Inquiry into spies' failure may halt political 'interference'

When Tony Blair first asked the intelligence services to compile the Iraq arms dossier, some senior members urged caution. If things went wrong, they warned, Downing Street would have little hesitation in hanging them out to dry.

John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, was, however, enjoying his proximity to Downing Street, and keen to help his "mate'' Alastair Campbell. The rest, for the spies, is uncomfortable history.

The inquiry looking at the failure of intelligence over Iraq will add immensely to that discomfort, but there is also a feeling that it may be used to salvage something of the tattered credibility of the espionage agencies. A truly independent investigation, say some senior figures, could do what Lord Hutton so abjectly fail to do: address the problem of politicisation of the intelligence services and scotch any attempt by a future government to go down the dossier path.

But Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a former chairman of JIC, sees pitfalls. "It could become a mere device for making scapegoats out of our intelligence people and diverting the primary responsibility from the politicians. The Prime Minister, of course, has an interest in that happening and so does the Leader of the Opposition.

"Lord Hutton dealt with a very narrow question and interpreted his terms of reference very narrowly.

"There was a theory this time last year in Washington and London that you could safely launch a pre-emptive war on the basis of 'what we know from intelligence'. Well that was always a dubious proposition and it has now been, it seems to me, comprehensively exploded."

Sir Rodric acknowledged that the services "obviously have something to answer for: they produced intelligence which turned out to be wrong. But if you look what was said in both Washington and in London, they went far beyond, it seems to me, what was justified even by the interpretation of the intelligence that was put to them. They can't simply shuffle off the responsibility on the intelligence agencies."

He said that there was no reason why the inquiry could not be concluded within nine months and be conducted by an all-party panel. "I think it would be a good thing if the panel was chaired by an outsider," he said. "I think it would be no bad thing to help to demonstrate to the public that this is not a political stitch-up if somebody like that were to act as chairman." In the United States, where the Bush administration has also called an inquiry, sceptics are convinced that it is a political stitch-up. "It's bullshit," said Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst with 27 years of experience. "The commission will be just like the [11 September] commission and it will not report back until after the election. It will not look into the politicisation of intelligence."

Mr Bush is expected to announce within days the make-up of the panel to investigate why intelligence on which he said his administration based its claims about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction did not match what has been found on the ground in Iraq. Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security Adviser in Mr Bush's father's administration, has been tipped to head the inquiry.

Mr McGovern said that there was outrage among intelligence professionals that they were being used as scapegoats. He said that intelligence provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies was used selectively by the administration to support a political decision that it had already made to go to war with Saddam.

"Especially earlier on, the intelligence they were getting was accurate: [CIA director] George Tenet stood up to them. But after he was told that Bush was going to war he caved in," Mr McGovern said. "There is a sense of outrage among analysts, at least the good ones. The good ones are leaving. There are a lot of mid-level managers who are leaving."

In the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq there have been numerous examples of how initial drafts of US intelligence reports about Saddam's alleged weapons capability had caveats and "dissents" removed by the time the final report was drawn up. On the weekend it was revealed that a report into the ability of Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicles to carry biological weapons -- used by Colin Powell, Secretary of State, before the UN -- included a dissenting opinion from the US Air Force that had been watered down. The vehicles have since been proved to be harmless.

Judith Yaphe, a former CIA officer who teaches at the National Defence University, supported an inquiry but said that it must be wide-ranging and include an examination of the Office of Special Plans, a special intelligence unit established within the Pentagon to build the case that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

"It should investigate everyone who gave intelligence to the White House, not just the CIA," Ms Yaphe said. She added: "Of course the intelligence community is being blamed. It's always the easy fall- guy because it never fights back. It's a matter of custom that it does not answer back."

Political interference is also a concern in Britain. Air Marshal Sir John Walker, a former Chief of Defence Intelligence and deputy chairman of the JIC, said: "An inquiry just into intelligence will not do much good; it has to be much broader. It was not just the intelligence supplied which took us into the war. Others took that decision.

"What we have seen is an example of a government that has tried to use the JIC as a public relations exercise. It doesn't look as if it had been a great success."