Is it possible for a film to inspire a real event? The answer might be found in a famous film from 1996, The Rock, which achieved great success and received praise from both audiences and critics. However, it appears that the film’s plot not only captivated moviegoers but also intrigued intelligence agencies such as the British MI6. A recent report suggests that MI6 used the film’s story to help justify the military intervention and invasion of Iraq, as if the film’s director, Michael Bay, were to blame for the invasion due to his creation of this cinematic masterpiece.
This information emerged from the Chilcot Inquiry, a seven-year investigation into the UK’s role in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The inquiry aimed to provide a comprehensive picture of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s conduct before the war and his handling of intelligence, particularly in misusing it to assert that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The 2016 report revealed that British intelligence had relied on the plot of The Rock as a source of information to support its case for war and the removal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
In the film, actor Ed Harris plays a military commander who, with the help of loyal soldiers, seizes a stockpile of rockets armed with deadly nerve gases and takes over Alcatraz prison. He threatens to launch the rockets at San Francisco if the US government does not meet his demands. To stop him, FBI chemical weapons specialist Nicolas Cage and former Alcatraz inmate Sean Connery, who previously escaped from the prison, are brought in. They successfully thwart the plan and save the city.
The element from the film that caught the attention of MI6 was the VX nerve gas, which Harris’s character stored in spherical glass containers filled with green liquid. A September 2002 MI6 report stated that a new, unnamed source had provided information suggesting Iraq had developed exceptional capabilities in biological and chemical weapons, including VX nerve gas, sarin, and soman, stored in containers, including spherical glass ones. Analysts within the intelligence agency were initially shocked by the similarities to the film The Rock.
According to the Chilcot Inquiry, glass containers are not typically used for chemical weapons, and the film inaccurately depicted nerve gases being stored in glass spheres. Despite these concerns, the intelligence analysts continued to rely on the same source in a report claiming that Iraq was accelerating its chemical and biological weapons programs and building additional facilities. This information was used by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to justify the war. However, by February 2003, MI6 confirmed their suspicions, revealing that the source had been lying. Nevertheless, preparations for the Iraq War were already underway, culminating in the invasion in March of the same year. In the aftermath, British intelligence tracked down the alleged source of the fabricated information, who had claimed to have been provided the details by someone involved in Iraq’s chemical weapons program before 1991. After extensive investigations, MI6 concluded that the source had been deceitful from the start, thus contributing to the UK’s involvement in the war.
