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WILL NEW MI6 CHIEF RESIGN?
by
Gordon Thomas
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look and see what grabs your attention.
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Gordon
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WILL NEW MI6 CHIEF RESIGN?
by
Gordon Thomas
Sir John Scarlett, due to take over as MI6 chief at the end of the
month, is poised to resign.
His final decision will depend on how severe the fallout will be from
his central role in the Butler Report into the politicising of
intelligence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
The growing prospect that Scarlett could quit - possibly next week
before he "even gets his feet under the desk" at MI6's Thames-side
headquarters - has further plunged the service into an unprecedented
crisis.
Already its once close relationship with the CIA has been seriously
jeopardised, and also that with Germany's BND, French and Spanish
intelligence, in the continuing revelations about MI6's
misinformation in the run-up to the Iraqi war.
Before he resigned last month, CIA director George Tenet listed
seventeen MI6 briefings which turned out to be "seriously inaccurate
intelligence". These included:
The Niger Yellocake. MI6 claimed the yellowcake - iron ore - had been
shipped from the impoverished West African country to Iraq to extract
uranium. MI6 produced documents. They all turned out to be fake.
MI6 claimed that Saddam had portable chemical labs. These formed a
key part of US Secretary of State Colin Powell's controversial
address to the United Nations about why it must support war against
Saddam. There were no such labs.
MI6 claimed it had "established" that Saddam had weapons of mass
destruction capable of being launched in 45 minutes.
All these claims came to the CIA through Scarlett. At the time he was
operating out of the Downing Street Cabinet Office as Chairman of the
Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)
"We assumed that his information was approved by Tony Blair. So we
sent it to the White House and the Pentagon. Crucial decisions were
made on those MI6 reports", said a source close to George Tenet.
The last thing Tenet did before resigning was close off to MI6 the
free-flow of Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI). It is the
highest form of US security information.
Scarlett has made repeated efforts to unblock the situation without
success.
With the CIA now facing ferocious criticism in a damning
Congressional report, there is cold fury in the agency that part of
its very public humiliation lies at the door of MI6 - and Scarlett.
A senior US Department of Defence officer confirmed: "Speculation was
served up as fact. We were constantly promised by MI6 that its
information was impeccably sourced. We were told its intelligence was
established beyond doubt. Only later, after the war was over, did we
realise that it was often little better than the material 'Our Man In
Havana' dreamed up".
The Graham Greene character in this novel produced a number of
fictitious reports, including a drawing of a vacuum cleaner, for his
London paymasters.
Israel's Mossad has been told by its director-general, Meir Dagan,
that "it is arms length with Six until we see what happens to
Scarlett".
Mossad's ten-man station in Britain has dramatically reduced its
contacts with MI6 after its claim that Saddam had shipped weapons of
mass destruction into Syria. "Look, we are always ready to think the
worst of Syria. But this time we found nothing", said a Mossad
analyst.
He revealed that Mossad's own analysis of the MI6 intelligence before
the Iraq war showed "there had been some sloppy input".
More recently, an MI6 warning that the May enlargement of the
European Union would result in an influx of terrorists into Britain
proved to be groundless.
"We were put on high alert that prime targets would be Jewish
business leaders. But our own checks failed to uncover any such
plans", said a Mossad officer.
French, German and Spanish intelligence chiefs have all indicated
they will in future look more carefully at MI6 sourced material.
A French intelligence officer in Paris said: "Scarlett's eagerness to
satisfy Downing Street allowed raw intelligence from Iraq to be
politicised to an unacceptable level".
What is likely to further ignite controversy over Scarlett's future
is the alarming discovery by Spanish and German intelligence - who
both had agents on the ground in Iraq in the run-up to the war -
about MI6's prime source in the Saddam regime.
"He was an Iraqi general who was trying to save his own neck by
feeding MI6 with suspect information that Saddam had a sizeable
arsenal of chemical and biological weapons", said a Madrid
intelligence officer who had served in Iraq.
But the raft of accusations could settle Scarlett's future next week.
The information from Iraq played a key part in the shaping of the now
infamous Downing Street dossier which claimed Saddam could deploy
weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.
The fate of Scarlett - whether he will resign or be sacked - has
renewed tensions with Sir Richard Dearlove, who is due to retire as
MI6 director at the end of the month.
While he will be seriously censured by the Butler Report, Dearlove
has told Downing Street there was "no possibility" he would remain in
office if a replacement for Scarlett is needed.
The two spymasters are no more than civil to each other in their
Thames headquarters. Dearlove has made no secret of the fact he is
retiring with a serious blemish on MI6 and blames Scarlett for its
cause.
Scarlett was cleared by Lord Hutton of "sexing up" the Downing Street
dossier. But within the ranks of MI6 he is still seen, in the
disparaging words of one intelligence officer, as "Blair's man".
Certainly, no other intelligence director has had such a close
relationship with a prime minister. Until recently the two men
regularly dined together in Downing Street.
But here, too, there is a marked cooling. Scarlett is no longer a
daily visitor to Downing Street.
"There is a mood that Tony is waiting to see what Butler says", said
an intelligence officer. "If Scarlett resigns then Blair can lay the
blame for intelligence failures on him. With Dearlove retiring, Blair
can point to a clean sweep. It is what Bush has been doing after
Tenet and his top aides went. It's the kind of political expediency
both men well understand".
There is a growing belief in MI6 that Scarlett was "parachuted on to
them". Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, has made no secret
of her views to her department heads that Scarlett was too quick "to
rush to judgement" over the raw intelligence MI6 was receiving.
A key to Scarlett's future will rest in the outcome of
behind-the-scenes lobbying by Ann Taylor, chairman of the
parliamentary and security committee.
She has told Butler that she strongly objects to "naming and shaming"
Scarlett.
Only when his report is published next week will it show whether or
not she has succeeded.
ends
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