Campbell to face MPs over ‘dodgy dossier’
Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief aide Alastair Campbell is to face tough questions from the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee today on his involvement in the so-called ‘dodgy dossier,’ which reported on Iraq’s potential for an assault using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Prior to the outbreak of the US-led war against Iraq, the Government produced documents which assessed Saddam Hussein’s capacity for WMDs.
One was later found to have been plagiarised from a 12-year-old PhD thesis on Iraq by an American student.
Yesterday, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw admitted the dossier had been an ’embarrassment’ for the Government.
He told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee: ‘It is not remotely in the government’s interests to produce a document with this provenance. To put it the vernacular it was a complete horlicks in the way it came to be produced.’
Mr. Campbell, who will make a rare appearance before the committee, will have to answer to MPs on whether the Government deliberately ‘sexed up’ a previous document to bolster support for the unpopular military invasion of Iraq.
Importantly, Mr. Straw said yesterday that the document’s claim that Iraq could launch WMDs within 45-minutes had some credence, as it was approved by the joint intelligence committee (JIC) and did not derive from Downing Street’s spin machine.
In light of Mr. Straw’s remarks regarding Mr. Blair’s director of communications, Shadow Foreign Secretary Michael Ancram said Mr. Campbell had been ‘left out to dry.’
“If the Government’s credibility is to be re-established it’s vital Alastair Campbell answers the relevant questions openly and completely and does not seek to hide the truth in a miasma of clever words,’ he said.
