by Paul Waugh independent.co.uk
 
The intelligence official whose revelations stunned the Hutton inquiry into the death of government scientist David Kelly has suggested that not a single defense intelligence expert backed Tony Blair's most contentious claims on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

As Mr Blair yesterday set up an inquiry into intelligence failures before the war, Brian Jones, the former leading expert on WMD in the Ministry of Defense, declared that Downing Street's dossier, a key plank in convincing the public of the case for war, was "misleading" about Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological capability.

Writing in today's Independent, Dr Jones, who was head of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of the Defense Intelligence Staff until he retired last year, reveals that the experts failed in their efforts to have their views reflected.

Dr Jones says: "In my view, the expert intelligence analysts of the DIS were overruled in the preparation of the dossier back in September 2002, resulting in a presentation that was misleading about Iraq's capabilities."

He calls on the Prime Minister to publish the intelligence behind the Government's claims that Iraq was actively producing chemical weapons and could launch an attack within 45 minutes of an order to do so. He is "extremely doubtful" that anyone with chemical and biological weapons expertise had seen the raw intelligence reports and if they were made public, it would prove just how right he and his colleagues were to be concerned about the claims.

Downing Street was triumphant last week when Lord Hutton ruled that Andrew Gilligan's claims that the dossier was "sexed up" were "unfounded". But Dr Jones's comments are bound to boost the wider case of the BBC and others that the dossier failed to take into account worries of intelligence officials.

Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, revealed for the first time yesterday that he would not have supported military action against Baghdad if he had known that Iraq lacked weapons of mass destruction.

Acutely aware of the American inquiry into the war, Mr Blair said that a committee of inquiry would investigate "intelligence gathering, evaluation and use" in the UK before the conflict in Iraq. Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former cabinet secretary, will chair the five-strong committee which will meet in private. The Liberal Democrats refused to support the inquiry because its remit was not wide enough.

Dr Jones was the man whose decision to give evidence in public electrified the Hutton inquiry as he disclosed that he had formally complained about the dossier, which was subsequently followed in February last year by the so-called dodgy dossier.

The Government attempted to dismiss his complaints as part of the normal process of "debate" within the DIS and claimed that other sections of the intelligence community were better qualified to assess the 45-minute and chemical claim. But today Dr Jones makes clear that he was not alone and declares that the whole of the Defense Intelligence Staff, Britain's best qualified analysts on WMD, agreed that the claims should have been "carefully caveatted".

Furthermore, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which allowed the contentious claims to go into the dossier, lacked the expertise to make a competent judgment on them.

Dr Jones makes clear that it was John Scarlett, the chairman of the JIC, who was responsible for including the controversial claims in the executive summary of the dossier that was used to justify war. It was Mr Scarlett's strong assessment that allowed Alastair Campbell to "translate a probability into a certainty" in Mr Blair's foreword to the document, Dr Jones adds.

He says that he foresaw at the time of the Government's dossier in September 2002 that no major WMD stockpiles would be found. He made a formal complaint about the dossier precisely to avoid himself and his fellow experts being cast as "scapegoats" for any such failure. In his article, Dr Jones warns that intelligence analysts should not be blamed for the lack of any significant finds in Iraq and points out that it was the "intelligence community leadership" - the heads of MI6 and MI5 and Mr Scarlett - who were responsible for the dossier. It would be a "travesty" if the DIS was criticized over the affair, he says.

Dr Jones complains that he and others were not allowed to see vital intelligence supporting the 45-minute claim and chemical production claim. But he reveals that he has discovered from a colleague that the raw reports from the ground did not meet his and others' concerns about the wording of the JIC's assessments. It also turns out that the Deputy Chief of Defense Intelligence, Tony Cragg, did not see the supposedly clinching intelligence and took on trust assurances from MI6 that it was credible.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, announced a wide-ranging review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Charles Kennedy, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, chose not to support the inquiry.

The Government yesterday finally slipped out its response to the Intelligence and Security Committee's report last autumn on the intelligence case in the run-up to war. For the first time, it conceded that it "understands the reasoning" for the committee's criticism that the presentation of the 45-minute claim in the dossier "allowed speculation as to its exact meaning", including the firing of WMD on long-range missiles. But the Government pointed out that it had not linked the claim to ballistic missiles.

© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=487557&host=3&dir=62