HUTTON INQUIRY: A top British intelligence officer stepped out of the shadows yesterday to defend the dossier on which Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair based his case for war with Iraq.
Mr John Scarlett, a former chief of the British intelligence service's Moscow station, told the inquiry yesterday Mr Blair's team did not inflate intelligence about banned Iraqi weapons to make a case for war which most Britons opposed.
Scientist Dr David Kelly slashed his wrist last month after being named as the suspected source for a BBC reporter's claim that the government "sexed up" its September 2002 dossier.
"It was completely untrue," Mr Scarlett, head of the government Joint Intelligence Committee, told the inquiry led by judge Lord Hutton. "Nobody was in a better position than I to know that."
Mr Scarlett was in charge of drafting Mr Blair's dossier but admitted that his communications chief, Mr Alastair Campbell asked a number of times to harden up sections of language.
He said he only accepted those suggestions that could be justified by the intelligence, rejecting any others.
But an e-mail between officials showed there was a scramble for intelligence tit-bits to help beef up the document.
"Number 10 . . . want the document to be as strong as possible within the bounds of the available intelligence," said the e-mail from an unnamed official.
"This is therefore a last call for any items of intelligence that the agencies think can and should be included."
Dr Kelly's name became public as Mr Campbell, conducted a row with the BBC over a claim that Mr Campbell had added to the dossier the assertion that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction at 45 minutes' notice.
Mr Scarlett said he believed last year's dossier was firmly backed by intelligence then available but hinted that, given no warheads have turned up, it has proved to be questionable.
The inquiry into the death of Dr Kelly has already raised difficult questions for Mr Blair.
It revealed his chief of staff believed the dossier contained no proof of a threat from Saddam and that a whole series of Blair aides made suggestions to make it more hard-hitting.
But the inquiry has produced no evidence to corroborate the most damaging allegation - that Mr Campbell inserted the 45-minute claim into the document, knowing it was probably wrong.
Meanwhile, the MP who described Dr Kelly as the government's "fall guy" said yesterday he had been the target for hate mail.
Labour MP Mr Andrew MacKinlay was in the vanguard of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee's robust questioning of Dr Kelly on July 15th.
During the televised questioning of the weapons expert the plain-spoken backbencher had told Dr Kelly that he was "chaff" who had been "set up" by the Government.
He told the inquiry his local newspaper had daubed on its walls "Kelly's blood on MacKinlay's hands". - (Reuters, PA)