Scarlett under fire over Kelly

Intelligence chief John Scarlett's credibility was questioned today after his evidence to the Hutton Inquiry.

Sources said he was "stretching credulity" by telling Lord Hutton that he had not heard of Dr David Kelly - one of the world's experts on Iraqi weapons - until July this year.

Questions were also raised about his claims in the September dossier about what constitutes a weapon of mass destruction.

Today a senior security figure described his handling of the Joint Intelligence Committee over the Iraq issue as "disgraceful".

Mr Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, took personal control of the September 2002 dossier which claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which could be deployed against British interests within 45 minutes of an order being given.

Giving evidence to Lord Hutton yesterday, Mr Scarlett said Dr Kelly had been mistaken in believing that references to WMD in his Iraq dossier referred to warheads for surface to surface missiles. In fact, he told the inquiry, these references were to munitions including shell and mortar rounds.

"That description is manifestly wrong," one of Britain's most senior retired officers told the Evening Standard." He added: "The point about a weapon of mass destruction must be

that it causes casualties which are of an order of magnitude far greater than a conventional weapon.

"A 1,000lb nuclear, chemical or biological weapon must cause a huge amount more damage than say a 1,000lb bomb because it is the term 'mass' that is the key. You cannot call a mortar shell or a single small artillery round a WMD because quite simply its capability is self-evidently not massive."

Another senior security source - who before he retired had access to Britain's most sensitive intelligence - said a simple check with the Defence Intelligence Service, whose expertise was at Mr Scarlett's disposal-would have shown that the 45-minute claim in the dossier was impossible to defend.

He said: "If that intelligence had crossed my desk I would have asked 'Where is the corroboration?' Without any corroboration, there is no sustaining that sort of intelligence."

By including the claim in the dossier, the security source said Mr Scarlett had broken a series of key rules about intelligence.

"Intelligence is a search for truth," he said. "It should be unemotional. Two things should never be revealed: sources and methods. The dossier has the potential to reveal both."