The Spies Who Fooled The World

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of one of the most contentious and divisive wars in living memory, Peter Taylor forensically investigates how key aspects of the secret intelligence used by Downing Street and the White House to justify the invasion of Iraq, were based on fabrication, wishful thinking and lies.

Using remarkable first hand testimony, this one-hour Panorama special reveals the full story of how two very highly placed sources, both close to Saddam Hussein, talked secretly to the CIA via an intermediary and directly to MI6 in the build-up to the war and said Iraq did not have an active Weapons of Mass Destruction programme. But both were ignored.

In a compelling story of spies and intrigue, deception and lies, key players reveal how sparse British and American intelligence was and how none of the handful of human sources had direct knowledge of WMD production. The former CIA Paris Station Chief, Bill Murray, explains how he used an intermediary to recruit Iraq’s Foreign Minister and his frustration when he found crucial intelligence from this source was rejected because it didn’t fit in with the White House’s agenda. The intelligence from Iraq’s Foreign Minister was confirmed four months later, when an MI6 officer met Iraq’s Head of Intelligence, who passed on the same message, saying Iraq had no WMD.

Lord Butler, author of the 2004 report into the WMD intelligence, says the British public was misled.

With a series of revelatory interviews, including a shocking exchange with the Iraqi spy and self-confessed fabricator ‘Curveball’, Panorama sheds new light on the spies who fooled the world.

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