UK ponders failure to find WMD

By Frank Gardner BBC Security Correspondent

When US and British troops invaded Iraq last year they carried full protective clothing against chemical and biological weapons.

Many had been inoculated against anthrax and smallpox - precautions their governments thought necessary to counter Saddam's doomsday weapons.

No WMDs have been found in Iraq

But those weapons have still not been found, although there is some evidence of Iraq's illegal research programmes.

Academics such as Dr Gary Samore, at the British International Institute for Strategic Studies, is surprised that Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) have not been found.

He says that British, American, French and Russian intelligence agreed that Iraq had some stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.

"There was a pretty good chance that it would be used during a war," he says, "and now that assessment appears to be wrong."

Whose fault?

In Britain, a dossier on WMD was compiled by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).

It took much of its information from the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6.

The international community and the UN believed Iraq had WMD

Their assessment at the time was that Saddam Hussein did possess such weapons.

It was a view based partly on his past actions, partly on his recent obstructive behaviour, and partly on secret communiques coming from agents inside Iraq.

The director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, Professor Anthony Glees, believes SIS should have been more careful.

"There is a serious question to be asked as to why somebody that SIS obviously trusted one hundred percent produced intelligence about WMD that was clearly inaccurate", he says.

"It could have been because the report was published in September 2002 but the attack on Iraq didn't start until March 2003.

Broader enquiry

"There could be some other reason, possibly the agent himself - I'm sure it was a male - was a double agent. We can't be sure. But certainly there has to be a very major investigation into this".

Lord Hutton's report may well criticise the unhealthily close relationship between the JIC and the prime minister's office.

He may also criticise the failure to reflect the concerns of some key analysts in the Defence Intelligence Staff.

But he is unlikely to delve too deeply into the murky world of intelligence.

UK INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS There needs to be a broader enquiry as to whether or not the country was taken to war on false pretences Dan Plesch, Research Fellow at Birkbeck College In quotes: Iraq's WMD

Yet some, like Dan Plesch, a research fellow at Birkbeck College, now want the scope of enquiry to be widened.

"I don't think that is something that parliament can fob off to a law lord, however eminent.

"Its an investigation that parliament, on behalf of the British people, needs to investigate itself", he says.

Behind the walls of SIS headquarters in London, officials are bracing themselves for possible criticism.

Amid all the unwelcome attention generated by the Hutton enquiry, they are still standing by their view that in September 2002 Saddam's Iraq did possess WMD.

MI6 has been accused of providing inaccurate intelligence

It was a view shared at the time by many governments and the UN.

But Professor Anthony Glees says presenting that view in a public dossier was a bad mistake on two counts.

"There was a failure on the part of Britain's intelligence services to discover reliable evidence about weapons of mass destruction", he says.

"There was also a failure of government in publishing the dossier in the first place, which contravened virtually every rule that intelligence and security work has always had."

Professor Glees believes that Saddam's secret police then had six months to try to hunt down Britain's spies who were reporting from inside Iraq.

Spy and counter-spy

The risks in publicising intelligence are also shared by Gary Samore, who served on President Clinton's National Security Council.

"The more that intelligence is used in public, the more that governments can take steps to conceal and to disguise what they're doing", he says.

Once it is realised that satellite images, phone conversations or e-mails are being intercepted, he argues, then counter-measures can be taken.

"There's always a game of spy and counter-spy that's going on, and I think it's very difficult to criticise the intelligence services, they're doing the best job they can", Mr Samore said.

Whoever ends up taking the blame for the failure to find Iraq's alleged weapons, it is certain that any British government will now think long and hard before putting secret intelligence into the public domain.