Sir John Chilcot has announced that he is to publish his report into the Iraq
war next June or July after government officials were given up to three
months to carry out “national security checking” on its findings.
In a letter to the prime minister, who had expressed frustration with the delays to the report, the former Northern Ireland office permanent secretary said he would finally complete his work seven years after the inquiry was set up by Gordon Brown.
Downing Street reacted with disappointment to Chilcot’s timescale. In a letter of reply to Chilcot, Cameron said that while welcoming the “clear end of sight of your inquiry” he knew the families of those who served in Iraq “will also be disappointed that you do not believe it will be logistically possible to publish your report until early summer”.
Cameron, who received Chilcot’s letter as he travelled to the Northern Future Forum in Iceland on Wednesday, wrote: “We remain ready to provide whatever further assistance we can in order to support the conclusion of your work, and I am very happy to provide more resource if it would allow the report to be published more quickly.”
The prime minister added it would be possible to complete security checking within two weeks – as occurred with the Savile inquiry into Bloody Sunday.
Chilcot stated that the inquiry expects to be able to complete the text of its report, which runs to more than 2m words, in the week of 18 April 2016. He will then hand over the report to officials, who will be allowed to conduct national security checks, allowing it to be published in June or July.
Chilcot pre-empted criticism of his decision to allow the report to be cleared by officials by saying it is necessary to avoid an inadvertent breach of national security. He also said it would be necessary to ensure there had been no breach of article two of the European convention on human rights – the right to life.
In his letter, Chilcot said that he would hand over the report to officials after it has been completed in the week beginning 18 April 2016. He wrote: “At that point, national security checking of its contents by a team of officials, who will be given confidential access to the report on your behalf, can begin.
“National security checking is distinct from the process of declassifying material for disclosure in the inquiry’s report. Its purpose is to ensure that the government’s obligations under article two of the ECHR and for the protection of national security will not be inadvertently breached by publication of the inquiry’s report as a whole.
“The inquiry will obviously seek to ensure no such breach might occur, but I entirely understand that a checking process is necessary and is normal procedure in inquiries which have considered a large volume of sensitive material, as we have.”
The publication has been held up by two factors. Chilcot was involved in a lengthy wrangle with two successive cabinet secretaries – Gus O’Donnell and Sir Jeremy Heywood – over the publication of correspondence between Tony Blair and George W Bush.
These focused on whether Blair provided undertakings to Bush in the run-up to the invasion in 2003 – around the time of his visit to Bush in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002 – that Britain would join US forces.
Blair has always said that he gave no definitive commitment to the US and actually succeeded in putting pressure on the White House to seek UN authority in the autumn and winter of 2002.
Heywood, who feared that publication of the correspondence might harm communications with future presidents, eventually agreed to some limited publication. This then paved the way for the Maxwellisation process in which the Chilcot team sent sections of the report to witnesses who were to be criticised.
This is a lengthy process because witnesses have the right to respond. The news that Chilcot will finally publish his work comes shortly after Blair issued a partial apology for elements of the Iraq war.
Blair’s remarks gave an insight into Chilcot’s likely findings because the former prime minister, in common with other witnesses, has been sent the sections of the report that criticise his conduct.
The former prime minister apologised for the use of misleading intelligence which prompted him to justify the invasion on the grounds that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. He also said that inadequate preparations were made for the aftermath of the war.
Blair told Fareed Zakaria on CNN: “I apologise for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong. I also apologise for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime.”
But Blair made clear that he still felt he made the right decision in backing the US invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. He said: “I find it hard to apologise for removing Saddam.”
The Chilcot letter was released after Dr Hans Blix, UN chief weapons inspector at the time of the invasion, accused Blair of misrepresenting intelligence about Iraq’s WMD programme.
Blix told the journalist Peter Oborne: “The big difference in the British dossier was that they simply asserted that these items are there. But when Mr Blair asserts that there were weapons, well that’s an assertion and it was not supported by evidence. Both the UK and the US replaced question marks by exclamation marks. I certainly think it was a misrepresentation.”
Asked by Oborne whether Blair had lied, Blix said: “Well, I’m a diplomat, so I’m not using such … such words. But in substance, yes. They misrepresented what we did and they did so in order to get the authorisation that they shouldn’t have had.”
Oborne interviewed Blix for a BBC Radio 4 documentary, Peter Oborne’s Chilcot Report. He wrote about Blix’s interview in an article for Open Democracy.
In a letter to the prime minister, who had expressed frustration with the delays to the report, the former Northern Ireland office permanent secretary said he would finally complete his work seven years after the inquiry was set up by Gordon Brown.
Downing Street reacted with disappointment to Chilcot’s timescale. In a letter of reply to Chilcot, Cameron said that while welcoming the “clear end of sight of your inquiry” he knew the families of those who served in Iraq “will also be disappointed that you do not believe it will be logistically possible to publish your report until early summer”.
Cameron, who received Chilcot’s letter as he travelled to the Northern Future Forum in Iceland on Wednesday, wrote: “We remain ready to provide whatever further assistance we can in order to support the conclusion of your work, and I am very happy to provide more resource if it would allow the report to be published more quickly.”
The prime minister added it would be possible to complete security checking within two weeks – as occurred with the Savile inquiry into Bloody Sunday.
Chilcot stated that the inquiry expects to be able to complete the text of its report, which runs to more than 2m words, in the week of 18 April 2016. He will then hand over the report to officials, who will be allowed to conduct national security checks, allowing it to be published in June or July.
Chilcot pre-empted criticism of his decision to allow the report to be cleared by officials by saying it is necessary to avoid an inadvertent breach of national security. He also said it would be necessary to ensure there had been no breach of article two of the European convention on human rights – the right to life.
In his letter, Chilcot said that he would hand over the report to officials after it has been completed in the week beginning 18 April 2016. He wrote: “At that point, national security checking of its contents by a team of officials, who will be given confidential access to the report on your behalf, can begin.
“National security checking is distinct from the process of declassifying material for disclosure in the inquiry’s report. Its purpose is to ensure that the government’s obligations under article two of the ECHR and for the protection of national security will not be inadvertently breached by publication of the inquiry’s report as a whole.
“The inquiry will obviously seek to ensure no such breach might occur, but I entirely understand that a checking process is necessary and is normal procedure in inquiries which have considered a large volume of sensitive material, as we have.”
The publication has been held up by two factors. Chilcot was involved in a lengthy wrangle with two successive cabinet secretaries – Gus O’Donnell and Sir Jeremy Heywood – over the publication of correspondence between Tony Blair and George W Bush.
These focused on whether Blair provided undertakings to Bush in the run-up to the invasion in 2003 – around the time of his visit to Bush in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002 – that Britain would join US forces.
Blair has always said that he gave no definitive commitment to the US and actually succeeded in putting pressure on the White House to seek UN authority in the autumn and winter of 2002.
Heywood, who feared that publication of the correspondence might harm communications with future presidents, eventually agreed to some limited publication. This then paved the way for the Maxwellisation process in which the Chilcot team sent sections of the report to witnesses who were to be criticised.
This is a lengthy process because witnesses have the right to respond. The news that Chilcot will finally publish his work comes shortly after Blair issued a partial apology for elements of the Iraq war.
Blair’s remarks gave an insight into Chilcot’s likely findings because the former prime minister, in common with other witnesses, has been sent the sections of the report that criticise his conduct.
The former prime minister apologised for the use of misleading intelligence which prompted him to justify the invasion on the grounds that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. He also said that inadequate preparations were made for the aftermath of the war.
Blair told Fareed Zakaria on CNN: “I apologise for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong. I also apologise for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime.”
But Blair made clear that he still felt he made the right decision in backing the US invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. He said: “I find it hard to apologise for removing Saddam.”
The Chilcot letter was released after Dr Hans Blix, UN chief weapons inspector at the time of the invasion, accused Blair of misrepresenting intelligence about Iraq’s WMD programme.
Blix told the journalist Peter Oborne: “The big difference in the British dossier was that they simply asserted that these items are there. But when Mr Blair asserts that there were weapons, well that’s an assertion and it was not supported by evidence. Both the UK and the US replaced question marks by exclamation marks. I certainly think it was a misrepresentation.”
Asked by Oborne whether Blair had lied, Blix said: “Well, I’m a diplomat, so I’m not using such … such words. But in substance, yes. They misrepresented what we did and they did so in order to get the authorisation that they shouldn’t have had.”
Oborne interviewed Blix for a BBC Radio 4 documentary, Peter Oborne’s Chilcot Report. He wrote about Blix’s interview in an article for Open Democracy.
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