Press officer wrote 'dodgy' WMD dossier says member of British Parliament

The first full draft of the British government's notorious 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was written by a press officer and not intelligence chiefs, a member of British Parliament claimed on June 13. Tory John Baron (Billericay), in a Westminster Hall debate, said John Williams, the then director of news at the Foreign Office started the drafting process. His document was requested by, and passed to, Sir John Scarlett, chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), the day before he wrote what became the published document. The dossier included the claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. The Foreign Office said Williams produced "a version of his own" which was made "redundant" by Scarlett's work. Baron said his new evidence contradicted the conclusions of the Hutton and Butler inquiries, both of which concluded that the drafting process was "owned" by the JIC. "New evidence shows that spin doctors were not just shaping decisions about the content, they were also helping to write the dossier itself," Baron said. "This new evidence confirms that Williams produced his draft on September 9, one day before John Scarlett wrote his own first draft. "We also know from information supplied by the information commissioner... that John Scarlett requested this draft before writing his own. "Spin doctors were actually on the inside of the process, driving it forward and that accounts for the sexing up," he said. The Williams draft was seen by the Hutton inquiry but not published on its website, nor mentioned by Williams in his evidence, Baron said. It is now the subject of a Freedom of Information battle. The Information Commissioner has approved the document for publication but ministers have appealed against the decision. Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells said keeping the document private was essential to preserve the privacy of the policy-making process. "It is claimed that the first draft of the Government's dossier was produced not by intelligence officers in the JIC but by press officers... this is simply not true. "John Scarlett and the JIC were commissioned by the Prime Minister to produce the Government dossier and they led throughout in drafting and finalizing the dossier. He said Williams wrote his own dossier "on his own initiative." "By the time Mr. Williams produced it, it was already redundant because Sir John Scarlett in the meantime had been asked by the Prime Minister to produce a dossier and that's what he set about doing. It was not based on the Williams draft."