The Private Transcripts MI6 - SIS1 Part 2 - his meeting with Tony Blair

 SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: The phrase was essentially that it would be pretty ridiculous and absurd if 25,000 people marched into Iraq and didn't find anything, and the Prime Minister responded that he was very confident in our intelligence.  Was that sort of sense of doubt being expressed in any of the liaison services of the countries you were dealing with?

SIS1: Not a single one. -

The rest of this exchange is redacted.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: So do you think when all of these people were telling, the ones you met, but others too, and we have had lots of evidence of Iraqis in direct contact, for example, with the UN and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, saying, we don't have anything; were they telling the truth as theyknew it then, or do you think some of them actually did suspect they had something but that was the party line?

SIS1: Many of them believed they had it, and in a way that was part of the picture that we were getting –

The rest of this exchange is redacted.

Sir Larence Freedman then offers SIS1 what initally looks like either a get out of jail free card or a trap by suggesting that the underlying problem might be that UNMOVIC was a bit shit.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Just one final question. One of the senses one gets from the documents is a sense that UNMOVIC weren't really up to it, that it was put together quickly, gaps in its capabilities, acting under serious constraints, the Iraqis had a game plan. What was your assessment of how UNMOVIC was trying to doits job?

SIS1: I think they were trying very hard. I think they were pretty capable, but it was such an enormous task. And the Iraqis controlled the space, and I don't think that the  Iraqi behaviour was consistent with a view that they were being collaborative, co-operative, and wanting to get this process over with and convincing them. We still have the sort of “proving the negative” thing. But there was a lot of sort of residual debris from previous programmes, which I think they were probably worried hadn't been fully cleared up, because there was no records and there was very little discipline. They were worried, maybe they will find stuff and they will be able to say, "Aha, you have got it", and that would be dangerous.  I think the Iraqis had a genuine fear that, even though there would have been some that knew we had no programmes, it would be difficult to prove that to the international community's satisfaction, and particularly the Americans, who were hard over on -- I think they realised -- hard over on doing it one way or another. For the Americans, WMD was not necessarily the issue.

Just as the evidence gets dull and starts to reiterate the same old discussions about silver bullets we suddenly learn about “chance” meeting/discussion between SIS1 and Tony Blair himself. 

While the Prime Minister is entitled to demand virtually any documentation from MI6 it is unusual for a Prime Minister or any senior Minister to interact so directly with the the lower echelons of the service.  Even for the Prime Minister to interact with C or the head of MI5 too often and without recourse to the JIC is frowned upon.  For example when Harold Wilson requested Norman Scott's security file in the late 1970s because he was worried about an MI5 conspiracy against Jeremy Thorpe ...Wilson delegated the task of requesting the file to then junior minister Jack Straw.  Wilson is on tape as having said "Look, I saw Jack Straw, he's worried if he were mentioned in this context, he thinks he'll be finished".  So requesting information from MI5 or MI6 is no light undertaking.

Sir Roderic Lyne pushes SIS1 on why Tony Blair approached him directly to do a stocktake of WMD rather than go through the JIC.   SIS1 when cornered states that the relationship between Number 10 and MI6 had become "too personalised".