As we approach the 10th anniversary of possibly the most contentious and divisive war in living memory, Peter Taylor forensically investigates how key intelligence used by Downing Street and the White House to justify invading Iraq was based on fabrication, wishful thinking and lies.

Using never before first hand testimony, this Panorama special tells the story of how two high placed sources, who were very close to Saddam Hussein, talked to the CIA secretly via an intermediary and directly to M16 in the build-up to the war and stated that Iraq did not have a Weapons of Mass Destruction programme, but they were both ignored.

In a story of spies and intrigue, lies and deception, key people reveal how little intelligence Britain and America actually had and how none of the human sources at hand had any direct knowledge of WMD's. Former CIA Paris Station Chief Bill Murray tells of how he used an intermediary to recruit Iraq's Foreign Minister and of his frustration when his crucial information he gathered from his source was rejected because it did not fit the White House's agenda. The intelligence received from the Iraqi Foreign Minister was confirmed just a few months later when Iraq's Head of Intelligence passed on the same message, that Iraq did not have any WMD's, to an MI6 officer.

Lord Butler who wrote the 2004 report into the intelligence that was had on WMD's says that the British public was misled. With a plethera of revealing interviews, including an amazing exchange between the Iraqi spy and a self-confessed fabricator known only as 'Curveball', Panorama tells the in depth story, of the spies who fooled the world.