Gordon Carrera

It's not making the case for war.

It's just putting information into the public domain for people to make up their own minds about Saddam.

Sure.

No.

And in fact, I don't think it had really ever been done in this way by the Joint Intelligence Committee.

So this is really completely new.

There have been some little things.

There have been something after the run up to Afghanistan a year or two earlier, where they put some intelligence in the public domain.

And occasionally, a politician might deploy some intelligence.

But the idea of doing a dossier

to tell people about a specific thing where the government is pursuing a particular agenda, that does feel new, I think.

It's a bit more common in the US, but it's perhaps got more common.

But it is because of the power that intelligence has, isn't it?

It's because of the mystique surrounding it in intelligence agencies.

And politicians, if they're trying to make a case, are thinking, we'll have a bit of that.

We want a bit of that.

No one had ever done this before where you've got a dossier, which is going to be a joint intelligence committee dossier, but where you've got political appointees also involved in the process and commenting on it.

And I think that's where some of the difficulties come with this.

Yeah.

And that is, I think, the problem.