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Operation Rockingham was the codeword for UK involvement in inspections in Iraq following the war over Kuwait in 1990-91. Early in 1991 the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) was established to oversee the destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Use of the codeword was referred to in the annual British defence policy white paper "Statement on the Defence Estimates 1991" (published in July that year as Command Paper 1559-I) where at page 28 it states "The United Kingdom is playing a full part in the work of the Special Commission; our involvement is known as Operation ROCKINGHAM." The activities carried out by the UK as part of Rockingham were detailed in the following white paper (published in July 1992 as Command Paper 1981). The codename languished in obscurity for a decade or so, used only by those in support of inspections in Iraq. Each department of the UK government directly involved in these support activities would have its staff allocated to "Rockingham" duties. In the Defence Intelligence Staff, the team involved with Iraq activities was known as the "Rockingham Cell". The codename hit the headlines after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, over allegations that Operation Rockingham was a propaganda effort within the British intelligence world. ==The Rockingham Allegations== Former U.S. military intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter claimed that Operation Rockingham was a secret UK intelligence unit in an interview with the Scottish Sunday Herald in June 2003. Journalist Neil Mackay described the function of Operation Rockingham, in Ritter's words, as "producing misleading intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which could be used as justification for action against Iraq". The article claimed, based on Ritter's allegations, that the Rockingham cell was at the center of various British and US intelligence organisations collecting information on Iraq's WMD, and that the unit dealt with intelligence obtained from a variety of sources, including Iraqi defectors and the UN arms inspections organisation in Iraq UNSCOM, which Rockingham had penetrated. According to Scott Ritter the unit amassed evidence selectively, with government backing, for political goals: "Operation Rockingham cherry-picked intelligence. It received hard data, but had a preordained outcome in mind. It only put forward a small percentage of the facts when most were ambiguous or noted no WMD... It became part of an effort to maintain a public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance with the inspections. They had to sustain the allegation that Iraq had WMD () Unscom was showing the opposite." For example, Ritter claimed, Rockingham would leak false information to weapons inspectors but then use the inspections as evidence for WMD: "Rockingham was the source of some very controversial information which led to inspections of a suspected ballistic missile site. We ... found nothing. However, our act of searching allowed the US and UK to say that the missiles existed." Ritter alleged that "Operation Rockingham" assumed a central role within the UK intelligence system in building the case that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities constituted a threat to the UK and the US. Ritter said that the Rockingham cell included military officers, intelligence services representatives as well as civilian Ministry of Defence personnel. According to Ritter, the British weapons expert David Kelly, played an important role in Operation Rockingham. Ritter describes him as "Rockingham's go-to person for translating the data that came out of Unscom into concise reporting". The day before he died, Kelly had told the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) : "Within the defence intelligence services I liaise with the Rockingham cell." Although this evidence was given in secret, a transcript was released to the Hutton Inquiry. ((1) ) The press jumped on a suggestion that the only other public mention of "Operation Rockingham" prior to David Kelly's ISC evidence was by Brigadier Richard Holmes while giving evidence to the defence select committee in June 1998. ((2) ) This clearly overlooked the public references to Rockingham that had been made in 1991 and 1992. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Operation Rockingham」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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