The Private Transcripts MI6 - SIS2 Part 2 - Alastair Campbell the “unguided missile”

 More redaction before Sir Lawrence Freedman asserts that after UNSCOM withdrew from Iraq in the late 90s MI6 lost most of its sources... for those of you who dont know what UNSCOM is or what it had to do with spying here's a quick flashback.

SIS2: Well, I think, as this exercise gathered momentum, there was -- and I'm sure others will have made this comment -- very substantial pressure to generate new intelligence because at this juncture, fresh intelligence, new intelligence was at a premium and was in very short supply. So there was undoubtedly considerable pressure to generate new sources, new insights, and we were, in all honesty, not well placed to do that. Our access to Iraq was no better than it was.  [redacted].

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: So essentially the position was that until the end of 1998, you had relied on UNSCOM.

SIS2: Not entirely.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: And UNSCOM of course had had quite a good relationship with intelligence. Then you don't have it anymore. Iraq is not a big priority. Iraq becomes a big priority during the course of 2002. Almost immediately, you are expected to provide a dossier, which doesn't actually give you an awful lot of time to develop your resources. So essentially it takes place at a time when you are sort of scrambling around to find people. In the chronology that's quite important.

SIS2 eventually goes on to disown the dossier entirely.  That is the 2nd dossier I think but I'm not sure.  The dossier we saw was apparently a dossier based on a dossier.  The original dossier that MI6 supplied.  SIS2 seems to have the serious hump about this denying all knowledge of how dossier number 2 was machinated....

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Thanks very much.  Just a final question on the dossier. The further dossier, the dodgy one, that had an SIS input. But SIS were not particularly involved -- is that correct -- in its production?

SIS2: We were not, absolutely not, and I think we were rather shocked by the outcome of this. It was certainly not the case that we had been closely involved in the preparation of that document.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: So the first you were aware of it was ...?

SIS2: To be honest, I can't remember when I first became aware of it, but I think it may actually have been when it came out. Certainly not much before.

…until after it came out.  One would have thought a spy would have been better informed but there you are.  This moves us on to the famous Alastair Campbell “unguided missile” quote.

Sir Lawrenece Freedman then asks if SIS found its self filling a gap that the FCO created and SIS2 replies that the FCO’s inclination was not to do too much post war planning as it was felt that that may be misinterpreted as some form of approval for the war.  They then go on to talk about whether the FCO, MI6 and Alister Campbell were ever at the same meetings but the answers are redacted.  Sir Lawrence asks if SIS was directly briefing journalists as well.  The answers are redacted.  There’s then more waffle and more redaction before Sir Martin Gilbert asks about the post war invasion and the Sunni insurgency.

SIS2 says “Of course, this was one of those situations where SIS was performing a function that the late Maurice Oldfield* used to call delivering inconvenient information, because  this was not a welcome message that was coming”

*Maurice Oldfield (left) was C from 1973 to 1978.  He was the first C to “go public”.  Holding meetings for his favoured journalists at the Athenaeum club in Pall Mall (right).  Eventually as everyone knew who he was ....pretending not to be who he was became tedious...    and he sort of gave up.  Unlike today where he'd have to undergo a press conference.

The Athenaeum Club on Pall Mall by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

SIR MARTIN GILBERT: With regard to the other Islamic extremists who were making ground in Iraq and making common cause with the Ba'athists, did this come as a surprise, given their different ideologies?

SIS2: Are you talking here about Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, ISI, the various acronyms under which it became known? Not especially, no. I think this was a classic case of opportunism and a coincidence of interests.   I think the intensity of the violence to which this gave rise was initially a shock, and it took a while, I think, to appreciate how all this was wired together. But I think it came as no -- in terms of the Sunni, it came as no great surprise.  I think the Shia in the south was another question. The emergence of Muqtada al-Sadr, that was probably more of a surprise because Muqtada is essentially more mercurial and difficult to predict as an individual.

SIR MARTIN GILBERT: With regard to the Sunni insurgency, can you give us perhaps a clearer picture of when this became clear? Witnesses have given us evidence that in a sense it was quite a long delayed process.

SIS2: To be honest, I do have a problem with dates and I'm trying to -- I think by the summer of 2003 [redacted] something more serious and structured was going on. This was not just general lawlessness.

SIR MARTIN GILBERT: With regard to the assessments of the Iranian impact, originally, I believe, our assessment was that Iran had not ordered attacks on coalition forces, although it had provided military training to Iraqis, and later we found that Iran had provided arms to the Shia insurgents.   With hindsight, how accurate do you believe our first assessments were?

SIS2: Well, of course, it's very difficult to answer that question absolutely because Iran's position was changing all the time. It was never fixed. [redacted].  But I think the general perception was that Iraqis were Iraqi nationalists first and Shia second, so to speak, and I don't think that that essential judgment was incorrect.   But, of course, the Iranians did have very substantial scope to influence events in Iraq, and as the situation unfolded, and I think the vulnerabilities of the coalition became more evident, so Iran itself became emboldened and willing to countenance greater levels of risk, albeit within limits. The Iranian involvement was always, I think, quite carefully calibrated to ensure that -- to minimise the risk of a smoking gun being detected.

SIR MARTIN GILBERT: Was there more we could have done to deter Iranian participation?

SIS2: Well, not invade Iraq.

It seems by this time SIS2 is finding the whole process rather tiring and as the interview goes on the number of sarcastic comments in the transcript can definitely be seen to increase.  After apologising for this “flippant comment” SIS2 goes on to offer more detailed analysis which is redacted.  When later on Sir Roderic Lyne asks SIS2 to summarise on the question of intelligence validation he receives the equally blunt answer:

SIS2: I think it was simply down to the very febrile atmosphere within which this collection process was taking place. The pressure to generate results, I fear, did lead to the cutting of corners.

Later Sir Roderic Lyne asks if number 10 got SIS involved in actual policy making – a function it was never designed for…?

SIR RODERIC LYNE: In effect it crossed a line between its traditional roles of providing information and carrying out instructions that you have talked about earlier, and it actually got sucked into the process of policy making?

SIS2: Not exactly policy making as such, but perilously close to it, I would say. I think a fair criticism would be that we were probably too eager to please.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: And how would you counteract that? Do you think steps have since been taken that make this less likely to happen in the future?

SIS2: I don't think you can ever entirely inoculate yourself against this particular virus, but yes, certainly, as things stand at the moment, I think it would be more difficult for this kind of situation to arise.  In 2005, when the new chief of the service took over*, board structures were very deliberately and board culture was very deliberately redesigned, I think to ensure that more systematic process was injected into these issues, thereby minimising the likelihood of something like this happening again.

 *This is Sir John Scarlett 

 

at this time head of the JIC

SIS2 and Sir Roderic discuss what safeguards could be put in place in future to prevent MI6 being drawn into the process of policy making…

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Could you introduce an element of challenge to it, of somebody who was specifically there to be the guardian of the ark of the principles of SIS, or has that got to be done from outside?

SIS2: Well, I don't think there is a single way of dealing with this.  Two aspects here. Firstly, the composition of the SIS board was significantly expanded, and by design, to inject more outside views. So there are two or three people on board who are not career intelligence officers, have different perspectives, and are expected to ask the, so to speak, commonsense questions. That's one area where I think a greater degree of control has to be exercised.  But I think also the oversight mechanisms that exist have a role to play there as well in terms of challenge and asking questions about what things are done and why they are done.

He also asks how Jack Straw and Colin Powell ended up working towards different outcomes.  To which the answer is “I don’t know”… but SIS2 clearly insinuates (again) that the FCO had it’s head firmly in the sand.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Did this create awkwardness for SIS? On the one hand you were getting instructions fairly directly from Number 10; on the other hand your sponsoring Minister, the Foreign Secretary, who you approach through the Deputy Undersecretary for Defence and Intelligence, at the time, I think, Stephen Wright, were pointing in a different direction. Did that make life awkward for you?

SIS2: It probably should have done, but I think that there was, if I may say, an element of hubris at work which made us less sensitive to that than we probably ought to have been.

SIS2’s general conclusion is that the service was too keen to please Number 10…

The Private Transcripts MI6 - SIS2 Part 1 - Abdul Qadeer Khan ...seller of nuclear secrets to "axis of evil" countries

 

We dont know what SIS2 looks like but here's a completely random image
of a member of the general public who probably looks nothing like him

The evidence session of SIS2 starts with Sir John Chilcot asking him by way of introduction: “One further question I would just like to put at this stage is simply about your designation. How do you now describe yourself and your past career for public purposes in the work that you are now undertaking?”

The answer is redacted.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: That's very helpful. That's the factual position.

This reminded me very much of the opening forward of the House at Pooh Corner where, when the narrator asks Pooh  what  the opposite of an Introduction was, he said "The  what of a what?”, but luckily  Owl  kept  his  head  and  told us that the Opposite of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was a Contradiction.  One wonders what the point is of transcribing a question but not the answer.  Particularly when it can be deduced from further un-redacted evidence. 

Never mind …let’s plod on  to the question of when SIS2 realised the level of US interest in Iraq ...to which the evasive answer is he’s not sure but some time in summer of 2002.  We then go over the run up to war all over again …

SIR MARTIN GILBERT: What was your understanding of the different factions within the United States administration
towards the United Nations route that was determined by the President in September 2002?

SIS2: Well, there was always a faction within the Bush administration that was fairly viscerally disinclined to involve the United Nations in anything at all, and the people who espoused that route were well documented, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other members [redacted].  But I think -- sorry, I didn't fully answer your question. I think the message coming out of the White House in respect of this was that there was recognition of the case made by the United Kingdom to pursue a second resolution, and I think probably the best way to put this was that the White House registered a nil obstat*.

* "nothing stands in the way" for those of you without an Oxbridge degree in Latin

…but don’t really learn anything the non-private witnesses haven’t already told us before slipping back into redacted territory.  Indeed several full pages of redaction only broken by…

SIS2: Well, that obviously comes into two categories. The first was to ramp up intelligence collection on the Iraqi WMD programme. Obviously SIS had been to some degree collecting on that programme, but as I think the Butler Inquiry makes abundantly clear, for a long period of time during the 1990s there was little that SIS could do, given the pervasive UN inspector presence in Iraq.  The other area where SIS began to make plans was in terms of operational intelligence support in the event that it did come to a military conflict involving British troops.

…which is also pretty meaningless out of context.  The conversation seems to be covering the spring/summer of 2002 … another snippet emerges from the blacked out lines about who actually received intelligence and about Tony Blair’s increasing interest in MI6…

SIR MARTIN GILBERT: Finally from me, who in our system was aware of the SIS activities?

SIS2: Well, the Foreign Secretary would certainly have been, and I imagine to some degree, but not necessarily the same degree, the Defence Secretary. At that point, I think, most of the activity that was being undertaken was probably of the kind that would not naturally come to his attention.  I think the Prime Minister was taking a very keen interest at that point already in what SIS (a) might be doing and (b) could do to assist HMG to manage the
situation.

After some more redaction we finally bump into some interesting testimony about a board that SIS2 was on …

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Yes. I think it might be helpful at this stage -- maybe we should have done this earlier -- if you could just give us a broad description of how the board functioned. It's a fairly small board. [redacted]  To what extent would the board have regularly discussed and been briefed on, given that you all had different areas of operation, the way that the Iraq picture was unfolding?

SIS2: Well, the Board met at regular intervals. I think we were a weekly board, and certainly we would have a fixed  agenda, a lot of which would be about either strategic management or housekeeping issues. But an issue like this obviously was on the agenda. There was discussion about it from a fairly early stage. But I'm not sure that we ever really looked at this from an appropriate risk management perspective. I don't think we ever really got out our risk register and said, okay, this is an area where we as an organisation are actually at risk. This is a reputational issue for us and we need to think through very carefully how we handle ourselves in this regard. That's something I would refer to.
But there's no question that the board was regularly briefed on Iraq. [redacted] but at the same time one has to bear in mind that on the political arena, so to speak, things began to move very quickly indeed, and I think it's true to say that there were a number of occasions where we as a board effectively found ourselves facing a fait accompli in terms of some decisions that were made, rather than having the opportunity fully to debate them before they were made.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Fait accompli in terms of what sort of decision? Decisions that you would have normally made yourselves or were made elsewhere and presented to the board, or were they made by somebody on the board and
presented but not for debate?

SIS2: I'm talking predominantly about conversations that the then chief of the service had with the Prime Minister and others in Number 10, which obviously could not have been the subject of pre-arranged deliberation that the chief had to make, as it were, there and then. I'm not bringing this as a criticism because, as I said, the reality is that things were moving very fast, and we didn't, I don't think, have the luxury of an opportunity to manage every aspect of this by committee. But it did mean that occasionally we would find ourselves being told, well, I have spoken to the Prime Minister and this has happened or that has happened, we are going to do this, we are going to do that.

They go on to talk about Libya and the slightly scarey sounding “nuclear black market”

Sir Lawrence Freedman asks where would Iraq have featured from, say, the middle of 2002 onwards?

SIS2: It went up the scale dramatically. I think in WMD terms, Iraq had been relatively low down the scale of preoccupations. The main focus of concern at that point was, firstly, the Iranian nuclear programme, which was a matter of top priority; the AQ Khan* nuclear black market, and the realisation that after years of dabbling ineffectually in an indigenous nuclear programme, Libya had opted for an engagement with the AQ Khan* nuclear supply network that made a Libyan programme more of a preoccupation than it otherwise would have done. So there there were three major WMD preoccupations on which we had to focus.  I think, as I said, Iraq was in one sense a legacy issue. The collection effort around Iraq was focused more, I think, on making sure that we understood where Iraqi capabilities rested at the time of sanctions, so that once the programmes began to resume, we would have a very clear idea of what the baseline was from which that resumption would take place.  In political terms, I think relatively little focus was devoted to collection on Iraq prior to that point. This was a function of considerations –

Sir Lawrence Freedman then asks if anyone in SIS questioned the volume of resources Iraq was obviously eating up.  SIS2 replies no because “SIS is very much a task-driven organisation that responds to requirements, and is a relatively, and by design, process-light organisation.  So when the requirement to deal with a much increased Iraqi requirement came into effect, I think we just swallowed hard and diverted the resources that we judged necessary. I don't think we -- as far as I'm aware, we never formally registered a concern about the resource implications of this".

*Abdul Qadeer Khan pictured above with some of his dangerous toys was a senior nuclear weapons expert who sold Pakistan's nuclear secrets to "axis of evil" countries.  This made MI6 and the CIA quite cross and after pressure was brought to bear on the Pakistan government they put an end to his activities in early 2004.  The Government of Pakistan reported that Khan had signed a confession indicating that he had provided Iran, Libya, and North Korea with designs and centrifuge technology to aid in nuclear weapons programs, and said that the government had not been complicit in the proliferation activities.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Informally?

SIS2: The honest truth is I don't know, but I should have been surprised at that point.

There is then a highly redacted conversation about some information that was, as Sir Roderic Lynd puts it “neither withheld nor, as it were, volunteered”.  SIS2 appears to try and brush this aside…

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: So do you think that clear evidence that Iraq did not have WMD would have made a difference to the Americans.

SIS2:[redacted].

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: [redacted]?

SIS2: I think the US Government had a very clear and explicit agenda of regime change in Iraq. There were two new areas of information that were seen as bearing on that.  One was WMD. The other was allegation of a relationship between the Saddam Hussein regime and Al Qaeda.  Now, we knew absolutely that there was no such relationship, although there were those in the American administration who sought very energetically to argue [redacted] that this was in fact the case.  So, you know, if there are two areas which might have impacted on the American decision, the way in which they handled one of them, the relationship with Al Qaeda is, I think, indicative of what their real intentions were.

The next 4-5 pages are fully redacted before we move onto the more interesting area of that dossier ...actually I'm not sure which dossier as it's hard to figure that out because of all the redactions.  But I think they're talking about the 2002 dossier.  Oh I cant be bothered.  Here's a picture:

SIS2 admits the service were not generally keen on the whole dossier idea.  Mainly because it risked putting a lot of secret material into the public domain and they wished to protect their sources.  There seems to have been a feeling that some kind of breech of trust was involved in putting so much secret material into the public domain.

The Private Transcripts MI6 - SIS1 Part 4 - SIS1’s evidence session draws to its close

The rest of this conversation is redacted and is followed by a discussion on the uselessness of some SIS subsources.  Here's a picture of what I think they're talking about...

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: What about  [redacted], the less happy story?

SIS1: Yes, I think we did get to the bottom of that.  I wasn't personally involved.  [redacted].  But I think we came to the conclusion that he wasn't as reliable as we thought and his subsources were very much less reliable.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Did his subsources actually exist?

SIS1: Yes, they did.

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: But there was fabrication?

SIS1: There was fabrication. There was fabrication.



SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: So it was alerted, I think, in early June 2003 that this might not be wholly reliable. Might it have been withdrawn earlier, do you think?

SIS1: I don't know. I don't know.

After more redaction we’re left with the blunt admission that

SIS1: Yes, I think the handling of the source, and the marketing, if I can use that word, of the intelligence was awful.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Generally, are there any other lessons you can think of on this story?

SIS1: On what?

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: On the WMD story, I guess, including the role of the technical expertise, for example. The evaluation of the evidence that you were given or examining.

SIS1: It's not so much a lesson. It's an observation that we based a lot on not enough.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: I don't think I can sum it up any better myself.

This is followed by a huge redacted section relating to Iran and active sources within the Shia population.

SIS1: [redacted] I think again, if they could cause trouble for the coalition, they would.  It was not in Iran's interests for Iraq to be pacified, a government to be formed, and a secular Shia-dominated state, as it were, arising on their border. I think they would have thought that that was -- that would have been a challenge to their own world picture.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Because it showed an alternative Shia vision?

SIS1: An alternative Shia vision. At least that was our assumption. I don't know that we could read Iranian perceptions to that degree.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Do you have a sense of when they started to use the Sunni insurgency as a way of -

SIS1: Again, any methods. I think they began to do it as soon as they could. Iran, after the fall of Saddam, had so many ways into Iraq, from the pilgrims to the exiles who had come across the border, and I think it was a very complicated melting pot of interests and capabilities.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: So on a scale of 1 to 10, how important do you think the Iranians were as a factor in the Sunni insurgency?

SIS1: No more than 4.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: That's quite high.

SIS1: Okay. Again, lack of knowledge. I mean, frankly, the Sunni insurgency was doing fine by itself.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Quite.

After some more redaction SIS1 suddenly gets quite angry about




Jerry Bremer ( Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq )
who he accuses of being a bully and also of being very rude to
Sir Jeremy Greenstock



(United Kingdom Ambassador to the United Nations for five years, from 1998 to July 2003)

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Can you make a judgment about whether our influence was sufficient, proportionate, effective?

SIS1: As a partner in this enterprise, we were disregarded by the CPA. Our advice was not taken into account. Bremer
had in Jeremy Greenstock an extraordinary partner if he chose to use him, and he treated him disgracefully. He would rebuke him in meetings and tell him that he didn't expect to be contradicted, when Jeremy was offering, you know, a correcting or modifying view.

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Yes.

SIS1: And I think that says a lot about Bremer's arrogance. He was under clear political orders, and he didn't know a lot about the country, and that's quite a lethal combination.

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Arrogance and insecurity sometimes go together.

SIS1: Arrogance and ignorance and insecurity, and I think, you know, if he had embraced Jeremy Greenstock and they had -

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Just a last point on that, because we have got a lot of other evidence to take. Bremer was definitely acting under political direction on those key decisions about de-Ba'athification and disbandment?

SIS1: Yes, but I think people were desperate for someone on the ground to tell them what to do. I don't think there was an ideological sense that this had to happen. In fact it's quite the reverse. Initially you're talking about decapitating the regime and leaving the structures in place.  He went a lot further, and frankly, to this day, I don't really know why.

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Okay, thanks.

After some more redaction SIS1’s evidence session draws to its close

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: [SIS1], thank you very much indeed for your evidence. It's been helpful and illuminating.  Can I just remind that there is a transcript which will need to be reviewed in this building, I'm afraid, when it's convenient to you.

The Private Transcripts MI6 - SIS1 Part 3 - Fast Food Intelligence

The discussion then moves on to when the Government first learnt that George W Bush decided that the UK should be in charge of Basra.  This was, it seems, very late in the day and SIS has a lot of trouble supplying the military with intelligence.

SIS1: Yes. Absolutely. We were galloping to keep up with events and to do what we are not often required to do, which is to produce intelligence of military value that will help win a campaign.

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Yes. I would like to take for granted the fact that there were real and very valuable successes.  They come out of your report and in the comments of military commanders. But at the same time there were shortcomings, and we're a lessons learned Inquiry.  Looking ahead, keys to the success, but also keys to a future better level of success in this kind of engagement, with the green army as well as with special forces.

SIS1: The sort of core SIS intelligence activity is not well suited to a fast-moving military situation. By that stage they are not interested in the broad intentions of the regime and so on. They want to know where the tanks are, when they are going to move.

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: But you got the “fast food intelligence” effort running.

The transcript goes into Reacted territory again. 
There’s some talk about technology that I don’t understand and over-commitment.

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Sure. You are also imposing on people, and indeed on their families, as you've acknowledged, very considerable 24/7 strains, without much time for recovery whatever. So I'm left with wondering what lesson there is to learn from that, that expectations should be limited -- expectation of SIS, not by SIS.

SIS1: We tend to say yes and sometimes overcommit. I think there that can-do, want-to-help attitude may have given people the impression that we were capable of doing more than we were.

…before we slip back into redacted territory again.

There is some talk about SIS’s role in supplying intelligence in a real time operation and how this differs from its usual role of whisper collecting and sifting over long periods of time and whether one role absorbed resources from the other.

SIS1:  It was not just about tactical intelligence for the war fighters. It was about understanding the environment, using their language skills and what we knew of the power structures in the areas that the military were moving through, to assist an intelligent conduct of the campaign.

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: Any last comment on the future of the relationship between SIS and the regular army? Issues such as training familiarisation, just keeping up a level of acquaintance with military personnel, with doctrines, et cetera. Is this an effort that SIS will and can continue to make and should make?

SIS1: Again [redacted] but I think yes. I think as long as we are engaged in this kind of activity, as we have been in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, it has to be one of the clubs in our golf bag. We have got to be able to do that. It doesn't suit everybody, and it's not what people joining, say, 20 years would have thought they were going to do, but we have to do it.

A large redacted section then covers what I think is what they expected to find and how long they were expecting to be in Iraq before they could pull out.  It seems some people actually thought it would be like the Normady invasion.  When the reader is allowed to read the text again something is being discussed to to with El Baradei and the IAEA.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Again, was it a surprise, the definite pronouncement made by El-Baradei about the Iraqi nuclear programme?

SIS1: No, I think everyone accepted that there wasn't a nuclear programme. I think there was a belief that if Saddam was given a free hand, he would buy, beg, steal or borrow a nuclear capability as soon as he could.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Does that go on to issues like the aluminium tubes and all that sort of thing?

SIS1: Yes. That was again a small piece of a bigger jigsaw. It seemed to be consistent with an interest in resuscitating or developing that programme if conditions allowed.

They then move onto the painful question of actually discovering there were no WMD.
Which is not a simple process