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Is a mortar shell a weapon of mass destruction? British Secretary of State for Defence Geoff Hoon MP on the '45 minute' claim, February 5

Transcript from Radio 4's Today Programme, February 5, 2004.

John Humphrys: You are telling us that you knew they were battlefield weapons, that Robin Cook knew they were battlefield weapons but the prime minister did not know they were battlefield weapons.

He seemed to think they were pretty much bigger than that.

Geoff Hoon: I made clear when I was asked this question yesterday in the House of Commons that following the publication of the dossier in that time-frame, and forgive me I can't precisely remember when this conversation took place, I asked a question in the Ministry of Defence as to what kind of weapons we were talking about.

JH: So let me be clear, even you didn't know, when that dossier was published, the dossier carried forward by Mr Blair with this information in it, even you didn't know what it was all about. Is that what your saying?

GH: I am not saying I didn't know what it was all about, I am saying, and the intelligence as we've made clear in our evidence very recently to the House of Commons, we did not refer specifically to any kind of delivery system.

What we're talking about here is something fundamentally important, we are talking about weapons of mass destruction that we feared were in the hands of Saddam Hussein and he was capable of using them within 45 minutes.

Classification of WMDs

JH: Is a mortar shell a weapon of mass destruction?

GH: Of course it is.

JH: Is it really?

Because that is not what the military says, they say in no way can a mortar shell be described as a weapon of mass destruction.

Air Marshall Sir John Walker, who was on this programme just a few days ago, said in no way possible can a mortar shell be described as a weapon of mass destruction.

He's a military man, I'm not.

GH: I didn't actually hear that interview.

JH: Well, I can quote you from it.

GH: It's what the mortar shell contains.

The kind of shells used in Halabja, for example, were battlefield weapons munitions, if you like, but they were causing devastating death and destruction across a huge area because they contained a chemical agent.

Now that is a weapon of mass destruction.

JH: You believe that when that dossier told us about weapons of mass destruction that threatened us, threatened this nation, people had in mind battlefield munitions; artillery shells, mortar shells that sort of thing.

You believe that is the message you were delivering, do you?

GH: The dossier, as I said earlier, did not set out the nature of the delivery system.

JH: That's not what I am asking.

GH: I know it's not what you're asking me.

That is what we published to the British public at the time.

This was not a great issue of public concern at the time.

This was not a great debate, it became a debate only after the Today programme and Andrew Gilligan made it an issue in May the following year.

Many months later it became a matter of public controversy.

Matter of public interest

JH: So you had from September to May, you had more than eight months, in which to correct this mistaken impression.

Why did you not do so?

GH: I am sorry, I don't understand what is the mistaken impression you're referring to.

JH: Well, you're telling me that it did not become an issue until the Andrew Gilligan report and then it became an issue.

Now until then, on this basis, we were meant to believe that these were not significant weapons - that is to say, they were not ballistic missiles that could threaten our interests directly.

We didn't know this, it did not become a matter of public interest and public controversy until Andrew Gilligan did his report in May.

Now are you saying that you had no opportunity during all of those months, or that you were still confused about it and Tony Blair was still confused about it, to correct that misleading impression.

GH: But I don't believe there was a misleading impression.

We set out very clearly in the dossier the fact that there was intelligence to suggest that within 45 minutes Saddam Hussein's Iraq could use weapons of mass destruction.

There was no description there of the kind of way in which that weapon could be delivered, therefore there was no impression given to anyone.

Impression in press

JH: So when the Sun, for instance, on 25 September said British servicemen and tourists in Cyprus could be annihilated by germ warfare missiles launched by Iraq, it was revealed yesterday.

They could thud into the Mediterranean island within 45 minutes etcetera - that wasn't creating an impression was it?

GH: I am afraid I did not see that newspaper.

JH: What... and nobody in your department saw it - you don't have a press department that reads the newspapers for you?

GH: What I can say to you, as far as my own knowledge is concerned, I did not see that publication until actually the first time I saw that.

JH: ...And none of the others either?

GH: Well, I can only speak for myself and I am trying to answer the questions for myself.

The first time I saw that headline was very recently watching a Panorama programme that flashed up the front page of the Sun on the screen.

That was the very first time I saw that particular publication.

JH: Right and the same goes for all the other papers that carried it.

The Evening Standard, we've done a trawl ourselves this morning, the Liverpool Echo, the Edinburgh Evening News, the Evening Standard and so it goes.

I don't expect you to see all of these but it is slightly odd, would you not say?

You run a large department - you have, I imagine, have a fairly substantial press office.

I'd have thought that one of the jobs they did was to read newspapers and brief you on what was in them.

Don't they do that?

Not 'great controversy'

GH: I think that this does get to the heart of the matter.

The heart of the matter is that this was not a matter of great public debate or controversy.

JH: Well, I've just told you that it was - that it was a matter of great public interest.

GH: I think it's quite interesting that in your long list of newspapers you've actually mentioned only one national newspaper.

You've mentioned a number of regional newspapers which actually on a regular basis I do not see - I am not a regular reader, unfortunately, of the Liverpool Echo.

What is the case is that one national newspaper published this.

In retrospect, I have been aware of it.

As I say, a few weeks ago I was watching Panorama.

I saw Panorama use the front page of that newspaper - that is the very first time that I saw that publication.

JH: Yes, it happens to be the biggest selling newspaper in the country.

GH: I am not denying that - but what is interesting about your point is that it does demonstrate for me, I think, that this was not a great matter of public controversy.

Had this been a great matter of public controversy at the time you would actually be given me a great long list of national newspapers.

JH: What's interesting is that you keep using this word public controversy - I would suggest to you the word public interest.

If you're actually telling me this morning that the public was not interested in the notion that Saddam Hussein, a notion fed to them by the government, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could threaten this nation and its interests, then I'd be hugely surprised.

GH: Again, I think that you and I had conversations about this many times, I am sure, around that time and the Today programme is very good at generating these kinds of debates.

I don't recall us having this kind of conversation until after Andrew Gilligan and the Today programme made this an issue of national controversy.

Battlefield weapon threat

JH: Well, may I tell you why that is partly the case.

Because it wasn't until the Hutton Inquiry that we knew that Sir Richard Dearlove, the boss of MI6, had told you himself in terms that these were battlefield weapons and not a different sort of weapon that could threaten us.

We didn't know that until the Hutton Inquiry because it was concealed from us.

GH: I don't believe that it was concealed because it came out at the time of the Hutton Inquiry and it was a matter of discussion at that time.

I did not incidentally receive that information from Sir Richard.

JH: You seem not to have been very well informed, if I might be so impertinent as to suggest.

GH: I can't either be badly informed or well informed. I asked a question, as I indicated to the House of Commons yesterday, about the nature of the delivery system for weapons of mass destruction in relation to the 45 minute claim.

I asked that question inside the Ministry of Defence and was given an answer at that time.

But the fact is that this was not a great matter of public controversy at the time and in a sense your illustrations from newspaper headlines, I think, have demonstrated that.

JH: Well, on the contrary it was a matter of enormous public interest whether or not Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

You tell us that the delivery systems were not significant or not discussed.

Tony Blair himself, in that foreword, said he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme.

Saddam 'breached resolutions'

GH: That, of course, is the case and has been confirmed, amongst other things, by Mr Kay's investigations since the end of the war.

It is one of the key findings by the ISG that actually Saddam Hussein was in breach a number of his UN resolutions by developing longer range missiles that he was not entitled under the rules to have.

JH: This would be the same Mr Kay who said there was no evidence, he didn't believe he had ever had these stockpiles of WMDs that threatened us.

The same Mr Kay, I take it?

GH: The point is that his investigations demonstrated that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in breach of 1441 and other resolutions the international community wanted upheld.

That was precisely the reason why Britain and the US judged it was necessary to take military action in order to uphold those resolutions.

Public's case for war

JH: Can I just ask you this?

Do you believe that when the House of Commons and many people in this country approved the idea that we should go to war with Iraq, they were conscious of there being weapons of mass destruction, some of which were capable of being launched within 45 minutes that directly threatened this country.

GH: I believe and I have read again the prime minister's speech before the vote in the House of Commons which was the key debate, the key focus of your interest, of my interest, I believe the British public's interest.

The prime minister did not actually make any reference to the 45-minute claim.

JH: That's not what I asked you.

GH: I know it's not what you asked me - you asked me what was in the public's mind.

The best I can say is what the prime minister was setting out to the country in Parliament, explaining what was the basis of the government's decision to take military action and in that very, very thorough speech, a speech that was yesterday praised by a Conservative member of Parliament as one of the best speeches in the House of Commons in the last 20 years, the prime minister did not mention that issue which we are now having a debated about

JH: Maybe that's because he no longer thought it was true.

Do you think that's the case?

GH: I do not believe that the prime minister was taking a judgement at that stage, what he was doing was setting out to the country, to the House of Commons, the basis on which he judged military action was necessary.

Saddam's 'unconventional' threat

JH: Which was?

I'll tell you what it was if you like: "That the threat from Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction is real, growing and of an entirely different nature to any conventional threat to our security than Britain has faced before."

GH: And that was a judgement that I shared, as did other members of the government, as of course did the House of Commons in the vote that they took.

JH: Since then you've not been able to provide a scintilla of evidence for that.

JH: That is quite wrong, John, and I've just referred you to the work of the survey group that has established in a number of ways that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was completely in breach of resolution 1441.

So rather more than a scintilla - quite a weighty piece of evidence.

JH: The new leader of that survey group, the man who resigned from leading that survey group a couple of weeks ago and the previous leader of that survey group, not one of those people believed that Saddam had those weapons - not just has but had those weapons of mass destruction - all three of them.

GH: What is actually important is what those of us responsible for taking those decisions believed and on the basis of a long history of intelligence material certainly provided to me I judged not on the basis of a snapshot provided to me in September 2002 but over many years of seeing week by week the relevant intelligence I judged and I still judge Saddam had access to weapons of mass destruction.

JH: In spite of the absence of evidence of a real growing and entirely different nature of threat?

Inquiry into Iraq intelligence

GH: It is still my judgement because I have seen nothing better to suggest that that evidence was wrong, false or in any material particular.

That is obviously why the inquiry under Lord Butler has been established to look at the background to the intelligence to try and establish what was the intelligence basis of the judgement that I formed.

JH: But you see the problem with that is that some of the intelligence was accurate.

The intelligence about the absence of ballistic weapons of mass destruction that could threaten us was accurate.

They were at best, if they existed at all, only battlefield weapons.

The problem is that that information wasn't passed on to the prime minister, you didn't apparently know about it until some time later.

So you did have some accurate information you simply didn't tell us about it.

You allowed us to believe something that was not the case.

That we were being threatened directly when we weren't.

No 'delivery reference'

GH: Well, I think that's unfair if you'll forgive me for saying so.

I indicated earlier in our conversation what was set out in the dossier.

There was no specific reference to whether this was a ballistic missile, a battlefield munition or anything of the kind.

JH: Tony Blair - "he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme".

GH: Of course, but you are talking now about weapons of mass destruction.

The issue was whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction available to Saddam Hussein at that time.

Judgement 'still right'

The best judgement that I could bring to bear in the light of seeing years of intelligence in relation to Iraq was that he did have at that time weapons of mass destruction.

That judgement I formed over a long period of time, not in response to any particular evidence of September 2002.

JH: And you still believe that he has any weapons - that is to say that they exist today.

GH: I still believe that that judgement that I formed was right.

I believe that it is important that now an inquiry has been established that we allow that inquiry to reach a proper conclusion on the basis of the kind of co-operation that we gave to the Hutton Inquiry - we will give the same to Lord Butler's inquiry in order to establish the background to the judgements and decisions that I took.

Nothing 'suppressed'

JH: Should it also look into why Tony Blair appeared not to know about this pretty important information and why you the defence secretary didn't know about it until much later.

GH: Well, you keep saying much later - I don't want to leave you that impression.

JH: It was you that said that.

GH: No, I didn't say much later, I said after the publication of the report.

And what is important again, and we've made clear, is that the intelligence of the so-called 45 minute claim was not referring to any specific kind of delivery system.

And again, and I am sorry to repeat this, it was not a matter of great public controversy in September 2002.

It has become one since but largely on the basis of the unfounded allegations made by Radio 4's Today Programme.

JH: Well, you keep returning to that, but let me just make one small point and that is that one of your own MPs, Tam Dalyell, who admittedly has been a thorn in your side for a long time, says had it not been suppressed - that is to say the specific information about the 45 minutes - had it not been suppressed more Labour MPs would have joined us in voting against the war and it may have been enough to stop military action.

He's not on the staff of the Today Programme as far as I know?

GH: I am not quite sure what you're referring to - nothing was suppressed.

The 45-minute claim appeared in the dossier - it then became a matter of public controversy many months later after the Today programme's unfounded allegations and it is still a matter of debate today which is why we are having this conversation but what is important is at the time in September 2002 when the dossier was published it was not a great matter of public controversy.

Source: BBC News online, http://news.bbc.co.uk.

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