Ex-Navy chief 'took private legal advice on Iraq'

The head of the Royal Navy at the time of the Iraq invasion was so worried about the legality of the conflict that he sought his own private legal advice on justification for the war.

Admiral Sir Alan West, the First Sea Lord, approached lawyers to ask whether Navy and Royal Marines personnel might end up facing war crimes charges in relation to their duties in Iraq. The extraordinary steps taken by Sir Alan - which The Independent can reveal today - shows the high level of concern felt by service chiefs in the approach to war - concern that was not eased by the Attorney General's provision of a legal licence for the attack on Iraq.

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The apprehension felt by the military commanders was highlighted at one meeting where General Sir Michael Jackson, the head of the Army, is reported to have said: "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure [the former Serb leader Slobodan] Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the cell next to him in The Hague."

In the approach to the 2003 invasion, Lord Boyce, the Chief of Defence Staff, insisted that the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, provide an unequivocal written assurance that the invasion was lawful. He eventually received a two-line note from Lord Goldsmith on 14 March 2003 confirming the supposed legality of the war. It has since emerged that the Attorney General had twice changed his views on the matter prior to that note.

Lord Goldsmith also wrote to Tony Blair on 14 March, stressing it was "essential" that "strong evidence" existed that Iraq was still producing weapons of mass destruction. The Prime Minister replied the next day, saying: "This is to confirm, it is indeed the Prime Minister's unequivocal view that Iraq is in further material breach of the obligations". The information he relied on for this had formed the basis of the now discredited Iraq dossier.

On 17 March, Mr Blair presented what was described as Lord Goldsmith's opinion, presented on one side of an A4 page, to the Cabinet. The following day, Parliament voted for war.

Sir Alan refused to comment on allegations that he had "gone private" to seek legal advice. However, a senior military source said: "The defence chiefs were aware of a rising degree of worry in all three services. Some of this has been passed to them through the padres. What was noticeable was the difference in attitude among the men and women compared to the Afghan war. There was genuine unease and it was the duty of the chiefs of staff, as the head of the services, to get clarification about whether they would be in breach of international law. There was also a degree of worry about the independence or otherwise of the government legal advice.

"Admiral West approached lawyers ... on whether the impending action over Iraq was justified. It was a personal decision on his part and he felt this was necessary because of his duty of care towards people serving under him. He and the other service chiefs did not walk blindly into Iraq, they asked all the questions they could under the circumstances and with the ever-present caveat that they could not stray into the field of politics. At the end they were given Lord Goldsmith's assurance. The rest, as they say, is history."

In the event, the advice Admiral West got from the lawyers was that the invasion could just about be justified due to Saddam Hussein's flouting of United Nations resolutions, although the question of how much time Iraq should be given to comply would have to be considered carefully.

In April 2005, Mr Blair made public the full legal advice he received from Lord Goldsmith. It ran to 13 pages. The Attorney General warned that other UN nations could take Britain to an international court and that opponents could have obtained a court injunction to stop the invasion.