The long-delayed Chilcot inquiry report will be published without crucial evidence that would reveal what Tony Blair promised President George Bush in the runup to the invasion of Iraq 10 years ago, Whitehall sources have indicated to the Guardian.
Sir John Chilcot and his four-member panel have been at loggerheads with the Cabinet Office, the chief protector of government documents, over the disclosure of evidence they have described as of central importance in establishing the circumstances that led to war. In sharp exchanges with the former cabinet secretary Lord O'Donnell last year over the refusal to disclose details of correspondence and conversations between Blair and Bush, Chilcot said their release would serve to "illuminate Mr Blair's position at critical points" in the runup to war.
O'Donnell consulted Blair before suppressing the documents. Chilcot, who has seen the documents, told O'Donnell last year: "The question when and how the prime minister made commitments to the US about the UK's involvement in military action in Iraq, and subsequent decisions on the UK's continuing involvement, is central to its considerations."
Chilcot referred to passages in memoirs, including Blair's autobiography, A Journey, and disclosures by Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, and Alastair Campbell, his former head of communications.
Those publications, and the refusal to disclose Blair's notes, Chilcot said, "leads to the position that individuals may disclose privileged information (without sanction) whilst a committee of privy counsellors established by a former prime minister to review the issues cannot".
O'Donnell told Chilcot that releasing Blair's notes would damage Britain's relations with the US and would not be in the public interest. "We have attached particular importance to protecting the privacy of the channel between the prime minister and president," he said. Sir Jeremy Heywood, O'Donnell's successor, is believed to share O'Donnell's approach to the release of the documents. It may be decades before the notes are released.
Chilcot first suggested that his report would be completed by early summer 2011. He then said he hoped it would be completed by autumn last year. Then, last summer, he said he hoped the inquiry team would be in a position to begin the "Maxwellisation" process by the middle of this year. Under this process, those whom the inquiry intends to criticise are given a copy of passages of the draft report to enable them to respond. The process derives from Companies Act investigations.
Chilcot has yet to commit the inquiry panel to be ready to hand a completed report to David Cameron before the end of the year. The prime minister and his official advisers will consider the report before it is published.
Whitehall sources make it clear that Downing Street intends to keep tight control over the manner in which the final report is published.
The Chilcot inquiry says on its website that it has not yet begun a "dialogue with the government on the treatment of discussions in cabinet and cabinet committees, and the UK position in discussions between the prime minister and the heads of state or government of other nations".
However, it goes out of the way to stress that Whitehall's refusal to declassify records of Blair-Bush conversations is not a reason for any delay in completing the report.
Given Chilcot's frosty exchanges with the Cabinet Office specifically over notes of those conversations, the implication is that the inquiry team may have given up kicking against what appears to be a brick wall.
Chilcot also made it clear in a letter to Cameron last year that he and his fellow panel members are deeply frustrated by Whitehall's refusal to release papers that reveal which ministers, legal advisers and officials were excluded from discussions on military action. The papers kept secret include those relating to MI6 and the government's electronic eavesdropping centre, GCHQ.
Despite his refusal to release the Blair-Bush papers, O'Donnell said in evidence to the inquiry that the cabinet should have been told of former attorney general Lord Goldsmith's doubts about the legality of invading Iraq before Blair went to war. "The ministerial code is very clear about the need, when the attorney general gives written advice, the full text of that advice should be attached [to cabinet papers]," O'Donnell said.
The inquiry held 18 months of public hearings between the end of 2009 and early 2011. Witnesses, including former cabinet secretaries and military commanders, strongly criticised the way Blair and his close advisers in Downing Street took key decisions without consulting senior ministers and the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith.
