Straw grilled over ‘sexed up’ dossier
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw faced a grilling from MPs today over whether evidence relating to Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction had been ‘sexed up’.
Mr Straw was facing the House of Commons foreign affairs committee for the second time in order to defend the Government’s use of intelligence information in the lead-up to the war on Iraq.
The chairman of the committee Donald Anderson accused the Government of withholding key information from the investigation and demanded that the cross party committee be allowed to question the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).
Mr Straw replied that he would privately read out parts of JIC’s own assessment to the committee so it could be compared to the final dossier, but stressed that sensitive security issues would be kept private.
He stated that the Commons intelligence and security committee, which meets only in private, was the right place for the JIC chairman to be questioned and accused Mr Anderson of trying to start a ‘turf war’ between Commons investigations.
The investigation began after the BBC reported that a senior security source claimed the government had ‘sexed up’ last September’s dossier on Iraq’s banned weapons.
The BBC has stated that it stands by its initial report and has refused to bend to spin doctor Alastair Campbell’s calls for an apology over the allegations. Mr Campbell is also demanding that the corporation answer questions relating to its sources.
Earlier today, former foreign secretary Robin Cook warned that the stand-off between the BBC and the Government over whether the September 2002 document had been ‘sexed up’ was obscuring the real issue: namely his assertion that its contents were ‘simply wrong’.
But addressing the committee today, Mr Straw again denied that the Government had exaggerated Saddam Hussein’s weapons capabilities.
Answering questions about the claim that Iraq could launch WMD within 45 minutes, Mr Straw confirmed that it had been added to the draft dossier only a matter of weeks before its publication on September 24th 2002.
However, he maintained that this was not because anyone in Government had asked the JIC to ‘sex up’ the dossier, but because the information had only just come to light and been analysed.
Mr Straw also insisted that the war had still been justified based on the information published, despite the Government’s failure to find evidence of the alleged weapons of mass destruction.
