This new web page is designed to give our readers access to all the stories we
have written about three highly classified documents on the Iraq war that
were leaked to The Sunday Times ahead of the British General
Election on May 5, 2005.
These three documents include the now famous Downing Street Memo which
contains the minutes of a meeting, of what was effectively Tony Blair’s war
cabinet, held in Downing Street, on July 23, 2002.
The meeting was a crucial one. President George W Bush was due to make a
decision on which military plan should be used for the invasion of Iraq. The
British had a number of deep concerns over the US plans which Blair would
have to raise with the US president.
The Foreign Office was particularly concerned over US lack of interest in
planning for the aftermath of the war and the lack of a legal justification
for ousting Saddam. Regime change for its own sake is illegal under
international law. It was therefore seen as essential that the allies went
first to the UN to obtain a Security Council resolution backing the use of
force to oust Saddam.
It was in this context that the main players on the British side met. Blair
chaired the meeting, which was also attended by the Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw; the then Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon; the Attorney General Lord
Goldsmith; Sir Richard Dearlove, the Chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence
Service (better known as MI6); the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Committee John Scarlett; and Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, who as Chief of
Defence Staff was head of Britain’s armed forces.
The key quotes in this particular document came from:
Dearlove, who had just returned from Washington where he had
talks with George Tenet, and was quoted as saying that there was “a
perceptible shift in attitude” in the US capital. “Military action was now
seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, though military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and
facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the
UN route... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after
military action.”
Straw, who said: “It seemed clear that Bush had made up his
mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But
the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD
capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.” Britain should
“work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons
inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of
force.”
And Geoff Hoon, who in what may yet turn out to be the most
damaging quote of all, said that “the US had already begun “spikes of
activity” to put pressure on the regime”. (See British Bombing Raids were
Illegal, says Foreign Office, June 19, 2005)
An inside-page article set out the context for the publication of the leaked
document (see Blair planned Iraq war from the start, May 1, 2005), and it
was in fact the second of the documents, the Cabinet Office briefing paper,
Iraq: Conditions for Military Action, on which we based our first front-page
story (Blair hit by new leak of secret war plan, May 1, 2005).
This document distributed on July 21, 2002 two days before the Downing Street
meeting was designed to brief the participants on the latest situation with
regard to the US war planning. It gives an astonishing feel of the official
concern felt within Whitehall over the way in which things were going, the
lack of legal justification, the failure to prepare for the post-war
situation in Iraq and most particularly the fact that there was no way that
Britain could get out of going to war (See Ministers were told of need for
Gulf War excuse, June 12, 2005).
For as the briefing paper made clear very early on “When the Prime Minister
discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK
would support military action to bring about regime change.”
At the time, this was the most damaging part of any of the documents. Despite
Blair’s repeated insistence throughout 2002 that no decision had been taken
to go to war with Iraq, political analysts had long believed that the
decision was in fact made at the Bush-Blair summit at the president’s range
at Crawford, Texas, in early April 2002. Not only did this confirm it, but
it did so in terms that were highly damaging to the prime minister.
Despite having been warned by his officials that “regime change per se is
illegal” he had agreed to back military action to achieve it. There were
three conditions attached to his agreement. But the most crucial of these,
that “options for action to eliminate Iraq’s WMD through the UN weapons
inspectors had been exhausted” would never be achieved.
The third leaked document was Foreign Office legal advice, which was appended
to the briefing paper. This is a useful background document on the British
view of international law the text of which is now also published on this
website.
The recent circulation on the internet of the text of five other similar
memos, which were leaked to me last September, has raised some interesting
issues, largely because I destroyed the original copies I was given to
protect my source. A number of supporters of President Bush have even
suggested that this somehow “proved” that the documents were not genuine.
Firstly, all of the documents have been authenticated not just by me, but by
the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the
Associated Press. Secondly, the various documents included quotes from a
dozen senior officials, including Blair, Straw and Hoon, none of whom have
come forward to dismiss them as fakes. Thirdly it is a matter of record that
a police Special Branch leak investigation took place into how I came to get
hold of the documents, something that would not have occurred were they
forgeries.
The leak investigation should come as no surprise to anyone who has read the
Downing Street Memo, which carries the stern warning, “This record is
extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown
only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.” The irony is of
course that the attention given to the document by the internet bloggers
once it appeared on this website has almost certainly made it the most
widely read secret British document in history.
Additional links: Hansard on bombs dropped March to October 2002
Hansard on bombs dropped October 2002 to January 2003
Online discussion with Washington Post
