U.K. gov takes hit after testimony
Intel officers doubted credibility of Iraq dossier
Prime Minister Tony Blair said last week he would resign if the government had falsified the dossier.
The latest evidence could prove a turning point for the BBC and justify its argument for broadcasting defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan's report on Radio 4's "Today" program. The report said that the government had "sexed up" an Iraq dossier, which claimed that Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.
Brian Jones, a retired branch head of the defense intelligence analysis staff, told the inquiry that his department thought the assessments of the threat posed by Iraq were over-stressed in the dossier.
The department was concerned about "the tendency... to, shall we say, over-egg certain assessments, particularly in relation to the production of chemical weapons," said Jones, who added that the 45-minute claim should have been included in the dossier but not as a conclusive claim.
Another intelligence officer, who went under the codename Mr. A, said the dossier "had been around the houses" to find "words that would strengthen certain political objectives."
The inquiry heard that government weapons expert and source of the BBC story, David Kelly, had been involved in the dossier's preparation and was aware about concerns about the 45-minute claim. In an email Mr. A sent to Kelly, he described the claim as "another example supporting our view that you and I should have been more involved in this than the spin merchants in this administration."
The director of communications Alastair Campbell, who quit last week, maintains that he did not insert the 45-minute claim.
It also emerged that intelligence staff had doubts about the credibility of the source of the information despite assertions from John Scarlett, the chairman of the joint intelligence committee, that it had come from a "senior Iraqi intelligence officer."
