Butler Review The Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction , widely known as the Butler Review after its chairman Lord Robin Butler of Brockwell , was announced on the 3rd of February 2004 by the British Government and published on the 4th July 2004 . It examined the intelligence on Iraq ' s weapons of mass destruction which played a key part in the Government ' s decision to invade Iraq ( as part of the U . S . - led coalition ) in 2003 . A similar Iraq Intelligence Commission was set up in the USA . Despite the apparent certainty of both governments prior to the war that Iraq possessed such weapons , no such illegal weapons or programs were found by the Iraq Survey Group . The inquiry also dealt with the wider issue of WMD programmes in " countries of concern " and the global trade in WMD . Recommendations were made to the prime minister to better evaluate and assess intelligence information in the future before invoking action . The committee . Lord Butler of Brockwell headed the five - member committee which included senior parliamentarians and civil servants with military and intelligence links : The Butler Review followed procedures similar to the Franks Committee inquiry into the Falklands War . The inquiry had access to all intelligence reports and other government papers , and it could call witnesses to give oral evidence . It worked closely with the US inquiry and the Iraq Survey Group . The committee met in secret and only its conclusions were published on 14 July 2004 . Background . The British government followed US President George W . Bush who had created a similar Iraq Intelligence Commission one day earlier . The Butler Inquiry ' s remit did not extend to an examination of the political decision making process . Controversy . The Liberal Democrats opted not to take part , because the role of politicians had been excluded from the Inquiry ' s remit . ( Senior Lib Dem MP Alan Beith was to have been the sixth member of the panel ) . Explaining their position Foreign Affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell asked the prime minister : Don ' t you understand . . . that following the public response to the Hutton report that an inquiry that excludes politicians from scrutiny is unlikely to command public confidence . . . On 1 March 2004 the Conservative Party announced that they would not be taking part in the inquiry either . Conservative leader Michael Howard said that this was because Lord Butler of Brockwell ' s interpretation of the terms of reference were " unacceptably restrictive " . Conservative member Michael Mates stated that he would remain on the committee . Conclusions of the Review . The review was published on 14 July 2004 . Its main conclusion was that key intelligence used to justify the war with Iraq has been shown to be unreliable . It claims that the Secret Intelligence Service did not check its sources well enough and sometimes relied on third hand reports . It criticises the use of the 45 minute claim in the 2002 dossier as " unsubstantiated " , and says that there was an over - reliance on Iraqi dissident sources . It also comments that warnings from the Joint Intelligence Committee on the limitations of the intelligence were not made clear . Overall it said that " more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear " , and that judgements had stretched available intelligence " to the outer limits " . It says that information from another country ' s intelligence service on Iraqi production of chemical and biological weapons was " seriously flawed " , without naming the country . It says that there was no recent intelligence to demonstrate that Iraq was a greater threat than other countries , and that the lack of any success in the UNMOVIC finding WMDs should have prompted a re - think . It states that Tony Blair ' s policy towards Iraq shifted because of the attacks of 11 September 2001 , not because of Iraq ' s weapons programme , and that the government ' s language left the impression that there was " fuller and firmer intelligence " than was the case . The report indicated that there was enough intelligence to make a " well - founded " judgment that Saddam Hussein was seeking , perhaps as late as 2002 , to obtain uranium illegally from Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo ( 6 . 4 para . 499 ) . In particular , referring to a 1999 visit of Iraqi officials to Niger , the report states ( 6 . 4 para . 503 ) : " The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium . Since uranium constitutes almost three - quarters of Niger ' s exports , the intelligence was credible . " Stauber and Rampton , however , noted that " the " Butler Report " offers no details - - not even an approximate date when this may have happened , thus giving no way to assess its credibility . The British have also declined to share any information about this intelligence , even with the International Atomic Energy Agency , which was responsible for prewar monitoring of Iraq ' s nuclear capability . In any case , the Congo ' s uranium mine was flooded and sealed several decades ago , which means that Iraq would not have been able to obtain uranium there even if it tried . " This intelligence ( which had controversially found its way into George W . Bush ' s 2003 State of the Union speech ) had previously ( before September 2003 [ C . May , 2004 ] ) been thought to rely on forged documents . The Butler Review stated that " the forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made . " ( 6 . 4 para . 503 ) Taking into account the American intelligence community ’ s findings on the matter , it is true that in December 2003 , then CIA director George Tenet conceded that the inclusion of the claim in the State of the Union address was a mistake . ( " CNN . com " , 2003 ) However , Tenet believed so , not due to any compelling evidence to the contrary , but rather because the CIA ( criticized concerning this matter by the Senate Report of Pre - war Intelligence on Iraq [ Schmidt , 2004 ] ) had failed to investigate the claim thoroughly ; however again , the Butler Review states ( 6 . 4 para . 497 ) in 2002 the CIA " agreed that there was evidence that [ uranium from Africa ] had been sought . " In the run - up to war in Iraq , the British Intelligence Services apparently believed that Iraq had been trying to obtain uranium from Africa ; however , no evidence has been passed on to the IAEA apart from the forged documents ( 6 . 4 Para . 502 ) . ( " Times Online " , 2003 ) The report did not blame any specific individuals . It specifically stated that John Scarlett , the head of the JIC should not resign , and indeed should take up his new post as head of MI6 . Criticism . Appointees . " Private Eye " magazine expressed misgivings against members of a committee personally appointed by Prime Minister Tony Blair . The magazine was particularly critical over the choice selection of New Labour Party politician and close acquaintance Ann Taylor , writing " Taylor is hardly a disinterested observer : she was herself involved in the famous ' September dossier ' that explained Blair ' s reasons for going to war . " On 18 September 2002 an official in Blair ' s office sent this memo to chief of staff Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell : " The PM has asked Ann Taylor to read through the dossier in draft and give us any comments . He stressed that it is for her and for her only and that no one else outside this building was seeing it in draft . I ' m contacting John Scarlett to work out how this should happen — needs to be tomorrow . " Taylor went to Scarlett ' s office at 8 o ' clock the next morning , read the dossier and gave her comments to the spy chief — who then passed them on to Blair . She advised that it " needs to come across as an impartial , professional assessment of the threat " , and that the PM should " undercut critics " by explaining why Saddam should be stopped now . So the only person outside No 10 and the JIC who was trusted to help with the dossier ( and who also expressed a wish to see Blair ' s critics undercut ) is now sitting on the inquiry into its contents . One wonders why Blair didn ' t go the whole hog and add Alastair Campbell to Lord Butler ' s team of independent inquisitors . Lynne Jones ( MP ) was also critical of Taylor ' s involvement in subsequent inquiries , stating : " It is self - evidently bad practice to appoint someone to a committee when their previous conclusions are under scrutiny " . A piece in the " Western Mail " was more direct , noting of a joke that followed the publication of the report : " When you call the Butler , you get what you ordered " . Uranium conclusion . Nuclear expert Norman Dombey , a professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Sussex , said the information relied upon by the Butler Review on the Niger issue was incomplete . " The Butler report says the claim was credible because an Iraqi diplomat visited Niger in 1999 , and almost three - quarters of Niger ' s exports were uranium . But this is irrelevant , since France controls Niger ' s uranium mines " . Dombey also noted that Iraq already had some 550 tonnes of uranium compound sitting in its gutted Tuwaitha nuclear research center : Iraq already had far more uranium than it needed for any conceivable nuclear weapons programme . . . . Nuclear weapons are difficult and expensive to build not because uranium is scarce , but because it is difficult and expensive to enrich U235 from 0 . 7 per cent to the 90 per cent needed for a bomb . Enrichment plants are large , use a lot of electricity and are almost impossible to conceal . Neither British security services nor the CIA seriously thought Iraq had a functioning enrichment plant that would have justified all the noise about nuclear weapons we heard before the war . When I read of the supposed Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger , I thought it smelt distinctly fishy . . . . It was a gigantic red herring . London ' s " Evening Standard " daily newspaper dismissed the report ' s findings , under the front - page headline " Whitewash ( Part Two ) " , saying Lord Butler had effectively thrown Tony Blair " a lifebelt " by claiming that Saddam was indeed trying to procure uranium from Niger in 1999 to build a nuclear bomb , and concluding that illicit " material may be hidden in the sand " .