THE outgoing head of MI6 and John Scarlett, his successor, were robustly defended by Downing Street yesterday after allegations that they had omitted to tell last year’s Hutton inquiry that some of the key intelligence on Iraq was considered suspect.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who retires as Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service at the end of this month, and Mr Scarlett appeared as witnesses last summer before Lord Hutton. His inquiry was investigating the circumstances leading to the death of David Kelly, the Ministry of Defence expert on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Dr Kelly disappeared from his home in Oxfordshire a year ago today and his body was found the next day.

Sir Richard and Mr Scarlett told Lord Hutton that the intelligence on Iraq’s WMD was credible and well-founded.

When he was asked about the intelligence on the controversial 45-minute timeframe for launching WMD, Sir Richard told the inquiry: “It did come from an established and reliable source, equating to a senior Iraqi military officer who was certainly in a position to know this information.”

However, it emerged from the review of intelligence by Lord Butler of Brockwell — whose report was published on Wednesday this week — that MI6 had re-examined its five main sources from inside Iraq since the war. This was part of a normal “revalidation process”. The agency had decided the sourcing for the 45-minute claim was not reliable.

In another case, MI6 had decided to drop an Iraqi source who had claimed that Saddam Hussein was still secretly producing chemical and biological weapons.

This agent was crossed off the list of reliable sources in July 2002, one month before Lord Hutton began his inquiry.

Neither of these developments was imparted to Lord Hutton. But intelligence officials said that it was false to suggest that either Sir Richard or Mr Scarlett had misled Lord Hutton by omission.

The process of revalidating agents had still been going on during and after the Hutton inquiry, they said, adding that in only one case — that of the agent who claimed Saddam’s WMD production line was still running — had a decision been taken that the source was no longer credible and should be abandoned.

The officials said that the information had not been brought up in the Hutton inquiry because it was not specifically raised as an issue. It did not bear directly on the circumstances behind Dr Kelly’s death, they argued.

The Butler inquiry, on the other hand, was about the credibility of intelligence, and details of the revalidating of sources had been disclosed in that context in full.

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