Photo by Chris John Beckett
MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction.
Tony Blair assured parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was “active”, “growing” and “up and running”, and his assurances also bolstered G W Bush’s own campaign to win over public support for an invasion of Iraq.
British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries a special BBC Panorama programme today reveals.
Revealing how Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister, told Bill Murray the CIA Paris station chief that Iraq had “virtually nothing” in terms of Weapons of Mass Desruction other than the small chemical stockpiles manufactured under consent from Britain
Interestingly Sabri said in a statement that the Panorama story was “totally fabricated”, not entirely surprising that he now supports the “official version of events” given that he was a CIA asset spirited out of the country at the start of the war and left out of the infamous “deck of cards”.
What is revealing and new it is confirmed by Panorama that MI6 met with Iraq’s head of intelligence, Tahir Habbush al-Tikriti, three months before the war, who corroborated that Iraq had no WMD’s to speak of. This meeting took place just days before the British Government published the infamous Iraq weapons dossier. Dr David Kelly lost his life trying to reveal the truth about this. maybe now ten years later we are starting to see the reality.
An inquiry was lead by Lord Butler into the use of intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq after the David Kelly debacle, however he tells the programme that he was not made aware of Sabri’s comments inferring that these were withheld from the Government’s own inquiry.
When it was suggested to him that the body that probably felt most misled of all was the British public, Butler replied: “Yes, I think they’re, they’re, they got every reason think that.”
The programme shows how the then chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, responded to information from Iraqi sources later acknowledged to be unreliable and known as such.
One unidentified MI6 officer has told the Chilcot inquiry that at one stage information was “being torn off the teleprinter and rushed across to Number 10”.
The intelligence used, seems to have been selective to the point of ignoring credible intelligence sources, and using corrupted sources who had been told what to say by the same intelligence agencies who employed them.
The programme says that MI6 stood by claims that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, though these were dismissed by other intelligence agencies, including the French.
Panorama says it asked for an interview with Blair but he said he was “too busy”.
Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2013/12/panorama-spies.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/18/panorama-iraq-fresh-wmd-claims