The 45 minute claim:
The incredible ignorance of Blair
When he took Britain to war last
March, the Prime Minister didn’t know that the 45-minute claim in the dossier
he published six months earlier applied to battlefield weapons. That’s what he told the House of Commons
during its debate on the Hutton report on 4 February 2004.
The Prime Minister didn’t
volunteer this information. He was put
on the spot by Conservative MP, Richard Ottaway, who intervened
in his speech to ask when he became aware that the claim applied to battlefield
weapons and, in particular, if he knew when the House voted for war on 18 March
2003. He replied:
“No. I
have already indicated exactly when this came to my attention. It was not
before the debate on 18 March last year.”
This
revelation came as a complete surprise to everybody, including Robin Cook, who said
later in the debate:
“I find it difficult to reconcile with what I knew,
and what I am sure my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister knew when we had the
vote in March.”
He
suggested that the Prime Minister might like to qualify what he had said. The specific statement: “I have already
indicated exactly when this came to my attention”, is surely wrong, since this
is the first time he brought his extraordinary ignorance to public attention.
The 45-minute claim was the only
really new, and striking, feature of the Government’s dossier published on 24
September 2002.
We know from the Intelligence
& Security Committee (ISC) report published a year later that the claim was
based on an MI6 report of 30 August 2002, a few weeks before the dossier was
published.
Charles Duelfer, deputy head of
UNSCOM in its latter years and recently appointed as David Kay’s replacement as
head of the Iraq Survey Group, wrote of it in The Times:
“The most
striking intelligence is the statement that the Iraqi military has the
capability to deploy and use chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes
of receiving an order. Until UNSCOM
left Iraq in 1998, we strongly suspected that the regime had the ability to launch
chemical and biological attack. This
evidence suggests to me that concrete evidence has now been obtained.”
The claim appeared four times in
the dossier. The Prime Minister wrote
in his foreword that the dossier “discloses
that his military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45
minutes of an order to use them”. He
made that claim with an absolute confidence unwarranted by the intelligence
(like most claims in his foreword) and he did so (he now says) without knowing
that it referred to battlefield weapons.
Presumably, the Prime Minister believed it referred to missiles capable
of delivering warheads to Cyprus, if not further afield. If he didn’t know that when he signed the
dossier off, he would certainly have learnt it from the Sun on 25 September
2002. Downing Street’s obsessive
interest in newspaper headlines, particularly tabloid headlines, is well known,
and it can be guaranteed that he was made aware of the great success achieved
in this regard on 25 September 2002.
The Sun screamed at its 10 million readers BRITS 45
mins FROM DOOM, saying:
“British
servicemen and tourists in Cyprus could be annihilated by germ warfare missiles
launched by Iraq, it was revealed yesterday.
They could thud into the Mediterranean island within 45 MINUTES of
tyrant Saddam Hussein ordering an attack.
They could spread death and destruction through warheads carrying
anthrax, mustard gas, sarin or ricin.”
(In reality, even if the claim did apply to missiles (which it didn’t),
and even if the claim had been true (which it wasn’t), a missile could not
reach its target in Cyprus within 45 minutes of an order being given, since,
Sun journalists please note, it takes time for missiles to travel from launch
point to target.)
So, if we are to believe the Prime Minister, from September 2002 until
after the decision to go to war the following March, and beyond, he remained in
ignorance of the fact that the 45-minute claim applied to battlefield weapons.
His Secretary of State, Geoff Hoon, did know that the claim applied to
battlefield weapons. He gave evidence
to that effect to the Hutton Inquiry on 20 September 2003.
(When asked by the BBC’s barrister why the Government had not issued a
correction to the misreporting of the claim, he replied that his long
experience had taught him that newspapers don’t print corrections, and that was
probably the reason why no correction was issued. Who did he think he was going to kid with that pathetic
excuse? He knows very well that the
issuing of a correction would have been a sensation and would have made
headlines world wide. One phone call to
Andrew Gilligan, for example, would have made it the lead story on Today the
next morning, and from there it would have raced round the world, like a
certain story on 29 May 2003.)
On 4 February 2004 Hoon gave additional information to the House of
Commons. He said
that he had inquired within the Ministry of Defence about the delivery system
“out of curiosity” – but not until after the dossier was published without any
specific information about the delivery system.
Geoff Hoon did not inform the Prime Minister of the result of his inquiry,
nor did the Prime Minister develop a curiosity about the claim like Geoff
Hoon. Nor, if we are to believe him
now, did any of the many people on his staff who knew that the 45-minute claim
applied to battlefield weapons inform him that the Sun, and other newspapers,
had got it wrong on 24/25 September 2002.
When on 18 March 2003, he rose to try to persuade the House of Commons
to support military action he was still didn’t know that the claim applied to
battlefield weapons. At least that’s
what he says. Inexplicably, he didn’t
mention the 45-minute claim – this “most striking intelligence”, in the words of
Charles Duelfer – on 18 March 2003, despite
being in the most difficult spot of his political life (nor did he mention his
extravagant claims of the previous September that Iraq was currently producing
proscribed agents and weapons). In
fact, the claim was hardly mentioned at all by Ministers after 24 September
2002.
Insignificant
claim
Jack Straw
told
the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on 24 June 2003:
“I do not
happen to regard the 45 minute statement having the significance which has been
attached to it, neither does anybody else, indeed nobody round this table, if I
say so with respect. It was scarcely mentioned in any of the very large number
of debates that took place in the House, evidence to the Foreign Affairs
Committee, all of the times I was questioned on the radio and television, scarcely
mentioned at all.”
But that
begs two very important questions:
(1) Why did
such an insignificant claim appear, not once, but four times in the dossier?
(2)
Why did ministers cease mentioning the claim shortly after
the dossier was published?
There must have been a very good reason for the
latter. Why would the Downing Street
propaganda machine cease mentioning a claim that had produced such a bumper
harvest of headlines on 24/25 September 2002?
Now, echoing Straw last year, the Government says that
the claim was “not a significant issue”, to use Geoff Hoon’s words
to the Defence Select Committee on 5 February 2004. That is true in a military sense (as this magazine has said more
than once) but since when did Alistair Campbell become scrupulous about using
insignificant issues to generate big headlines? After all, this insignificant issue had worked spectacularly well
once. There must have been a very good
reason why it wasn’t tried again, and again, and again.
Campbell steer?
My guess is that the reason was that Campbell supplied
newspapers with the wrong information in the first place. I say this because there was a
remarkable uniformity in the press reports of the dossier on 24/25 September
2002. In most reports, the following
key points were identified:
(a) Iraq
has the ability to hit British bases in Cyprus with chemical and biological
weapons within 45 minutes of Saddam Hussein giving the order to do so, and
(b) that
Iraq could have nuclear weapons in between one and two years.
Since the dossier did not say that the 45-minute claim
applied to strategic missiles rather than battlefield weapons, either the
newspapers all guessed the same way or they were all steered the same way by
Campbell. (b) is not mentioned in the
Prime Minister’s foreword to the dossier, nor in its Executive Summary; it is
mentioned once, and only once, on page 27 - which makes it highly unlikely that
so many newspapers would have picked it out as a key point without a steer from
Campbell.
The wrong information about the 45-minute claim
generated a marvelously frightening crop of headlines. Imagine the scene the next morning when
Campbell was told (perhaps by his “mate” John Scarlett) that all those
wonderful headlines were based on a false premise. It is very difficult to believe that he wasn’t told, and that
Blair wasn’t told.
Scarlett knew the headlines were wrong at the time: he
said as much to the Hutton inquiry on 23 September 2003. Would he not have told his “mate”? Would he not have told Blair, or Blair’s
Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator, Sir David Omand, who would surely have
told Blair? It’s very difficult to
believe that Blair remained in ignorance until after 18 March 2003.
Correction impossible
At that point, what could Campbell do? If he had supplied the wrong information in
the first place, it was impossible to correct it without it becoming public
knowledge that he had done so – which would have made him, and the dossier, a
laughing stock.
Even if one assumes that the newspapers all got it
wrong without his help, the issuing of a correction was impossible. It would have led to a ferocious public
controversy, in which all the good work done by the frightening headlines would
have been undone with interest. The
public might even have got the politically inconvenient impression that if
British forces stayed away from Iraq, they would most likely be safe from
Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons.
The drive for war against Iraq would have lost momentum – perhaps
fatally.
In either case, there was no choice but to let the
hare sit, and to continue to deceive the public about the claim. My guess is that at that point a decision
was also taken to cease mentioning the claim.
That way, controversy about the claim, and the risk of awkward questions
being asked and the truth coming out, would be minimised. That certainly explains why this “most
striking intelligence” which appeared four times in the dossier, and generated
marvelous headlines immediately after the dossier was published, was barely
heard of again until Andrew Gilligan’s broadcast on 29 May 2003.
Ignorance or deception?
Blair claims that he remained ignorant of the true
meaning of the 45-minute claim until after 18 March 2003, when he took Britain
to war. An alternative explanation,
which seems much more likely, is that he knew, if not when he published the
dossier, then after the issue was misreported the next day.
It is unbelievable that none of his staff drew his
attention to the fact that the Sun’s banner headline was based on a false
premise. In which case, he was part of
the conspiracy to deceive the British public about the true meaning of the
claim until after he took Britain to war.
Has he chosen to plead ignorance, because deception is
a hanging offence?
Militarily insignificant
In a military sense, the 45-minute claim was
insignificant. If Iraq had retained
chemical and biological weapons, then it would be very strange indeed if
it hadn’t plans to deploy them, for example, to transport filled shells from a
bunker to an artillery piece so that they could be fired, and to do so within a
short period. The ISC
report said of the claim:
“That
the Iraqis could use chemical or biological battlefield weapons rapidly had
already been established in previous conflicts and the reference to the 20–45
minutes in the JIC Assessment added nothing fundamentally new to the UK’s
assessment of the Iraqi battlefield capability. “ (paragraph 56)
Intelligence vague
The ISC report reveals (paragraph 49) that the claim
was derived from an MI6 report dated 30 August 2002, allegedly based on
information from an Iraqi military officer, who was in a position to know,
received by MI6 through a third party.
The information was that on average it took 20
minutes to move chemical and biological munitions into place for attack (the
maximum response time was 45-minutes).
But the information didn’t identify the munitions to which the 45-minute
claim was supposed to apply, nor from where to where the munitions were
supposed to be moved within 45 minutes (ibid, paragraph 52).
So, the
intelligence was that unknown battlefield munitions could be moved from
somewhere unknown to somewhere else unknown in 45 minutes. On this slim foundation, the 45-minute claim
was included in the dossier four times and, as a result, the Sun’s 10 million
readers were informed that missiles could hit Cyprus within 45 minutes of
Saddam ordering an attack.
Caveats required
Of
the claim, the ISC said:
“The fact that it was assessed to
refer to battlefield chemical and biological munitions and their movement on
the battlefield, not to any other form of chemical or biological attack, should
have been highlighted in the dossier. The omission of the context and
assessment allowed speculation as to its exact meaning. This was unhelpful to
an understanding of this issue.” (ibid, paragraph 112)
Of course,
the 45-minute claim would never have been included in the dossier with the
caveats necessary to reflect the vagueness of the intelligence on which it was
based. In what was meant to be a
“convincing” dossier, as required by the Prime Minister (see e-mail from
Campbell to Scarlett on 17 September 2002), there was no point in saying:
“We recently received a piece of
intelligence that some chemical and biological munitions can be deployed within
45 minutes. Our intelligence is that
the munitions in question are for battlefield weapons, but we have no
information about which weapons, or from where to where the munitions can be
moved in 45 minutes. Furthermore, it
doesn’t add very much to what we know already know about Iraq’s plans to use
chemical and biological weapons.”
That
wouldn’t have produced frightening banner headlines in the Sun, no matter how
hard Alistair Campbell tried. A
properly caveated 45-minute claim would never have been published. And without the 45-minute claim, which was
the only really new, and striking, feature of the dossier, it is doubtful if
the dossier would have been published.
Nitpicking?
For completeness, it should be said that there was a
vague possibility that Iraq could hit Cyprus with al Hussein missiles. About 20 of them were “unaccounted for” by
UN inspectors. But, if they existed at
all, they had been hidden away since 1991, and there was a question mark over
their operability.
The possible existence of these missiles has allowed
Downing Street to defend Blair’s ignorance in recent days by saying that he
knew about these missiles, and the fact that he had the wrong impression that
they could be launched in 45 minutes is “nitpicking”.
That is a clever excuse, but beside the point: what he
was ignorant about was the meaning of the 45-minute claim, which appeared four
times in his dossier, the dossier he (allegedly) published to inform the
British public about the threat from Iraq.
If he, with his army of advisers to keep him accurately informed, got a
wrong impression from the dossier, how were the British public supposed to get
the right impression?
Best
current evidence
Dr Brian
Jones was formerly head of the branch within the Defence Intelligence Staff in
the MoD responsible for the analysis of intelligence on nuclear, biological and
chemical warfare. He gave evidence to
the Hutton Inquiry about the disquiet in his branch about aspects of the
dossier. In an article in the
Independent on 4 February 2004, he wrote:
“The problem was that the best
available current evidence that Saddam actually had chemical and
biological weapons (CW and BW) was the inference that this must be so from the
claim of an apparently unproven original source that such weapons could be
‘deployed’ within 45 minutes.”
So,
although the 45-minute claim was militarily insignificant, the intelligence
itself was significant – because it was taken to be up to date confirmation
that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons: if Iraq had plans to deploy
these weapons, then it must have had these weapons to deploy. That’s what Duelfer was saying as well (see
above).
On the
reliability of the intelligence, Jones says;
“Although the information was
relayed through a reliable second source, there was no indication the original
or primary source had established a track record of reliability. Furthermore,
the information reported by the source was vague in all aspects except,
possibly, for the range of times quoted.”
Recently, other information has come into the public
domain about the sources. According
to the Guardian of 27 January 2004, the primary source was an Iraqi military
officer, who never saw the alleged chemical weapons on which he based the
claim. The secondary source, which
passed it on to MI6, was the Iraqi exile group, the Iraqi National Accord, a
spokesman for which was quoted as saying that the information now seemed to be
“a crock of shit”.
(This
group was founded in 1990 with the support of the CIA, and was made up of
Ba’athists and former military officers, opposed to Saddam Hussein; it was
responsible for an unsuccessful coup attempt against him in 1996. It’s leader in exile, Iyad Allawi, is now a
member of the Iraqi Governing Council.)
Without that “crock of shit”,
there’s a good chance that Britain would not have gone to war. And, without Britain, there’s a chance that
the US would not have gone to war – and tens of thousands of people who are now
dead would still be alive.
Labour & Trade Union Review