When Geoff Hoon was interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme on 5th February
2004, he claimed that not only was the Prime Minister unaware before 18th
March 2004 of the precise nature of the 'WMD' claimed to be deployable
within 45 minutes, but also that he himself was unaware until after the
publication of the dossier in September 2004.

John Humphrys pointed out that, while there was great public interest in the
claims made in the dossier, Hoon had failed to correct the newspaper
headlines suggesting that Iraq had strategic missiles equipped with chemical
or biological warheads that presented an imminent threat to the UK.

Although the Hutton Report stated, paragraph 225:
'In his evidence on 22 September [2003] when cross-examined by Mr Caldecott,
Mr Hoon said:
Q. Are you aware that on 25th September a number of newspapers had banner
headlines suggesting that [weapons deployable within 45 minutes] related to
strategic missiles or bombs?
A. I can recall, yes.'

Mr Hoon appears to have contradicted his evidence to the Hutton Inquiry in
his Today programme interview:
Q: When the Sun on 25th September [2002] said, 'British servicemen and
tourists in Cyprus could be annihilated by germ-warfare missiles' that
wasn^Òt creating [a misleading] impression, was it?
A: I did not see that particular publication until very recently on a
Panorama programme.

Hoon claimed that the nature of the munitions deployable within 45 minutes
was not controversial when the dossier was presented to Parliament in
September 2002.

This still leaves many questions unanswered:

1. Wasn't the reason that the 45 minutes claim was not controversial
at the time, simply that people trusted it to be reliable and
relevant, although this is no longer the case?

2. Were the participation of UK intelligence agencies in Operation
Mass Appeal and the Rockingham Cell within the UK intelligence
agencies (claimed by ex-UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter ^Ö see
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3227506.stm and
 http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2205340) instrumental in the
placing of newspaper headlines about Cyprus being within range of
biological weapons? If so, isn^Òt this a perversion of the very
democracy that the UK Government claims to be promoting?

3. Isn't the fact that, when the September dossier was published,
neither Tony Blair nor Geoff Hoon was aware of the nature of the
munitions claimed to be deployable within 45 minutes, evidence that:
a. the dossier presented to Parliament was far too vague to inform a
proper decision about going to war? b. unless the dossier was only
intended to provide a vague pretext for going to war, Government
Ministers were not personally adequately informed to make a judgement
about the appropriateness of the claims made in the dossier that they
published?

4. Wasn^Òt it likely that delegating the task of writing the dossier
to the JIC, under the influence of Downing Street aides and with the
Prime Minister^Òs requirement to make 'as strong a case as possible'
(Hutton, paragraph 228) in favour of going to war, would unbalance
previous intelligence assessments?

5. Isn't it a reasonable inference that if a dossier mentions (a)
long-range missiles capable of use with chemical and biological
warheads and (b) chemical and biological weapons deployable within 45
minutes, the latter are likely to be delivered by the former? Will we
have to ask in future: What range missiles? What sort of munitions?
Will one deliver the other?

6. Hasn't the trust of Parliament and the Electorate in the
Government been abused?

7. Why was Dr Brian Jones, head of the Nuclear, Chemical and
Biological Weapons section of the Defence Intelligence Analysis Staff,
prevented from seeing certain 'compartmented' intelligence?

('we were told there was other intelligence that we, the experts,
could not see, and that it removed the reservations we were
expressing. It was so sensitive it could not be shown to us. It was
held within a tight virtual "compartment", available only to a few
selected people.

'The two DIS representatives on the dossier-drafting group were told
at the last drafting meeting on 17 September that the compartmented
intelligence would be shown by the SIS (MI6) to only the two most
senior members of the DIS, the Chief of Defence Intelligence (CDI) and
his deputy (DCDI).

'At a subsequent DIS meeting on that day, the DCDI ruled that he was
satisfied by the SIS reassurance and that no further objections on the
contentious issues should be raised with the Cabinet Office Assessment
Staff. It transpired from evidence to the Hutton inquiry that the
clinching intelligence was never seen by the DCDI.')

( http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=487515)

8. Were Operation Mass Appeal or the Rockingham Cell responsible for
the production of the forged Niger documents?

(According to a Washington Post report of 22 March 2003 on the
documents suggesting that Iraq had sought to procure uranium from
Niger:

'U.S. intelligence officials said they had not even seen the actual
evidence, consisting of supposed government documents from Niger,
until last month. The source of their information, and their doubts,
officials said, was a written summary provided more than six months
ago by the Italian intelligence service, which first obtained the
documents.

'One of the documents was a letter, dated July 2000 and apparently
signed by the Niger president, discussing Iraq's agreement to purchase
500 tons of uranium oxide, and certifying that it was authorized under
the Niger constitution of 1965. But U.N. officials quickly noted that
Niger had promulgated a new constitution in 1999, and that the
letter's signature bore little resemblance to the actual signature of
President Tandja Mamadou.

'Another letter, dated in 1999, was signed by the Niger foreign
minister. But the letterhead belonged to the military government that
had been replaced earlier in 1999, and the signatory had left the job
of foreign minister in 1989.

'U.N. official recently told reporters, a Niger diplomat turned the
letters over to Italian intelligence, which provided summaries of the
information to Washington and London. 'The first public charge that
Iraq had tried to purchase uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa came
from Britain, in [the dossier] published last Sept. 24. Two weeks
after the^ÅBritish publication, the Niger story appeared in a
classified version of the National Intelligence Estimate, a summary of
U.S. intelligence agencies' conclusions about Iraq^Òs weapons of
mass destruction, although the report noted that the information had
not been verified and the CIA had not confirmed that the uranium sale
had gone through.

'The State Department's December fact sheet, issued to point out
glaring omissions in a declaration Iraq said accounted for all of its
prohibited weapons, said the declaration "ignores efforts to procure
uranium from Niger.

'Shortly after receiving the documents, the United States turned them
over to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Within weeks,
U.N. inspectors, along with an independent team of international
experts, determined that the documents were fake.

'British officials said they "stand behind" the original
allegation. They note they never mentioned Niger, the subject of the
forged documents, and imply, but do not say, that there was other
information, about another African country. But an informed
U.N. official said the United States and Britain were repeatedly asked
for all information they had to support the charge. Neither
government, the official said, "ever indicated that they had any
information on any other country.")

In peace,

Alan