LONDON -- Britain's influential spy watchdog criticized the government on Tuesday for releasing a dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons concealment program without checking its contents with intelligence services. The document -- dubbed the "dodgy dossier" by Britain's media because much of it was plagiarized from a student thesis -- was one of three published by Prime Minister Tony Blair to justify preparations for war on Iraq. The Intelligence and Security Committee said Blair's February document, which set out the role of Iraq's security services in hiding banned weapons from UN inspectors, had not been cleared with the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6. "It is imperative that the agencies are consulted before any of their material is published," the committee said in its annual report. "This process was not followed". Pre-empting the report last Sunday, Blair's office said his communications chief Alastair Campbell had apologized to MI6 chief Richard Dearlove and promised to take more care in future when publishing intelligence material. The committee is also opening an investigation into claims that the government pressured intelligence chiefs to "sex up" an earlier dossier which set out the evidence of Saddam Hussein's alleged biological and chemical weapons arsenal. The issue has dogged Blair in recent weeks as pressure mounts for him to show evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that he said justified war. Weeks after Saddam was toppled by U.S. and British forces, none has yet been found. A U.S. Senate committee will also investigate the validity of intelligence information about the threat Iraq posed. "There is not a shred of evidence, absolutely no evidence at all, that we have doctored or manipulated intelligence," Blair told a news conference on Tuesday. "That would be absolutely gross if we did so. We have not done so." The committee of parliamentarians, which reports directly to Blair, said it was too soon to deliver a full verdict on the role of intelligence in the Iraq war. But it criticized the prime minister and his senior colleagues for not overseeing closely enough the long term priorities of the intelligence and security agencies, and warned of gaps in intelligence on potential hot spots around the world. "Intelligence assets are most useful when they can warn of and disrupt hostile action rather than being used to deal with current crises," the committee said. "With the focus on current crises, the agencies' long-term capacity to provide warnings is being eroded."