Former UN expert accuses British govt. of cover-up

A key witness to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war has accused Whitehall of trying to silence embarrassing testimony undermining the case for the invasion. In today's Observer, Carne Ross, the UK's Iraq expert at the UN between 1997 and 2002, writes that the inquiry is being prevented by "deep state" forces from establishing the government's true motivation for invading Iraq. Ross, who appeared before the inquiry this month, says he was not provided with key documents relevant to his testimony and was warned by officials not to refer to an internal Foreign Office memo that contradicted the government's public case for war. Before his appearance, large files were sent to him to read in confidence at the UK mission to the UN in New York, but "most of the key documents I had asked for were not there". In the hours before his appearance, Ross visited the Foreign Office, where he says "an official repeatedly sought to persuade me to delete references to certain documents in my testimony". Ross claims he was told his evidence must not refer to a memo from a senior Foreign Office official. The memo, to the special adviser to the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, expressed concern that a briefing paper for the parliamentary Labor party had "dramatically" altered the assessment of Iraq's nuclear threat. Ross says the "paper claimed that if Iraq's programs remained unchecked, it could develop a workable nuclear device within five years. The official's memo pointed out that this was not in fact the UK assessment, which was more or less the opposite: that the UK believed that Iraq's nuclear program had been effectively checked by sanctions." Despite the official's concern, the paper was used to brief the cabinet. Ross writes: "This paper was pure overstated propaganda, filled with almost ludicrous statements like 'one teaspoon of anthrax can kill a million people'."