The secret first draft of the Iraq dossier is still being suppressed

Last November, this magazine's political editor, Martin Bright, revealed in the New Statesman that I had uncovered a secret first draft of the Iraq dossier, written by former director of news at the Foreign Office (FCO), John Williams, and withheld from the Hutton inquiry.

It seemed to me a document of some importance, possibly the "smoking gun" of the notorious 45 minutes claim. I first requested it from the FCO under the Freedom of Information Act two years ago but the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, personally blocked its release, having delayed making a decision until after the 2005 election. The specific exemption he used was Section 36(2)(b) of the act - an explicit statement that the public is not to know what input Williams had into the dossier.

The Information Commissioner has now been considering my appeal for a year and a half, hampered by comic delaying tactics from the FCO, and is expected to rule imminently. Given that Williams has said he has no objection to the release of the draft, it would be strange for the commissioner to sanction its continued suppression.

What I believe the draft will demonstrate convincingly is that spin-doctors were on the inside of the drafting process. In a little-noticed - and late - piece of Hutton evidence, a letter to Tony Blair on 4 June 2003, Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) chairman John Scarlett revealed that: "representatives from the No 10 (Danny Pruce) and FCO Press Offices (John Williams, Paul Hamill and James Paver) were involved. The aim was to ensure that the [dossier] deployed the intelligence effectively . . ." The letter adds to the evidence that spin-doctors did, after all, "sex up" the dossier and that the government covered it up.

Since Andrew Gilligan first reported David Kelly's allegation that government spin-doctors had sexed-up the dossier and inserted a false claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes, the government's defence has relied on another false claim. This is that the dossier was written by Scarlett and/or the JIC. In particular, the government has claimed that a draft Scarlett produced on 10 September 2002 was both the first full draft and the first to include the 45 minutes.

I believe the Williams draft, produced a day earlier on 9 September, will prove all this to be untrue. Hutton was given - but ignored - evidence that one of the key Gilligan/Kelly claims was right: the 45 minutes was "not in the original draft" of the dossier. The JIC assessments staff had cited the uncertain intelligence on the 45 minutes in a draft JIC assessment on 5 September but chose not to include it in a dossier draft produced on the same day. The government's explanation for the late appearance of the claim in the dossier - that it followed a discussion of the JIC assessment at a meeting on 9 September - is, ironically, the very evidence that points to the inclusion of the claim being the work of spin-doctoring rather than intelligence.

There were two meetings on the dossier on 9 September. The first of these - which I first wrote about in the NS in July 2003 - was a "planning meeting", chaired by Alastair Campbell. During the Hutton hearings, both Scarlett and Campbell insisted that at that meeting it was decided definitively that Scarlett, not Williams, would write the dossier. Scarlett told Hutton he had called a pre-meeting with Campbell to clarify this: "I wanted it stated clearly in writing; and I wanted that to be the outcome of our meeting."

Williams has destroyed this story. He told The World at One last November that he produced his draft after that meeting. Indeed, later that day, at 2pm, Williams and other spin-doctors went to another meeting - the first official "dossier drafting group". Scarlett told Hutton that the JIC assessment was issued at 2pm - as the meeting began - and the government confirmed to the Foreign Affairs Committee that it was discussed there. Scarlett's deputy, Julian Miller, told Hutton that the 45-minutes claim was added to the dossier "immediately after" the issue of the JIC assessment, which would mean at or shortly after the meeting. Miller also said that a new draft was produced "in the light of discussion" at that meeting.

So the 45 minutes claim went in the dossier "immediately after" and "in the light of" its discussion at this meeting, attended by spin-doctors. They were given clearance to see intelligence with the purpose of "deploying" it in the dossier and were the only people to whom the intelligence was new.

This is where the Williams draft comes in. It appears that he produced it after the meeting and inserted the claim. If he did and the government covered this up before, during and after the exposure and suicide of Dr Kelly, it would surely rank as the biggest scandal in recent political history.

The Williams draft could prove that the spin-doctors were responsible for inserting the claim, but the claim's absence cannot prove they were not: the simple fact is that it was not in the dossier until they got "involved".

The draft could also prove that the government's attribution of the dossier to Scarlett was a lie. If it were established that Scarlett's draft was based on Williams's version, the government's story, maintained through Hutton, Butler and the other inquiries, will be shot to pieces. It would be even worse for the government if it were shown that Scarlett's attempts to resist spin-doctor involvement were overruled.

On the afternoon of 4 June, the Prime Minister faced the Commons, armed with Scarlett's letter confirming the involvement of Williams et al. Blair said nothing about spin-doctors, setting the pattern for the cover-up. But what he did say may come back to haunt him: "the so-called 45 minutes was a judgement made by the Joint Intelligence Committee and by that committee alone".

Also by Chris Ames on newstatesman.com:

An important day for truth seekers

Links:

Iraqdossier.com

John Scarlett's letter to the Prime Minister on the Iraq dossier

The email that reveals the 2pm drafting group meeting

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