Gaby Hinsliff, political editor The Observer, Sunday February 17 2008
The secret first draft of the notorious Iraq dossier that helped to take Britain to war is expected to be released tomorrow, in a victory for freedom of information campaigners.
The early version written by John Williams, then director of communications at the Foreign Office, has been the subject of a three-year legal wrangle amid hopes that it could reveal whether the supposedly intelligence-led dossier was actually based on a press officer's script - and whether it was subsequently 'sexed up' by Alastair Campbell.
The draft is understood not to contain the infamous claim that Saddam Hussein could launch a strike with 'weapons of mass destruction' within 45 minutes, a claim that was central to the final 'dodgy dossier'.
Yesterday Williams attacked the decision to withhold the document for so long. 'If the government withholds a piece of paper, it immediately makes it significant; it almost doesn't matter what it says,' he argued. 'That's what I said at the time: why are we withholding it?'
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/17/iraq.iraq