[iwar] how MI6 sold the Iraq war

The Sunday Times - Britain

December 28, 2003
Revealed: how MI6 sold the Iraq war

Nicholas Rufford

THE Secret Intelligence Service has run an operation to gain public
support for sanctions and the use of military force in Iraq. The
government yesterday confirmed that MI6 had organised Operation Mass
Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction.

The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the
run-up to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the
circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the government
weapons expert.

A senior official admitted that MI6 had been at the heart of a campaign
launched in the late 1990s to spread information about Saddam's
development of nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had
planted misinformation. "There were things about Saddam's regime and
his weapons that the public needed to know," said the official.

The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, who led 14 inspection
missions in Iraq, that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the
propaganda effort. He described meetings where the senior officer and
at least two other MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate
intelligence material.

"The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat
than it actually was," Ritter said last week.

He said there was evidence that MI6 continued to use similar propaganda
tactics up to the invasion of Iraq earlier this year. "Stories ran in
the media about secret underground facilities in Iraq and ongoing
programmes (to produce weapons of mass destruction)," said Ritter.
"They were sourced to western intelligence and all of them were
garbage."

Kelly, himself a former United Nations weapons inspector and colleague
of Ritter, might also have been used by MI6 to pass information to the
media. "Kelly was a known and government-approved conduit with the
media," said Ritter.

Hutton's report is expected to deliver a verdict next month on whether
intelligence was misused in order to promote the case for going to war.

Hutton heard evidence that Kelly was authorised by the Foreign Office to
speak to journalists on Iraq. Kelly was in close touch with the
"Rockingham cell", a group of weapons experts that received MI6
intelligence.

Blair justified his backing for sanctions and for the invasion of Iraq
on the grounds that intelligence reports showed Saddam was working to
acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The use of MI6 as a
"back channel" for promoting the government's policies on Iraq was never
discovered during the Hutton inquiry and is likely to cause considerable
disquiet among MPs.

A key figure in Operation Mass Appeal was Sir Derek Plumbly, then
director of the Middle East department at the Foreign Office and now
Britain's ambassador to Egypt. Plumbly worked closely with MI6 to help
to promote Britain's Middle East policy.

The campaign was judged to be having a successful effect on public
opinion. MI6 passed on intelligence that Iraq was hiding weapons of
mass destruction and rebuilding its arsenal.

Poland, India and South Africa were initially chosen as targets for the
campaign because they were non-aligned UN countries not supporting the
British and US position on sanctions. At the time, in 1997, Poland was
also a member of the UN security council.

Ritter was a willing accomplice to the alleged propaganda effort when
first approached by MI6's station chief in New York. He obtained
approval to co-operate from Richard Butler, then executive chairman of
the UN Special Commission on Iraq Disarmament.

Ritter met MI6 to discuss Operation Mass Appeal at a lunch in London in
June 1998 at which two men and a woman from MI6 were present. The
Sunday Times is prevented by the Official Secrets Act from publishing
their names.

Ritter had previously met the MI6 officer at Vauxhall Cross, the
service's London headquarters. He asked Ritter for information on Iraq
that could be planted in newspapers in India, Poland and South Africa
from where it would "feed back" to Britain and America.

Ritter opposed the Iraq war but this is the first time that he has named
members of British intelligence as being involved in a propaganda
campaign. He said he had decided to "name names" because he was
frustrated at "an official cover-up" and the "misuse of intelligence".

"What MI6 was determined to do by the selective use of intelligence was
to give the impression that Saddam still had WMDs or was making them and
thereby legitimise sanctions and military action against Iraq," he said.

Recent reports suggest America has all but abandoned hopes of finding
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that David Kay, head of the Iraq
Survey Group, has resigned earlier than expected, frustrated that his
resources have been diverted to tracking down insurgents.

-- This communication is confidential to the parties it is intended to serve --
Fred Cohen - http://all.net/ - fc@all.net - fc@unhca.com - tel/fax: 925-454-0171
Fred Cohen & Associates - University of New Haven - Security Posture

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Received on Mon Dec 29 10:33:13 2003