INTRODUCTION •xxxilearn that his army minister had been visiting call girls at a flat used by
an MI5 surveillance operation, leading to the resignation of Lord Lamb-
ton and another minister, Lord Jellicoe. John Major’s government sur-
vived a Commons division on the Matrix Churchill fiasco by just one
vote. Similarly, Tony Blair’s government failed to find the weapons of
mass destruction so confidently described and predicted by the Joint
Intelligence Committee, which then had its performance scrutinized by
an independent inquiry conducted by Lord Hutton in January 2004. Al-
though the government escaped censure, the JIC did not need to be re-
minded of the dangers of being sucked into the policy process or
participating in what amounted to political pamphleteering and was
obliged to endure further scrutiny from a panel of privy councilors
headed by the former cabinet secretary Lord Butler.
In the final accounting, whatever the result of any profit-and-loss cal-
culation that assesses the contribution made by British Intelligence to
the country’s history, there can be little doubt that the part played by
the various organizations has had a major influence on events, strategy,
and the public’s perception of each.