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U.K. Pledges to Fix Intelligence Flaws
The British government yesterday promised to correct the flaws listed in the report released this week by high-level inquiry into British intelligence on prewar Iraq, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, July 14). The report, which details the findings of an inquiry conducted by former British civil servant Robin Butler, says that British intelligence suffered from poor human sources and inadequate resources in trying to learn more about Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts. “Obviously there are implications in the Butler report which we will have to reflect on,” said a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “We should do everything we can to make sure that these mistakes will not be repeated,” the spokesman said. British officials have said that intelligence spending would be increased and that an additional 1,000 staff members would be recruited for British intelligence agencies (Ed Johnson, Associated Press, July 15). Meanwhile, the London Independent reported today that doubts over prewar Iraq’s alleged ability to produce chemical weapons were withheld from two postwar inquiries that examined the rationale for war. According to the Independent, the two inquiries were not told that some of intelligence upon which Blair based his claims of the threat posed by prewar Iraq had been discredited by the MI6 intelligence service. Three of the five sources for some of the claims made in the British government’s 2002 dossier on Iraqi WMD efforts were found by MI6 to be so questionable that their reports on chemical weapons production activities were withdrawn in July 2003. One of the inquiries began the following month, but it was not told that the reports had been discredited, the Independent reported (Sengupta/Grice, London Independent, July 16).
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