drafts of the dossier, all of which contained this seriously flawed
assessment that Saddam was no threat to anybody, and not one of them noticed
it. And but for the Prime Minister’s
Chief of Staff having a “bit of a problem” with the paragraph, this seriously
flawed piece of intelligence would have been communicated to the world as the
best assessment of the UK intelligence services.
One doesn’t need to be an
intelligence professional to see that the final assessment is fairly meaningless,
and deliberately so. An assessment
worthy of the name would have provided separate judgements for the two distinct
circumstances (a) if the Iraqi regime was under threat, and (b) if it wasn’t. But the assessment in the September dossier
could not deal separately with those cases – because it could not have avoided
the conclusion that the chances of chemical and biological weapons being used
in case (a) were much greater than in case (b). However, in that event Powell’s “bit of a problem” would have
remained, and the public might have got the politically inconvenient impression
feared by Powell that “there is no CBW threat and we will only create one if we
attack him”.
A couple of weeks after the
September dossier was published, when the US Congress was debating a resolution
to empower the President to take military action against Iraq, the CIA provided
it with an assessment of the threat posed by Iraq’s chemical and biological
weapons. This was given in a letter
dated 7 October 2002 to Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee (which is publicly available in the Congressional record, see here, for
example).
The letter declassified a
small portion of CIA evidence to Graham’s committee at a closed session on 2
October 2002. This reads as follows:
Senator
Levin: . . . If (Saddam) didn't feel threatened, did not feel
threatened [sic], is it likely that he would initiate an attack using a weapon
of mass destruction?
Senior
Intelligence Witness: . . . My judgment would be that the probability of
him initiating an attack--let me put a time frame on it--in the foreseeable
future, given the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would be
low.
Senator
Levin: Now if he did initiate an attack you've . . . indicated he
would probably attempt clandestine attacks against us . . . But what about his
use of weapons of mass destruction? If we initiate an attack and he thought he
was in extremis or otherwise, what's the likelihood in response to our attack
that he would use chemical or biological weapons?
Senior
Intelligence Witness: Pretty high, in my view.
The British Government’s dossier
should have contained something similar on “Saddam’s willingness to use
chemical and biological weapons”.
Originally, it did. But since
that gave the impression that there was no threat from these weapons, the Prime
Minister’s Chief of Staff had it excised.
Labour &
Trade Union Review
October 2003