David Weisberg, who co-wrote 1996 thriller which Chilcot inquiry suspected to be source for crucial yet false details about Iraqs nerve gas resource, says he was dismayed experts didnt realise green balls of gas were fabrication.
The man behind 1996 thriller The Rock has expressed his amazement a key detail from the plot was apparently used by an intelligence agent to fabricate evidence which aided the case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Speaking to the Guardian on Friday, David Weisberg, who co-scripted the Sean Connery/Nicolas Cage hit with late writing partner Douglas Cook, said the green glass globes feared to be central to the agents evidence were complete fabrication pure invention designed to try and add visual excitement to an dull technology.
The Chilcot report, published on Wednesday, found that Britains Secret Intelligence Service was led to understand Saddam Husseins regime was continuing to produce weapons of mass destruction based, in part, on the testimony of a source said to have direct access.
This information, revealed in September 2002, claimed intensive anthrax production was underway in the country. Chilcots findings reported that questions were raised after t was pointed out that glass containers were not typically used in chemical munitions, and that a popular movie [The Rock] had inaccurately depicted nerve agents being carried in glass beads or spheres.
However, despite MI6 concluding a month before the invasion that the source had been lying over a period of time, they failed to inform Tony Blair or others that the veracity of the evidence presented was in any doubt.
What was so amazing, said Weisberg, was anybody in the poison gas community would immediately know that this was total bullshit such obvious bullshit.