It is with great sadness that I have to report the death of Dr Brian Jones.
Brian was the intelligence official who had the courage to query his superiors and raise concerns about the now infamous Iraqi WMD dossier drafted for Downing Street in 2002.
The Hutton Inquiry saw evidence from Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, from John Scarlett and Richard Dearlove. But for my money the real 'star witness' was Dr Brian Francis Gill Jones.
He was not a household name, but to me he represented everything that is honourable about the men and women who work behind the scenes in the intelligence services. In an era when 'public service' has become tarnished, Brian was a public servant in the truest sense of the phrase.
I find it difficult to write about him in the past tense, but his wife Linda has just rung with the news and she would like as many of his friends and contacts as possible to know of his passing. Brian passed away last week after a short illness. He was just 67 and leaves behind Linda and their two sons.
My finest hour at the Independent stemmed directly from Dr Brian Jones. It was during the Hutton Inquiry that I noticed buried in the documents a reference to a mysterious figure known only from his acronym within the DIS (the Defence Intelligence Staff, the lesser known section of our security services).
After I mentioned this obscure piece of evidence in the newspaper, Brian rang up and said he wanted to talk. We met up and I soon realised just how fastidious he was about the terminology used within the intelligence services - and how upset he had been by the way the dossier had been used by Tony Blair to make the case for war.
He had no political axe to grind and was a journalist's dream source: straight-talking, passionate and utterly, unimpeachably credible. He was also a bloody nice guy. Softly-spoken, but deadly serious about his work.
Brian disliked the title 'whistleblower'. He felt that people who work within the security services should never divulge sensitive material and felt that concerns had to be dealt with internally wherever possible. But that was the whole point about that September dossier:his and others' concerns were not dealt with. They were ignored and felt sidelined by the political narrative. When he did step out of the shadows, it was to correct the record.
You can read my 2003 Independent interview with Brian HERE (see Annex D). One of his best lines covered the role of the intelligence assessment experts in DIS:
"It's not a sexy part of the process, is it? It's not James Bond, it's the backroom boys, it's the boys down in the engine room with the oily rag, if you like".
His wife Linda was alongside him for the interview (which don't forget was a big deal for an intelligence official, even a retired one). She put it like this:
"It's like going to a garage and the mechanic saying, 'sorry, your brakes are faulty', only to find the office accounts manager coming in to say 'don't worry, your car's fine, you can drive it away'. Who would you rather believe?"
I know who I believed.
Brian was always a sceptic. He was singled out for praise by both Hutton and Butler but he wasn't that impressed with their efforts. When I last talked to him, he wasn't too convinced by Chilcot either, though he was ready to be surprised.
Brian's last web post (a must-read) was for Chris Ames' Iraq Inquiry Digest site and it was a typically forthright warning of the dangers of forgetting the lessons of 2002/3. He loathed the 'We all got it wrong' excuse trotted out about Iraq WMD by politicians of all stripes. He was one of those who didn't get it wrong at all.
Indeed, with all of the recent stories on Iran's own nuclear programme, it sometimes feels like Groundhog Day as we read once more of centrifuges, links to Al Qaeda and enriched uranium.
But it's also worth pointing out that Brian felt that one of the real tragedies* about the Iraqi WMD fiasco was that the world would take its eye off the real proliferation threat posed by Iran (as well as Pakistan and the Russians). He would probably want that Tehran threat confronted if the evidence stacked up. He wasn't a pacificist, yet he was a stickler for the truth.
Thanks in no small part to people like Dr David Kelly and Dr Brian Jones, at least Britain will never again force its intelligence officials or their assessments to bear the burden of a Prime Minister sending troops to war.
Rest in peace, Brian. We'll miss you.
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