Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Iraq/WMD.
Iraq/WMD
Put to him that John Reid’s comments this morning, in which he had said that elements of the security services were undermining the Government, and the Prime Minister’s comments at PMQS, in which he had said that it was simply the result of someone talking to journalists, did not add up, the Prime Minster’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that he would disagree. The two statements did, in fact, add up. It was legitimate for us to ask who was feeding the story and why. Was it because they were not fully in the picture, or was it for some other reason? That was precisely the question which Dr Reid had posed this morning. What was not in doubt was the fact that we had not leant on the security services in any way and that the 45-minute statement had come from the security services and had not been the result of pressure from us. On the one hand, there was the statement made by the Prime Minster which John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), had endorsed. On the other hand, there was an unnamed source whose status within the intelligence community we did not know. Did that alter our view of the intelligence services or the JIC? No it did not, because as the Prime Minister had said, they had a proven record over the past six years in terms of Iraq and Northern Ireland, for example. Asked if he would accept that the comments by John Reid and the Prime Minister were different in tone, emphasis and seriousness, with the latter being more dismissive, the PMOS said no. In the same way that we had issued a categorical denial to the Today Programme within three quarters of an hour of the allegations being made last Thursday morning, the Prime Minister had been conveying his absolute categorical denial - as indeed we had in Kuwait, Basra, Warsaw, St Petersburg and Evian - that we had in any way put pressure on the security services in general, or in particular on the 45-minutes statement.
Asked if the Prime Minister had been seeking to clarify Dr Reid’s remarks in PMQs or whether he fully endorsed what Dr Reid had said, the PMOS said he had dealt with questions about Dr Reid this morning. If he was being asked whether Downing Street stood by his comments, the answer to that was yes. Asked if the Prime Minster had been distancing himself from Dr Reid at PMQs, the PMOS said no. Pressed as to whether the Prime Minister believed there were rogue elements operating in the intelligence services, the PMOS said that it was impossible to say what the motivations were of whoever was sourcing the story until we knew who it was. Unless the BBC was prepared to confirm the status of that individual and whether they had access to the full intelligence picture, which we did not believe they did, it was impossible to address the issue. Asked why he was refusing to answer the question, the PMOS said that he was answering it. As he had said this morning, we agreed with Dr Reid’s comments and that it was perfectly legitimate to ask the BBC who its source was.
Asked to comment on allegations by security service personnel who had said that the intelligence had been ‘cooked’ to give Donald Rumsfeld what he wanted, the PMOS said that he had no reason to believe any such allegation. He was well aware of the care, caution and painstaking work which had gone into ensuring that nothing incorrect had been included in the dossier. The onus was therefore on those who were making the allegations to provide evidence to back up their claims. Anonymous sources on the Today Programme should not be seen to be equivalent to the considered judgement of the chairman of the JIC. Put to him that Clare Short was no anonymous source and that she had repeated the claims today, and whether he could confirm her assertion that the Prime Minster had initially fixed 15 February as the date to begin military action in Iraq, the PMOS said that he didn’t recognise the picture being painted. He preferred to rely on his knowledge of the painstaking work done in advance of the publication of the WMD dossier.
Asked to explain why the Government was reluctant to publish the JIC’s initial assessment, the PMOS said that there was an established procedure which we would follow because it was important to protect the integrity of the intelligence services and their work. Anonymous sources on the Today Programme were not sufficient justification to junk that well established process.
Asked by the Express if he would agree that it would be better to wait for the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) to investigate the issue and draw up a report rather than battle on and issue rebuttal after rebuttal, the PMOS said no. Was it seriously being suggested that the Prime Minister should stand up in the Commons and decline to answer questions about the matter because he was waiting for the ISC to publish its report? Allegations had been made which were untrue, and it was our duty to rebut them. Besides, if we adopted the Express’s tactics, we would be inviting the headline "Downing Street Refused Today to Rebut….". We therefore believed it was important for us to state our version of events. Put to him that it wasn’t helping our case to go for the shins with studs flying on journalists who wrote stories we didn’t like, the PMOS said he was not attacking journalists. He was attacking wild allegations that were untrue. If people were talking about going in hard, they should not be looking at what we had been saying over the past week but at where the allegations had come from in the first place.
Asked if the Prime Minister would be willing to give evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry should they decide to ask him to do so, the PMOS said that the normal processes would apply. We would wait for the Select Committee to decide what it wanted to do. Questioned about the ISC inquiry, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister gave evidence on an annual basis to the Intelligence and Security Committee. He had not yet had a session with them this year. Asked if the ISC’s evidence sessions would be held in public, the PMOS said no. It wasn’t the Committee’s policy to provide a running commentary on its work. Its report, however, would be published. Put to him that the Committee should consider holding its sessions in public, the PMOS said that the Committee operated in the way it operated. He was not its spokesman. Asked if Downing Street would have any objection if the ISC decided to go public, the PMOS said that the Committee operated in the way it did for a very good reason, namely to protect intelligence sources. That must remain a priority.
Asked if the Government would be compelled to set up an independent inquiry if the two motions put down by the Opposition under the Tribunals Act were to be approved, the PMOS said that he preferred to deal with facts rather than hypotheticals. The facts in this case were simple. We had not in any way attempted to pressurise the intelligence agencies into putting something into the dossier which shouldn’t have been included.
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