"How a former intelligence officer became a whistleblower on a collision course with his country's government. On 11 March 2003, Andrew Wilkie resigned from Australia’s senior intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, in protest over the looming Iraq war. He was the only serving Intelligence Officer from the Coalition of the Willing--the US, UK and Australia--to do so, and his dramatic action was reported throughout the world. In Axis of Deceit, Wilkie offers timely insights into the world of international intelligence and details of his life as a spook, in the lead-up to a controversial and divisive war. Wilkie’s pre-war statements have proven remarkably accurate: he was convinced Iraq did not pose a serious enough security threat to justify a war. In particular, he assessed
* Iraq’s military to be weak
* Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction program to be disjointed and contained
* no evidence of Iraq's active co-operation with al Quaida
Wilkie assesses how the case for war was made in Washington, London and Canberra and explains how the three governments routinely skewed, spun and fabricated the relevant intelligence.
