The Committee
Lord Butler of Brockwell headed the five-member committee which included senior parliamentarians and civil servants with military and intelligence links:
- The Lord Butler of Brockwell, career civil servant who served three prime ministers as Cabinet Secretary.
- Field Marshal The Lord Inge, a crossbencher who was Chief of the Defence Staff from 1994 to 1997.
- Sir John Chilcot, a career diplomat and top civil servant.
- Ann Taylor, Labour MP who supported the invasion of Iraq, chair of the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), and former chief whip of the Labour Party.
- Michael Mates Conservative MP who supported the invasion of Iraq, chair of the Northern Ireland select committee. He is also a member of the ISC.
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.
Read more about this topic: Butler Review
Famous quotes containing the word committee:
“Like other cities created overnight in the Outlet, Woodward acquired between noon and sunset of September 16, 1893, a population of five thousand; and that night a voluntary committee on law and order sent around the warning, “if you must shoot, shoot straight up!””
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The absence on the panel of anyone who could become pregnant accidentally or discover her salary was five thousand dollars a year less than that of her male counterpart meant there was a hole in the consciousness of the committee that empathy, however welcome, could not entirely fill.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)