Iraq WMD claim "came from taxi driver"

[Brazen]

WMD claim 'came from cab driver'

Intelligence that Saddam Hussein could launch a chemical attack on UK targets within 45 minutes came from a taxi driver in Iraq, a MP has claimed.

Downing Street ignored advice that the claim was not credible when writing the dossier spelling out the case for the Iraq War, Adam Holloway's report said.

A Commons Defence Committee member, he claims military advice was matched to the "prevailing political wind".

The government has yet to respond to the claims by the Tory MP.

Mr Holloway, the MP for Gravesham, Kent, is a former officer in the Grenadier Guards and journalist.

He published his paper The Failure of British Political and Military Leadership through First Defence, the centre-right think-tank he chairs.

In it, he said the claim that Saddam could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45-minutes arose as British intelligence were "squeezing" agents in Iraq for information, under pressure from Downing Street to back up its case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
" Despite this glaring factual inaccuracy... the report was characterised as reliable "
Adam Holloway MP

"The provenance of this information was never questioned in detail until after the Iraq invasion, when it became apparent that something was wrong," he said.

"In the end it turned out that the information was not credible, it had originated from an emigre taxi driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border, who had remembered an overheard conversation in the back of his cab a full two years earlier."

Mr Holloway stated that an intelligence analyst had at the time flagged up - via a footnote - that the claims were "demonstrably untrue".

"Despite this glaring factual inaccuracy... the report was characterised as reliable," he said.

The claim then formed one of the main planks of the September 2002 dossier stating the case for the war, Mr Holloway added.

Lord Butler's inquiry into intelligence about Iraq's weapons capability later found it had come "third-hand", through an established source and a second link in the reporting chain from the original Iraqi military source.

MI6 had later cast doubts over the reliability of the middle link, the inquiry found in 2004.

Lord Butler concluded the limitations of the intelligence were not "made sufficiently clear", that important caveats had been removed and that the 45 minutes claim was "unsubstantiated" and should not have been included without clarification.

Sir John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee at the time of the invasion, is to give evidence to the Iraq Inquiry in London later.

He is expected to go over much of the same ground as in his appearance before the Hutton Inquiry in 2003, when he stood by the 45-minute claim.

Mr Holloway claims to have information from intelligence officers that there was "no appetite" in government for information contravening the case for war and that, as a consequence, civil servants ignored it in the interests of their careers.

Mr Holloway claims this is indicative of a culture of senior defence officials and military officers glossing over problems to toe the government line.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8401473.stm

Epic intelligence fail 

[Richard Hakluyt]

 

No doubt other information was obtained in the public bar of the Dog and Duck, Southwark.

[Syt]

Bad I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E.!

[Sheilbh]