A "Gossip from an Iraqi taxi driver was a key source for Tony Blair's "intelligence" and 'dodgy dossier' "
Byres
Gossip from an Iraqi taxi driver was a key source for Tony Blair's 'dodgy
dossier'.
A report by a respected MP claims that the unlikely secret agent was one of
MI6's top sources when it was building a case to justify the invasion. He
provided the information that Saddam Hussein could fire chemical weapons at
British targets within 45 minutes.
The revelation comes as the death toll of British troops in Afghanistan
reaches 100 this year alone following the shooting of a member of 1st
Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment in a gun battle with the Taliban.
Senior intelligence officials have told the MP that the cabbie falsely
claimed Saddam Hussein had acquired long-range missiles after listening to
Iraqi commanders chatting in his taxi two years before the invasion.
The driver, who worked near Iraq's border with Jordan, was allegedly the
'sub-source' of a senior Iraqi military officer who told MI6 that Saddam had
battlefield chemical weapons ready to deploy at 45 minutes' notice. The
revelations come in a report on the Iraq War by Tory MP Adam Holloway, due
to be published by the think-tank First Defence.
Mr Holloway, a former Grenadier Guardsman, has close links to intelligence
officials. He was told about the cab driver by a former member of one of
Britain's intelligence agencies who was serving at the time of the build-up
to war.
Intelligence from the cab driver allegedly bolstered the suggestion that
weapons of mass destruction could be fired at British targets in Cyprus - a
central plank of the dodgy dossier. Mr Holloway's report says that analysts
at the Secret Intelligence Service quickly decided the cab driver's
information about missiles was 'verifiably' false and warned that the agent
was not reliable. But a carefully-worded footnote in an MI6 report was
apparently brushed aside by Downing Street officials when the dodgy dossier
was put together in September 2002. Mr Holloway says a security official in
the U.S. with knowledge of the pre-war MI6 reports confirmed to him that
'the footnote was ignored'.
Read more