156. The Road to Iraq: Tony Blair's Campaign for War (Ep 4)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Classified

Episode 156 — The Road to Iraq: Tony Blair's Campaign for War (Ep 4)

Release Date: May 13, 2026
Hosts: David McCloskey (former CIA analyst & spy novelist), Gordon Corera (security correspondent)

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Overview

This episode dives deep into the intelligence breakdowns on both sides of the Atlantic that led to the infamous public cases for the Iraq War in 2002–2003. Focusing initially on the UK—with frank admissions that the US is equally culpable—the hosts explore how weak and unverified intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was amplified, politicized, and presented to justify military action. Key figures, internal processes, and the deeply flawed symbiosis of politics and intelligence assessment are dissected with characteristic wit, storytelling skill, and insider knowledge.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Building the Case: From "Sporadic and Patchy" to "Beyond Doubt"

• Background: After the decision to base public justification for war almost entirely on Iraq’s possession of WMD, the need for convincing intelligence—and a compelling public dossier—became urgent.
• Mutual Failures: Both the UK’s MI6 and the US’s CIA contributed to a reinforcing loop of faulty reporting and assumption-making.

  "Loads of blame to go around on both sides of the Atlantic with both MI6 and the CIA in a feedback doom loop." – David McCloskey [01:57]

2. The British Dossier: Political Drivers and Intelligence Structures

• Role of the JIC: The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), chaired unusually by former MI6 officer John Scarlett, was directed by Downing Street (notably Alastair Campbell, Blair’s comms director) to produce a revelatory public dossier by September 2002.
• Political Influence: The fusion of political needs and intelligence analysis created inherent tension, particularly as the intelligence itself was weak.
• Notable Quote:

  "All have to dip their hands in the blood of collective judgment, however unwelcome that may be. And that is the JIC idea: there is no dissent." – As recalled by David Omond, via Gordon Corera [07:20]

3. Unprecedented Release and the Mystique of Intelligence

• The UK had never before released an intelligence-based public dossier of this kind. Using intelligence as public justification was highly unusual and leveraged its "mystique."

  "You’re trying to sell the public that this war that the Americans are pushing… it makes sense for the UK to join." – David McCloskey [09:07]

4. Weak Evidence: A Thin Case for War

• Throughout 2002, British intelligence on Iraqi WMD was described as "sporadic and patchy." Pressure quickly mounted to bolster the evidence or at least present it as more certain than it was.
• Conversation gems:

  "Sporadic and patchy does not sound very convincing if you're making a public case, does it?" – Gordon Corera [12:48]
  "No, it's how I describe my beard. And it's not good." – David McCloskey [12:52]

• MI6 attempted to rapidly expand its human intelligence collection, but most sources had limited or indirect access—some reporting what someone else had heard rather than direct evidence.

5. The "45 Minutes" Claim and Its Origins

• A now-notorious report (from a "subsource" to an established MI6 asset) indicated that "biological or chemical munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 20 to 45 minutes."
• Problems: The source’s chain was long and vague, there was no corroborative detail, and even the time window was arbitrarily shifted from "20–45 minutes" to "45 minutes" for public effect.
• Notable Quote:

  "It was a little bit of colour. It was a great detail which you can see if you're making a public case. Well, they can fire the weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes." – Gordon Corera [19:25]

6. Pressure, Doubts, and Hardened Language

• Policymakers and communicators (e.g., Alastair Campbell) pushed for stronger language in summaries and key judgments, while internal caveats and doubts were often left out or watered down.

  "Those get hardened up and made to sound, you know, firm, like we know what we know with certainty, when in fact... it is divorced from the reality of the intelligence picture." – David McCloskey [22:16]

7. The MI6 "Source on Trial": Hopes, Haste, and Vetting Failures

• MI6 believed it had found "another Penkovsky"—a walk-in Iraqi source promising proof of WMD soon. The source’s data was rushed up the chain to Blair without proper vetting and not shown to relevant technical experts.
• Internal dissent by analysts like Brian Jones (Defense Intelligence Staff) was ignored or suppressed.

  "My suggestions are getting ignored. We don’t have the intelligence that Iraq’s been producing quantities of chemical warfare agents since 1991. But I’m getting ignored." – Recounted by Gordon Corera [33:11]

8. Communication of Confidence: Lessons Ignored

• Both US and UK intelligence processes failed to clearly communicate confidence levels or major caveats. The final public documents presented judgments as unambiguous, with critical uncertainty hidden away.

  "If a public document says this is the judgment, but we have low confidence in this, you can't go to war on a low confidence judgment. But it would have been accurate." – David McCloskey [35:34]

• This failure led to reforms: UK officials now include terms like “highly likely” in later years to indicate uncertainty.

9. Public and Political Reception

• Blair presented the dossier as “beyond doubt.” The infamous “45 minutes from attack” claim dominated headlines and parliamentary debate.
• Even Saddam Hussein was reportedly bewildered by the specific claims, unsure if his own military secretly possessed WMD capabilities.
• Notable moment:

  "He goes around the room and he goes, is there anyone here who knows about these capabilities that I, the President, don't know about?" – Gordon Corera [40:57]
  "All of this fake information… now comes back to Saddam and he's legitimately wondering if he might have the capability somewhere in his government." – David McCloskey [41:16]

10. US Case: Echoes and Escalations

• Similarly, the US hastily assembled a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) supporting claims of Iraqi WMD, under intense political pressure but largely without direct politicization affecting analytic lines.
• Policy officials repeatedly asked for clearer public cases; language was sharpened.
• The infamous George Tenet “slam dunk” exchange emerged after Bush found the evidence underwhelming:

  "Don't worry to the President, the case is a slam dunk." – George Tenet [52:45] "The two dumbest words I ever said." – As cited by Gordon Corera [53:01]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On the UK/US "doom loop" of bad intel:
  "Loads of blame to go around on both sides of the Atlantic..." — McCloskey [01:57]

• On the JIC's collective responsibility:
  "All have to dip their hands in the blood of collective judgment, however unwelcome that may be." — David Omond via Corera [07:20]

• On the mystical role of intelligence:
  "Politicians, if they're trying to make a case, are thinking, we'll have a bit of that, we want a bit of that." — Corera [08:45]

• On 'sporadic and patchy' intelligence:
  "March, by the Joint Intelligence Committee. Sporadic and patchy does not sound very convincing if you're making a public case, does it?" — Corera [12:48]

• On vetting sources:
  "This new source on trial is absolutely intriguing because this is a walk in...the aim is to give Blair a flavour of what's happening on the ground." — Corera [24:50]

• On ignoring expert warnings:
  "My suggestions are getting ignored. You know, we don't have the intelligence that Iraq's been producing quantities of chemical warfare agents since 1991. But I'm getting ignored." — Recounting Brian Jones, Corera [33:11]

• Triumph of "confidence" over facts:
  "What I believe is the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons." — Quoting Tony Blair, Corera [36:36]

• On Saddam's confusion:
  "He looks around the table and... goes, is there anyone here who knows about these capabilities that I, the President, don't know about?" — Corera [40:57]

• On the infamous "slam dunk" meeting:
  "Tenet uses this line, he says, don't worry to the President, the case is a slam dunk." — Corera [52:45]
  "The two dumbest words I ever said." — Quoting George Tenet [53:01]

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Important Timestamps

• [03:59] Starting the UK case: Campbell, Scarlett, and the public dossier
• [07:20] "Dipping our hands in the blood of collective judgment"
• [12:48] “Sporadic and patchy” intelligence and pressure to bolster it
• [17:36] Human intelligence chains and the challenge of source reliability
• [19:25] The 45 minutes claim—origins, doubts, and transformation
• [24:50] “Source on trial” and his unvetted, critical information
• [33:11] Ignoring expert dissent (Brian Jones)
• [36:36] Blair’s unequivocal language in the dossier forward
• [40:57] Saddam's confusion over British claims
• [44:58] US rushes to produce NIE
• [52:45] The “slam dunk” moment with George Tenet

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Summary

This episode vividly lays bare the problematic fusion of politics and intelligence in both the UK and the US prior to the Iraq War. Through sharp historical context, personal anecdotes, and behind-the-scenes revelations, McCloskey and Corera reveal how weak evidence was spun, how dissent was suppressed, and how even those on the receiving end (including Saddam himself) were bamboozled by the mystique and misrepresentation of intelligence. The insight into operational reality, internal government frictions, and the consequences of language and process make this essential listening (and reading) for anyone fascinated by how truth can be constructed—or distorted—at the highest levels of government.

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Next Episode Preview

The story continues as debate shifts to how the White House, perhaps recognizing the weakness of CIA information, leans heavily on British intelligence to make the public case for war—a decision with enormous consequences.

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Bonus for Club Members: Upcoming interviews with Michael Morell, Richard Dearlove, and Alastair Campbell.
Live Show: 4–5th September, South Bank.

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Transcript

[A]

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com. Did MI6 lean on weak intelligence to justify the Iraq war? And why were dissenting voices ignored? Well, welcome to the Rest Is classified. I'm David McCloskey.

[B]

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

[A]

And we are on episode four of this deep dark journey into the story of the Iraq weapons of mass destruction intelligence failure, the debacle that led up to the Iraq War of 2003. And we left off last time looking at the decision to use WMD as the the marketing strategy, the basis to confront Saddam, to change his regime, to sell the war publicly. And the decision was taken to rest the public case for that war almost entirely on Iraq's possession of WMD in defiance of UN resolutions, course of the 1990s and early 2000s, and of course demanding that Saddam disarm. So what that decision naturally leads you toward is the need to have intelligence to make the case that Saddam in fact has weapons of mass destruction. And so we're going to look in this episode at how that case is constructed. And we should say before we get going that I think many of our American listeners will presume that the WMD intelligence failure was solely an American one.

[B]

Oh no.

[A]

When in fact there is loads of blame to go around on both sides of the Atlantic with both MI6 and the CIA in a feedback doom loop of giving each other bad information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2002. I'm frankly grateful, Gorda, that we're going to start the story by focusing on how the UK's secret services screw up.

[B]

That's right, we are going to start with the uk, but we will get to the us. Don't worry.

[A]

I should say we're coming back to the CIA. Don't worry.

[B]

Yeah, the CIA won't get away with this one. But it is interesting, isn't it? Because I think you're absolutely right that what's so interesting is it's both intelligence services. But it's also, as we'll see in the next couple of episodes as well, the way in which the US and UK interact, which is really, really interesting in this. This episode is brought to you by hp.

[A]

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[B]

Let's start with the UK. So the idea of making a public case actually first arrives back in April 2002 when the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, John Scarlett, former MI6 officer, meets with someone called Alistair Campbell. Don't know what happened to him. Who was Tony Blair's Director of Communications?

[A]

He's faded into obscurity in the.

[B]

I hear he's a podcast now. Yeah, he, he's got. Everyone's got a podcast. David.

[A]

What a loser.

[B]

Don't say that. We've got him on our bonus episode. He is far from it. He's our colleague now. But he does play a really important role in this story because he's Director of communications at number 10. And they are thinking, you know, quite explicitly, how are we going to set the scene communications wise to confront Iraq? And they start thinking about this as far back as April. And it's in conjunction with this thing called the Joint intelligence committee, the JIC.

[A]

And unlike the CIA, which has its own analytic cadre, MI6SIS does not. So is it fair to say that in the British system the JIC is playing the role of some combination of the CIA's Directorate of Analysis and like the National Intelligence Council, where it's formulating the big strategic assessments that are coming out of the uk.

[B]

Yeah, it's a good point because CIA has both collection and analysis and MI6 is just collection. Then there is a group underneath the JIC called the Assessment Staff who do a lot of the analysis. And the JIC sits at the top of it. So it's more like National Intelligence Council. It's actually quite a small body which meets weekly and oversees the final assessments which are presented to government. And it includes the agencies, often technically the top or very senior people from the agencies, plus the customer departments at a foreign office, Ministry of Defense. Interestingly enough, the CIA London station head has a. Has a seat on the jic. Not for every meeting.

[A]

Shows you how deeply we've penetrated your government, Gordon, that we exactly have an intelligence officer that sits with your intelligence officers, that comes up with your assessments.

[B]

Yeah. And I don't think it's reciprocated. It is interesting, isn't it?

[A]

It is not. It is not reciprocated.

[B]

No.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So. So it's a very interesting group. Now, John Scarlett is chair of the group. This is also interesting because it's quite unusual to have someone from MI6, which is where he'd been previously, Oleg Gordievsky's handler, as the chair of it. Normally you'd have a diplomat who's a kind of consumer, rather than someone from the production agencies. And there are interesting kind of personal dynamics here. I think it's worth saying, because he is an MI6 officer who's gone to this job, but he's also hoping to eventually succeed Richard Dearlove as chief of MI6. And it's fair to say that he and Richard Dearlove are not that close. I think that's me being a bit British and understated. I think Dearlove would rather have other people succeed him as chief of MI6. And so there's kind of. There's some tension there, I think it's fair to say. So Scarlett is told by number 10, Alastair Campbell and others that this dossier, which they're now planning to produce in September, has to be revelatory.

[A]

It's good feedback on Adasi. That's a good, good task.

[B]

Make it good, make it.

[A]

Make it good. Make it good and informative. Good and informative, yeah.

[B]

A guy called David Omond, who was a security coordinator at the time and sits on the jit, he says, we didn't object to doing this. We didn't see the risks at the time. We just thought, this is something we've been told to do. And he has this line, all have to dip their hands in the blood of collective judgment, however unwelcome that may be. And that is the JIC idea is there is no dissent.

[A]

It's. The rest is classified way too. We have the same. We have the same slogan on this show. Glad to see gets carried through.

[B]

Dipping our hands in the blood of collective judgment. So that's the dossier which is going to become very famous in the uk. People involved in it would say, well, it's not propaganda, it's not making the case forward, it's just putting information into the public domain for. For people to make up their own minds. About Saddam.

[A]

Sure. This is not common in the UK system, is it, for the intelligence services to produce a public document that is going to be consumed by everybody on the eve of major policy decisions like that's not typically done.

[B]

No. And in fact, I don't think it had really ever been done in this way by the Joint Intelligence Committee. So this is really completely new. There've been some little things, there've been something after the, you know, the run up to Afghanistan a year or two earlier where they put some intelligence in the public domain and occasionally a politician might deploy some intelligence. But the idea of doing a dossier to tell people about a specific thing, where the government is pursuing a particular agenda, you know, that does feel new. I think it's a bit more common in the us but it's perhaps got more common. But it is because of the power that intelligence has, isn't it? It's because of the mystique surrounding it in intelligence agencies and politicians, if they're trying to make a case, are thinking, we'll have a bit of that, we want a bit of that.

[A]

Yeah. I think every year there are unclassified remarks from the Director of National Intelligence on the global threat landscape. It's not common, but it's also not uncommon or unheard of to declassify segments of national intelligence estimates, for example, particularly key judgments could, you know, where you're not revealing sources and methods but you're disclosing analytic judgments, bottom lines, high level analysis, that sort of thing. There was the case during the 911 Commission's work where the entire PDB bin Laden determined to strike us was declassified as a kind of COVID year behind measure by the Bush administration to show that they didn't have tactical warning. So it's more common, I think, in the US system and it makes sense in this case in the UK when you're trying to, let's be honest, you're trying to sell the public that this war that the Americans are pushing, it makes sense for the UK to join.

[B]

No one had ever done this before. Where you've got a dossier which is going to be a Joint Intelligence Committee dossier, but where you've got political appointees also involved in the process and commenting on it. And I think that's where some of the difficulties come with this.

[A]

I suppose the biggest problem though is not necessarily making this public, it's that the intelligence that you have to make public is really thin.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And is not going to withstand the scrutiny of having to put together this dossier and I suppose it's worth reminding listeners we talked about this a little bit last time, that everybody on both sides of the Atlantic, really, in most Western intelligence services, and frankly, many people inside Saddam's regime in Iraq also think that Saddam has wmd.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that assessment, which is based heavily off of the fact that Saddam had chemical weapons programs, biological weapons, and had been striving for a nuclear capability all Prior to the first Gulf War in 1991, you had this historical precedent of Saddam going for this stuff, actually having it in some cases. And then Saddam in the early 1990s, makes the wild decision to destroy all of that, to wind down the nuclear program, get rid of the chemical weapons stockpiles, the biological weapons, and do it in secret without telling the inspectors, without telling the US and he does so to maintain regional deterrence against the Israelis, against the Iranians, the. With the underlying assumption that the United States of America will know that he has disarmed, because that is smart. Because we're really smart and all seeing and all powerful. And so by the time we get to 2002, Western intelligence services have really thin information, old information. And this old assumption about Saddam and his weapons has turned into the judgment, effectively.

[B]

Yeah. And that is, I think, the problem, because as they start working on this public case on both sides of the Atlantic, focusing here on the uk, but it's definitely true on the American side as well. They kind of go, well, we know he's got wmd, but they look at the actual facts that they can put out into the public domain. They go, well, that doesn't look that good. Because of course. Because of course he's not there. But. But they think, well, that's a bit weak. But the intelligence is described as. As sporadic and patchy in March by the Joint Intelligence Committee. Sporadic and patchy does not sound very convincing if you're making a public case, does it? War?

[A]

No, it's how I describe my beard. And it's not good. It doesn't give.

[B]

And I wouldn't go to war on that basis.

[A]

You wouldn't go to war on the basis of this part?

[B]

Yeah. So you get two pressures. One is how far can you push this intelligence you have, reduce the caveats. And the second is, can you actually improve the intelligence base of which you're working, which is thin, as we said, to get fresh intelligence to make it stronger? And we're going to see a bit of both of those things. I mean, we've talked about the analytic failure by the poor old analysts. I think here we get into a collection failure, though, particularly for MI6. We talked last time about Iraq having been a bit of a backwater in the 90s for collection. They'd been reliant on inspectors. They were out now by 2002, though, unsurprisingly, it's a top collection priority, isn't it?

[A]

But.

[B]

But it's not easy to quickly step up that collection.

[A]

Yeah, Human intelligence collection isn't a dial you just turn up. It takes time to develop those sources, it takes time to reallocate collectors to that target to make sure you get the sources. I mean, agents have to be spotted, researched, assessed, developed, cultivated, you know, and pitched, and then have information that they produce that is kind of vetted and validated over time. For an intelligence service to have confidence in that reporting, you have to understand exactly why they're doing what they're doing. You have to understand their access, you have to understand who their subsources are, the exact chain of custody of the information that you are receiving. This isn't an excuse, it is just a statement. Iraq's a really hard target in 2002. There's no embassy, it's a denied area. The US is running a covert action program to try to unseat Saddam. So a lot of the intelligence firepower has been focused on that did, not necessarily on penetrating his regime. But MI6 does have a small stable of agents that are reporting from within Iraq. Small, but it's there.

[B]

Yeah. Now, one or two, particularly one, had been there for a long time, even back to the first Gulf War, and have been able to supply very useful information on things like Iraq's air defences, aspects of the military. But the problem is he this source plus the one or two others they've got, you know, didn't really have direct access into the weapons of mass destruction program. And this is the problem. What they start doing is asking these sources, can you find out anything? Can you get anything from new sources or from other sources? And what you get is your agents then look for their own agents. So you get a chain and it's a source, recruits, a subsource. And in some cases in Iraq, the intelligence comes from sub, sub sources. So there's like a chain of people who are passing information on because words gone out from the main agent saying, does anyone know anything about wmd? And that is one of the weaknesses, because immediately you've got a problem with that, haven't you?

[A]

Well, so the way we would talk about this kind of access in the agency is you'd have A you'd have a source description when you're reading a human intelligence report. And it was, there were different words used. If you were reading a, you know, a UK generated intelligence report, you know, a 6 versus a CIA TD or TDX, which is what the kind of disseminated human intelligence reports are called, they would describe sources that have firsthand access, secondhand access. Sometimes the UK would refer to it as know, indirect access. There could even be sources that have thirdhand access as you're describing here, which is this chain of custody of the information that is, you know, a bit of a telephone game between the person who actually heard the thing and the person who is telling the case officer, CIA, SIS, MI6, they're dealing with this problem all the time. I mean this is what human, human collectors are doing. The important thing is being able to have confidence in the chain. So if, for example, if you had the ultimate source of the information is someone who is actually working in Saddam's chemical weapons program and they tell their cousin who is working with your source, if you over time can have confidence in that chain, you could say that's third hand access.

[B]

But it's good, you can validate it,

[A]

you can check it, you can validate it. So having this chain of subsources is not in and of itself the problem. It does make it more difficult for a case officer to verify the information. And certainly like an actual kid's game of telephone, it increases the risk of misunderstandings and miscommunications in that chain of custody.

[B]

What's so interesting is this period, August, September 2002, MI6 is really keen to get new sources or subsources to bolster the case which is going into this dossier which is due at the end of September and kind of firm up the conclusions. And so you get a couple of very important new sources. It's worth just talking about two of those. The one that becomes most famous in the UK is produces a report which refers to 45 minutes and this will become after the war, very controversial. So this is a subsource. So the existing agent says he's got a new subsource and has this vague report and it is vague saying that biological or chemical munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 20 to 45 minutes. Where it exactly comes from, there's still a little bit of mystery about it. You know, some people said, oh, someone overheard an attack saying. Another person said it was like a notice on a notice board saying, you know, you should be ready for this. And even MI6, when they're asked about it by British intelligence analysts, are less clear about the exact source than the analysts would have expected. You know, it's later said that they were unusually vague and unhelpful about what the exact source. So you've already got something which it's a little bit unclear where it's come from. And there's some specific problems with it as well. For instance, is it biological or chemical weapons? It's not actually clear. And also, I mean, someone, when you dig down into it, what does it mean the munitions could be fired, The WMD, within 20 to 45 minutes, as someone puts it. Well, if it. If it actually takes 45 minutes to move a munition from a storage place to a unit to fire it, that's actually not that impressive. If it's already with the U. D, then that's, you know, what does that actually tell you? It's not that impressive. And actually they end up changing it from 20 to 45 to 45 because. Which is also a bit weird because they think 20 sounds too quick, which I find a kind of odd thing to have done. So it actually changes. There's also none of the kind of collateral or corroborating intelligence you might want to go with it. Which unit, which types of weapons, where is the WMD being produced, by whom? You know, there's no surrounding intercept or anything to support it. So it's a kind of quite vague statement. But the thing is, they're putting together this dossier. The emails are whizzing back and forth. You know, people are kind of pleading for more information. And you can see why, as people who are involved in the process says, they kind of fell on the 45 minutes because it was a little bit of colour. It was a great detail which you can see if you're making a public case. Well, they can fire the weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.

[A]

It is politically helpful. It also seems, I'm reading between the lines a little bit that perhaps the source was making the same faulty assumption that the intelligence analysts were, which is. Well, Saddam obviously has weapons of mass destruction, but the lack of specificity seems to indicate that whoever this is, that they don't actually have access to those programs. And they're sort of layering their own.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Assumptions and judgments on top of something. They saw that related to the delivery of a munition. And perhaps it wasn't. It wasn't even a munition that had chemical or biological weapons on it.

[B]

Yeah, I Mean, you could imagine a kind of manual or a note saying, you know, should you have the weapons, they should be ready to fire within 20 to 45 minutes, you know, according to standard procedures.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You could imagine reading that. But does it actually tell you they've got it? You know, is it something old from pre1991? It is very vague, but as you said, very useful.

[A]

And it's interesting here that an original draft talks about Iraq probably having dispersed its special weapons and stating that they could be with military units and ready for firing within 45 minutes. But Alistair Campbell pointed out that in one draft of the dossier, the use of the qualifier may in the main text was weaker than the language in the summary. And this is. This will be a problem on both sides of the Atlantic in that the intelligence assessments are often more mushier and weaker in the main body. And the overarching, what we would have called key judgments, which get all of the attention because those are the ones that are going to be the talking points for policymakers and in some cases disseminated publicly, those get hardened up and made to sound, you know, firm, like we know what we know with certainty, when in fact, as you do, that it is divorced from the reality of the intelligence picture.

[B]

Yeah. And in a sense, I mean, without wishing to defend Alistair too much, it's his job to say we've got to make the strongest case. If the intelligence community is. Thinks it's going too far, it's their job to resist that or to decide upon it. You know, that is the tension you've got within. Within this process. But there were doubts about the 45 minutes, even, I think, on the American side.

[A]

And frankly, I mean, as we'll see,

[B]

I think there were.

[A]

There were doubts at the working levels on the UK side as well.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But a lot of that uncertainty didn't make its way into the main body of the report, to the language that was used. Again, it all comes back to this idea that we all know that he's got the weapons and so, yeah, it maybe doesn't matter all that much. Now, the other dynamic is that the dossier is being drawn up really quickly. You have emails going back and forth, police for more information. I mean, David Omend, who had that great quote about drawing up the thing in blood or something like that, at one point, says, has anybody got anything more they can put in the dossier? I mean, you know, it's just like we thought we'd have a great public document here, and this whole thing is Kind of not turning out as we thought.

[B]

Yeah, that is exactly the tone of things. Which is, which is the words going out, come on, you know, and you can see the pressure on MI6 going, come on, you got to have more. But there is this great, great quote, I think from the director of the CIA, George Tenet, because I think he says, I think in his memoir he says people thought it didn't fit with the artillery capability of the Iraqis and he thought it questionable and referred to it privately as the. They can attack in 45 minutes. Shit. Sorry for the language, but after the war, 45 minutes is going to become the focus of massive attention. But there was another piece of intelligence from a new source which was actually even more important at the time. So let's take a break and afterwards we'll look at that.

[A]

Welcome back. In the push to fill out this dossier, MI6 has potentially struck gold. There is a new source that has come into the British stable, a new source on trial whose information is going to be critical to the way that the dossier is compiled.

[B]

Yeah, that's right. This new source on trial is absolutely intriguing because this is a walk in. An Iraqi who just walks in to the UK in the Middle east, they've got a relative in Iraq and the relative is saying that they have information that the production of biological and chemical weapons was being accelerated and there was the building of further facilities and the use of what are called dual use facilities, which are where they look like they're civilian, but actually have military use and WMD use. And the crucial thing is this new source promises, promises a crucial consignment of proof to back up these claims in the next three to four weeks, including details of the sites. And it will be contained on a set of CDs.

[A]

What are those?

[B]

Do you remember what CDs are, David? You're not too young. Compact discs, a form of storage for information.

[A]

And not that, in retrospect, not that compact.

[B]

No, not that compact. Not as good as USB stick. But it's interesting. This seems to MI6 to be great. One officer is quoted at the time as telling people, we've got another Penkovsky. Now, Penkovsky was the great source that the US and UK had in the early 60s, a Soviet GRU military intelligence officer who provides intelligence on missiles and rockets, which helps the Cuban missile crisis, doesn't it? I mean, it's a story we should definitely do and I mean it's a pretty big comparison to make. But they think this new source at the on trial bit Tells you he's not yet been confirmed or validated. They think he's the big deal.

[A]

So the source was described as on trial, so being vetted. In other words, the Brits don't yet have total confidence in his reporting, but he's reporting on WMD and Iraq. And so the head of MI6, Richard Dearlove, who will be speaking to in an interview for club members, I think rightly believed that the information was too important to sit on.

[B]

This actually gets to one of the great controversies about MI6 and its political masters at this period, which, which is how did they interact and did something go wrong in that relationship. So you're right, this source comes in early September. Dearlove has a scheduled meeting anyway with Tony Blair, the prime minister, on September 12, where he's going to with another officer. Update Blair on what's going on in Iraq. Dear Love goes through the sources they've got and he brings up the new source on trial. And the aim is to give Blair a flavour of what's happening on the ground. And he says, you know, this new source could be important, but he does say the case was developmental and the source was unproven. Now, some inside MI6 will argue in hindsight that this was emblematic of some of the things that went wrong, which is you've got the chief of MI6 walking an unproven source directly to the Prime Minister and, you know, before it's been vetted or confirmed. And, you know, this goes to this question, and it is very similar, I think, to the debates about CIA Director George Tenet and his relationship with President Bush. Is are the intelligence chiefs too close to the politicians and are they too eager to please? And there are definitely two sides to this.

[A]

I think it reminds me of the dynamic that, and we'll see this as the story unfolds, of the dynamic that, that spins out between the office of the Vice President of the US and the CIA, where you have analysts inside Cheney's office who are looking at all of the raw intelligence and essentially coming up with their own analytic lines. It's a danger because if you are working on building an analytic line, if you show the policymakers the raw intel, they can come up with their own. They have a right to see that information. And I think in certain circumstances like this one, it probably makes sense to give Blair, give Bush an idea of just how thin the case is. For example, you could imagine a set of, I don't know. And it'd be interesting to talk to Richard Dearlove about this when we speak to him. But there's a flavor of this conversation which would make Blair much less keen on trying to sell the war based on WMD and much less keen to put out a public dossier. Because you look at the information and say, this isn't very good.

[B]

Yeah, but I think the reality is that the intelligence chiefs, because they believe the WMD is there and they're being called on, are giving confidence to the politicians rather than giving doubt. Dearlove is very interesting on this, and I've spoken to him about it in the past, because he gets accused of being too, too close to Blair, too eager to please his comeback, which I think is interesting, is to say it's your job as an intelligence chief, especially in times of conflict, to be in the room with the Prime Minister. During World War II, Churchill was reading raw intelligence and, you know, the chief of MI6 was walking into his office every day and no one goes, well, he was too close to his intelligence chief.

[A]

It's not about the closeness. I think that's, that's not the right mental model. You would want a CIA director who has the trust of the Prime Minister or the President that. You absolutely would want that. You don't want someone who's isolated, who's out of the loop. You don't want that at all. Because I was going to ask you this. If, if your read of this interaction between Dear Love and Blair is Blair twisting Dear Love's arm and telling him, you know, it'd really be great if we could have an assessment that says this. Whereas. Because when I, when I look at this, I actually see this as less of a concern around politicization of intelligence and more about the analytic failure that was ongoing in everyone's minds to even question the underlying assumptions that were forming the basis of the judgments.

[B]

Yeah, I think that is true. I don't think you get the sense that Blair himself is going, come on, give me more, you know, or I want you to push this beyond what it is. I think Blair is eager and hungry for information which will validate a decision he's effectively already taken. And I think, you know, the spies know that. I think the accusation against them would be that they are too eager to please and to provide that intelligence, even when there are caveats. And I think, I mean, just to keep on this new source on trial, because I think this is really interesting because that report, which, as we said, is kind of rushed into the Prime Minister before it's properly validated, is shown to the Prime Minister. But this is what's so interesting. It's not shown to some of the technical experts within the British government. Now that, I think is where you get to a, you know, a real question. And these are the people who, after all, are able to judge the credibility of the information. One of these was a guy I knew, sadly now passed away called Brian Jones. And Brian worked in something called the Defence Intelligence Staff of the Ministry of Defense events. And they are very much the kind of unsung heroes, I think, of the intelligence community because these are the analysts who are the deep experts on things like weapon systems of other countries and technical areas like weapons of mass destruction and who are, who have the technical knowledge to judge whether something like these reports are true and fit. Fit in with anything else. And Brian comes back from holiday in September. The dossier's been worked on very in a rush in his absence. And his staff tell him, you know, their work's dominated by it. His expert on biological weapons isn't completely happy, but is okay. Brian Jones, who's the kind of superior in this team, his expert on Iraq's chemical weapons, was very unhappy with the dossier. And he says, my suggestions are getting ignored. You know, we don't have the intelligence that Iraq's been producing quantities of chemical warfare agents since 1991. But I'm getting ignored. I mean, that's the kind of judgment which.

[A]

That would have been helpful. That would have been helpful. Super important because that goes back to

[B]

that 45 minutes point. It's all very well saying you can fire this stuff in 45 minutes, but where's the evidence? It's being produced somewhere. If you have nothing on that, then you've got a problem.

[A]

And that's what the expert analysts are

[B]

there to kind of say. Brian hears about this new source on trial and he's not being shown the details. Details. He asks his boss about it in Defense Intelligence who says, you know, some very new intelligence, very sensitive, can't be shown to very many people, but it clears up all the worries.

[A]

These are not the droids you're looking for.

[B]

Yeah, Brian is like asking about it and. And his boss goes, well, MI6 guy has assured me, you know, it's all good. And Brian goes, have you seen it? Have you actually seen it? And his boss goes, Nope, no, but MI6 tell me it was the good stuff. Brian privately contacts someone who had seen the MI6 report. And he asked the other person, he says, should I write a formal minute outlining my concerns or is it okay? And the person says, Write the Minute. And Brian Jones's chemical weapons analyst also writes their concerns on paper that they think the dossier is kind of going too far. So I think it's very interesting because these are the people who, who are deeply versed in this stuff.

[A]

This point around the level of confidence and certainty in the judgments is a really, really important and big point in the story because it's the. It's the same dynamic on both sides of the Atlantic where you probably would come up with a judgment in this case that Saddam does have chemical and biological weapons. But you'd probably caveat that and, and say we have really old information, we have big gaps, and we have low confidence as a result in that judgment. If that lived at the top of the document along with the judgment would be deeply unsatisfying to policymakers. It would be true, and it would make it challenging to sell the war on the basis of wmd. If a public document says this is the judgment, but we have low confidence in this, you can't go to war on a low confidence judgment. But it would have been really. It would have been accurate.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's this issue around

[A]

clearly communicating the confidence level of a judgment. It sounds arcane, but it's actually. It's a really big deal in the world of intelligence analysis.

[B]

It is. And actually it's one of the lessons the UK will learn very much after Iraq is in future. You have all these phrases which you'll hear people use, prime ministers use in Parliament when they talk about intelligence on the Salisbury poisoning. They'll say highly likely. They will stick to that language because they've been told we have to be clear about our level of confidence in these judgments. And it's interesting because this new source on trial, it's not actually in the dossier because it's on trial, but it is used to overcome some of the doubts and harden the judgments. The language gets hardened. John Scarlett, chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, is writing the main text, but there is a forward written by Tony Blair. And in that, again, back to your point about language, the language is even starker because in the forward, Tony Blair says, what I believe is the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons. I mean, that's a big phrase, isn't it? And so you've suddenly lost, as you said, you know, this idea of gaps in confidence and caveats. They're gone.

[A]

Yeah. Not a lot of ambiguity in a statement saying it's beyond doubt that Saddam has. Has continued on Those programs. So by 24 September 2002, the dossier is published and Blair makes his case in the House of Commons. And he says, I'm aware of course, that people will have to take elements of this on the good faith of our intelligence services, which. Which also, just as a side note, we're so distant now from that world where I think any public would agree that that's a rational statement, isn't it?

[B]

Yes. In the us, especially these days.

[A]

Especially in the us, I think that's

[B]

really worth just picking up on because this is an era still where I think for the politicians pointing to intelligence services was something really useful because they still have this mystique, the public has confidence in them. This was a world in which we trusted experts, which we've been told to do less these days by various people. But, you know, these are the experts. And Tony Blair is saying, this is what they've told me and I trust them.

[A]

Remember, this is in September where Blair goes public with the dossier. The intelligence that in March had been sporadic and patchy is now, as Blair will say, extensive, detailed and authoritative, which. What a transformation. This intelligence has gotten a brand new sparkly dress on over the course of a six, six month period.

[B]

Yeah, thanks to MI6 managing to pull these rabbits out of the hat, effectively. The 45 minutes, you know, the sub sources, the new source on trial, there's another source on biological weapons. Suddenly, there we go, it's transformed. And you know, the dossier comes out that day. I remember it very well, I still got my copy the dossier somewhere. But the media, of course, what do they pick up on? They pick up on the 45 minutes claim because it's something specific. And I think again, people in the Joint Intelligence Committee who were drafting this, they are not journalists. In fact, they probably had spent most of their career steering as far clear as journalists as possible and of the media. And I don't think they quite grasped how the media would pick up on certain details and then these would become the key facts. And 45 minutes is going to be one of them. 45 minutes from attack. You know, the Evening Standard late edition read on September 24 itself. And I remember talking to an MI6 officer, this is afterwards, he tells me that he comes out of Vauxhall Cross MI6 headquarters and he sees, you know, they have billboards for the evening stand at the evening newspaper by the tube station and he saw this headline, 45 minutes from attack. And he says two thoughts go through his head. The first one is that's not quite what the original intelligence report said. And the second thought he has is if this goes wrong we're all screwed. And oh yes, I think he was right.

[A]

That was some good analysis right there to counter the analysis of the dossier. What I find striking about this is that not Only are the MI6 officers confused by the way the dossier has been received, received. There's another gentleman two and a half thousand miles away at a palace in Baghdad who is probably just looked up from writing the sequel to Zabiba and the Cake and is also deeply confused by what he's seeing coming out of the uk. And that is Saddam Hussein who looks I suppose at the dossier and the reporting around the dossier and is saying some version of if only I had this capability, I would be, I would be king of the world.

[B]

Yeah, I love the fact he summons his Revolutionary Command Council which is supposed to be the group running the country. I mean it's not, but you know, it's his senior people and he looks around the table and people who were there will recall later he looked stiff and under pressure because he's just read this British dossier and it contains details about his own military capabilities that they could be fired within 45 minutes which he doesn't know about. So he goes around the room and he goes, is there anyone here who knows about these capabilities that I, the President don't know about?

[A]

I mean, you know, this is an absolutely insane meeting. I would have loved to have been a fly at a wall in this meeting because it's, it's like a full, this, I don't even, is it a loop? I don't even know what it is. The whole, it's just like a self licking ice cream cone. So all the, all of this fake information that the Brits have collected and disseminated now comes back to Saddam and he's legitimately wondering if he might have the capability somewhere in his government.

[B]

Yeah, does someone know about this and they haven't told him? And they're all going like, no, no, no. Because of course no one's going to be like yeah, I've got something I haven't told you. And I mean throughout this whole period Saddam and some of the people and his senior generals seem unsure whether they might have WMD.

[A]

They misplaced it. They misplaced it in the early 90s. I guess it's possible though, it makes some sense because if he ordered it destroyed he could presume that maybe someone didn't destroy all of it.

[B]

I've got a little bit hidden away in the back of my shed, you know, he goes to Chemical Alley, who'd used this stuff at her lab, he goes, do we have it at wmd? You know, do you know? Kevin Alley goes, no, you know, I don't know. So they're really puzzled. And of course they think the CIA and MI6, therefore are all powerful and they know. And so the idea that they're wrong about it doesn't kind of work for him, I think. I think he thinks at this point, well, either they're right, maybe it's hidden, but everyone's saying I don't have it. Or maybe he's thinking, well, they know I don't have it and they're just making it up anyway. So I think, you know, this is confusion in Iraq about this, which is wild, isn't it?

[A]

Not that this excuses the intelligence failure, but it gives you another lens for how difficult of a target this was. Because it's very possible that you could have recruited someone who had access to a very senior Iraqi military leader. And that senior Iraqi military leader may have assumed that there were wmd.

[B]

The guy down the road's got it,

[A]

the guy down the road has it. And I mean, I love this quote from Richard Dearlove where he says there was clearly a great deal of confusion among the Iraqi leadership about what their own capability was. So, yeah, it's a great picture of how complicated an intelligence target Iraq was at the time. Because even inside the system, there would have been senior people who were making the same assumption that Western intelligence agencies were.

[B]

Yeah, and I mean, D level says, you know, I'm of the view there were probably no human sources in Iraq who could have told us authoritatively that they didn't have wmd. On the one hand, it's a really weird statement to say, but it's like if anyone comes and tells you, no, we don't have it, it, you're not going to believe them because you're going to be like, well, maybe you don't know, maybe someone else have it.

[A]

Right?

[B]

So even someone who tells you the truth and says, I don't know about any wmd, I don't think there is any, you're not going to believe them. I mean, it's just this level of kind of confusion and complexity to it, which I think is extraordinary. So that's the kind of the British case as we hit the dossier being published, but the U.S. administration is also kind of to be making its case, isn't it?

[A]

So By September of 2002, the US system is making a similar move to get the intelligence package together to make this case. There have been a series of speeches and media interviews by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to persuade the public and Congress, which mattered more 23 years ago, 24 years ago. Remember, remember that time all these administration leaders are making the point that Iraq has WMD and is able to use it, which is ahead of the intelligence community in the, in the US in the CIA. And so the intelligence community is trying to catch up. And a product known as an nie, a National Intelligence Estimate is going to be quite quickly cobbled together over the course of a three week period that fall or autumn.

[B]

GORDON but we should expect, I mean, NIE is the, it's the equivalent of a Joint Intelligence Committee assessment. It's a, it's a big deal, isn't it? It should normally take months, I think, and in this case they're like, we just need one fast to make this case, particularly, I think, to Congress ahead of a vote so that they can

[A]

be briefed on it in NIEU Corporation coordination process. Drafting process does usually take months. It's, it's extremely painful because it is the judgment of an entire US intelligence community. It's not just a CIA product. So FBI, State Department, nsa, all of the, you know, different intelligence agencies embedded in every, you know, executive branch agency in the government are going to weigh in. And so it is no small thing. And having been involved in drafting these and coordinating these, I can say that they are atrocious experiences. It is really awful experience because it is just, you're sitting in a room with a bunch of people debating minor points in language usually, and trying to suss out where there's disagreement, which it's a valuable process, but it is, it's extremely painful. And in this case, the CIA has exactly the same problem as the Brits do, which is that they believe there's wmd. But as the analysts and managers who are putting this thing together are looking at the details, they're realizing when you compile it all together that it's not a very persuasive picture.

[B]

This goes to the same question we were talking about with Britain, which is is there political pressure, do you think, on the analysts? Because, you know, this was always the accusation made by, at the time and immediately afterwards that Dick Cheney was visiting Langley, that there was pressure to come to certain conclusions. It's a bit subtler, isn't it, than a politician saying, change that language there and make it up. It's a more complicated process, I think, which is going on behind the scenes, isn't it?

[A]

I think it's worth breaking out the Iraq judgments into a couple categories to talk about politicization because we're doing this whole series on wmd. But there was a separate set of judgments that had been considered as the basis for war around Saddam's relationship with Al Qaeda and international terrorist groups. And I think in that case, there were instances of really atrocious attempts at politicization by the office of the Vice President in the US in particular, Scooter Libby, where the CIA had put together analysis that ends up going into NIEs around this time that basically says Saddam doesn't have a relationship with Al Qaeda and he wasn't connected to the nine, 11 attacks.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And Scooter Libby's office, Cheney's office, really at one point actually called the CIA and asked them to withdraw a report that. That said that. That is a very blatant example of. But I will say to her credit, the Deputy Director for Intelligence at the time, J.B. missick, held firm and was backed up by George Tennant, who was the CIA director, said, we're not going to withdraw the report.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now, when you get to wmd, you're absolutely right that there was intense policy interest in this question. For obvious reasons. There were visits by the members or staff inside the Vice President's office to actually go out to Langley with their own big binders of information and go back and forth with the analysts around what we knew and why that is not politicization. That's unusual. But Michael Morell, who at the time was one of the top three analysts in the. In the Directorate of Intelligence, he was a deputy to JB Misick and who will be speaking to. He writes in his memoir that in every case, when the office of the Vice President went to the agency analysts and said, what about this? What about that? The Agency analysts won out and things were stripped out of eventually the State of Union address, which we'll talk about, stripped out of Colin Powell speech to the un Stripped out of the nie. So, yeah, I don't think you can make a case that politicization on the WMD issue was a major factor. Obviously, it's uncomfortable if you have people from the office of the Vice President out at Langley mixing it up with you and challenging your. Your analytic lines, your judgments, the how you're using the reporting. But I think in this case, where the policy impulse is so strong, like it makes sense to me that that would happen. And I don't think we could say that politicization drove the analytic line on wmd.

[B]

No. That's interesting. So we go back to those other issues of analytic failure that we talked of before. So you end up with this NIE and you get a declassified summary published. You know, more details are briefed to Congress. And I think the key judgments say Iraq has chemical and biological weapons and is reconstituting its nuclear program. We'll come back to the nuclear program.

[A]

Not a lot of ambiguity.

[B]

No, there's not. Again, a bit like, you know, the Blair statement. There's no ambiguity there. On October 7, Bush gives a speech, doesn't he, in which they really do focus on the nuclear threat. Facing clear evidence of peril. We cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. You know, it's dramatic language, isn't it? But it's basically saying, we may not have a smoking gun yet. But you don't want to wait for that if you're the public, because if you want absolute proof that Saddam's got a nuclear bomb, well, you know, let him detonate one and then you'll be sure about it. It's a kind of really interesting framing, I think, of how to make a case to the public that you don't have the smoking gun, but you still better believe this.

[A]

So Congress votes to authorize military action, but there is still a need in Washington to persuade the American public and the rest of the world that this military action will make sense. And the Bush team decide that they want an Adley Stevenson moment. And so the plan is for a State of the Union address by President Bush in January, followed by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, appearing at the UN soon after to make the case. We should say that Adlai Stevenson moment refers to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Adley Stevenson is John F. Kennedy's ambassador to the UN and he makes this very dramatic presentation to the UN Security Council about the missiles on Cuba, where he has very famously, these pictures of him mounting declassified aerial photos up on an easel on the floor of the UN to show that Moscow has deployed nuclear missiles onto Cuba. So the Bush team is looking for a similar aha moment to make their case about Iraq in early 2003.

[B]

And so they're building up, aren't they, to that? And they're. They're looking at it now in December, I guess, is when on the American side, the real pressure is. And there's this meeting in the Oval Office. And this becomes very famous again because George Tenet, CIA director is Deputy John McLachlan are meeting, you know, President Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice to go through the evidence that could be used in that case. And of course, again, a bit like with the Brits, when they look at it just looks a bit circumstantial. And the president goes to John McLachlan who's doing the, you know, tenant's deputy who's doing the presentation. Nice try, but it's not something that Joe Public would understand. And the President turns to Tenet and says, this is the best we've got.

[A]

All of my briefings ended with the customer looking at me and saying, this is the best we've got. That is not it.

[B]

Is that McCloskey, is that it?

[A]

That is. That is absolutely not what you want to hear as, as the CIA director really as anybody delivering a briefing. And of course leads to this very famous line from George Tenet which has forever been immortalized.

[B]

Have you ever reached for this line when you know, you disappointed the person you're briefing Because Tenet uses this line, he says, don't worry to the President, the case is a slam dunk, which is, I understand, a basketball phrase.

[A]

Maybe you can.

[B]

I think everyone knows what a slam dunk is. And Tenet will later say the two dumbest words I ever said.

[A]

So there with CIA Director Tenet having told President Bush that this is a slam dunk assessment, let's end. And when we come back next time, we'll see how the, the White House perhaps realizing it's not a slam dunk assessment, at least based on American information, is going. It hurts me to say it. Gordon is going to end up using British intelligence and not CIA intelligence to make some of the key, he claims supporting this drive toward war.

[B]

And it's fair to say it doesn't end well. So do, do tune in for that. And of course you can listen to that right now. If you're a declassified club member, join@the restisclassified.com and also get access to those bonus episodes, interviews with Mike Morell, Richard Dearlove and Alistair Campbell. And the live show, don't Forget live show 4th to 5th of September at the South Bank. Do get your tickets for that. Otherwise we will see you next time.

[A]

We'll see you next time.