Tony Blair's Iraq adviser wins £50,000 U.S. defence job

The man who acted as Tony Blair's go-between with George Bush in the run-up to the war in Iraq has landed a job worth a reported £50,000-a-year with U.S. arms giant Lockheed Martin.



Sir David Manning, 58, Britain's former ambassador in Washington, has joined the board of the company's UK arm, which develops jet fighters and missiles, as a non-executive director.



He has also become an adviser to Hakluyt, a private security company set up by former spies.



Vital link: Sir David Manning and George Bush in Washington DC in 2005

The appointments were confirmed by the Cabinet Office, which vets mandarins and politicians who take up lucrative jobs in the private sector.

The Cabinet Office also disclosed that Sir David had been told under anti-sleaze rules that he is banned from lobbying the British Government for a year - a routine move to prevent civil-service figures using Whitehall secrets to make money.

Sir David was Mr Blair's foreign affairs and defence adviser. He stepped down as the UK's envoy in Washington two years ago.

He played a key role in planning the Iraq War, and secret memos published after the conflict revealed how he knew Mr Blair had promised to go to war with Mr Bush a year before the conflict.

Sir David has become a non-executive director of Lockheed's subsidiary, Lockheed UK. He will also act as personal adviser to the firm's chief executive, Ian Stopps.

A company spokesman said: 'He has joined because of his distinguished career and experience in diplomacy as well as in government.'

Lockheed is one of the most powerful defence firms in the world. It is proud of its role in the Iraq War and published an 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' brochure that described how its 'stealthy F-117 Nighthawk opened the Allied operation with a strike aimed at Saddam Hussein's leadership'.

The company earns large sums from the Ministry of Defence.

In June, a Lockheed-led consortium won a £635million contract to train RAF and Army pilots.

In the same month, RAF pilots test-flew a new 'Stealth Fighter Bomber' at Lockheed's Texas plant.