John Scarlett
Encyclopedia
Sir John McLeod Scarlett, KCMG
, OBE
(born 18 August 1948) was Director General of the British
Secret Intelligence Service
(MI6) from 2004 to 2009. Prior to this appointment, he had chaired the Cabinet Office Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).
and Magdalen College, Oxford
where in 1969 or 1970 he received a first class degree in history
. He was a contemporary of figures including Christopher Hitchens
, Robert Jackson
, William Waldegrave
, Edwina Currie
, Stephen Milligan
, John Redwood
, William Blair
, Bill Clinton
and Gyles Brandreth
. Shortly afterward, he was recruited by MI6 and served in Moscow
, Nairobi
(1973–1976), and Paris
.
In 1994, after a tit-for-tat row between the UK and Russia
n authorities, Scarlett was expelled from Moscow where he had been MI6's "station chief". He retired from MI6 as Director of Security and Public Affairs in 2001.
The normally secretive intelligence services were thrust into the public gaze in the Summer of 2003 after the death of the eminent government weapons expert, Dr David Kelly. Kelly had been found dead in the Oxfordshire countryside near his home, after being exposed as the source of allegations that the government had "sexed-up" intelligence regarding existence of weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq
prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq
. The "classic case" was the claim that Iraq could launch Weapons of Mass Destruction "within 45 minutes of an order to do so" - Dr Kelly had privately dismissed this as "risible".
Scarlett gave evidence at the Hutton Inquiry
into the circumstances surrounding Kelly's death. It became clear that Scarlett had worked closely with Alastair Campbell
, then the Prime Minister
's Director of Communications and Strategy, on the controversial September Dossier
, with Campbell making drafting suggestions which the inquiry found may have "subconsciously influenced" Scarlett and the JIC. This influence may have had deleterious effects on the quality of the assessments presented in the dossier. For instance, the Intelligence and Security Committee
made several criticisms in their report "Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction — Intelligence and Assessments":
Scarlett became the head of SIS on 6 May 2004, before publication of the findings of the Butler Review
. Although the review highlighted many failings in the intelligence behind the Iraq war and the workings of the Joint Intelligence Committee, it specifically stated that Scarlett should not resign as head of the Committee and SIS.
On December 8, 2009, Scarlett gave evidence to The Iraq Inquiry. He denied he was under any pressure to "firm up" the September Dossier, and claimed there was "no conscious intention" to mislead about Iraq's weapons but it would have been "better" to have clarified battlefield munitions not missiles were meant.
On 26 June 2011, The Guardian
reported on a memo from Scarlett to Blair's foreign affairs adviser, released under the Freedom of Information Act, which referred to "the benefit of obscuring the fact that in terms of WMD Iraq is not that exceptional". The memo has been described as one of the most significant documents on the September dossier yet published as it is considered a proposal to mislead the public.
, which publishes The Times
and The Sunday Times
. In May 2011, he was hired as a strategic advisor for Statoil
, the Norwegian
petroleum company.
in the Queen's New Years Honours List 2007
was criticised in the media by some who believe that certain honours have been given unfairly to officials and supporters loyal to the government during the 2003 war in Iraq. Scarlett, while Chairman of the JIC, was the principal author of the assessments on which the September Dossier
was based, a document partly by which the Prime Minister
justified to Parliament
the invasion of Iraq and which was later found to be "flawed" by the Butler Review. However, despite the claims of preferential honours, the award of a KCMG is normal practice for all heads of SIS and senior FCO
and British
diplomat
s.
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....
, OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(born 18 August 1948) was Director General of the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Secret Intelligence Service
Secret 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...
(MI6) from 2004 to 2009. Prior to this appointment, he had chaired the Cabinet Office Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).
Biography
Fluent in French and Russian, Scarlett was educated at the private school Epsom CollegeEpsom College
Epsom College is an independent co-educational public school in Epsom, Surrey, England, for pupils aged 13 to 18. Founded in 1853 to provide support for poor members of the medical profession such as pensioners and orphans , Epsom's long-standing association with medicine was estimated in 1980 as...
and Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...
where in 1969 or 1970 he received a first class degree in history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
. He was a contemporary of figures including Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
, Robert Jackson
Robert V. Jackson
Robert Victor Jackson is a politician in the United Kingdom. He was a Member of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1984 and Member of Parliament for Wantage from 1983 to 2005, having been elected as a Conservative; however, he joined the Labour Party in 2005.-Early life:He was raised in...
, William Waldegrave
William Waldegrave
William Waldegrave may refer to:* William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock , admiral* William Waldegrave, 8th Earl Waldegrave , vice-admiral* William Waldegrave, 9th Earl Waldegrave , politician...
, Edwina Currie
Edwina Currie
Edwina Jonesnée Cohen is a former British Member of Parliament. First elected as a Conservative Party MP in 1983, she was a Junior Health Minister for two years, before resigning in 1988 over the controversy over salmonella in eggs...
, Stephen Milligan
Stephen Milligan
Stephen David Wyatt Milligan was a British Conservative politician and journalist. He held a number of senior journalistic posts until his election to serve as Member of Parliament for Eastleigh in 1992...
, John Redwood
John Redwood
John Alan Redwood is a British Conservative Party politician and Member of Parliament for Wokingham. He was formerly Secretary of State for Wales in Prime Minister John Major's Cabinet and was an unsuccessful challenger for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 1995...
, William Blair
William Blair (judge)
Sir William James Lynton Blair , styled The Hon. Mr Justice Blair, is a British judge. He was previously a Queen's Counsel, specialising in domestic and international banking and finance law...
, Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
and Gyles Brandreth
Gyles Brandreth
Gyles Daubeney Brandreth is a British writer, broadcaster and former Conservative Member of Parliament and junior minister.-Early life:...
. Shortly afterward, he was recruited by MI6 and served in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, Nairobi
Nairobi
Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...
(1973–1976), and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
In 1994, after a tit-for-tat row between the UK and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n authorities, Scarlett was expelled from Moscow where he had been MI6's "station chief". He retired from MI6 as Director of Security and Public Affairs in 2001.
Joint Intelligence Committee
Scarlett took on the role of head of the JIC one week before the September 11 attacks.The normally secretive intelligence services were thrust into the public gaze in the Summer of 2003 after the death of the eminent government weapons expert, Dr David Kelly. Kelly had been found dead in the Oxfordshire countryside near his home, after being exposed as the source of allegations that the government had "sexed-up" intelligence regarding existence of 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...
in Iraq
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....
prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
. The "classic case" was the claim that Iraq could launch Weapons of Mass Destruction "within 45 minutes of an order to do so" - Dr Kelly had privately dismissed this as "risible".
Scarlett gave evidence at the Hutton Inquiry
Hutton Inquiry
The 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...
into the circumstances surrounding Kelly's death. It became clear that Scarlett had worked closely with Alastair Campbell
Alastair Campbell
Alastair John Campbell is a British journalist, broadcaster, political aide and author, best known for his work as Director of Communications and Strategy for Prime Minister Tony Blair between 1997 and 2003, having first started working for Blair in 1994...
, then the Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
's Director of Communications and Strategy, on the controversial September Dossier
September Dossier
Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, also known as the September Dossier, was a document published by the British government on 24 September 2002 on the same day of a recall of Parliament to discuss the contents of the document...
, with Campbell making drafting suggestions which the inquiry found may have "subconsciously influenced" Scarlett and the JIC. This influence may have had deleterious effects on the quality of the assessments presented in the dossier. For instance, the Intelligence and Security Committee
Intelligence and Security Committee
The 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...
made several criticisms in their report "Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction — Intelligence and Assessments":
- "As the 45 minutes claim was new to its readers, the context of the intelligence and any assessment needed to be explained. The fact that it was assessed to refer to battlefield chemical and biological munitions and their movement on the battlefield, not to any other form of chemical or biological attack, should have been highlighted in the dossier. The omission of the context and assessment allowed speculation as to its exact meaning. This was unhelpful to an understanding of this issue."
Scarlett became the head of SIS on 6 May 2004, before publication of the findings of the Butler Review
Butler Review
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 in 2003. A similar investigation was set up in the USA...
. Although the review highlighted many failings in the intelligence behind the Iraq war and the workings of the Joint Intelligence Committee, it specifically stated that Scarlett should not resign as head of the Committee and SIS.
On December 8, 2009, Scarlett gave evidence to The Iraq Inquiry. He denied he was under any pressure to "firm up" the September Dossier, and claimed there was "no conscious intention" to mislead about Iraq's weapons but it would have been "better" to have clarified battlefield munitions not missiles were meant.
On 26 June 2011, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
reported on a memo from Scarlett to Blair's foreign affairs adviser, released under the Freedom of Information Act, which referred to "the benefit of obscuring the fact that in terms of WMD Iraq is not that exceptional". The memo has been described as one of the most significant documents on the September dossier yet published as it is considered a proposal to mislead the public.
Post retirement
On 28 January 2011, Scarlett was appointed to the board of Times Newspapers Ltd, part of News InternationalNews International
News International Ltd is the United Kingdom newspaper publishing division of News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
, which publishes The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
and The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
. In May 2011, he was hired as a strategic advisor for Statoil
Statoil
Statoil ASA is a Norwegian petroleum company established in 1972. It merged with Norsk Hydro in 2007 and was known as StatoilHydro until 2009, when the name was changed back to Statoil ASA. The brand Statoil was retained as a chain of fuel stations owned by StatoilHydro...
, the Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
petroleum company.
Knighthood controversy
Scarlett's appointment as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St GeorgeOrder of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....
in the Queen's New Years Honours List 2007
New Year Honours 2007
The New Year Honours 2007 for the Commonwealth Realms were announced on 30 December 2006, to celebrate the year passed and mark the beginning of 2007....
was criticised in the media by some who believe that certain honours have been given unfairly to officials and supporters loyal to the government during the 2003 war in Iraq. Scarlett, while Chairman of the JIC, was the principal author of the assessments on which the September Dossier
September Dossier
Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, also known as the September Dossier, was a document published by the British government on 24 September 2002 on the same day of a recall of Parliament to discuss the contents of the document...
was based, a document partly by which the Prime Minister
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
justified to Parliament
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...
the invasion of Iraq and which was later found to be "flawed" by the Butler Review. However, despite the claims of preferential honours, the award of a KCMG is normal practice for all heads of SIS and senior FCO
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...
and British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
diplomat
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
s.
External links
- John Scarlett collected news and commentary at The Daily Mail
- John Scarlett collected news and commentary at the London Evening Standard
- The Observer Profile: John Scarlett, David Rose, The ObserverThe ObserverThe Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, 9 May 2004 - Profile: John Scarlett: ‘C’ is for suspected crony in spying HQ, The Sunday TimesThe Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
, 9 May 2004 - MI6 - A Century in the Shadows (Part Three), 31 December 2010, 24:00, "In the final part of this series, Sir John Scarlett, the former head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service talks about the interrogation of terrorist suspects and MI6's role in the run up to the war in Iraq."