WMD dossier author 'should remain MI6 chief'

John Scarlett, the man who drew up the British government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, should not lose his job as chief of MI6 despite flaws in intelligence in the run-up to the war, the Butler report said today.

Mr Scarlett, the outgoing chair of Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), accepted “ownership” of the crucial September 2002 dossier which wrongly alleged that Saddam Hussein was capable of deploying WMD within 45 minutes.