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Britain's spymaster Dearlove to quit

Britain's top spymaster has decided to retire early, dealing a damaging new blow to the government's credibility over its presentation of intelligence on Iraq.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6 (British counter intelligence), is thought to be dismayed by the visible rift between his organization and Downing Street.

At 58, he had been widely expected to stay in post for another two years, but is now likely to have left by early next year, little more than four years after he started the job in Sept. 1999.

The move is likely to worsen MI6's crisis of confidence over Downing Street's alleged manipulation of information over former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and to plunge Prime Minister Tony Blair and the intelligence services into a covert battle over the choice of Dearlove's successor.

Retired and serving MI6 officers have said they favor an internal candidate -- someone who would be seen as a standard-bearer for the freedom from political interference the service has traditionally sworn to uphold.

But Whitehall sources say Blair is seriously considering John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee -- viewed by some professionals as `fatally tainted' because he endorsed the claim in the government's dossier last September that Saddam could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.

Scarlett was a trusted member of Blair's inner circle throughout the Iraq crisis, and has now become a personal friend.

He is to give evidence to Lord Hutton's judicial inquiry into the death of the Ministry of Defence biological weapons expert David Kelly, who is said to have questioned the 45-minute assertion in his briefings to BBC journalists.

"Scarlett put his name to the dossier which included the 45-minute claim, and Blair has repeatedly cited his support in telling people it had the intelligence services' backing," one source said. "It is now uncomfortably apparent that this claim was exaggerated. He is going to be placed in a very difficult position."

Dearlove last month effectively named his own choice as his successor in the job of MI6's "C" by appointing a deputy. The post of MI6 deputy chief is normally left vacant, and is filled only when the serving "C" has announced his departure and wants to groom his successor.

Respected equally for his intellect and operational skill, he has served as a spy in Asia and South America. More recently, he led MI6's attempts to gather intelligence on Iraq. He and his colleagues are said not to dispute the main substance of the Government's September dossier, only its presentation and emphasis. Sources say they remain confident that overwhelming evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs will in due course emerge.

Meanwhile Dearlove, a graduate of Queen's College, Cambridge, has told friends that after retirement, he would like to be considered for a job as Master of an Oxbridge college.

Widely admired for his swift and decisive response to the terrorist attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001, Dearlove restructured MI6 to focus on Islamist extremism, and began a big recruiting drive for more Arabic speakers and Muslims. But while he was close to Blair in the period after the attacks, accompanying him on trips to build support for the anti-terrorist coalition, there were signs that once the government began to concentrate mainly on Iraq, his influence had waned.

He was rarely seen in Blair's company, and his presence on diplomatic missions ceased. In the index to a recent book by former <> editor Peter Stothard, who was granted constant fly-on-the-wall access to Blair during the Iraq crisis, Dearlove's name does not appear. There are, however, numerous references to Scarlett.

Scarlett is a former MI6 man who served there with distinction, leading the operation which saved the life of MI6's agent inside the Soviet KGB, Oleg Gordievsky. But intelligence sources are scathing about his association with Blair's media adviser Alastair Campbell, who has described him as a "mate," and by his public endorsement of the September dossier.

The fiercest criticism relates to the fact that Scarlett allowed Campbell, a political appointee with no intelligence training or expertise, to chair a meeting which discussed the dossier and the raw intelligence behind it before publication.
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