Examination of Witness (Questions 180-199)
Tuesday 8 July 2003
RT HON
TONY BLAIR
Q180 Sir George Young: You are not
prepared to contemplate that they were not?
Mr Blair: If I can just deal with
the issue about credibility, let us be clear about this. It is
not surprising, when we have had five weeks of being told, in
effect, because the public does not get into the detail of a lot
of these things and the FAC did get into the detail of it and
there was a very detailed report,—we have had five weeks
essentially where a central allegation has been made. This allegation
started with the claim that the 45-minute time for Saddam to activate
his weapons was inserted into the September dossier on a false
basis, that Number 10 Downing Street or myself inserted this into
this dossier against the wishes of our intelligence services,
knowing it to be untrue. There could not be a more serious allegation
against the Government. I do not think a single person around
this table believes that to be true, but it has been repeated
for five weeks.
Q181 Sir George Young: That was not
the question that we were putting. Can we—
Mr Blair: You were putting the
question of credibility, and the question of credibility is obviously
governed by the seriousness of that charge. It is an extremely
serious charge. I hope people accept that that charge was wrong.
I also think it is important to say this: I believe that the British
intelligence services, for their size, are the best in the world.
I have now had six years of dealing with those intelligence services
and intelligence is intelligence. I am not saying there cannot
be particular items or particular lines that turn out to be different
from what the intelligence says, because intelligence is exactly
what it means. In my experience of dealing with the British intelligence
services, I have never come across a consistent line of reporting
that has turned out to be wrong, and that is why I do not believe
that their intelligence reporting that was revealed in the dossier
last September was wrong, I believe it will be shown to be right.
Q182 Sir George Young: Prime Minister,
when you were here a year ago some of us asked you about your
style of government and there is a section in this report about
the machinery of government. Does this document not confirm some
of the fears that were put to you about a year ago? We read in
this document that Parliament is denied access to the papers and
the people that it needs to hold the Government to account; we
read the Cabinet is sidelined; sensitive documents presented to
Parliament without any ministerial oversight; meetings on intelligence
chaired by the Government's spin doctor instead of the Chairman
of the JIC; the Cabinet's Defence and Overseas Policy Committee
has not met for two years; ad hoc unaccountable groups meeting
without papers and taking decisions. Does this not reveal systemic
failings in government?
Mr Blair: It would if it were
true, but it is not. Let me deal with each of those allegations
in turn. First of all, in relation to Parliament not being informed,
let us be clear, I am the first Prime Minister who has ever appeared
before a parliamentary committee of this sort; the first.
Q183 Sir George Young: They asked
for access to papers and they were denied them.
Mr Blair: Intelligence papers
have never been provided to committees in this way. However, we
have provided more than any government before us has ever done.
Secondly, in relation to Parliament, I think I am the first Prime
Minister who has actually gone to Parliament to seek specific
clearance for a decision to take this country to war. So the idea
that Parliament never had a chance to debate this, or was not
involved, I think is fatuous. As for the suggestion that Cabinet
has been sidelined, after I read that allegation I went back through
and since March 2002 Iraq started to be debated at Cabinet since
it became a live issue; from September 2002 onwards I think at
virtually every Cabinet meeting it was debated; during the course
of the war 28 separate meetings of the relevant Cabinet Committee
were held at which, incidentally, the Deputy Prime Minister, the
Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary and the Development Secretary
were all present. In relation to the Defence Committee that you
mentioned, the reason why it was not meeting was that we had a
special committee meeting on the war. I think the notion that
Parliament was not involved cannot be sustained. The notion that
the Cabinet was not involved is simply contradicted by the meetings
that we had both of the Cabinet and of the sub-committee of the
Cabinet dealing with the issue to do with the war. In relation
to unelected groups of advisors, it is simply not true to say
that those groups of advisors—Of course I talk to the people
who work with me in my office, but the idea that they supplanted
the decisions of the Cabinet simply is not right. The Cabinet
agreed to take the action in respect of the conflict and once
the Cabinet had agreed, we then went to Parliament and Parliament
agreed. I look back on this and think we published the September
dossier because people demanded the intelligence and for the first
time a government actually gave a large amount of its intelligence
and put it before the public. We then had massive parliamentary
debate for six months over this, we then had a final parliamentary
decision that we should go to conflict and we had Cabinet meeting
after Cabinet meeting debating this. The idea that this took place
and I got together with a couple of people in the office over
a cup of coffee and decided to take the country to war is somewhat
farfetched, if I can respectfully say so.
Q184 Sir George Young: Finally, can
we put to bed the question that Donald raised right at the beginning.
Do you accept that inadvertently you misrepresented the status
of the document on 3 February and you regret this?
Mr Blair: No, I accept that what
we should have done is we should have said that this middle part
of the document was actually taken from a reference document.
I did not know at the time that if I put it before Parliament
it should have been sourced in that way. Can I just make the point,
however, that the information in it was actually correct. I accept
entirely—for the future we have put in place procedures
to make absolutely sure—if we were putting any document
in the public domain and actually a source for that document was
a reference work or an article or something that was on the Internet,
we should have sourced it. The information was correct and the
intelligence material in the other two parts of the document was,
indeed, intelligence material.
Q185 Sir George Young: But its status
was misrepresented.
Mr Blair: I do not think its status
was misrepresented. What we should have done was sourced the bit
that actually came from a reference document to the reference
document.
Q186 Mr Leigh: Just so that we leave
no loose ends undone, can I just go back to this point which has
been raised with you by Donald Anderson and Sir George Young.
You claimed on February 3 that this document was based on intelligence.
In fact, 90% of it was plagiarised from a 12 year old PhD thesis.
We all make mistakes, nobody is accusing you of doing this deliberately,
Prime Minister, but has not the time really come for you to tell
Parliament that you are sorry, that inadvertently you misled Parliament
in claiming that this dossier was based on intelligence when it
was not?
Mr Blair: First of all, let me
just correct the facts. It is not true that 90% of it came from
the reference document. There are three parts to the briefing.
The first part and the third part were based on intelligence.
The second part was mainly based on this reference document, and
that was the list of security services and so on that Saddam had.
The first part and the third part were, indeed, based on intelligence.
We have apologised already and said it was a mistake, we should
have sourced the second part of it. So that the people watching
this get a sense of the gravity of this mistake, the information
in it was correct, the briefing paper was, indeed, largely based
on intelligence, and all that would have corrected this was if
we had said at the time, "The second bit of this that lists
the security services of Saddam is actually taken from, I do not
know, either an article in an academic review or a piece on the
Internet". Supposing we had said that, supposing at the time
we had known it and we had said it, would the whole world have
been up in arms? No, it would have barely got a single mention.
Q187 Mr Leigh: All right. Well, you
disagree with the conclusion of the Foreign Affairs Committee
on that and we will now pass on. As you correctly said, we were
not at Camp David, but following on from another question from
Donald Anderson, on what date, therefore, did you decide to go
to war?
Mr Blair: I decided that we could
not avoid conflict in the few days before the vote on 18 March
because it was then that it was obvious that we could not get
a second UN resolution that delivered an ultimatum to Saddam.
Once other countries had made it clear that they were not prepared
to support a resolution with an ultimatum in it, then all we were
going to get was a further condemnation of Saddam and an agreement
to have another discussion. That was not enough. Up until that
point I was still working to avoid the conflict. I had very nearly
secured, and believe I would have, the necessary votes in the
UN to have got effectively an ultimatum to Saddam that could still
have avoided the conflict. The answer is that all the way through
I had in my mind an attempt, if at all possible, to do this peacefully,
but we made an agreement in 1441 that disarmament had to happen
one way or another, that the inspectors had to have the full co-operation,
not partial but full co-operation, of Saddam and he never gave
that, and he did not give it for the reasons I have already outlined.
Q188 Mr Leigh: Thank you for that.
The last part of just tying up previous answers is I notice that
you have picked your words very carefully today in talking about
evidence of weapons of mass destruction, construction programmes,
and you have referred again to evidence of programmes. Are you
still claiming that at the time that we went to war Saddam Hussein
had an ability to unleash weapons of mass destruction?
Mr Blair: I believed the intelligence
we had on that back in September and also throughout the conflict.
Again, and I think the Foreign Affairs Committee report makes
mention of this, if you think of the chemical suits that we issued
to our people and that were issued by Saddam to his, I think that
was some evidence of the fact that this was not a game.
Q189 Mr Leigh: What is your exit
strategy from Iraq?
Mr Blair: We stay until we get
the job done. The job is to get the country back on its feet,
to give it a proper functioning political system which means that
the Iraqis themselves in a representative way control their country
and to make sure that it has the ability to be a stable and prosperous
partner in the region. I think that if Iraq does turn into the
stable and prosperous country that it can be, and remember 30
years ago this was a country with the same GDP as Portugal and
Malaysia, this was not a wrecked Third World country back in those
days, if we are able to do that it will make a huge difference
to the whole of the stability of the Middle East and the region.
Q190 Mr Leigh: There are large numbers
of British troops committed there, 40 American soldiers have been
killed since the end of the war and, sadly, six British soldiers.
Are you worried that we may be dragged into a dreary neo-colonial
situation where there is very little hope of installing some kind
of effective democracy?
Mr Blair: No, I am not concerned
about that. Again, I would simply draw attention to the fact that
we are less than three months from the end of the conflict. Let
us get a sense here of the size of the task. It is tragic that
we carry on losing people in respect of what is happening in Iraq,
the security situation is still very difficult there but we are
stabilising it. As I was saying a moment or two ago, just today
we have had the first signs that we have the ability to put a
proper functioning democracy in place. Here you have a city council
in Baghdad being put together, which is far more representative
than anything that was under Saddam, and you have the possibility
in the next few weeks of a proper provisional political authority
getting up and running in Iraq.
Q191 Mr Leigh: But do you accept
that we cannot do this alone with the Americans? Lastly, what
are your plans to internationalise this and bring other countries
in, get some sort of effective UN presence in Iraq? What are your
plans?
Mr Blair: We are doing it now,
Edward. Sergio de Mello has been there in Baghdad, the UN is working.
We have around about 20 different countries coming in with troops
of various descriptions. We reckon we will have around about 5,000
to 6,000 troops from different countries in the British sector
alone in the next few weeks. The British troop requirement—let
us just be clear about this—is already just under a third
of what it was at the height of the conflict, so we are not at
the same troop strength as we were even two months ago.
Q192 Dr Gibson: Prime Minister, I
do not think anybody in this room or in the country generally
could understand the agony that you had to go through to make
the decisions that you did, I think we understand that. In answer
to Edward Leigh you seemed to indicate that the parliamentary
decision was the critical compelling moment when it was yes or
no in terms of war, if you had lost that vote it would have been
different from winning the vote. Is that what you were indicating
or were there other things previously that forced you down the
line that said in your own head, "This is it, I have got
to go"?
Mr Blair: First of all, I had
to recommend a decision that we go to conflict and that was a
few days before the parliamentary vote. That was when I appreciated
that there was no way that we could get the UN to pass a proper
second resolution and obviously then we had to persuade the Cabinet
and then we had to persuade Parliament. Those were the three stages
of it. If at any one of those stages the opposite decision had
been taken, of course it would not have happened.
Q193 Dr Gibson: So if the vote had
gone the other way it would have been, "No, we do not go",
and you would have had to tell Bush that he was on his own?
Mr Blair: As I said in the debate
on the 18th, if Parliament voted against it, I never thought it
was possible, whatever the precise constitutional position, I
never thought it was realistic, especially in a situation like
this, for British troops to go to war. Whatever the constitutional
position, I do not think it would have been sustainable.
Q194 Dr Gibson: In terms of the fine
work you have indicated that the intelligence and security services
do, and I guess we all agree with that because there is peace
most of the time, do you ever accept that they need checks on
them sometimes in terms of the uranium in Niger business, the
document you referred to, that poor PhD student whose work was
suddenly raised to this great status because it was picked up?
You mentioned and apologised for the need to source it but there
is obviously a lesson there, is there not, about intelligence
and security, they are not omnipotent and always correct? Is that
your view now?
Mr Blair: I think that is a sensible
view at any time about them and I am sure that is their own view
of themselves. They do not claim to be omnipotent or always right
about everything. I think they do a fantastic job. The reason
why a British Prime Minister often has a fairly good idea about
the work that the intelligence services do is we have had a continuing
problem over many years in relation to Northern Ireland, for example,
and we get to know fairly well the validity of the work that they
do. I can only tell you that the work that I have seen the intelligence
services do is done by very serious, deeply committed public servants
who do a fantastic job for this country. Can I just deal with
the Niger point as well, and this is terribly important because,
again, this has been elevated into something that really is not
warranted by the actual facts. First of all—let me just
make this clear—there was an historic link between Niger
and Iraq. In the 1980s Iraq purchased somewhere in the region
of 200 or more tonnes of uranium from Niger. The evidence that
we had that the Iraqi Government had gone back to try to purchase
further amounts of uranium from Niger did not come from these
so-called "forged" documents, they came from separate
intelligence. Again, insofar as our intelligence services are
concerned, they stand by that. I think we said in the dossier
that we believe that they tried to purchase this uranium but we
could not say whether they had been successful or not in actually
doing so. We said exactly what the intelligence was. Again, to
read some of the coverage, you would think that this link between
Iraq and Niger has been a fantasy invented by the security services
and I think a lot of people out there will be thinking "What
on earth has Niger got to do with Iraq?" Actually, Niger's
main export is uranium and there is no doubt at all that in the
1980s they purchased very considerable quantities of uranium from
Niger. The whole point about uranium and Iraq is that at least
by the early 1990s they had absolutely no civil nuclear power
programme of any validity at all, so what on earth would they
be doing buying uranium from Niger? That is why I think it is
important, in fairness to the intelligence services, that people
go back and actually assess in a slightly more objective way exactly
what they were telling us.
Q195 Dr Gibson: I do not want to
get into a detailed argy-bargy about this but you will know the
International Atomic Energy Commission absolutely disagreed with
that assessment, that any uranium was going into Iraq from Niger,
but I do not want to go down that particular line because it is
a very complex argument and I am sure it will turn everybody off
the debate. I just want to carry on about the thesis and so on.
Who actually sourced that work for the dossier?
Mr Blair: All of the intelligence,
and in fact the dossier itself, was cleared through the Joint
Intelligence Committee. The Chairman of that committee would assess
and review all the intelligence and signed off the dossier. The
way that it works is this—and again it is important that
people understand this because politicians are not involved in
this process of assessing intelligence, I am not an intelligence
expert—intelligence flows in the whole time from all sorts
of different sources and these people who are experts then make
an evaluation. The Joint Intelligence Committee's job is to evaluate
and weigh the raw intelligence that comes in. On some of the intelligence
that comes in they will say, "It is not of any great validity,
we cannot be sure of it, the particular source may not be a very
credible source". They establish a whole set of procedures
whereby they judge, evaluate and weigh that evidence. For example,
one of the things that you will see constantly in intelligence
assessments is that they will describe a source sometimes as "credible
and reliable" or "longstanding". When they are
making these judgments, they are not making them off the top of
their head, they are trying to use their experience and the guidelines
to assess whether that intelligence is correct. All of the intelligence
in that dossier, and indeed in the second briefing paper, was
intelligence cleared by the Joint Intelligence Committee in that
way.
Q196 Dr Gibson: Have you seen anything
from those sources now which would have predicted the events that
are happening in Iraq at the minute in terms of the aftermath
of the struggle there? Did intelligence look into that security
and warn you that this would be a problem?
Mr Blair: Yes. I think it was
obvious that there would be elements of the regime that would
try and regroup. One of the reasons why it is important to get
after Saddam is precisely because until he is captured, first
of all there is a huge fear on the part of many Iraqi people that
he is going to reappear, but he will not, and—
Q197 Dr Gibson: You are not quite
answering my question. Have you seen a document that says all
these issues that we are seeing now were potential or possibilities?
Mr Blair: I am trying to answer
it precisely. Certainly what there has been is intelligence over
the course of the conflict and afterwards that there are elements
of the Ba'athist regime trying to regroup. Is that what you mean?
Q198 Dr Gibson: Yes, and all the
problems there would be in the civil infrastructure, developing
it and so on. It was obviously not a question of walking in, doing
the business and walking out. There must have been some kind of
intelligence and security problems related to the aftermath and
that must surface somewhere in the debate.
Mr Blair: Yes, it does. I think,
to be frank about it, what has happened in the aftermath was a
pretty foreseeable consequence irrespective of intelligence.
Q199 Dr Gibson: Okay. My final question
is in the last week we have seen Hilary Clinton running around
Britain talking about neo-cons in the United States, the Republican
regime and how it is moving and so on. How does that relate to
British foreign policy now and in the future? In two sentences.
Has it made you rethink? Has your attitude to shoulder-to-shoulder
with the United States been changed in any way because of that?
Mr Blair: There will be a great
debate about neo-cons and what they are and their influence on
American policy, but I can assure you that I think we should make
British policy for ourselves. I still take the view, and always
will, that Britain should be a strong ally of America. That is
not America right or wrong, there are areas that we disagree with
America on and we say where we do disagree. I think America is
right about this threat to do with terrorism and WMD. I can only
tell you what I genuinely believe. I think this is the security
threat of the 21st century, that the issue we will have to confront
is not big powers fighting each other. I do not think Russia and
America are going to fight—maybe diplomatically they will
have the odd scrap with the rest of Europe—there is not
going to be a big battle between European powers, that is not
the security threat. The security threat is disorder and chaos
on the back of terrorism of a particularly virulent fundamental
kind that is based on a perversion of the doctrine and religion
of Islam and rogue or repressive states that are engaged in the
trade of weapons of mass destruction. I can only tell you that
is what I believe. The belief is there also on the part of the
United States of America. I do not really worry about whether
it comes from so-called "neo-cons" or comes from so-called
"liberals", I am not from that part of the political
spectrum myself, but I do genuinely believe this is a huge threat
and I think our job, and Britain's job, is to say to America,
"We agree with you about this threat, we will help you deal
with it", but then, as I have said in many speeches, to broaden
the agenda so that America realises that if we want to deal with
this threat properly we have also got to deal with the breeding
ground and some of the causes in which this terrorism and these
repressive states are developing.
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