1 Nuclear Claims

Campbell had the dossier’s nuclear section rewritten so that the fabricated claim that Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon in as little as a year appeared to be a judgement of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).

It therefore undercut the JIC’s true assessment that "While sanctions remain effective, Iraq cannot indigenously develop and produce nuclear weapons. If sanctions were removed or became ineffective, it would take at least five years to produce a nuclear weapon. This timescale would shorten if fissile material was acquired from abroad."

2 Claims of "progress"

He had a statement added to the executive summary that, "despite sanctions and the policy of containment, Saddam has continued to make progress with his illicit weapons programmes".

The first of 17 drafting points in a memorandum Campbell sent Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) chairman John Scarlett on 17 September was the observation, "it would be stronger if we said that despite sanctions and the policy of containment, he has made real progress". In reply to Campbell Scarlett wrote, "The summary also bring out the point on sanctions and containment, as you proposed." Indeed the 19 September draft used the very same phrase that Campbell had proposed: "despite sanctions and the policy of containment, Saddam has continued to make progress with his illicit weapons programmes".

It is hard to imagine a more blatant case of Campbell adding to the dossier a claim that – in his own words – strengthened it. But at the Hutton Inquiry, Scarlett simply made up (Section 85) a story that this statement had been requested by the JIC at its meeting on 11 September. Scarlett offered no evidence in support of this claim, which was not supported by any other JIC member and is totally undermined by the fact that the statement did not appear in the next dossier draft of 16 September but did appear three days later – after Campbell requested it.

3 Plans to attack Shia

He had the fabricated judgement that "Iraq has … military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, including against its own Shia population" added to the dossier.

At 12:43 on 19 September 2002, Campbell emailed Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) Chairman John Scarlett about the dossier. Referring to a claim that Saddam Hussein was willing to use his alleged chemical and biological weapons against any uprising by the majority Shia population in Iraq, Campbell asked: "Could the Shia uprising point go in the executive summary?"

This request, which came just two hours before the final deadline for comments on the penultimate draft, with the final draft due the next day, was was no mere presentational suggestion. By asking for the claim to appear in an executive summary that set out a bulleted list of claims headed by the statement, "We judge that Iraq has…", Campbell was asking for the fabrication of a new "judgement", in a document whose "judgements" were claimed to "reflect the views of the JIC". Scarlett obliged. He also acceded to an additional request from Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell to remove references to Saddam using weapons of mass destruction if his regime was under threat. As a direct result, the next draft of the dossier and the published version included the statement:

"We judge that Iraq has … military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, including against its own Shia population."

The Butler Review published much of the formal JIC assessment of 9 September 2002, two weeks before the dossier was published. The JIC had been far from sure that Saddam would again use WMD against his own majority population:

"It is also possible that Saddam would seek to use chemical and biological munitions against any internal uprising; intelligence indicates that he is prepared to deliberately target the Shia population." (p171)

This change is highly significant in that it occurred after JIC members had ceased to be consulted on the dossier. This totally destroys the pretence that the JIC had approved the dossier’s judgements.

Next: The language of the dossier