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| Weapons of mass destruction in The Rock |
Could the UK's decision to go to war in Iraq have been influenced by supposed intelligence that came from an action film? The Chilcot Report, released today, noted similarities between a description of weapons in a Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) report and the 1996 film The Rock, which starred Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.
The SIS report, produced in September 2002, claimed that chemical agents VX, sarin and soman had been produced in Al-Yarmuk, and were loaded into a variety of containers including "linked hollow glass spheres". SIS said this came from a source concerned about accelerated production rates of these weapons, annd that they considered it "valuable intelligence".
That October, concerns were raised abut the report, in view of the fact that using glass containers for weapons of this sort was not standard practice. It was also noted that Iraq was known to have difficulty getting holdd of one of the chemicals involved.
SIS admitted the similarity of the language used in the report to descriptions of containers full of nerve agents in The Rock, and in December acknowledged that it was possible their source had made things up.
Then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sad he was concerned about the case and was told that the US did not expect to receive further confirmation about the source. Whether or not it ultimately contributed to the decision to go to war is unclear.
