Gee whiz banged

Weapons: Downer admits being told

Marian Wilkinson
September 1, 2006
AdvertisementAdvertisement

THE Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has confirmed for the first time that he was personally told by a senior Australian weapons inspector that the US-led weapons hunt in postwar Iraq was seriously flawed.

But he denies suppressing a damning six-page letter by the inspector, John Gee, who resigned from the Iraq Survey Group in March 2004.

The letter outlines in detail interference by the CIA and the Bush Administration in first reports about the weapons hunt to avoid finding that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

Dr Gee, one of Australia's leading chemical weapons experts, briefed Mr Downer on his concerns after his resignation. He bluntly told him that he believed Iraq had no such weapons.

While praising Dr Gee as "a serious person", Mr Downer said yesterday: "I personally gave no instructions that it [his letter] was to be or wasn't to be distributed."

"As far as I knew, people around the Government were very well aware of Dr Gee's concerns. We had no reason not to want to hear what he had to say."

Labor's spokesman on Foreign Affairs, Kevin Rudd, yesterday accused Mr Downer of a cover-up over the affair for now revealing he had been told months before there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "He didn't want that message to get out to the Australian public before the 2004 federal election. That is where this thing stinks."