Britain: The Intelligence and Security Committee did not lead him to resign so his fate will turn on Lord Hutton, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
Britain's embattled Defence Secretary, Mr Geoff Hoon, lives to fight another day. However, his fate will now turn on Lord Hutton's inquiry into the circumstances leading to the death of government weapons expert Dr David Kelly.
That was the verdict at Westminster and in Whitehall last night as Prime Minister Tony Blair battened-down the hatches in face of Tory demands for Mr Hoon's immediate dismissal.
Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith declared Mr Hoon's position "untenable" within an hour of publication of the Intelligence and Security Committee's (ISC) report on the Blair government's handling of intelligence in the run-up to the war with Iraq.
But the Liberal Democrat spokesman, Mr Menzies Campbell, was probably closer to the mark when he suggested rather that Mr Hoon's position appeared to be "unravelling".
Mr Duncan Smith considered the committee's findings against Mr Hoon and his ministry "damning". And no amount of Number 10 "spin" could have obscured the nature of the charge. For while heavily nuanced, the cross-party committee's criticism was extremely serious - a fact which Downing Street wisely did not attempt to deny.
The failure of Mr Hoon's ministry to disclose that two members of Defence Intelligence Staff had put in writing their concerns about the controversial Iraqi weapons dossier was considered "unhelpful and potentially misleading." The members of the ISC were in turn "disturbed" that, following his initial appearance, Mr Hoon decided against civil service advice that he should write to the committee outlining the nature of those expressed concerns.
In committee-speak terms, this was in fact searing stuff. As was the ISC's rebuttal of Mr Hoon's defence that the expression of such concerns was part of the normal process of internal debate often surrounding draft intelligence assessments before the Defence Intelligence Staff reached a collective view.
It was not, however, the knock-out blow it might have first appeared. While hardly pro-active in his disclosures to the ISC (which has recommended that in future written concerns should be referred to the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee) Mr Hoon did inform the committee there had been dispute within his department about the dossier, and thus the ISC did not call for his resignation.
Rather ISC Chairman Ms Ann Taylor characterised the findings as "a ticking off" for the minister as she acquitted him of the charge which would have propelled him out of the Cabinet: "He did not tell us lies . . . and was quite explicit that there had been a dispute."
Some respite, then, for Mr Hoon and relief for Number 10 as Mr Alastair Campbell and the government were cleared of "sexing-up" the dossier or compromising the Joint Intelligence Committee. Indeed the ISC's exoneration of Mr Campbell went further than the Foreign Affairs Select Committee report, confirming that Mr Campbell did not chair meetings on intelligence matters.
Yet whether Mr Campbell can depart Downing Street with head held high may yet depend on his predicted second appearance before the Hutton inquiry. Mr Hoon, too, must nervously await Lord Hutton's findings.
Nor, in what Mr Blair might call "big picture" terms, can the prime minister or his government be considered in-the-clear. To the contrary the ISC said the omission of "context and assessment" of the 45-minute claim meant it had been presented in a manner "unhelpful to an understanding of this issue" - and the dossier should have highlighted the fact that it was assessed to refer to battlefield munitions and "not to any other form of chemical or biological attack".
The dossier should also have made clear that Saddam Hussein was not considered a current or imminent threat to the UK.
The committee noted a sentence in the first draft of Mr Blair's foreword to the dossier, saying: "The case I make is not that Saddam could launch a nuclear attack on London or another part of the UK. (He could not.)" And in gloriously understated language the ISC concluded: "It was unfortunate that this point was removed from the published version . . . and not highlighted elsewhere."
On the accuracy of the intelligence, the assessments and therefore the dossier itself, the ISC reminded Mr Blair that the jury is still out.