Butler Review
Encyclopedia
On February 3, 2004, the British Government announced an inquiry into the intelligence relating to Iraq
's weapons of mass destruction
which played a key part in the Government's decision to invade Iraq (as part of the U.S.-led coalition) in 2003. A similar investigation
was set up in the USA. Despite the apparent certainty of both governments prior to the war that Iraq possessed such weapons, no such illegal weapons or programs were found by the Iraq Survey Group
.
The inquiry also dealt with the wider issue of WMD programmes in "countries of concern" and the global trade in WMD. Recommendations were made to the prime minister to better evaluate and assess intelligence information in the future before invoking action.
headed the five-member committee which included senior parliamentarians and civil servants with military and intelligence links:
The Butler Review followed procedures similar to the Franks Committee inquiry into the Falklands War
. The inquiry had access to all intelligence reports and other government papers, and it could call witnesses to give oral evidence. It worked closely with the US inquiry
and the Iraq Survey Group. The committee met in secret and only its conclusions were published on 14 July 2004.
George W. Bush
who had created a similar Iraq Intelligence Commission
one day earlier. The Butler Inquiry's remit did not extend to an examination of the political decision making process.
was to have been the sixth member of the panel). Explaining their position Foreign Affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell asked the prime minister:
On 1 March 2004 the Conservative Party
announced that they would not be taking part in the inquiry either. Conservative leader Michael Howard
said that this was because Lord Butler of Brockwell's interpretation of the terms of reference were "unacceptably restrictive". Conservative member Michael Mates stated that he would remain on the committee.
did not check its sources well enough and sometimes relied on third hand reports. It criticises the use of the 45 minute claim in the 2002 dossier as "unsubstantiated", and says that there was an over-reliance on Iraqi dissident sources. It also comments that warnings from the Joint Intelligence Committee on the limitations of the intelligence were not made clear. Overall it said that "more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear", and that judgements had stretched available intelligence "to the outer limits".
It says that information from another country's intelligence service on Iraqi production of chemical and biological weapons was "seriously flawed", without naming the country. It says that there was no recent intelligence to demonstrate that Iraq was a greater threat than other countries, and that the lack of any success in the UNMOVIC finding WMDs should have prompted a re-think. It states that Tony Blair's policy towards Iraq shifted because of the attacks of September 11, 2001, not because of Iraq's weapons programme, and that the government's language left the impression that there was "fuller and firmer intelligence" than was the case.
The report indicated that there was enough intelligence to make a “well-founded” judgment that Saddam Hussein
was seeking, perhaps as late as 2002, to obtain uranium illegally from Niger
and the Democratic Republic of Congo (6.4 para. 499). In particular, referring to a 1999 visit of Iraqi officials to Niger, the report states (6.4 para. 503): “The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.”
Stauber and Rampton, however, noted that "the Butler Report offers no details -- not even an approximate date when this may have happened, thus giving no way to assess its credibility. The British have also declined to share any information about this intelligence, even with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was responsible for prewar monitoring of Iraq's nuclear capability. In any case, the Congo's uranium mine was flooded and sealed several decades ago, which means that Iraq would not have been able to obtain uranium there even if it tried."
This intelligence (which had controversially found its way into George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech) had previously (before September 2003 [C. May, 2004]) been thought to rely on forged documents. The Butler Review stated that “the forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made.” (6.4 para. 503) Taking into account the American intelligence community’s findings on the matter, it is true that in December 2003, then CIA director George Tenet
conceded that the inclusion of the claim in the State of the Union address was a mistake. (CNN.com, 2003) However, Tenet believed so, not due to any compelling evidence to the contrary, but rather because the CIA (criticized concerning this matter by the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq
[Schmidt, 2004]) had failed to investigate the claim thoroughly; however again, the Butler Review states (6.4 para. 497) in 2002 the CIA “agreed that there was evidence that [uranium from Africa] had been sought.” In the run-up to war in Iraq, the British Intelligence Services apparently believed that Iraq had been trying to obtain uranium from Africa; however, no evidence has been passed on to the IAEA apart from the forged documents (6.4 Para. 502). (Times Online, 2003)
The report did not blame any specific individuals. It specifically stated that John Scarlett
, the head of the JIC should not resign, and indeed should take up his new post as head of MI6.
Party politician and close acquaintance Ann Taylor
, writing "Taylor is hardly a disinterested observer: she was herself involved in the famous 'September dossier' that explained Blair's reasons for going to war."
Lynne Jones
(MP) was also critical of Taylor's involvement in subsequent inquiries, stating: "It is self-evidently bad practice to appoint someone to a committee when their previous conclusions are under scrutiny". A piece in the Western Mail was more direct, noting of a joke that followed the publication of the report: "When you call the Butler, you get what you ordered".
, has pointed out that the information relied upon by the Butler Review on the Niger issue was incomplete; as he noted, "The Butler report says the claim was credible because an Iraqi diplomat visited Niger in 1999, and almost three-quarters of Niger's exports were uranium. But this is irrelevant, since France controls Niger's uranium mines". Dombey also noted that Iraq already had some 550 tonnes of uranium compound sitting in its gutted Tuwaitha nuclear research center:
When asked by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss the conclusions of British intelligence, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John McLaughlin stated, "The one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. We've looked at those reports and we don't think they are very credible. It doesn't diminish our conviction that he's going for nuclear weapons, but I think they reached a little bit on that one point."
London's Evening Standard daily newspaper dismissed the report's findings, under the front-page headline "Whitewash (Part Two)", saying Lord Butler had effectively thrown Tony Blair "a lifebelt" by claiming that Saddam was indeed trying to procure uranium from Niger in 1999 to build a nuclear bomb, and concluding that illicit "material may be hidden in the sand".
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
's weapons of mass destruction
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...
which played a key part in the Government's decision to invade Iraq (as part of the U.S.-led coalition) in 2003. A similar investigation
Iraq Intelligence Commission
The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction is a panel created by Executive Order 13328 signed by U.S. President George W. Bush in February 2004...
was set up in the USA. Despite the apparent certainty of both governments prior to the war that Iraq possessed such weapons, no such illegal weapons or programs were found by the Iraq Survey Group
Iraq Survey Group
The Iraq Survey Group was a fact-finding mission sent by the multinational force in Iraq after the 2003 invasion of Iraq to find the alleged weapons of mass destruction alleged to be possessed by Iraq that had been the main ostensible reason for the invasion. Its final report is commonly called...
.
The inquiry also dealt with the wider issue of WMD programmes in "countries of concern" and the global trade in WMD. Recommendations were made to the prime minister to better evaluate and assess intelligence information in the future before invoking action.
The committee
Lord Butler of BrockwellRobin Butler, Baron Butler of Brockwell
Frederick Edward Robin Butler, Baron Butler of Brockwell, is a retired British civil servant, now sitting in the House of Lords as a Life Peer.-Life:Butler was born in Lytham St Annes on on 3 January, 1938...
headed the five-member committee which included senior parliamentarians and civil servants with military and intelligence links:
- The Lord Butler of Brockwell, career civil servant who served three prime ministers as Cabinet SecretaryCabinet SecretaryA Cabinet Secretary is almost always a senior official who provides services and advice to a Cabinet of Ministers. In many countries, the position can have considerably wider functions and powers, including general responsibility for the entire civil service...
. - Field Marshal The Lord IngePeter Inge, Baron IngeField Marshal Peter Anthony Inge, Baron Inge was the Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the British Army, between 1992 and 1994. He then served as Chief of the Defence Staff before retiring in 1997.-Army career:...
, a crossbencher who was Chief of the Defence StaffChief of the Defence Staff (United Kingdom)The Chief of the Defence Staff is the professional head of the British Armed Forces, a senior official within the Ministry of Defence, and the most senior uniformed military adviser to the Secretary of State for Defence and the Prime Minister...
from 1994 to 1997. - Sir John Chilcot, a career diplomat and top civil servant.
- Ann TaylorAnn Taylor, Baroness Taylor of BoltonWinifred Ann Taylor, Baroness Taylor of Bolton, PC is a British Labour Party politician, who was Minister for International Defence and Security, based at both the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, from October 2008 until 11 May 2010.-Member of Parliament:Taylor was the...
, Labour MP who supported the invasion of Iraq, chair of the Commons Intelligence and Security CommitteeIntelligence and Security CommitteeThe Intelligence and Security Committee is a committee of parliamentarians appointed by the Prime Minister to oversee the work of the Intelligence machinery of the United Kingdom...
(ISC), and former chief whipWhip (politics)A whip is an official in a political party whose primary purpose is to ensure party discipline in a legislature. Whips are a party's "enforcers", who typically offer inducements and threaten punishments for party members to ensure that they vote according to the official party policy...
of the Labour Party. - Michael MatesMichael MatesMichael John Mates is a Conservative Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for the constituency of East Hampshire from 1974 to 2010.He has been a member of the Privy Council since February 2004.-Education:...
Conservative MP who supported the invasion of Iraq, chair of the Northern Ireland select committee. He is also a member of the ISC.
The Butler Review followed procedures similar to the Franks Committee inquiry into the Falklands War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...
. The inquiry had access to all intelligence reports and other government papers, and it could call witnesses to give oral evidence. It worked closely with the US inquiry
Iraq Intelligence Commission
The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction is a panel created by Executive Order 13328 signed by U.S. President George W. Bush in February 2004...
and the Iraq Survey Group. The committee met in secret and only its conclusions were published on 14 July 2004.
Background
The British government followed US PresidentPresident of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
who had created a similar Iraq Intelligence Commission
Iraq Intelligence Commission
The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction is a panel created by Executive Order 13328 signed by U.S. President George W. Bush in February 2004...
one day earlier. The Butler Inquiry's remit did not extend to an examination of the political decision making process.
Controversy
The Liberal Democrats opted not to take part, because the role of politicians had been excluded from the Inquiry's remit. (Senior Lib Dem MP Alan BeithAlan Beith
Sir Alan James Beith is a British Liberal Democrat politician and Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed.-Early life:Alan Beith was born in 1943 in Poynton, in Cheshire...
was to have been the sixth member of the panel). Explaining their position Foreign Affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell asked the prime minister:
Don't you understand ... that following the public response to the Hutton reportHutton InquiryThe Hutton Inquiry was a 2003 judicial inquiry in the UK chaired by Lord Hutton, who was appointed by the Labour government to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly, a biological warfare expert and former UN weapons inspector in Iraq.On 18 July 2003, Kelly, an employee...
that an inquiry that excludes politicians from scrutiny is unlikely to command public confidence...
On 1 March 2004 the Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
announced that they would not be taking part in the inquiry either. Conservative leader Michael Howard
Michael Howard
Michael Howard, Baron Howard of Lympne, CH, QC, PC is a British politician, who served as the Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from November 2003 to December 2005...
said that this was because Lord Butler of Brockwell's interpretation of the terms of reference were "unacceptably restrictive". Conservative member Michael Mates stated that he would remain on the committee.
Conclusions of the Review
The review was published on 14 July 2004. Its main conclusion was that key intelligence used to justify the war with Iraq has been shown to be unreliable. It claims that the Secret Intelligence ServiceSecret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
did not check its sources well enough and sometimes relied on third hand reports. It criticises the use of the 45 minute claim in the 2002 dossier as "unsubstantiated", and says that there was an over-reliance on Iraqi dissident sources. It also comments that warnings from the Joint Intelligence Committee on the limitations of the intelligence were not made clear. Overall it said that "more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear", and that judgements had stretched available intelligence "to the outer limits".
It says that information from another country's intelligence service on Iraqi production of chemical and biological weapons was "seriously flawed", without naming the country. It says that there was no recent intelligence to demonstrate that Iraq was a greater threat than other countries, and that the lack of any success in the UNMOVIC finding WMDs should have prompted a re-think. It states that Tony Blair's policy towards Iraq shifted because of the attacks of September 11, 2001, not because of Iraq's weapons programme, and that the government's language left the impression that there was "fuller and firmer intelligence" than was the case.
The report indicated that there was enough intelligence to make a “well-founded” judgment that Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
was seeking, perhaps as late as 2002, to obtain uranium illegally from Niger
Niger
Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
and the Democratic Republic of Congo (6.4 para. 499). In particular, referring to a 1999 visit of Iraqi officials to Niger, the report states (6.4 para. 503): “The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.”
Stauber and Rampton, however, noted that "the Butler Report offers no details -- not even an approximate date when this may have happened, thus giving no way to assess its credibility. The British have also declined to share any information about this intelligence, even with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was responsible for prewar monitoring of Iraq's nuclear capability. In any case, the Congo's uranium mine was flooded and sealed several decades ago, which means that Iraq would not have been able to obtain uranium there even if it tried."
This intelligence (which had controversially found its way into George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech) had previously (before September 2003 [C. May, 2004]) been thought to rely on forged documents. The Butler Review stated that “the forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made.” (6.4 para. 503) Taking into account the American intelligence community’s findings on the matter, it is true that in December 2003, then CIA director George Tenet
George Tenet
George John Tenet was the Director of Central Intelligence for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, and is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University....
conceded that the inclusion of the claim in the State of the Union address was a mistake. (CNN.com, 2003) However, Tenet believed so, not due to any compelling evidence to the contrary, but rather because the CIA (criticized concerning this matter by the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq
Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq
The Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence was the report by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concerning the U.S. intelligence community's assessments of Iraq during the time leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion...
[Schmidt, 2004]) had failed to investigate the claim thoroughly; however again, the Butler Review states (6.4 para. 497) in 2002 the CIA “agreed that there was evidence that [uranium from Africa] had been sought.” In the run-up to war in Iraq, the British Intelligence Services apparently believed that Iraq had been trying to obtain uranium from Africa; however, no evidence has been passed on to the IAEA apart from the forged documents (6.4 Para. 502). (Times Online, 2003)
The report did not blame any specific individuals. It specifically stated that John Scarlett
John Scarlett
Sir John McLeod Scarlett, KCMG, OBE was Director General of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 2004 to 2009...
, the head of the JIC should not resign, and indeed should take up his new post as head of MI6.
Appointees
Private Eye magazine expressed misgivings against members of a committee personally appointed by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The magazine was particularly critical over the choice selection of New LabourLabour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
Party politician and close acquaintance Ann Taylor
Ann Taylor, Baroness Taylor of Bolton
Winifred Ann Taylor, Baroness Taylor of Bolton, PC is a British Labour Party politician, who was Minister for International Defence and Security, based at both the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, from October 2008 until 11 May 2010.-Member of Parliament:Taylor was the...
, writing "Taylor is hardly a disinterested observer: she was herself involved in the famous 'September dossier' that explained Blair's reasons for going to war."
On 18 September 2002 an official in Blair's office sent this memo to chief of staff Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell: "The PM has asked Ann Taylor to read through the dossier in draft and give us any comments. He stressed that it is for her and for her only and that no one else outside this building was seeing it in draft. I'm contacting John Scarlett to work out how this should happen — needs to be tomorrow."
Taylor went to Scarlett's office at 8 o'clock the next morning, read the dossier and gave her comments to the spy chief — who then passed them on to Blair. She advised that it "needs to come across as an impartial, professional assessment of the threat", and that the PM should "undercut critics" by explaining why Saddam should be stopped now.
So the only person outside No 10 and the JIC who was trusted to help with the dossier (and who also expressed a wish to see Blair's critics undercut) is now sitting on the inquiry into its contents. One wonders why Blair didn't go the whole hog and add Alastair Campbell to Lord Butler's team of independent inquisitors.
Lynne Jones
Lynne Jones
Lynne Mary Jones is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Selly Oak from 1992 until the dissolution of parliament in April 2010.-Early life:...
(MP) was also critical of Taylor's involvement in subsequent inquiries, stating: "It is self-evidently bad practice to appoint someone to a committee when their previous conclusions are under scrutiny". A piece in the Western Mail was more direct, noting of a joke that followed the publication of the report: "When you call the Butler, you get what you ordered".
Uranium conclusion
Nuclear expert Norman Dombey, a professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of SussexUniversity of Sussex
The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....
, has pointed out that the information relied upon by the Butler Review on the Niger issue was incomplete; as he noted, "The Butler report says the claim was credible because an Iraqi diplomat visited Niger in 1999, and almost three-quarters of Niger's exports were uranium. But this is irrelevant, since France controls Niger's uranium mines". Dombey also noted that Iraq already had some 550 tonnes of uranium compound sitting in its gutted Tuwaitha nuclear research center:
Iraq already had far more uranium than it needed for any conceivable nuclear weapons programme. ... Nuclear weapons are difficult and expensive to build not because uranium is scarce, but because it is difficult and expensive to enrich U235 from 0.7 per cent to the 90 per cent needed for a bomb. Enrichment plants are large, use a lot of electricity and are almost impossible to conceal. Neither British security services nor the CIA seriously thought Iraq had a functioning enrichment plant that would have justified all the noise about nuclear weapons we heard before the war. When I read of the supposed Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger, I thought it smelt distinctly fishy. ... It was a gigantic red herring.
When asked by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss the conclusions of British intelligence, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John McLaughlin stated, "The one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. We've looked at those reports and we don't think they are very credible. It doesn't diminish our conviction that he's going for nuclear weapons, but I think they reached a little bit on that one point."
London's Evening Standard daily newspaper dismissed the report's findings, under the front-page headline "Whitewash (Part Two)", saying Lord Butler had effectively thrown Tony Blair "a lifebelt" by claiming that Saddam was indeed trying to procure uranium from Niger in 1999 to build a nuclear bomb, and concluding that illicit "material may be hidden in the sand".
External links
- Butler Report on WMD was watered down to protect Blair by Melissa Kite of The Daily Telegraph.
- Media scepticism at UK Iraq probe by Sebastian Usher, BBC.
- Continuing coverage from the Guardian Unlimited Special Report: The Butler Report
- BBC overview of the Butler Report
- the full text of the Butler report (from BBC), Butler report (from The Guardian) (PDFPortable Document FormatPortable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
) - Focus: The Niger connection: how a spy story tarnished British and US reputations (July 13, 2003). Times Online.
- May, Clifford D. (July 12, 2004). Our Man in Niger. National Review Online.
- Schmidt, Susan (July 9, 2004). Plame's Input is Cited on Niger Mission washingtonpost.com, p. A09 [registration required]
- Tenet admits error in approving Bush speech (December 25, 2003). CNN.com.