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Issues arising from the Butler report
Glen Rangwala, 19 July 2004.
There are three major lines that the Butler
report brings out. Naturally, there are a number of subsidiary issues
well worth raising, but the following is a review of these three lines.
1. Disclosure. The Butler report reveals that
the government and intelligence services had a great deal of material
that would undermine the case that Mr Blair was presenting to the public
about Iraq's weapons, but which was held back from public scrutiny. As
a result, the public and MPs were not able to make a properly informed
judgement on the scale of the threat posed by Iraq. Naturally, much information
cannot be released for security reasons, but it is difficult to see how
keeping the following information secret could be justified in this way:
- The low number of sources inside Iraq. Over four-fifths
of the intelligence about Iraqi deception and concealment activities
came from only two sources; two-thirds came from just one individual
(§355; both of these sources are now recognised as being of questionable
reliability). On Iraqi weapons, two-thirds of all intelligence
reports that were circulated came from just two sources (§401):
one reported only indirectly, and the validity of the other is now open
to "serious doubt" (§403).
Butler also remarks that the "vast majority of the intelligence" on
Iraqi purported mobile biological capacity came from just one individual
(presumably, "Curveball", the INC-linked individual, held by Germany's
Federal Intelligence Service), with whom no British official had even
met prior to the war.
In total, therefore, the considerable majority of British intelligence
on Iraq beyond what was already in the public realm came from just five
individuals. It is in this regard that Butler remarks: "we were struck
by the relative thinness of the intelligence base supporting the greater
firmness of the JIC’s judgements on Iraqi production and possession
of chemical and biological weapons" (§304).
There has been no explanation of why this information was not released
to the public. It would have enabled the public to have a much better
ability to judge the plausible of the Prime Minister's claim
that Iraq was "a current and serious threat to the UK national interest"
(dossier of Sept 02, foreword).
It is difficult to see how releasing this information would have endangered
these sources. After all, US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a
clear account of the four individuals he claimed were reliable sources
on mobile biological laboratories in his presentation to the UN Security
Council on 5 February 2003. There seems to be little reason why the
UK could not have done the same.
At the very least, the Prime Minister could not mislead the House of
Commons by claiming to it on 24 September 2002 that the intelligence
picture painted in the dossier "is extensive, detailed and authoritative".
Many would have taken from this claim that the amount of intelligence
the UK had on Iraq was much greater than it really was.
Similarly, the dossier's allegations about mobile biological laboratories
are alleged to be based upon "evidence from defectors [which] has indicated
the existence of such facilities". Given that the "vast majority" of
the claims came from just one individual, the claim that "defectors"
(in the plural) were responsible for the evidence was simply misleading.
- Defectors and sources who gave a different picture.
The single most prominent defector from Iraq was Hussein Kamil, Saddam
Hussein's son-in-law and director of Iraq's Military Industrialization
Corporation, who had been in charge of Iraq's weapons programme. After
he defected to Jordan on 7 August 1995, he told
UN inspectors that "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All
weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed".
Butler confirms that this was known to the British intelligence services.
JIC reported on 24 August 1995 that: "Hussein Kamil claims there are
no remaining stockpiles of agent" (§177). This information was only
released to the public seven and a half years later through a leak (to
me) of the transcript of Hussein Kamil's interview,
on 26 February 2003.
There has been no explanation of why this information was held back
by the Government. It clearly undermined the Government's case, particularly
insofar as Hussein Kamil's name was invoked by many -- including the
Prime Minister himself (to the Independent
on Sunday, 2 March 2003) -- to justify the claim that Iraq was a
current threat. There was no danger to anyone from releasing this information,
as Kamil had already been killed in 1996.
Similarly, Butler records that two sources "regarded as reliable" by
the intelligence services "tended to present a less worrying view of
Iraqi chemical and biological weapons capability" (§404). The decision
to favour those sources with alarmist perspectives over those who presented
a "less worrying view" was therefore not based upon a question of their
reliability; it was a political choice, one that starkly influenced
the discussion of the scale of the threat Iraq posed.
- Changing perspectives on the threat from Iraq. Butler
mentions that reports on a source who "had a major effect on the certainty
of statements in the Government’s dossier of September 2002" (§401)
were withdrawn by MI6 in July 2003 (§405). This was not made public
until the Butler report was released in July 2004, even though it has
allowed a more honest public assessment of the case that had been made
for war.
Mr Blair claims that he was not aware of the withdrawal of this report
until the Butler process was complete. If it was the case that this
source had the "major effect" that Butler describes, the Prime Minister
needs to explain how it was that he was in such a serious position of
ignorance for twelve months, during which he continued to profess his
certainty about Iraq's weapons. Shouldn't someone pay the price for
allowing Mr Blair to look like a fool for so long?
2. Failure to investigate alarmist perspectives.
In a considerable number of cases, Butler demonstrates how sources or claims
of dubious reliability but of a highly alarmingly nature were not evaluated
thoroughly. Butler explains the lack of checks upon sources by pointing
to how the relevant staff - "Requirements" officers, in the jargon - were
"junior officers", who were in those positions "in order to make overall
staff savings" (§414).
However, the failure to investigate properly the claims of alarming sources
on such a crucial issue reflects a lack of political priority in evaluating
these claims with appropriate scepticism. It is difficult to imagine that
if Mr Blair had seriously pressed MI6 or JIC about how reliable their information
sources were, it would have been left to "junior officers" to make all the
checks on reliability. Two key examples recounted by Butler are:
- Uranium from Niger. The basis of the government's case,
as reported by Butler, was that: "During 2002, the UK received further
intelligence from additional sources which identified the purpose of
[an Iraqi official's] visit to Niger as having been to negotiate the
purchase of uranium ore" (§495).
Although these "additional sources" are not described by Butler, one
of them was not the Iraqi official at the centre of the allegations
- Ambassador Wissam al-Zahawi, referred to by Butler at §502. After
he retired from Iraqi government service in 2001, Zahawi was resident
in Amman, Jordan (where there is also a large MI6 station) and paid
a number of visits to the UK in 2001 and 2002. At no point did British
officials contact him to discuss his trip to Niger. The news media in
1999 had quoted him as being the official visiting Niger; when I wanted
to contact Zahawi for an interview in 2003, I was able to obtain his
telephone number and email address from a reputable academic database
without any difficulty whatsoever.
The failure of the intelligence services to do this five minute task
on an issue so crucial as to be key evidence for whether or not Iraq
had an ongoing nuclear programme reflects not just on the junior nature
of the staff. It demonstrates the political inexpediency of making a
serious attempt to investigate alarming allegations about Iraq for their
actual plausibility.
Incidentally, the Butler report oddly does not include any reference
to the claim from the CIA's director of Weapons, Intelligence, Non-Proliferation
and Arms Control Centre (WINPAC), as recounted in the Senate
intelligence committee report of 7 July 2004 (pp.65, 66). He told
the committee that the CIA had urged Britain to remove references to
the uranium claim from the September dossier.
- 45 minutes. The Butler report demonstrates that the
British intelligence services mentioned that the sub-source who provided
the information that Iraq could use CBW of some sort within 45 minutes
had "links to opposition groups and the possibility that his reports
would be affected by that." (§403; this is the individual referred to
as the sub-source for the 45 minutes claims at §512). This opposition
group referred to seems to be the Iraqi National Accord (INA), led by
interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, according to the INA's own statements.
As a result, there was a clear incentive for the individual source to
make alarming claims to British intelligence officials and their conduits.
Butler mentions that "post-war validation by SIS has raised serious
doubts about the reliability of reporting from this new sub-source"
(§403). There seems to have been every possibility that further attempts
to assess the reliability of the sub-source could have been made prior
incorporating his claim in such a categorical way into the September
2002 dossier. If it were the case that circumstances rendered it impossible
to ascertain his reliability, then it would seem proper that the dubious
provenance of the source - as well as the nature of the claim, relating
to battlefield weapons - should have been made public.
- Failure to re-evaluate claims after the introduction of inspectors.
Butler records how the British intelligence services were not asked
for a re-evaluation of intelligence given the findings of the UN weapons
inspectors during 2002-03 (§362).
This is remarkable, given that the inspectors were visiting many of
the sites that the British government had previously named as sites
of concern. Furthermore, UNMOVIC head Hans Blix had told
the Security Council on 7 March 2003 that "the numerous initiatives,
which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some
long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as 'active', or even
'proactive'". (Butler misstates Blix's position quite severely at his
§362).
The British government's failure to re-evaluate its claims, despite
this "proactive" cooperation from Iraq, demonstrates that there was
no attempt to ascertain the likely state of Iraq's weapons prior to
the invasion. Instead, the earlier alarming claims were allowed to stand,
even though material had subsequently been found that would cast severe
doubt upon their plausibility.
Equally, Butler mentions that there was not a full intelligence assessment
of the Iraqi declaration of 7 December 2002 (§363). Nevertheless,
the Iraqi declaration was condemned by both Mr Blair and Mr Straw as
being false. By contrast, Hans Blix had told
the Security Council on 27 January 2003: "In the field of missiles and
biotechnology, the declaration contains a good deal of new material
and information covering the period from 1998 and onward. This is welcome."
It seems that the UK did not have intelligence material with which to
disagree with Dr Blix's statement on the usefulness of the declaration.
However, they continue to portray it as inadequate, and used this as
part of the justification for war.
3. Political overstatement. Quite apart from
the September dossier, the Butler report demonstrates that a considerable
number of the claims that the Prime Minister was making on Iraq's weapons
through 2002 and 2003 were not based upon intelligence assessments. Some
were in direct contradiction with the intelligence assessments. There were
two major forms of this misstatement:
- claims about Iraq's weapons whilst JIC assessments were still
uncertain. The Butler report (§296) shows that the Joint Intelligence
Committee only gave a strong indication that Iraq had chemical and biological
weapons in its assessment of 9 September 2002. Prior to the 21 August
2002 assessment (which was more ambiguous), JIC assessments emphasised
how little was known about Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear programmes,
and stopped short of any definitive claims either way. The JIC Assessment
of 15 March 2002, for example states that:
"From the evidence available to us, we believe Iraq retains some production
equipment, and some small stocks of CW agent precursors, and may
have hidden small quantities of agents and weapons. [...] There
is no intelligence on any BW agent production facilities..." (Annex
B of the Butler report, pp.167-68).
Despite the uncertainty expressed in the JIC assessments of this period,
the Prime Minister continued to voice his certainty about Iraq weapons.
For example, on 3 April 2002, Mr Blair told
NBC news that "We know that he [Saddam Hussein] has stockpiles of major
amounts of chemical and biological weapons, we know that he is trying
to acquire nuclear capability, we know that he is trying to develop
ballistic missile capability of a greater range."
This reference to "major amounts of chemical and biological weapons"
is in direct contradiction with the latest JIC assessment, which stated
only the possibility that Iraq had "small quantities of agents".
Similarly, Jack Straw had said in an interview
with David Frost on 24 March 2002 that "Iraq poses a threat to the world
because of its manufacture and development of weapons of mass destruction".
There was no indication in any of the intelligence material recounted
in the Butler report that the hyperbolic claim about "a threat to the
world" had the slightest basis in evidence.
Furthermore, it was in this context that the intelligence assessments
had to be made. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary had already
declared - without evidence - that Iraq had prohibited chemical and
biological weapons. This left the intelligence services in a position
where they knew that they would only be able to take on a significant
role in policy-making if they were to provide material to justify these
claims.
- claims about UN weapons inspectors. The Butler report
makes clear the extent to which the intelligence services recognised
the UN weapons inspections during the 1991-98 period as having been
successful in disarming Iraq. The JIC assessment of 4 February 1998
recorded that "UNSCOM and the IAEA have succeeded in destroying or controlling
the vast majority of Saddam's 1991 weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
capability" (§181).
This assessment, repeated in later JIC assessments, was directly contradicted
by the Prime Minister. For example, he told the Independent
on Sunday on 2 March 2003 that "the UN has tried unsuccessfully
for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully". At the House of Commons
on 17 March 2003, in the debate that led to a vote for war, he presented
as still existing the "large quantities of WMD" left over from 1991
that were still "unaccounted for" when the US withdrew UN inspectors
from Iraq in 1998. This was in direct contrast with JIC assessments,
which had consistently claimed that little if any weapons were left
over from the 1991 capability.
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