LONDON, March 23 -- Britain has tightened controls on the processing of secret intelligence, the government said Wednesday, in a response to flawed information that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
The claim that Iraq possessed banned weapons was the primary U.S. and British justification for the war, but no weapons of mass destruction were ever found and British officials have since withdrawn two key lines of prewar intelligence.
Following the dispute over Iraq intelligence, the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, and other spy agencies have adopted new safeguards, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Wednesday.
"Secret Intelligence Service has developed new procedures, provided additional resources and revised line management arrangements to improve evaluation and to oversee the quality of intelligence," Straw said in a statement to Parliament.
The statement came in response to a report by Robin Butler, a senior civil servant who said last July that intelligence used to compile a September 2002 dossier on Iraq was "very thin."
The debacle over flawed intelligence on Iraq plunged Prime Minister Tony Blair into one of the rockiest periods of his prime ministership following the suicide of David Kelly, a government weapons inspector, in July 2003. Kelly was the source of a contested BBC radio report that accused the government of hyping the case for war.
Blair's popularity and public trust ratings took a nosedive over the Iraq war, and the issue could erode support for him in a general election expected in May. Political analysts predict he will win nonetheless.
Butler cleared Blair of deceiving Parliament and the public over the intelligence on Iraq but identified collective shortcomings in the gathering and presentation of intelligence.
Straw said the procedures of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which compiled the September 2002 dossier, had been "reviewed and tightened up" since the Butler report.
The government has agreed to appoint a professional head of intelligence analysis and has said that analysts will be better trained. The government also plans to expand the assessments staff, which analyzes the work of intelligence services for ministers, by about a third, allowing for more rigorous checking of Joint Intelligence Committee reports.
