This page is dedicated to a continuation of our back of fag packet analysis of the Iraq Inquiry. It took a long time to read literally all of the public hearings transcripts. However, the previous article did not comment on any of the private hearings - this hearings where the interviewees are interviewed behind closed doors because they're spooks and stuff. In particular it skips over all the MI6 transcripts that are hidden away on the back pages of the website. As Dame Edna Everage would have said "Spooky".
The Iraq war was, of course, the first in our history to be fought on the basis of "intelligence" so the inquiry requires intelligence officers to be interviewed in order to carry any public credibility. This gives us a brief and unusually candid look at the internal workings of an organisation we seldom see inside except through the prism of James Bond films, John Le Carre novels and other 9th hand semi-fictionalised sources.
The transcripts prove a particular problem for any reader due to the sever level of redaction applied post interview. Which not only removes a large volume of interesting information but moreover makes them difficult to actually read by breaking up any sense of narrative thread, isolating comments out of context, showing answers without their questions and asking questions to which one is not sure if the answer has or has not been supplied... Giving the reader the sense that they are listening to some kind of Delphic Oracle which either comes out with random nonsense or supplies the right answers but to the wrong questions. Here's a representative example of what I mean:
So here it is:
The Iraq inquiry have so far interviewed (as far as I can figure out) at least 12 members of MI6. SIS1, SIS2, SIS3,SIS4, SIS5 and SIS6 have all had their transcripts published in some form whereas statements have been made that SIS8, SIS9 and SIS11’s transcripts will never be published due to the fact that “The Committee has concluded, in line with its Protocols, that it would not be possible to redact and publish the transcript without rendering it unintelligible”. Which leaves open the question of what’s happened to SIS7, SIS10 and SIS12’s testimony and will we ever see a transcript because the inquiry has not made a statement that we wont…?
To an extent this is understandable. All security agencies have a duty to protect their sources. To an extent it is not. For example although some effort has been gone to to conceal the identities of individual interviewees you dont actually had to be too bright to work out actually what some of them do ...or indeed in some cases who they are.
MI6 famously never reveals who its agents are even though we all know that they are all Dominic Lawson. Which is obviously nonsense.
SIS1
We dont know what SIS1 looks like but here's a completely random image
of a member of the general public who probably looks nothing like him
of a member of the general public who probably looks nothing like him
The interview of MI6 agent 1 (SIS1) starts genteely with Sir John Chilcot ...
....inviting the gentleman to take his coat off before launching into his extensive ramble about how witnesses will be later asked to sign a transcript and inviting SIS1 to say a few words.
SIS1 tells us that in the period in question he had 3 jobs relevant to the Inquiry and goes on to explain what they were. A large chunk of information explaining exactly what SIS1 did is then redacted before Sir John Chilcot rejoins "Thankyou. Very helpful. Let's go straight to the questions. I'll ask Martin Gilbert to begin"
However, before Martin Gilbert does begin Sir Roderic Lyne ...
...quickly interjects "Can I just ask one question? Is your past affiliation now something that is in the public domain?"
This is interesting as it suggests that SIS1 did not work solely for MI6 or at least did not in the past. As to the curious past affiliation I guess it is not something that is in the public domain by the fact it has been redacted away to leave only a question mark. So far so uninformative.
Eventually Sir Martin Gilbert asks if he can start with the period when SIS1 was doing some redacted job. We dont know what that job is but one can suspect it was something to do with counter proliferation as that's what the conversation goes on to be about ...
SIR MARTIN GILBERT: If I could start with the period when you were [redacted], the point we would to like to look at is what proportion of Service effort was dedicated to counter proliferation, and to what extent had producing intelligence on proliferation and WMD, and on the WMD performance of countries of concern, become a higher priority for SIS during this period?
SIS1: It was a high priority. The requirements relating to counter proliferation were category 1. There were four countries from memory, perhaps five, in particular which were at the top of our concerns, and they included Iraq. But Iraq was by no means the most important at that period. The others were the Axis of Evil countries, [who's names are redacted]. So in that period, which was after all a very short [redacted] period that I was, only one year, they were high priority targets. The Service inevitably had a number of competing requirements and had to decide where to put those chips...
No spy cliches there then. Any more information as to the gambling habits of MI6 is, of course, redacted.
SIR MARTIN GILBERT: In terms of Iraq itself, what was the view of the particular threat posed by Iraq, and in the context of the containment policy of that time, what was intelligence reporting with regard to the efficacy or otherwise of containment?
SIS1: We knew more about Iraq than other countries because Iraq had used WMD, and the [redacted] enabled us to get a much clearer idea of how Iraq was, as we thought, continuing to bring in materials and develop a capacity to have a WMD programme. The context around Iraq was more highly developed. The intelligence picture, well placed sources inside the programme, was not highly developed. We had sort of pinpoints of light, and I think this is a point that might apply to some of the other issues which you will be asking about. The picture on Iraq was patchy. I think there was a presupposition of what it was, and the intelligence illuminated different parts of it in a way that seemed consistent with that picture. As far as the containment policy was concerned, it's like playing British bulldog against impossible odds.
SIR MARTIN GILBERT: In terms of Iraq itself, what was the view of the particular threat posed by Iraq, and in the context of the containment policy of that time, what was intelligence reporting with regard to the efficacy or otherwise of containment?
SIS1: We knew more about Iraq than other countries because Iraq had used WMD, and the [redacted] enabled us to get a much clearer idea of how Iraq was, as we thought, continuing to bring in materials and develop a capacity to have a WMD programme. The context around Iraq was more highly developed. The intelligence picture, well placed sources inside the programme, was not highly developed. We had sort of pinpoints of light, and I think this is a point that might apply to some of the other issues which you will be asking about. The picture on Iraq was patchy. I think there was a presupposition of what it was, and the intelligence illuminated different parts of it in a way that seemed consistent with that picture. As far as the containment policy was concerned, it's like playing British bulldog against impossible odds.
It's a big country. You can fly in and out. It has sea ports, porous borders, and what we saw was that the Iraqis were using ingenious and sometimes pretty crude methods to bring in stuff which was embargoed. Stuff which was embargoed, but even stuff for programmes which they were allowed to have. So they had a lot to hide. The inspection programme we know -- we knew at the time and it was subsequently verified -- was a threat to them because they didn't want to be found having stuff which they had smuggled in, even though it was for a programme that they might have been allowed to have.
SIS1 goes on to tell the story of interdictions of what is presumably WMD related material at sea but this is [redacted] ... however, his conclusion that this built up a sense that containment was not sustainable is not.
Sir Martin Gilbert asks who SIS1's main US interlocutors were in this period (2001) and how the CIA's assessment of Iraq's weapons programme meshed with our own intelligence? The answers are redacted.
Sir Martin then comes onto a question not often highlighted ... exactly how is the information gathered disseminated through Whitehall? To what levels did these assessments go? This is a recurring theme of these transcripts. It is a much forgotten fact that one of the intrinsic problems of an organisation like MI6 is not just the collation of highly sensitive information but who actually is important enough to have it disseminated to them. For those of you who are new to the world of espionage here's a quick overview of Britain's main intelligence services. The ones we know about anyway, MI5 & GCHQ (spying at home for the Home Office), MI6 (Spying Abroad for the FCO) and the less well known DIS (Military Spy Stuff for the MOD) showing roughly how they collect intelligence and just as importantly who they report to.
Obviously this is a bit crass and probably wrong but it's a start and we'll be coming back to elements of this illustration later on... but the important thing to note is that basically they all report to the JIC, the Prime Minister and senior Ministers and there seem to be absolutely no guidelines as to in what order. There's probably some idea here about avoiding the centralisation of power in one person but no one really understands it. It's basically a case of make-it-up-as-we-go-along as far as I understand it. All the various services having been born out of different needs and committees at different times but broadly speaking all are coordinated via the JIC ...or not...
SIS1: It was done on a limited basis
The exact names of those who recieved the information are redacted.
SIS1: ....and from memory, I think -- and this would be the normal procedure -- there would have been a letter from possibly the chief, or the relevant director, to the Foreign Office, and then onward distribution would be a matter for -- I can't remember in this case whether it was a letter to the private secretary to the Foreign Secretary, but that would be the sort of level that this would have been disseminated. [redacted]. It was handled in the same way that a lot of the correspondence on Iraq was handled, Manning, Condi Rice, by letter, by memo.
Sir Roderic then starts pushing the line that actually although containment was difficult it wasn't impossible and starts on about how the Iraqis didn't have nuclear capability. After a redacted exchange he concludes ...
SIR RODERIC LYNE: So it wasn't a strict either/or option. The thing is broken, we have got to do something more dramatic --
SIS1: Before 9/11, no. 9/11 changed the picture.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: It changed the context?
SIS1: Yes.
SIS1 admits that there wasn't really much sign of nuclear material smuggling but points out that it doesn't actually take a lot of fissile material to make a "dirty bomb".
SIS1: Smuggling from [redacted] was often exaggerated. There were all sorts of scams, red mercury and stuff, and people trying to rip other people off with promises of fissile material. But we know from our own research establishments that even a small amount of fissile material can have a devastating impact psychologically, you know, could close the channel tunnel for quite a considerable time. So in the hands of terrorism -- I say again that that's the thing that gave this legs -- in the hands of terrorists who were prepared to kill themselves in the process, even small amounts of fissile material, provided by a state that thought that it was in their interest to do so, would cause a disproportionate amount of damage, though, of course, as you know, the evidence for Iraq's links with AQ are pretty slim.
There have been two major fires in the channel tunnel. One in 1996 and one in 2008. Although neither of these were attriubted to terrorism ... officially. There is no doubt that the tunnel is a terrorist target.
Following this there is a large section about US-UK information exchange that is redacted. Eventually Sir John Chilcott and SIS1 move on to discussing intelligence sources. It turns out the SIS1 had a source who had a source who was the source of "the 45-minute report". Sir John then asks if the reports in which the SIS1's source's source are cited to the JIC and if assesments staff would make clear the reliablity of that source and how often they had been in contact ....and SIS1 said ...yes.
SIS1: And, of course, a good relationship with the Assessments Staff involves briefing them on what lies behind the rubric, which can sometimes appear a little opaque to those who don't understand the jargon, the terminology.
SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Yes. Would there have been dialogue between - [redacted] thinking of you as - between your people and people in the assessment staff?
SIS1: Daily.
SIR JOHN CHILCOT: As the stream of reporting came through?
SIS1: Yes. So a report that was considered to be important, particularly if it was going to be used in an assessment, there would be conversations and a kind of horse trading about how much can be put in and whether there was anything about the source that could help to understand the intelligence better.
SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Yes. You mentioned 45 minutes. There was a gossipy bit going around that it was a Jordanian taxi driver who dreamt this one up. Can you tell us any more about the actual sourcing of that report?
SIS1: It was, again from memory, a subsource who we understood to be [redacted].
SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Yes.
SIS1: And subsequently the information did not stack up. But the 45-minute report contained a number of unconnected bits of information, of which the 45 minutes paragraph was perhaps one of the more vivid.
SIR JOHN CHILCOT: It's probably not entirely a question for you, but I'll try it anyway. We have been told that the Assessments Staff and the JIC would have understood thoroughly well what 45 minutes meant, as it were between quite forward deployment and then putting it into the hands of -- it was a range of times, 20 to 45 minutes, quite realistic. Whether it was understood, was it, by ultimate consumers in that sense?
SIS1: I think it was. I mean, it made reference to chemical and biological weapons. The biological reference was less convincing, and I think I saw comments from the DIS to the effect that this doesn't make as much sense, and I think that whole process of working through the intelligence, it's not holy writ. These are human processes. You are looking down a very, very long tube at a very small part of the picture, and you have to understand that in transmission the intelligence can be misunderstood. So you have to interrogate back down the tube to make sure that you have got it right.
Now, I'm not an expert in international espionage but to me this is a pretty much open admission that 45 minutes claim was bollocks. SIS1 seems to realise this and points out that SIS was under "quite extraordinary pressure to try and get a better view of Iraq's WMD programme, and I think we marketed that intelligence -- I think this is not original comment -- before it was fully validated"
In other words their reports were bollocks. The conversation continues...
SIR JOHN CHILCOT: And there were doubts in SIS's collective consciousness even before March 2003, I think. Is that right, from memory?
SIS1: Well before that. Even while it was still going on. Here was a chap who promised the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow. [redacted] Now, you have got to go for those, because sometimes that can be just what you are looking for.
SIR JOHN CHILCOT: But that puts a huge strain on the validation process and the way in which it is reported.
SIS1: Well, there wasn't much to validate. What he was promising had not arrived. That was the point.
...in other words the source or the source's source was playing MI6. Pretending they had access to information that they did not. Since MI6 pay for information this was probably a nice little earner for the source and the source's source who knew how desperate MI6 were for their crock of gold / smoking gun.
SIS1: If he was referring to that, I think he's right.
So it seems that it maybe possible the MI6 had promised Tony Blair "intelligence" to justify the war but when it came to it they couldn't actually produce it because they realised quite late in the day that their sources had been playing them...?
There is another reference to another source that SIS says was significant and genuine but "our access to him was limited" and ...the rest has been redacted.
Sir John Chilcot then goes on to ask if SIS were consulted at all about what post-conflict Iraq might be like.
SIS1: You really want somebody who has lived in Iraq and understands the way the society works, and in particular the makeup of the tribal structures and how leadership and authority and -- because it's those structures that would come to the fore once the heavy lid of the regime was removed, and we didn't understand that very well.
The conversation then seems so wander through other issues - how come no one noticed Iraq was so run down
and how long it takes to figure out whether a source (any source) is genuine or not.
SIS1: That's a process. It happens over sometimes years, and you don't know at the outset how reliable the person is, and reliability is on a number of different levels. The person can be reporting sincerely but erroneously, or can be fabricating, and all the gradations in between.
SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Yes, you could have a reliable source --
SIS1: It's a matter of judgment often by the case officer or case officers in his or her dealings with an individual.
SIR JOHN CHILCOT: There's tremendous positive human motivation on the case officer to maximise the amount of intelligence that he collected from a source he is handling or she is handling and to come to believe in it?
SIS1: That's where good training and culture comes in. I think the best intelligence officers want to produce the best intelligence, not the most.
They then move on to a redacted discussion of whether MI6 has been downsized, streamlined or run down since the end of the cold war.and how their (presumably) performance related pay structure works in terms of creating the end product. In a business that is based on mistrust and lying how do attempt to quantify output? Particularly when you then have to decide who is responsible enough to actually trust with what you've actually gathered which may or may not be nonsense.... A huge chunk on this subject is sensibly redacted. It's hard to follow the bits left in but what seems to be being said is that the Forigen Office seemed to be in denial of the direction things are moving in:
So it seems that it maybe possible the MI6 had promised Tony Blair "intelligence" to justify the war but when it came to it they couldn't actually produce it because they realised quite late in the day that their sources had been playing them...?
There is another reference to another source that SIS says was significant and genuine but "our access to him was limited" and ...the rest has been redacted.
Sir John Chilcot then goes on to ask if SIS were consulted at all about what post-conflict Iraq might be like.
SIS1: You really want somebody who has lived in Iraq and understands the way the society works, and in particular the makeup of the tribal structures and how leadership and authority and -- because it's those structures that would come to the fore once the heavy lid of the regime was removed, and we didn't understand that very well.
The conversation then seems so wander through other issues - how come no one noticed Iraq was so run down
and how long it takes to figure out whether a source (any source) is genuine or not.
SIS1: That's a process. It happens over sometimes years, and you don't know at the outset how reliable the person is, and reliability is on a number of different levels. The person can be reporting sincerely but erroneously, or can be fabricating, and all the gradations in between.
SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Yes, you could have a reliable source --
SIS1: It's a matter of judgment often by the case officer or case officers in his or her dealings with an individual.
SIR JOHN CHILCOT: There's tremendous positive human motivation on the case officer to maximise the amount of intelligence that he collected from a source he is handling or she is handling and to come to believe in it?
SIS1: That's where good training and culture comes in. I think the best intelligence officers want to produce the best intelligence, not the most.
They then move on to a redacted discussion of whether MI6 has been downsized, streamlined or run down since the end of the cold war.and how their (presumably) performance related pay structure works in terms of creating the end product. In a business that is based on mistrust and lying how do attempt to quantify output? Particularly when you then have to decide who is responsible enough to actually trust with what you've actually gathered which may or may not be nonsense.... A huge chunk on this subject is sensibly redacted. It's hard to follow the bits left in but what seems to be being said is that the Forigen Office seemed to be in denial of the direction things are moving in:
SIS1: Yes. There was also a certain amount of resistance, shall I say in the Foreign Office, to believing what we were hearing, and I frequently [redacted] heard from, for example, , when they were discussing these things --
SIR RODERIC LYNE: That was [redacted]?
SIS1: [redacted]. In fact, as late as December 2002, we had almost a wager that there would or there would not be a war within four months, even at that stage.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: Did you sense that the Foreign Secretary shared in the scepticism about what you were hearing?
SIS1: I'm not in a position to say.
...it transpires that the FO believed that there would not be a war because of what their diplomatic contacts told them. Perhaps they were being diplomatic? MI6 were hearing something different. There is some mention of something called the "Piggot Group" which presumably is something to do with Anthony Pigott, Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Commitments), 2000-2003 of which SIS1 was a very active member but "others took it less seriously". Which makes it sound a bit like some kind of work social club.
SIS1 maintains that while he and Number 10 were on the same page as to US intentions to invade ...a lot of other heads were simply in sand because that's where they wanted to be. The answer to the crucial question...
SIR RODERIC LYNE: At what point did you get the sense that the Americans had moved from the decision on principle, which we have described, into a specific decision that they were going to take military action within a timeframe?
...is of course redacted except for some vague comments on the difficulties of finding Arabic speakers.
This is followed by an interesting discussion about Clare Short’s access to SIS information.
I think it's probably fair to say that no one talked to Clare.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: I'll come back in a minute to the planning, but just on the scenarios and the timeframes, I want to ask a question about DFID. Clare Short in her published memoirs referred to conversations she had -- perhaps she shouldn't have done, but she did -- with the Chief of your Service. Now, I understand that you were somebody who had conversations with her from time to time. Do you recall briefing her, either yourself or one of your colleagues, on the probability of military action against Iraq in the course of 2002?
SIS1: Yes, and also in the course of 2003, where she became -- I think she was convinced that it would happen, and she was concerned about the humanitarian consequences. I do remember, yes.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: Do you recall any impediments on her access to SIS, or it was a fairly free and easy relationship that you had with her?
SIS1: I didn't have complete visibility of that, but I know that she felt that she may not have had as much access as she thought she needed. I think that DFID were behind the curve for a number of reasons, and I think that was possibly one factor.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: Did you have any sense of their state of pre-conflict planning?
SIS1: I did. I saw them in some of the forums that existed. There were about three or four forums. There was the Chiefs of Staff meetings, which I generally attended to represent SIS. There was the Piggot Group. There were a couple of other Cabinet Office based co-ordination groups that grew up later, and DFID were slow starters at these forums as an organisation. There were a number of people who got it and were very active. I think --
SIR RODERIC LYNE: They were slow because of ministerial orders, the Secretary of State was very much against the idea of the conflict; was that holding them back?
SIS1: I think there were a number of reasons. Iraq was an odd place to commit DFID resources. It was a rich country, it didn't meet the sort of poverty criteria, and DFID may have felt that it was being used as an instrument of a policy that did not go to the core of their business.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: We have also heard evidence that they were excluded deliberately by Number 10 from some of the planning processes.
SIS1: I'm not aware of that, but it doesn't immediately surprise me.
SIS1 is the asked about his relationships with other government departments and states that he did no have much contact with the Treasury with regards to financial planning for the aftermath of the war.
It seems that no one talked to Robin Cook either.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: Did you yourself have any discussions with the former Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, who was leader of the House at this stage?
SIS1: None whatsoever, speaking for myself, and I'm not aware of any that involved my colleagues.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: We have asked others about his intelligence briefing and the view that he came to.
The rest of this conversation is redacted. SIS1 goes on to talk about a new team that was set up. What it did exactly I don’t know but it was clearly different from the old way of doing things and extremely narrowly focused on its core task “I think the innovation here was to work closely with the military and to operate in effect in an entirely different way, I think in a way which has changed the way in which SIS operates since then.”
They then go on to talk about the exile community.
SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Just one question. The relationship with the exile community in London and Europe, the Iraqi exile community. In the US that was quite important, their exile community. The impression is that SIS was always a bit more suspicious and sceptical. Do you think that that was right, in the rather more obvious cases, but also were there things you might have missed out by not being quite as close to the exile community?
SIS1: That is my view. I think -- I'm not an ...-
The rest of this discussion is redacted.
SIS1 then goes on to describe looking for WMD as a bit like playing the Coconut Shy at a village fete.
SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: It's possibly just interesting in terms of the overall time pressures that were facing the UK Government at the time as well. There wasn't much time. On WMD, you weren't in the lead on that.
SIS1: At that time, yes.
SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: So I don't want to spend a lot of time on the intelligence picture itself, but perhaps just to ask you whether you found the picture clearer by early 2003 than it had seemed to you earlier, when you looked back to it at that point. You felt more confident, rather than less, if you like?
SIS1: I think that the impact of some of the UNMOVIC inspections had increased our confidence that the stuff was there. We just needed the intelligence [redacted] to produce it. There were about three or four glimpses of what was there. As it turns out, the programme didn't exist. But when, for example, [redacted] said they went to this place, they missed the engines for these [Volga] missiles, which would be in breach of Security Council resolutions, if you go back there you will find them. They went back, they found them. One example.
Another example, where we not only gave them the intelligence about [redacted] and they went to that house and they found the papers. Just imagine trying to do this in a whole country, with such limited opportunities. So that when we sort of threw our shy and hit a coconut, we thought that's corroborative.
Quaint. After a large redacted section they continue…
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