John Williams (UK spin doctor)

John Williams was a head of news, press secretary and director of communications in three successive UK Foreign Secretaries at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office until 2006.

He is now a director of West One Communications, 'an international consultancy in strategic communications and media relations, mainly to governments'.

Activities

Williams reportedly wrote the first draft of the government dossier on WMD.

Mr Williams, press secretary to three foreign secretaries, said that the dossier would show how wrong the Blair team was about Saddam's alleged possession of WMD. Mr Williams said: "The argument was that here was someone who had been known to possess illegal weapons. We regarded him as a threat." He added: "The document will show the mindset that everyone had. It was wrong and we know that now."

The Government has yet to decide whether to publish the draft dossier, in line with an information tribunal judgment last month. Ministers have insisted that the dossier was entirely the work of intelligence agencies, but Mr Williams's role remains unclear. Mr Williams denies that he came up with the claim that Saddam could have launched a WMD strike within 45 minutes. He said: "I was a member of the team looking at it.... I used the available information to write it, but [intelligence chief] John Scarlett was then commissioned to write it instead."