John Williams

John Williams (propagandist)

John Williams was head of PR for three successive UK Foreign Secretaries at the FCO and wrote the first draft of the government dossier on WMD.

Mr Williams, press secretary to three foreign secretaries, said that the dossier would show how wrong the Blair team was about Saddam's alleged possession of WMD. Mr Williams said: "The argument was that here was someone who had been known to possess illegal weapons. We regarded him as a threat." He added: "The document will show the mindset that everyone had. It was wrong and we know that now."

The Government has yet to decide whether to publish the draft dossier, in line with an information tribunal judgment last month. Ministers have insisted that the dossier was entirely the work of intelligence agencies, but Mr Williams's role remains unclear. Mr Williams denies that he came up with the claim that Saddam could have launched a WMD strike within 45 minutes. He said: "I was a member of the team looking at it.... I used the available information to write it, but [intelligence chief] John Scarlett was then commissioned to write it instead."

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