US and British Spy Agencies Against Bush and Blair
According to
Paul Lashmar and Raymond Whitaker:
Britain and America's spies believe
(i) that they are being politicised:
(ii) that the intelligence they provide is being selectively applied - that Iraq is much less of a threat than their political masters claim.
(iii) the politicians plagiarise to make their case, even "tweaking" the plagiarised material to ensure a better fit.
The BBC received a Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) document which showed that
British intelligence believes there are NO current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qa'ida network. The classified document, written last month, said there had been contact between the two in the past, but it assessed that any fledgling relationship foundered due to mistrust and incompatible ideologies.
That conclusion
contradicted one of the main charges laid against Saddam Hussein by the United States and Britain, most notably in Wednesday's speech by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to the UN Security Council – that he has cultivated contacts with the group blamed for the 11 September attacks. "A DIS document like this is highly secret. Whoever leaked it must have been quite senior and had unofficial approval from within the highest levels of British intelligence," said one insider.
It emerged that large chunks of the British Government's latest intelligence dossier on Iraq, which claimed to draw on "intelligence material", were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old. The government dossier, "Iraq – its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation", was largely copied – complete with poor punctuation and grammar – from an article in last September's Middle East Review of International Affairs and two articles in Jane's Intelligence Review. It was this recycled material that Mr Powell held up in front of a worldwide television audience, saying: "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed ... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities."
The CIA produced a report after US Senator Graham threatened to accuse them of obstruction. The conclusions were so significant that he immediately asked for it to be declassified.
The CIA concluded that the likelihood of Saddam Hussein using such weapons was "very low" for the "foreseeable future". The only circumstances in which Iraq would be more likely to use chemical weapons or encourage terrorist attacks would be if it was attacked. Yet the report has largely been ignored by the US media.
US and British Spy Agencies Against Bush and Blair
According to
Paul Lashmar and Raymond Whitaker:
Britain and America's spies believe
(i) that they are being politicised:
(ii) that the intelligence they provide is being selectively applied - that Iraq is much less of a threat than their political masters claim.
(iii) the politicians plagiarise to make their case, even "tweaking" the plagiarised material to ensure a better fit.
The BBC received a Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) document which showed that
British intelligence believes there are NO current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qa'ida network. The classified document, written last month, said there had been contact between the two in the past, but it assessed that any fledgling relationship foundered due to mistrust and incompatible ideologies.
That conclusion
contradicted one of the main charges laid against Saddam Hussein by the United States and Britain, most notably in Wednesday's speech by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to the UN Security Council – that he has cultivated contacts with the group blamed for the 11 September attacks. "A DIS document like this is highly secret. Whoever leaked it must have been quite senior and had unofficial approval from within the highest levels of British intelligence," said one insider.
It emerged that large chunks of the British Government's latest intelligence dossier on Iraq, which claimed to draw on "intelligence material", were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old. The government dossier, "Iraq – its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation", was largely copied – complete with poor punctuation and grammar – from an article in last September's Middle East Review of International Affairs and two articles in Jane's Intelligence Review. It was this recycled material that Mr Powell held up in front of a worldwide television audience, saying: "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed ... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities."
The CIA produced a report after US Senator Graham threatened to accuse them of obstruction. The conclusions were so significant that he immediately asked for it to be declassified.
The CIA concluded that the likelihood of Saddam Hussein using such weapons was "very low" for the "foreseeable future". The only circumstances in which Iraq would be more likely to use chemical weapons or encourage terrorist attacks would be if it was attacked. Yet the report has largely been ignored by the US media.
