Investigating Intelligence

So, Tony Blair has finally agreed to call an inquiry into the intelligence failures that characterised the build up to the Iraq invasion. Only about eight months after it became clear that one was needed, too. Whether the inquiry will actually provide us with any answers remains to be seen. If it doesn't, Blair's already dubious electability will be severely damaged. Even if answers are forthcoming, Blair may suffer anyway. It all depends what those answers are.

The first controversy has already occurred, with the Liberal Democrats refusing to participate because the inquiry will not investigate the political judgements made about the intelligence. Charles Kennedy may not like this, but there really is little need to investigate this. We already know the political judgement. Between the various dossiers, speeches, and sound-bites the government assessment is a matter of record. There isn't even much interest in the information provided to the politicians. Senior cabinet figures (from Tony Blair to Robin Cook) have confirmed that they saw all the major intelligence reports, with Blair talking of the raw intelligence that crossed his desk every day. In the build up to war, Blair will have seen pretty much everything, especially given his personal interest in Iraq. Unless the inquiry is to conclude that MI6 deliberately with-held information from the Prime Minister, there seems little of interest here.

Instead, Kennedy is attempting to get his political point scoring in early. By refusing to participate in the inquiry, he can criticise both Labour and Conservatives. His party is doing badly in the polls, and setting himself up as the leader who doesn't trust the whitewash might play well with the voters. Unfortunately, the cost is that the Liberals will not be able to push the inquiry to bring to light the answers we need. I believe that is a mistake.

The focus of the inquiry, and the real interest, is exactly what intelligence was available to justify the government's confident claims the Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The question is not whether that intelligence was wrong - we know it was - but whether at the time it could reasonably have appeared to be reliable.

There are several sources for intelligence about Iraq's weapons programs. Information came from our pre-1991 dealings with Iraq, when we were happy to supply materials for their programs. The original, 1991-98, inspection team provided both an assessment of the materials they believed existed, and the materials for which they could not account. Defectors and others unhappy with Hussein's regime supplied much material, it appears primarily filtered through one of the Iraqi exile groups. Finally, spy satellites, aircraft, and so forth provided surveillance images.

Material from before 1998 would appear both the most reliable, and the least convincing. Essentially, it tells us that Iraq possessed up to a certain amount of various forms of WMDs, and that well over 90% was destroyed. This is the source of those "Iraq possesses tonnes of chemical and biological weapons" claims. A moment's thought will show the fallacy. If the figures quoted are the maximum possible, the true figure is likely to be less. If eight years work has destroyed 95% of the maximum possible, it does not follow that the remaining 5% is unaccounted for. It means that the missing 5% probably never existed. On their own, this material does not provide a credible intelligence source. And that's leaving aside the question of how this theoretical stockpile could justify war, when one twenty times it size was fine for our friend Saddam in 1990.

To prove the case for war, we needed evidence that stockpiles - or at the very least substantial programs - still existed in 2002. That means intelligence gathered in Iraq after 1998. Our primary source - at least based on the leaks to the press, and testimony to the Hutton inquiry - appears to have been statements from Iraqis opposed to Hussein. The notorious 45 minute, for instance, originated in a statement by an Iraqi officer, passed through an exile group. The information appears to have been vague - specifying neither location of the weapons, nor details of their type, just that rockets or shells were being made available to front line units. This pattern does not appear to have been atypical.

Intelligence of this type has a number of worries attached to it. The Iraqi exiles providing the information have a vested interest in securing an Anglo-American invasion. Does that make them all liars? Of course not, but it does make their information suspect. Similarly, their sources have an interest in keeping the exile groups happy - they may be their next political masters. Again, none of which means that the information is wrong, just that it cannot be assumed to be right.

Reliable intelligence needs to be specific, needs to be checkable. Before the war, we were told that if we could see the intelligence, we would have no doubts, no uncertainty. That isn't justified by statements made by potentially biased sources. For that, we need information we can actually check. What kinds of weapons, where, when. And ideally, we need to test those claims. Normally, that is difficult, making intelligence unreliable at best. Normally, you can't just send a team to a suspected weapons site to see what's going on. From late 2002, however, that was precisely what we could do in Iraq.

Any details that were in the reports obtained via the Iraqi exile groups, nearly every assumption made about satellite photos, could be checked. Not only could the UN inspectors check the validity of the intelligence, it was pretty much their whole reason for being there. So why wasn't the intelligence passed to the inspectors for verification? Lots of it was - none of it proved accurate.

Which leads us to the interesting question for the inquiry. What information was available that corroborated the reports provided by the Iraqi exiles? For the government to have been half as confident as they sounded, there must have been some. If no such corroboration exists, we'll know that the government over-stated their case.

There is one final confusion. It was in the best interests of the government - both here and in America - for proof of the existence of WMD to be discovered before the invasion. A smoking gun would have silenced opposition, and provided definitive, internationally-acceptable justification for the war. Yet, whatever evidence the government had was either not passed on to the inspectors, or proved to be wrong.

My belief is that the most likely outcome of the inquiry is that the intelligence community and senior politicians started from the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence reports were not interpreted on the assumption that the weapons existed. The idea that Hussein had told the truth when he claimed he had destroyed the weapons never crossed their minds. That, ultimately, was the central intelligence failure.

Graham Robinson. 4th February 2004.

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