'Intelligence bosses ignored experts' doubts over Iraq's WMD'

Intelligence chiefs ignored warnings from their own leading experts that they could not be certain Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, an ex-intelligence official who gave crucial evidence to the Hutton Inquiry claimed today.

Dr Brian Jones, a former branch head in the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), said that the most senior intelligence officials may have “misinterpreted” key evidence on Iraq’s weapons programmes.

He also disclosed, in an article for The Independent, that he and a DIS colleague had formally complained about the Iraq dossier because they feared that they would be made “scapegoats” after the war when no weapons were found.

Dr Jones’s disclosures came as MPs were preparing to debate Lord Hutton’s findings in the Commons and follow Tony Blair’s announcement yesterday of an inquiry into the Iraq intelligence.

His article lifts the lid on the extraordinary tensions within the intelligence in the run up to the publication of the Government’s Iraq weapons dossier in September.

They also cast new doubts on the role played by the Joint Intelligence Committee – which includes the heads of all the intelligence agencies – and its chairman, John Scarlett.

At the time, Dr Jones headed the branch within the DIS scientific and technical directorate which was responsible for analysing all intelligence on nuclear, chemical and biological warfare.

He described his team as the “foremost group of analysts in the West” on the subject.

But he said that when they had warned that the dossier had overstated the case that the Iraqis still had chemical weapons (CW) and biological weapons (BW), they were overruled.

DIS was told that the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, had other intelligence to back up the claims but it was considered to be so sensitive that it was “compartmented” and not shown to the other agencies.

However, Dr Jones said that did not satisfy the experts in DIS.

“My belief is that right up to the publication of the dossier there was a unified view amongst not only my own staff but all the DIS experts that on the basis of the intelligence available to them the assessment that Iraq possessed a CW or BW capability should be carefully caveated,” he said.