Telegraph | News | White House 'double-crossed' Blair, says Plame husband

Tony Blair was "doubled crossed" by US President George W Bush's aides in the run-up to the Iraq war, according to the former diplomat at the centre of a political crisis engulfing the White House.

Joe Wilson, the husband of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent who was allegedly 'outed' by senior administration figures, made the claim in an interview for the BBC.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Wilson said: "I watched the way that the British built their case, and it was a disarmament case as best I could see it.

"Mr Blair came to the US when Mr Bush was talking about regime change, and when he left Mr Bush started talking about disarmament as the objective.

"Mr Bush went to the United Nations, I think that that had a lot to do with the influence of the British. I think that Mr Blair really thought that he was getting involved in a disarmament campaign, which was all to the good - I fully supported that.

"I think at the end of the day he was double-crossed by the regime change crowd in Washington."

Mr Wilson, a former US ambassador, looked into the Bush administration's accusation that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium in Niger.

Mr Wilson found that the accusation was untrue and attacked Mr Bush for using the claim.

Mr Wilson said that four months before that State of the Union speech, the Senate was briefed on the issue and the CIA's deputy director warned that it believed that British intelligence sources - which had supplied the Niger uranium allegation - had "stretched the case".