Dossier details worry the spies

By KIM SENGUPTA in LONDON

British intelligence services are demanding clear guidelines and greater control on how information supplied to the British Government is used in Prime Minister Tony Blair's promised new Iraq dossier.

Senior security sources have disclosed unprecedented disquiet within the services on how Downing St "hardened up" their findings to support claims that Saddam Hussein posed an immediate danger with his alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Security personnel want John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, to ensure that reports by the services are not "subedited" by Downing St officials, and outside material is not passed off as intelligence.

There is concern that No 10 demanded and received "raw intelligence", material unchecked by the security services.

The normal practice for previous Governments has been for this to be filtered by the committee.

Security services believe that some of the "information" Downing St received came from United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon without the committee being involved.

They say Wolfowitz set up the Office of Special Plans because he and other Pentagon hawks felt the CIA was being too cautious about Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction.

There is also said to be consternation within the security services that some ministers are appearing to blame Britain's spies for exaggerating the alleged Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear arsenal, paving the way for war.

But the security officials say No 10 kept pressuring them to show the immediacy of the Iraqi threat, and the intelligence committee was under pressure from Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's communications director, and other senior officials, to "toughen" its conclusions.

The committee includes the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of the secret service (MI5), Eliza Manningham-Buller and Air Marshal Joe French, the head of military intelligence.

Scarlett, chairman of the committee since 2001, is a career MI6 officer.

Scarlett has admitted there was a "debate" about what should be included in the dossier presented by Blair in September last year.

But he has denied that there was any friction between him and Downing St. He has not commented on a subsequent dossier, in February, when information supplied by the committee was mashed together with material on the internet by a team of officials and researchers under Campbell and then passed off as an "intelligence dossier".

But the security officials say Scarlett was under pressure to change "nuances" in the reports.

"It may seem like semantics, but add an 's' to source and it becomes a multiple one, thus giving it more credence," said one source.


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Herald Feature: Iraq