**Spy chief Sir John Scarlett is being questioned about intelligence on Iraq after claims a taxi driver was the source for the most infamous claim.**The man who drew up the September 2002 dossier, which said Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, is facing the Chilcot inquiry.
Tory MP Adam Holloway has claimed No 10 ignored advice that the claim was not credible when producing the dossier.
Ministers withdrew the claim after the war but said they acted in good faith.
It was at the heart of the row between the government and the BBC which culminated in the death of government weapons expert Dr David Kelly.
‘Political wind’
Sir John, who until recently was head of MI6, was chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee in September 2002 when it produced the controversial dossier spelling out the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the case for military action against Iraq.
Sir John is expected to go over much of the same ground as in his appearance before the Hutton Inquiry in 2003 - although he stood by the 45-minute claim at that time.
A Commons Defence Committee member, Mr Holloway claims military advice was matched to the “prevailing political wind” in the run-up to the invasion.
“Despite this glaring factual inaccuracy… the report was characterised as reliable”
Adam Holloway MP
Mr Holloway, the MP for Gravesham and a former officer in the Grenadier Guards, published his paper The Failure of British Political and Military Leadership through First Defence, the centre-right think-tank he chairs.
In it, he said the claim that Saddam could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45-minutes arose as British intelligence were “squeezing” agents in Iraq for information, under pressure from Downing Street to back up its case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
“The provenance of this information was never questioned in detail until after the Iraq invasion, when it became apparent that something was wrong,” he said.
“In the end it turned out that the information was not credible, it had originated from an emigre taxi driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border, who had remembered an overheard conversation in the back of his cab a full two years earlier.”
Mr Holloway stated that an intelligence analyst had at the time flagged up - via a footnote - that the claims were “demonstrably untrue”.
“Despite this glaring factual inaccuracy… the report was characterised as reliable,” he said.
The claim then formed one of the main planks of the September 2002 dossier stating the case for the war, Mr Holloway added.
‘Caveats removed’
The government has yet to respond to his claims.
Lord Butler’s inquiry into intelligence about Iraq’s weapons capability later found it had come “third-hand”, through an established source and a second link in the reporting chain from the original Iraqi military source.
MI6 had later cast doubts over the reliability of the middle link, the inquiry found in 2004.
Lord Butler concluded the limitations of the intelligence were not “made sufficiently clear”, that important caveats had been removed and that the 45 minutes claim was “unsubstantiated” and should not have been included without clarification.
Mr Holloway claims to have information from intelligence officers that there was “no appetite” in government for information contravening the case for war and that, as a consequence, civil servants ignored it in the interests of their careers.
Mr Holloway claims this is indicative of a culture of senior defence officials and military officers glossing over problems to toe the government line.