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White House ‘buried British intelligence on Iraq WMDs’ - Times Online

Mr Tenet called him to his office in September 2003 and showed him the White House instructions to forge the letter. “Even five years later, Richer remembers looking down at the creamy White House stationary on which the assignment was written”

Tony Blair was told by MI6 before the invasion of Iraq that a high-placed and potentially credible Iraqi source was saying that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction - intelligence that was passed to the US but buried by the White House, according to an explosive new book.

The book claims that Mr Blair sent a top British spy to the Middle East at the beginning of 2003 - three months before the invasion - to dig up enough intelligence to avoid war, but that President Bush and Vice-President Cheney dismissed any claims or possible evidence that would derail the invasion.

In ‘The Way of the World’, Pulitzer-prize winning author Ron Suskind also claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein. The letter was designed to portray a false link between the Baathist regime and al-Qaeda, nine months after the invasion and at a time when no weapons of mass destruction had materialised.

The forgery, adamantly denied by the White House today, was passed to a British journalist in Baghdad and written about as if it were genuine by The Sunday Telegraph on December 14, 2003, under the headline: “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam’.” The article received significant attention in the US and provided the White House with a new rationale for the invasion, Suskind claims.

Suskind says at the beginning of 2003, MI6 sent one of its top agents, Michael Shipster, to the region. Shipster held a series of secret meetings in Jordan with Tahir Jalil Habbush, the head of Iraqi intelligence. The meetings were confirmed to Suskind by Nigel Inkster, the former assistant director of MI6.

Mr Inkster also confirmed that Shipster was told by Habbush that there were no illicit weapons in Iraq. Mr Inkster added that Saddam was focused on his own image and was worried about how he was viewed by Iran, and that Saddam didn’t think a US invasion “was a serious proposition”. Mr Inkster refused to comment this evening.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of British intelligence, was also interviewed by Suskind. The author says Sir Richard confirmed Shipster’s meetings and report. Suskind says he asked why Mr Blair did not act on the spy’s intelligence.

Sir Richard is quoted as saying that Shipster’s mission was an eleventh-hour “attempt to try, as it were, I’d say, to diffuse [sic] the whole situation”.

Sir Richard adds: “The problem was the Cheney crowd was in too much of a hurry, really. Bush never resisted them quite strongly enough. Yes, it was probably too late, I imagine, for Cheney. I’m not sure it was too late for Bush.” He then repeats: “I don’t think it was too late for Bush.”

Suskind writes that Sir Richard flew to Washington in February 2003 to present the Habbush report to George Tenet, then the CIA director. The report stated that according to Habbush, Saddam had ended his nuclear programme in 1991, the same year he destroyed his chemical weapons programme and had ended the biological weapons programme in 1996. All this has subsequently turned out to be true.

Mr Tenet briefed Mr Bush and Condoleezza Rice, then his National Security adviser. Suskind writes: “The White House then buried the Habbush report. They instructed the British that they were no longer interested in keeping the channel open.”

Rob Richer, a former CIA office in the Near East division, told Suskind: “The Brits wanted to avoid war - which was what was driving them. Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq from the very first days he was in office. Nothing was going to stop that.”

Sir Menzies Campbell, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “If these allegations are true, it immediately raises the question of why Tony Blair was so determined to stick with George Bush. The case for a proper inquiry such as followed the Falklands War gets stronger and stronger.”

Habbush was placed on the White House’s most wanted Iraqis list - manifested as a deck of cards - but according to Suskind was paid by the CIA in October 2003 to write a backdated forged letter to Saddam, dated July 1, 2001, saying that the September 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq. This was the letter publicised in the Sunday Telegraph.

Suskind quotes Mr Richer as saying that Mr Tenet called him to his office in September 2003 and showed him the White House instructions to forge the letter. “Even five years later, Richer remembers looking down at the creamy White House stationary on which the assignment was written,” Suskind writes.

Mr Richer is quoted: “The guys from the Vice-President’s office were just barraging us in the period… this was different. This was creating a deception.”

Of the forgery allegation, Mr Tenet said: “There was no such order from the White House to me, or, to the best of my knowledge, was anyone from the CIA ever involved in any such effort.”

Of Habbush, Mr Tenet said Suskind’s claims were a “complete fabrication”. He said Habbush “failed to persuade” the British that he had “anything new to offer by way of intelligence”. He said Habbush offered no evidence to back up his assertions and “acted in an evasive and unconvincing manner”.

White House ‘buried British intelligence on Iraq WMDs’ - Times Online