NP? -- Operation Rockingham

[Otto]

The very secret service
David Kelly referred obliquely to Operation Rockingham. What role did this
mysterious cell play in justifying the Iraq war?
Michael Meacher, Friday November 21, 2003, The Guardian

(...)
What is the role of the Rockingham cell? The evidence comes from a former
chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, who had been a US military
intelligence officer for eight years and served on the staff of General
Schwarzkopf, the US commander of allied forces in the first Gulf war. He has
described himself as a card-carrying Republican who voted for Bush, but he
distinguished himself in insisting before the Iraq war, and was almost alone
in doing so, that almost all of Iraq's WMD had been destroyed as a result of
inspections, and the rest either used or destroyed in the first Gulf war. In
terms, therefore, of proven accuracy of judgment and weight of experience of
the workings of western military intelligence, he is a highly reliable
source.
In an interview in the Scottish Sunday Herald in June, Ritter said:
"Operation Rockingham [a unit set up by defence intelligence staff within
the MoD in 1991] cherry-picked intelligence. It received hard data, but had
a preordained outcome in mind. It only put forward a small percentage of the
facts when most were ambiguous or noted no WMD... It became part of an
effort to maintain a public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance with the
inspections. They had to sustain the allegation that Iraq had WMD [when]
Unscom was showing the opposite."
Rockingham was, in fact, a clearing house for intelligence, but one with a
predetermined political purpose.
(...)
One of its tactics, which Ritter cites, is its leaking of false information
to weapons inspectors, and then, when the search is fruitless, using that as
"proof" of the weapons' existence. He quotes a case in 1993 when "Rockingham
was the source of some very controversial information which led to
inspections of a suspected ballistic missile site. We ... found nothing.
However, our act of searching allowed the US and UK to say that the missiles
existed."
(...)

Michael Meacher was environment minister, 1997-2003.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1089931,00.html