LONDON: The British government has confirmed that MI6 had organised Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the run-up to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly , the government weapons expert.
A senior official admitted that MI6 had been at the heart of a campaign launched in the late 1990s to spread information about Saddam's development of nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had planted misinformation.
"There were things about Saddam's regime and his weapons that the public needed to know," said the official.
The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, a former US marine who led 14 inspection missions in Iraq, who said that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda effort.
He described meetings where the senior officer and at least two other MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence material.
"The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than it actually was," Ritter said last week.
He said there was evidence that MI6 continued to use similar propaganda tactics up to the invasion of Iraq earlier this year.
"Stories ran in the media about secret underground facilities in Iraq and ongoing programmes to produce weapons of mass destruction," said Ritter.
"They were sourced to western intelligence and all of them were garbage." Kelly, himself a former United Nations weapons inspector and colleague of Ritter, might also have been used by MI6 to pass information to journalists.
"Kelly was a known and government-approved conduit with the media," said Ritter.
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The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the run-up to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly , the government weapons expert.
A senior official admitted that MI6 had been at the heart of a campaign launched in the late 1990s to spread information about Saddam's development of nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had planted misinformation.
"There were things about Saddam's regime and his weapons that the public needed to know," said the official.
The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, a former US marine who led 14 inspection missions in Iraq, who said that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda effort.
He described meetings where the senior officer and at least two other MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence material.
"The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than it actually was," Ritter said last week.
He said there was evidence that MI6 continued to use similar propaganda tactics up to the invasion of Iraq earlier this year.
"Stories ran in the media about secret underground facilities in Iraq and ongoing programmes to produce weapons of mass destruction," said Ritter.
"They were sourced to western intelligence and all of them were garbage." Kelly, himself a former United Nations weapons inspector and colleague of Ritter, might also have been used by MI6 to pass information to journalists.
"Kelly was a known and government-approved conduit with the media," said Ritter.
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