BRITISH INTELLIGENCE services could have challenged the dossier presented in 2003 by British prime minister Tony Blair to justify the Iraq invasion, but they did not do so, Mr Blair’s former press secretary, Alastair Campbell, told the Iraq Inquiry yesterday.
During a combative performance, Mr Campbell rejected charges made by the UK’s then-ambassador to Washington, Christopher Meyer, among others, that Mr Blair had signed up for the invasion in February 2002.
His assertion that MI6 could have changed the tenor of the introduction to the so-called “dodgy dossier” is likely to strain relations with former MI6 chief John Scarlett, who was head of the joint intelligence committee at the time.
“At no time did I ever ask (Mr Scarlett) to beef up, to override, any of the judgments that he had. I will defend it to the end of my days,” Mr Campbell said during almost five hours of questioning.
“If John Scarlett and any of his team had had any concerns of real substance about the foreword they could have taken that up with the prime minister,” he told the inquiry, which members of the public had queued from 7am to attend.
Mr Scarlett told the inquiry last month that he believed that the foreword, which alleged that Saddam Hussein was then still producing chemical and biological weapons, was “overtly political” and should have been clearly separated from the intelligence.
However, Mr Blair, Mr Campbell said, had been “led to make” his judgment from the intelligence presented to him and genuinely believed it.
“I have been in meetings with John Scarlett and intelligence officials and is that what they were saying? Yes it is.”
Mr Campbell said Mr Scarlett and Richard Dearlove, who was then head of MI6, had both said that the intelligence services were “effectively united” about the presentation of the evidence.
Questioned about the claim that the UK could face chemical attack within 45 minutes, Mr Campbell said the document had referred only to battlefield munitions and had not claimed that Saddam “was able to do something terrible to the British mainland”.
The 45-minute claim, first reported as such by the London Evening Standard, had been given “iconic status” by the press, but he acknowledged that he had not done anything to correct it once the allegation was made.
Rejecting charges that Mr Blair had been President Bush’s “poodle”, Mr Campbell denied that he had “signed up” for invasion when he met President George Bush in Texas in February 2002.
The suggestions made by former British ambassador Christopher Meyer that Mr Blair had then committed to going to war was “churlish and inaccurate”, Mr Campbell told the inquiry.
“You seem to be wanting me to say that Tony Blair signed up to saying, regardless of the facts and weapons of mass destruction, we are going to get rid of this guy. It was not like this,” he went on.
However, the inquiry revealed part of the contents of letters written by Mr Blair to Mr Bush at dates unknown in 2002 which promised that the UK “will be there” if diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis failed.
In one, Mr Blair wrote: “We are absolutely with you in making Saddam face up to his obligations and making sure Iraq will be disarmed. But if that can’t be done diplomatically . . . if it has to be done militarily, then Britain will definitely be there.”
Mr Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, then chancellor of the exchequer, had been involved in all of the key meetings and decisions about the war.
“Gordon Brown would have been one of the key ministers he spoke to regularly,” said Mr Campbell, who said that Mr Brown had been “very much part of the private circle”.
Mr Brown will give evidence to the inquiry after this year’s election.