Smash hit

Tony Blair’s spokesman said: “This specific piece of intelligence was only one part of the picture on chemical and biological weapons production and the process of Secret Intelligence Service validation was still going on at the time of Hutton and indeed is still going on.”

He added: “That process meant that when John Scarlett (and Sir Richard Dearlove) appeared at the Hutton inquiry, this matter was still being investigated as a sensitive operational matter.

“So, even if he had been asked about this particular piece of intelligence, which he wasn’t, it would have been completely wrong and improper for him to have mentioned it in public.

“Lord Hutton was not misled. He saw everything he wanted to.”

The spokesman said the Prime Minister learnt of the withdrawal of the source’s information by MI6 only as a result of the Butler inquiry.

An equally robust defence was made over the sourcing for the 45-minutes claim. Intelligence officials explained that its authenticity had become suspect because of a re-evaluation of the “sub-source” involved in the intelligence-gathering process.

In the complex world of espionage, a sub-source is a secondary agent who supplies his information to a primary agent who then passes it on to his MI6 case officer.

The sub-source does not necessarily know that he has given information to an MI6 agent.

The primary agent in the 45-minutes saga was a senior Iraqi military officer, the man who Sir Richard told Lord Hutton was an “established and reliable source”.

The sub-source was now considered to be unreliable, but had not been dropped altogether, the officials said. But this judgment had not been made in time for the Hutton inquiry.

Nevertheless, when asked in the Hutton inquiry whether he thought the 45-minutes intelligence had been given “undue prominence” in the Government’s dossier on Iraq published in September 2002, Sir Richard came up with this memorable reply: “I think, given the misinterpretation that was placed on the 45-minutes intelligence, with the benefit of hindsight, you can say that is a valid criticism.”

However, he added: “I am confident that the intelligence was accurate and that the use made of it was entirely consistent with the original report.”

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