Iraq: Sultan of spin 'tinkered'

2003-07-03 08:37

London - British Prime Minister Tony Blair's top aide, Alastair Campbell, has admitted tinkering with a security report seen as bolstering the campaign for United States-led action against Iraq.

This was revealed in a confidential letter published on Thursday in a London newspaper.

Significantly, Campbell denied a BBC allegation that, according to an unnamed source, he personally inserted into the report a claim that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

Details of the letter, sent to a parliamentary committee investigating the government's case for war, were leaked to the Guardian.

The letter is expected to form a crucial part of the foreign affairs select committee's final assessment, due next Monday, into whether ministers deliberately misled parliament.

It also is alleged that intelligence reports were exaggerated, against the wishes of security services, about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, claimed the newspaper.

Suggested 11 changes

The letter is said to have been cleared by the chairperson of the joint intelligence committee, which brings together the chiefs of all British intelligence agencies.

It reveals that Campbell, Blair's director of communications, suggested 11 changes be made to a draft of the Iraq dossier.

It was published in its final form by the British government on September 22, six months before it launched war on Iraq alongside the United States.

According to Campbell's letter, six of his proposed changes were acted on, four others were not while the other was already under way.

Among changes made were the removal of the words "vivid and horrifying" in the human-rights section of the dossier after Campbell deemed them to be unnecessary.

He also questioned why the draft report said Saddam's sons "may have" the authority to launch chemical weapons, instead of "have".

But Campbell's request for the removal of the word "may" was turned down by the JIC.

He was also told there was no intelligence to suggest Iraq had secured uranium and that the phrase "sought to secure" would have to remain.

Meanwhile, in a passage dealing with Iraqi dual-use facilities, Campbell successfully argued that the phrase "could be used" be replaced with "are capable of being used".

He also successfully proposed that the section detailing how long it might take for Iraq to develop nuclear weapons be more clearly explained, although the letter does not give details of what changes were made.

Significantly, Campbell refutes allegations that he personally "sexed-up" the 50-page dossier by insisting it state that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

"The chairman of the JIC has also confirmed and authorised me to say that it (the claim) reflected recent intelligence already in the JIC's classified assessment and that I played no part in the decision to include the intelligence in the dossier," Campbell wrote.

Asked to comment on the letter, a spokesman for Blair's office said simply: "We await the (foreign affairs select) committee's report on Monday."

Campbell, 46, is a former tabloid newspaper political editor known in British political circles as the "sultan of spin".

- AFX