As well as shooting the government’s national security fox, the Commissioner has ruled that publication of the secret documents would “promote accountability” of the people who produced the dossier. He argues that this:

“would of course be of even greater significance if there was evidence that the dossier was deliberately manipulated in order to present an exaggerated case for military action”.

The Commissioner’s office says this point is “hypothetical” but it’s hard to see why Thomas, who is usually very cautious, would say something so inflammatory if it was not relevant. It certainly isn’t speculative but has been said on the basis of direct knowledge of the documents’ contents, although the Cabinet Office insisted that the Commissioner’s representatives could only view the documents at its place. It turns out that many of them are “sensitive” for reasons other than national security.

The decision notice makes clear that the government’s refusal to release the documents represents an attempt to prevent embarrassment to politicians and officials. The Commissioner agrees with me that “embarrassment to politicians is not a relevant public interest factor” justifying suppression of the documents. While he agrees that the effect of disclosure on officials is relevant, he points out that the distinction is problematic, precisely because of the suggestion that politicians and officials conspired to sex the dossier up. Translation: if Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, John Williams and co are guilty as charged, you cannot cover this up to save their blushes.

The Cabinet Office has been suspiciously determined not to tell me who the authors of the comments were, even after I submitted a further freedom of information request to find this out. They then refused to tell me even the departments for which the individuals worked. Their obsessive secrecy would make Sir Humphrey blush:

“We believe that disclosure of department names, individuals' names and designations is as inhibiting for Government business as disclosing details of the responses.”

I also now know, as I have long suspected, that the Cabinet Office directly lied to me. I had sought assurances that all of these individuals were, as had been claimed, “those whose role it is to contribute to the intelligence assessment process.” The Cabinet Office’s then Managing Director assured me that this was the case. Yet the Commissioner makes clear that some of the individuals for whom the national security exemption was claimed were, after all, “from outside the intelligence community”.

Now that the Commissioner has set out the Cabinet Office’s obstructiveness, lies and half-truths in such detail and given such a heavy hint about the documents’ contents, it is inconceivable that the government should seek to prolong the cover-up by an appeal to the Information Tribunal. But when it comes to Iraq, government policy seems to be to hide as much as it can, for as long as it can. So I won’t be holding my breath…

Chris Ames, a freelance writer and investigative journalist, is editor of iraqdossier.com