Dossier went to limits of available intelligence

Lord Butler's report into British intelligence on Iraq today cleared the Government of any bad faith but revealed a catalogue of errors by MI6 and Whitehall officials.

The 196-page review lifts the lid on thorny issues left untouched by Lord Hutton's inquiry into the death of weapons expert David Kelly.

Sources of intelligence

From the end of the first Gulf war to 1998, most intelligence on Iraq came from UN weapons inspectors. After the inspectors were forced out, information was "sparse".

But even taking into account the difficulty of recruiting reliable agents, MI6 failed to check out its sources or give them "proper resourcing". Of the five informants in Iraq, one relied on hearsay, one was a secondary rather than primary source and one was "withdrawn as unreliable". The remaining two informants were reliable but they were not worried about WMD.

Reports received from a "liaison service", possibly the CIA, was so flawed that there were no grounds to say Iraq produced biological stocks.

Assessment

In general, original intelligence material was correctly reported in Joint Intelligence Committee assessments drafted in the

Cabinet Office. An exception was the 45-minute point. There is no evidence of deliberate distortion or culpable negligence.

But it was wrong to " compartmentalise" raw MI6 intelligence reports so that key experts in Defence Intelligence Staff were excluded. Assessment staff were not aware of the background of key informants. Assessments were "coloured by overreaction to previous errors". Worst case scenarios, shorn of caveats, became "the prevailing wisdom".

Use of intelligence

The Government wanted "advocacy" for its policy against Saddam, while the JIC wanted to offer a " dispassionate assessment" of intelligence. "This will have put a strain" on the JIC as they tried to be as neutral as possible. In translating material from tentative assessments into concrete conclusions, "warnings were lost about the limited intelligence base". "Language in the dossier may have left readers with the impression that there was a fuller and firmer intelligence behind the judgments than was the case," the report says.

"Our view is that judgments in the dossier went to (although not beyond) the outer limits of the intelligence available ... The Prime Minister's description to the Commons of the dossier as 'extensive, detailed and authoritative' may have reinforced this impression."

It was a "serious weakness" that the JIC's warning on the limits of intelligence were "not sufficiently clear in the dossier". Making public that the JIC had authored the document was "a mistaken judgment". In future, the Government should take responsibility for such dossiers. The JIC should have revised its views after UN inspectors let back into Iraq at the end of 2002 found little evidence of WMD programmes.

Validation of intelligence

Despite blunders, it is clear that Saddam had the "strategic intention of resuming the pursuit of prohibited weapons programmes", including if possible its nuclear programme if UN inspections and sanctions were weakened.

Iraq was "carrying out illicit research and development and procurement activities" and was developing long-range missiles with a range that exceeded that permitted by the UN.

But the country did not have " significant, if any, stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment" and had not developed plans for using them.

In a huge boost to Tony Blair, the report states that WMD "material may be hidden in the sand, including stocks of agent or weapons". "We believe it would be a rash person who asserted at this stage that evidence of Iraqi possession of stocks of biological or chemical agents or even of banned missiles, does not exist or will never be found."

Links between al-Qaeda and Iraq

The JIC made clear that al-Qaeda facilities in the Kurdish north of the country were involved in chemical and bioweapons agent production. But crucially, they were beyond the control of the Iraqi regime. Although there were no contacts between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda "there was no evidence of co-operation".

Uranium from Africa

Everyone agreed that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999 and Britain had intelligence from "several different sources" suggesting that this was to acquire uranium for nuclear weapons. The intelligence was " credible" as the forged documents that undermined US claims about Niger were not even seen by the British government at the time.

45-minute claim

The JIC should not have included in the dossier the claim that Saddam had WMD at a 45-minute readiness without stating what type of weapons it may have referred to. "The fact that the reference in the classified assessment was repeated in the dossier later led to suspicions that it had been included because of its eye-catching character".

Mobile weapons labs

It was reasonable to include in the dossier claims about Iraq's mobile biological weapons labs. But if the informant had been correctly reported, it was clear that Iraq had not produced any recent bio agent stocks. If MI6 had had direct access to its source instead of communicating second hand from 2000, it would have known that such evidence did not exist.

Aluminium tubes

There was "overwhelming" evidence that the tubes sought by Saddam were for rockets and not nuclear centrifuges as claimed by the Americans. But in writing up the dossier, the JIC failed to include such key information or the fact that substantial re-engineering would be needed to make a nuclear reactor.

Plague and dusty mustard

The plague and "dusty mustard" gas were two of the many bio and chemical threats that were canvassed after the first Gulf war. Claims about both appear in regular JIC assessments up to March 2003 and the eve of war, even though they did not make it into the controversial dossier. Although little new evidence was received, plague continued to be mentioned in assessments. But the assessments "reflected historic evidence and intelligence of dubious reliability, reinforced by suspicion of Iraq, rather than up to date evidence".

Dr Jones's dissent

Dr Brian Jones, the senior expert on WMD in the Defence Intelligence Staff, stunned the Hutton Inquiry by revealing he had warned that key claims in the dossier about 45 minutes and that Saddam was producing chemical and bioweapons were too strong. He was right to raise concerns about both points and should have been shown intelligence restricted from him. "Senior managers" in the DIS, including Chief of Defence Intelligence Air Marshal Joe French, and his deputy Tony Cragg, should have shown Dr Jones and others the intelligence rather than relying on their own judgment.

In future, similar written warnings from someone like Dr Jones should be allowed to be passed to the very top in confidence.

The Deputy of Defence Intelligence should in future "be an intelligence specialist". Mr Cragg was not.

Joint Intelligence Committee

There should be no change in JIC's membership, but there is a "strong case" for the post of its chairman being held be someone with experience of dealing with ministers and "who is demonstrably beyond influence, and thus probably in his last post". The clear implication is that John Scarlett should never have been appointed to chair the JIC because he was both from MI6 and was climbing his way through Whitehall.

Intelligence Assessments Staff

Sir David Omand, Mr Blair's Security and Intelligence Coordinator, should review the size of the assessments staff and consider whether they have the numbers and funding to do their job.

They should also have staff with special experience on weapons who "think radically". A distinguished scientist should be appointed parttime to advise the Cabinet Office to prevent future blunders on scientific intelligence such as the 45 minute and other claims.