The proof that Campbell and Blair DID lie about the Iraq War



Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair were accused of lying to the Iraq Inquiry yesterday after devastating secret evidence was declassified.



A furious former spy chief wrote to Sir John Chilcot, the Inquiry chairman, to complain that the former Downing Street spin doctor failed to tell the truth about the dodgy dossier on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.



And Mr Blair came under fire from the man he put in charge of Southern Iraq after the war. Sir Hilary Synnott said the then prime minister distorted his words about the post-war chaos.

Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair (seen here in 1998) were accused of lying to the Iraq Inquiry yesterday after devastating secret evidence was declassified

Details of the backlash emerged as the Inquiry team released a series of previously secret documents.



Sir John delivered further bad news for Mr Blair and his allies by revealing that he will not publish his report until the summer because he needs time to contact those he is planning to criticise.



When Mr Campbell gave evidence in January 2010, he vociferously denied that the dossier on Saddam’s arsenal was specifically drawn up to ‘make the case for war’.

Questionable conflict: U.S. troops prepare to enter Baghdad at the height of the Iraq War

But Major-General Michael Laurie, who was head of intelligence collection for the Defence Intelligence Agency, has become the first senior spy to flatly contradict the spin doctor’s claims.

In an email to Sir John, published for the first time yesterday, General Laurie said: ‘Alastair Campbell said to the inquiry that the purpose of the dossier was not “to make a case for war”. I had no doubt at that time this was exactly its purpose and these very words were used.

‘We knew at the time that the purpose of the Dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence. I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given.’

Mr Campbell also dismissed claims that he had pressured the Joint Intelligence Committee to ‘beef up’ the dossier which warned that Saddam could fire weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.

But General Laurie told the Inquiry: ‘During the drafting of the final Dossier, every fact was managed to make it as strong as possible, the final statements reaching beyond the conclusions intelligence assessments would normally draw from such facts.



‘It was clear to me that there was direction and pressure being applied on the JIC and its drafters.’

The whole truth? Mr Campbell, who appeared before the inquiry in January 2010, was not under oath when he gave evidence. But each witness is expected to sign an undertaking that their evidence is accurate and honest

Called to give evidence behind closed doors, General Laurie was asked if the dossier gave the public ‘a false picture’ of the intelligence. He replied: ‘Yes, yes, yes.’



Vindicated: Dr David Kelly committed suicide after claiming evidence was 'sexed up', but the new evidence supports his claims

That evidence dramatically reinforces the claims of the former weapons scientist Dr David Kelly, who committed suicide after he was outed as the source of a BBC story on the way the dossier was ‘sexed up’.



General Laurie made clear that the Labour Government knew the evidence for Saddam’s arsenal was flaky.



He said: ‘We could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment that related to WMD, generally concluding that they must have been dismantled, buried or taken abroad.’



General Laurie said the Government spent months building the case for war. A first dossier was drafted in February and March 2002, a year before the invasion, but was ‘rejected because it did not make a strong enough case’, he said. ‘From then until September we were under pressure to find intelligence that could reinforce the case.’



The former spy also fired a broadside at Tony Blair, who wrote a foreword to the Downing Street dossier claiming the ‘intelligence has established beyond doubt... that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons’. Asked if that was a ‘justifiable encapsulation’ of the evidence, General Laurie said: ‘No, because I don’t believe it was beyond doubt.’



Mr Blair also came under fire from his envoy to southern Iraq, Sir Hilary Synnott. When he testified for the second time in January this year, Mr Blair twice said that when Sir Hilary left Iraq in January 2004, he was ‘on balance optimistic, not pessimistic’.



But the former envoy said: ‘This judgment of course referred only to southern Iraq – the region for which I had some responsibility – not to the country as a whole.’ Sir Hilary said his optimism had been based only on advice he had given Mr Blair – to ‘maintain a multinational development presence in the south’ rather than hand control to the Iraqis – which Mr Blair then ignored.

The Chilcot hearings are not a formal judicial inquiry so neither Mr Blair or Mr Campbell was on oath when they made the disputed claims. But both were under an obligation to sign a declaration that their evidence was ‘truthful, fair and accurate’.

PREMIER WAS WARNED BEFORE 7/7 BLASTS

Tony Blair was warned three months before the July 7 bombings that the Iraq war was turning British Muslims to terrorism.

A four-page memo, prepared by the Joint Intelligence Committee, demolished his claims that the conflict had not increased the risk of terror attacks in the UK.

The memo, declassified yesterday by the Chilcot Inquiry, concluded before the London blasts that the invasion had ‘exacerbated’ the threat of extremists joining Al Qaeda’s cause.

It stated: ‘Iraq is likely to be an important motivating factor for some time to come in the radicalisation of British Muslims and for those extremists who view attacks against the UK as legitimate.’

The report, sent to Mr Blair and senior ministers in April 2005, added that the conflict had strengthened the message of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden – killed by U.S. special forces earlier this month – and his jihadist supporters that Islam was ‘under attack and must be defended using force’.

In 2005, two years after Britain invaded Iraq, and four years after Afghanistan was invaded, 52 commuters were murdered in the July 7 terror attacks in London.

The Inquiry has been periodically getting the Government to declassify the most important documents which have helped them arrive at the conclusions of the report.



Critics leapt on yesterday’s revelations as evidence that both Mr Blair and Mr Campbell have sought to cover their backs.



Reg Keys, whose son Tom was killed in Iraq in 2003, said: ‘I am convinced that both of them misled Parliament, they misled the nation, they misled the soldiers and now we find that they are lying to the Iraq Inquiry to build the case for their grubby war.’



Rose Gentle, who lost her son Gordon, said: ‘I think Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell have lied to the inquiry. I’m glad Sir John is taking his time. If he blames the right people it will be worth waiting for.’



Last night Mr Campbell said on his Twitter account : ‘Nothing to add to evidence to inquiry. Dossier not case for war. Set out why govt more concerned re IraqWMD. Never met Gen Laurie.’



A spokesman for Mr Blair said that his and Sir Hilary’s statements ‘are completely compatible’. He said the ‘suggestion is wrong’ that Mr Blair had distorted Sir Hilary’s words.



Secret testimony from SAS chiefs will be published by the Iraq Inquiry in a highly unusual move.



The transcripts are unlikely to reveal the techniques used by special forces on the battlefield, but they will give an insight into how Tony Blair planned to use the troops in the run-up to the invasion and afterwards.





MI6 plotted with No10 to oust Saddam



IAN DRURY

Target: Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in 1995

MI6 plotted the toppling of Saddam Hussein nearly 18 months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, secret papers revealed.



Spy chiefs discussed with Downing Street a plan that was layered ‘like an onion’, with ministers openly supporting ‘regime change’ while behind the scenes working closely with those carrying out a coup.



The intelligence service also made clear in newly declassified papers that the ‘prize’ for removing the Iraqi dictator was ‘new security to oil supplies’.



The documents will add weight to critics’ claims that this was the real reason the U.S. and Britain went to war, and not because they feared Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.



The Iraq Inquiry has heard that Tony Blair had signalled that he would be willing to back ‘regime change’ in Iraq when he met President George W Bush in Texas in 2002.



But the latest papers highlight how the prospect of removing Saddam had been discussed by the then Prime Minister’s inner circle months earlier.



Sir Richard Dearlove, the then head of the spy service, sent three documents to Mr Blair’s top foreign policy adviser Sir David Manning on the issue in December 2001.



Two discussed how Britain could ‘head off’ the U.S. from pursuing regime change in Baghdad. But the other set out ‘a route map for regime change very openly’.



Written by a Middle East expert at MI6 known only as ‘SIS4’, he told Sir David: ‘At our meeting on 30 November we discussed how we could combine an objective of regime change in Baghdad with the need to protect important regional interests which would be at grave risk.’



The MI6 agent raised the possibility of the U.S. and Britain covertly supporting a coup against Saddam by disgruntled Sunnis.



He wrote: ‘The key idea is that it is possible to speak openly about support for regime change in Iraq, without compromising the actual project to support a coup.



‘The overall plan would need to be like an onion – each layer concealing the one below.



‘The whole is a policy statement: We want regime change in Baghdad and we are ready to provide air support to coup makers. The inmost part is knowledge of the coup makers with whom we are in touch and their operational plan.’



‘SIS4’ suggested a 12- to 18-month timetable for the plan to work ‘to meet U.S. impatience’ for the removal of Saddam.



And he foresaw the problem of ministers taking ‘illegal’ military action. He wrote: ‘Government law officers to provide assurances of legality (there has been a serious problem here).’



In the third document to Sir David, ‘SIS4’ warned that an invasion of Iraq would not be as easy as the initial coalition thrust into Afghanistan.



‘The defences of the Iraqi regime are formidable,’ he wrote. ‘The Tikritis are not a bunch of Taliban.’



He also said an invasion could boost support for terrorism, increase distrust of the U.S. and its allies in the Islamic world and raise oil prices.

