BBC TELEVISION

SPECIAL TRANSCRIPTION
TRANSCRIBED: JUNE 18 2003
RECORDED : MAY 29TH 2003

TODAY PROGRAMME

JH : The government is facing more questions this morning

over its claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Our
defence-correspondent is Andrew Gilligan, this in particular
Andy is Tony Blair saying, they'd be ready to go within forty
five minutes.

AG : That's right, that was the central claim in his dossier

which he published in September, the main erm, case if you
like against er, against Iraq and the main statement of the
British government's belief of what it thought Iraq was up to
and what we've been told by one of the senior officials in
charge of drawing up that dossier was that, actually the
government probably emt, knew that that forty five minute
figure was wrong, even before it decided to put it in. 'What this
person says, is that a week before the publication date of the
dossier, it was actually rather erm, a bland production. It
didn't, the, the draft prepared for Mr Blair by the Intelligence
Agencies actually didn't say very much more than was public
knowledge already and erm, Downing Street, our source say-,,
ordered a week before publication, ordered it to be sexed up, to
be made more exciting and ordered more facts to be er, to be
discovered.

JH: When you say `more facts to be discovered', does that

suggest that they may not have been facts .

AG: Well, erm, our source says that the dossier, as it was
finally published, made the Intelligence Services unhappy, erm,
because, to quote erm the source he said, there was basically,
that there was, there was, there was unhappiness because it
didn't reflect the considered view they were putting forward.
that's a quote from our source and essentially, erm, the forty
five minute point er, was, was probably the most important
thing that was added. Erm, and the reason it hadn't been m the
original draft was that it was, it was only erm, it only came
from one source and most of the other claims were from two,
and the intelligence agencies say they don't really believe it
was necessarily true because they thought the person making
the claim had actually made a mistake, it got, had got rnixed
up .

JH: Does any of this matter now, all this, all these months
later. The war's been fought and won .

AG: Well the forty five minutes isn't just a detail, it did go to
the heart of the government's case that Saddam was an
imminent threat and it was repeated four times m the dossier,
including by the ?rime Minister himself, in the forward ; so I
think it probably does matter, Clearly, you 'Know, if enn, if 3t,
if it was, if it was wrong, things do, things are, got wrong m
good faith but if they lciew, it was wrong before they actually
made the claim, that's perhaps a bit more serious .

JH: Andrew, many thanks ; more about that later .

END OF FIRST RECORDING

7H: Twenty eight minutes to eight. Tony Blair had quite a job
persuading the country and indeed his own MP s to support the
invasion of Iraq ; his main argument was that Saddam had
weapons of mass destruction that threatened us all . None of
those weapons has been found. Now our defence
correspondent, Andrew Gilhgan, has found evidence that the
government's dossier on Iraq that was produced last
September, was cobbled together at the last minute with some
unconfirmed material that had not been approved by the
Securiry Services . Now you told us about this earlier on the
programme Andy, and we've had a statement from 10
Downing Street that says it's not true, and let me ,lust quote
what they said to you . `Not one word of the dossier was not
entirely the work of the intelligence agencies' . Sorry to submit
you to this sort of English but there we are . I think we know
what they mean. Are you suggesting, let's be very clear about
this, that it was not the work of the intelligence agencies.

AG: No, the information which I'm told was dubious did come
from the agencies, but they were unhappy about it, because
they didn't they think it should have been in there . They
thouoht it was, it was not corroborated sufficiently, and they
actually thought it was wrong, they thought the informant
concerned erm, had got it wrong, they thought he'd
misunderstood what was happening .

I mean let's, let's go through this. This is the dossier that was
published in September last year, erm, probably the rnost
substantial statement of the government's case against Iraq .
You'll remember that the Cornmons was recalled to deba-te it,
Tony Blair made the opening speech. It is not the same as the
famous dodgy dossier, the one that was copied off the internet,
that came later. This is quite a serious document. It domirnated
the news that day and you open up the dossier and th-- first
thing you see is a preface written by Tony Blair that includes
the following words, `Saddam's military planning allows for
some weapons of mass destruction to be ready within forty five
minutes of an order to deploy them' . Now that claim has come
back to haunt Mr Blair because if the weapons had been that
readily to hand, they probably would have been found by z,o-,v.
But you know, it could have been an honest mistake, but what I
have been told is that the government knew that claim was
questionable, even before the war, even before they wrote it in
their dossier .

I have spoken to a British official who was involved 7n the

preparation of the dossier, and he told me that until the -%7veck
before it was published, the draft dossier produced by the
Intelligence Services, added little to what was already publicly
known. He said, `It was transformed in the week before :t was
published, to make it sexisr. The classic example was the
statement that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use
,within forty frve minutes. That information was not in the
original draft. It was included in the dossier against our
wishes, because it wasn't reliable. Most things in the dossier
were double source, but that was single source, and we
believed £Zat the source was wrong'

Now this official told us that the transformation of the dossier

took place at the behest of Downing Street, and he added,
`Most people in intelligence weren't happy with the dossier,
because it didn't reflect the considered view they were putting
forward' . Now I want to stress that this official and others I've
spoken to, do still believe that Iraq did have some sort of
weapons of mass destruction pro ;ramrne `I believe it is about
30°o right:y there was a chemical weapons programme in the
six months before the war and considerably more likely, that
there was a biological weapons programme . We think Hans
B1ix dowT-played a couple of potentially interesting pieces of
evidence, bu: the weapons programmes were small : sanctions
did limit the programmes.

The official also added quite an interesting no'e about what has
happened as a result since the war, of the capture of some Iraqi
-1e,'IvD scientists. 'We don't have a great deal more
information yet than we had before . We have not got very
much out of the detainees yet .'

Now the forty five minutes really is, is not just a detail, it did
go to the heart of the govemment's case that Saddam was an
imminent threat, and it was repeated a further three times in the
body of the dossier, and I understand that the parliamentary
intelligence and security comnitttee is going to conduct an
enquiry in to the claims made by the British Government about
Iraq, and it is obviously this land of issue that will be at the
heart of their investigation .

TH: Andrew Gilligan, many thanks .

END OF SECOND PIECE WITH ANDREW GILLIGA_N

INTO ADAM INGRAM PIECE

JH: The Armed Forces Minister, Adam Ingram is on the line.

Good morning Mr Ingram .

AS Good morning .

JH: Why were we using cluster bombs m built up areas winen

we specifically said we would not.

AI: Well I don't think that is, is er, an allegation fnat stands up
to to full examination. Brm, what we have said from the outset
has becn consistent that cluster bombs are not illegal, they are
effect weapons against er, the ...

JiI: That's not the question I asked you

AI: No . Well I'm giving you, I'm giving you the answer and
then you maybe want to ask me another question. But er, they
are not illegal weapons . They are used in specific
circumstances where there is a threat to our troops . Noc<<,
clea-Tly there were circumstances where there were a
concentration of of er, military equipment, and and Iraqi troops,
in and around built-up areas . Now how would we to, how
would we to tackle those people er, were we to have close
combat with them with more casualties on on our side, is that
what people wanted to see. I would hone not.

JH: Right, Well let me ask you the question again in precisely
the way I asked it to you before. You had told us we would not
use cluster bombs m built-up areas, why did we do so.

AI: Well I don't, I don't fnink if you examined what was said
by Geo ffHoon, or indeed by the earlier statement by . . .

BOTH TOGETHER

JH. Baroness Crawley.

AI: Well Baroness Crawley is not a defence spokesperson

JH: Ah,

A?: She was answering a question er, on behalf of the

(inte:j ection)

JH: (interjects) Of the government.

AI: On behalf of the government and of the Ministry of

Defence .

JH : Quite so,

AI: In the House. But she's not a defence spokesperson .

JH : I see,

AI: She's not a Dafence Minister .

JFi : She was speaking for the government but she wasn't
speaking for the Defence Ministry.

AI. Well, no, that's not the point I'm making John.

JH: Well I've lost you in that case

AI: No you've not lost me, you presented her as a defence
spokesperson Now the point I'm xnaktng is that that was said
in February. Er, in April you then said what er, you then
recounted what Geoff Hoon had, had told your programme .

7H: Told me, in a long interview and I asked him about using
weapons and he said they would be used in battle field areas,
where there would be the minimum of casualties .

AS: And that's exactly what I have said that there .

BOTH TOGETHER

JFI: Built-up areas .

AI: Well there were troops and equipment in those areas . Now
I make the point to you .

.IH: Well yes they were all over the, Iraq, of course they were.
Clearly, they were everywhere.

AI: Yes, and therefore they were posing a threat to our tro©gs
and therefore we had to take the appropriate action.

J'rI: With cluster bombs.

AI: W ell wnth a whole range of ammunition .

.TH: Including cluster bombs.

AI: But Geoff Hoon al(fsn£fs), yes of course . . cluster oombs

and we've actually - and w e don't .. .

BOTH TOGETHER

JH: Well, so the allegation wasn't such a strange one was it.
The one that you denied right at the begmn:ng of the inte:~~iew
turns out to have been precisely accurate.

AF: No, no, if you let me answer the question rathe: than trymg
to hector and and and prove your case by shouting.

JH : No, I'm trying to make, to be very clear about it because

you told me right at the begiuuung of the interview that it v,"as
the wrong allegation that i had made it tures out and that was
 Made ir. fiat
. report - it rums out to have been precisely accurate
doesn't it.

Ai: Well it's not . Not, not, not in the way ir. which I
interrupted your earlier statements . What I am saying is that the
way in which we've presented this argument, that they are used
m targeted, in a targeted way, against specific and military
targets, and they, the use of them is to minimise casualties on
our side . Now all, all ammunitions, all weapons can create
tragedies and it's not just cluster bombs, it's, it's, it's a tragedy
of war that there are causaiities . Fortunately we had very few
causalities on our side, and would put it down to the, to the
very careful use of the powert'sl weapons we have to take out
the Iran .. .

JH: (interjects) And you have no idea how many children will
be blown to bits by the cluster bombs that did not explode and
now are abandoned and left around built up areas .

Al : Well that's a ridiculous allegation

TH : What, you have a - oh you can tell me can you,

AI: That's a ridiculous allegation.

.IH : Fine.

AI: have been abandoned and there is, there is

JH: Ait, you've found them all then have you .

AI : No, of course we haven't found them all because, because

it takes time to identify them. But we have two hundred
personnel woricing m this particular area. We have weekly
meetings with the NGOs who have the prime responsibility of
the clearance . We provide the maps. There was an allegation in
your programme there that we weren't Providing maps, we do
provide maps. We have a massive programme of education in
Basra and those other areas where we have used such weapons
and let me tell you .. . .

TH: Well sure, children are very good at following those

education programmes aren't they.
AI: Well let me tell you, just let me tell you one salient fact.
Our teams have already, have already destroyed one hundred
thousand m a region of one hundred thousand unexploded
ordinance There weren't and they're not necessarily cluster
bombs,

JH: Indeed,

AI: But, but, but unexploded ordinance that pauses a threat to

all of the citizens of Iraq and to our forces who remain there .
So to say that we're doing nothing is absolute nonsense.

JH: I didn't say, I didn't say you were doing nothing .

BOTH TOGETHER

AI: You said we'd abandoned, we've abandoned the peopIe of

Iraq. That was your allegation.

JH : I did not say you had abandoned the people of Iraq, I said
that these bomblets had been abandoned where they lay, w'nich
is precisely the case because-

BOTH TOGETHER

JH : ... can I .Just give you a

AI: . ... they have not been John, they have not been. And I am
saying to you .

JH: But they have been. We have just heard from fhree
chanties, each of them involved, three NGOs, each of them
involved in this exercise . Each of them, giving us graphic detail
about the way these things are lying around the country, and
how children and other people are being blown to bits by them.

AI: Oh, John, John We, we, we have, that, that could happen
in terms of any unexploded ordinance .

JH: Well not if you hadn't dropped cluster bombs it couldn't.

AI: No, and if we hadn't used them, then we'd have probably
more causalities on our side and then what you'd have .. .

BOTH TOGETHER
 JH: Do you know that. Can you be sure about that .

AI: Well that is, that is what we have to take in to

consideration that we have ammumtion and weapons ort our
side to try and minimise casualties to our own troops .

J`ri: That were not going to be used m built-up areas but were
used in built-up areas

AI: Well what we said was it would be, they would be targeted
on specific military targets. There were troops, there was
equipment in and around the built-up areas .

JH: Right.

AI. Therefore the bombs were used accordingly to take ou: that
threat to our troops, is that, is - would you accept that is is, is a
useful and effechve way of protecting the lives of service
personnel .

JH: It's not for me to accept or reject anything, it's for the
audience to do that, and I'li leave it to them Mr'L-tgram. Let r.e
put you another point if I may, and that is this whole question
of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussain vvas
supposed to have. It is active, detailed and growing said Tany
Blair. It is up and running now, it could be activated witiiin
forty five minutes .

,AP Yeah.

TH, We are now forty five or more days since the war ended,
none has been found.

AI : Well what er, we've said is that er, this was a very difficult
task to locate these and twelve years of, of effort on behalf of
the United Nations of course didn't fully identify it, but let, let
us put tn :s in context. On the 7th March, Hans Blix, on behalf
of the inspectors published a one hundred and seventy th:ee
page report, which damned completely what Saddam Hussein
and his regime was doing m respect of the procurement, the
development and p:oduction of weapons of mass destruc+don .

iH Do you want me to tell you what Hans Blix said. He said

 10

BOTH TOGETHER

AI: Well

7H: .. . must not jump to the conclusion that they exist

AI:- Have you read a hundred and seventy three page report.
No (this first no could be john H) ?3o, well no you haven't,
and that ...

JH: Do I need to. Do I need to when I've just told you the
conclusion that he came to, `one must not jump to the
conclusion that they exist' . That possibility is also not
excluded, so it was possible, but it wasn't proven. -

AI: Well for twelve years, twelve years, the United Nations
believed it was happening . Tune after time, resolution afte:
resolution, culminating m Resolution 14.41, came to a different:
conclusion . The nations who makeup the United Nations had
a different perception and understanding of Saddam Hussein's
regime . Now what, what we're now domg, extensive searching
is going on. We have, we're interrogating a wide range of
people who have a knowledge of all of this, a ji;-saw is now
beginning to come in to place. The Prime Minister has already
said that there have been two examples of, of what could be
construed as pointing to weapons of mass destruction, and
biological, these are biological agents, that could have been
procured and developed within these mobiles.. ..

JH: (overlap) So why did Donald Rumsfeld tell us i : is

possible: that they decided they would destroy them prior, they
decided they would destroy them paor to a conflict. What did
Donald Rumsfelt, the American Defence Secretary mean by
that.

AI : Well I think Donald Rumsfld, if you read all of what he

said.

7H : I have done that.

AI Ycah, okay. He didn't just say that, he also went on to say

that al: the efforts were being made to find these weapons of
mass destruction (intq'ection) and he was working on the finr,
assumption that there were such weapons of mass destruction,
 He postulated a possibility that they may, may not be fourid
(interjects) And that is the only, only part of his statemerat
you're now .. .,

BOTH TOGET?L_.R

JH: (overlaps) Right, well now given that that possibility has
been posuaated by no less a figure than the American Defence
Secretary himself. Why was Tony Blair in a position back last
year, last September to say that these weapons could ba
activated within forty five muiutes.

AI: Well that was, that was said on the basis of security forcte
er, info-manor. Single sourced, it wasn't corroborated .

.iH: Single source. So you concede that

AI: Well yes, I think that has already been conceded. In fact I
think your earlier programme today was based upon a singla
sonrce within the security services, an un-namcd anonymous
source incidentally.

JH: It was, who told us that the . .

BOTH TOGETHER

. the report that was initially ...

AI: . .. corroborated on what he said, and said was, this report

had been concocted under pressure from Number 10, that is not
the case There was no pressure from Number 10, that all the
information that was contained . . .

JH: No no . Can I tell you what the allegation was because I

think you may have been a little misled on that . The allegation
was not that it was concocted by Number 10, the allegation was
that a repon was produced . It went to Number 10 . It was then
sent back to be sexed up a little, I'm using not my own, but the
words of our source, as you hmow . Now, given that, is it
possible

AI: No, it's not true that, that allegation,

JIi: That isn't true.

 lz

AI: No, it's not true, And you know Number 10 has derue(2
that.

JH: Well I know that Number 10 has dented it and I'm asking
you to deny it yourself.

AI: So, whose word are you taking here.

JH : Oh well I'll tell you Agam it isn't a question for me to

take any words but if well hang on a minute er Mr Ingram if I
may, you've asked me the question . What we have here is a
source, within the intetligence service .

AI: Un-named. _ -

JH : An un-named, naturally un-named. Do you want to give

me the names of all those sources that you got your informat)on
from on this programme now . I think not . Probably.

AI: No but., but when we, when we present a dossier on behalf

of the Security Services, it has their imprint on it, it has their
authoritative of best assessment . Some of it will be
corroborated information . Some of it will be single sourced,
and what - the judgement call that was made was to play-out all
of the information with which we could, without exposing er,
the basis upon which that information was gar .... (?) , to th e
wide, public .

JH: And whose judgement was it to advice the Prime Mintste-,

to say these weapers are ready for use within forty rive
usnutes

AI: That was one element within a comprehensive report,

JH : I see . So, Tony Biair took that one element from a

comprehensive report, and told tne House of Commons that we
were under threat .

AI: Yes

JH: Within forty five minutes notice . That's why we went to

war remember Mr Ingrain.

AI: Because of that on statement .

 13

J'rI: Because of the combination of things that Mr Blair said.

AI: No, we did not go to war because of that one statement .

IH: Well, well let me tell you what Geoff Hoon said, 'Our
primary purpose is those weapons of mass destntction tnat
present a real threat' .

AI : Now let me tell you why we went to war. We went to war

JH: Well I've just told you, Mr Hoon said, unless you want to
tell me he said something else

AI: We went to war because of all of the evidence, all of the

information we had about Saddam Hussein's regime, whtci-i
culminated m Resolution 14/1, which is set out m graphic
detail in the 1?3 page report produced by Hans Blix There was
no question m the mmds of even those who were opposed to
war in the United Nations, of what Saddam Hussein was up to .
They knew, they knew what be was capable of, they knew what
he'd done and they }mew that - where he was guilty. The:
judgement call was the best way of prosecuting that conclusion,
and the judgement call of this country and of the parliament of
tins country was that we should take the appropriate action . Go
to, go Iraq as I have been m the last m the last two weeks I've
been in the southern area of Iraq, I've spoken to Iraqis . I think
they're beginning to sense freedom . They want freedom, the
barbarism of that reeime has been removed from them . The
threat

JH: I take that point

AI. Well that's good . and now I hope

7H : But that is not what the war was fought for.

AI: Well what - the war, the wa .- was fought for cr, on the basis
of all of those allegations, much of which was substannated,
not just m a security document produced by ou-. security
servtces, not concocted by by Number 10, or pressured, a
pressure from Number 10 to produce it in a particular way, but
their best knowledge, and their best assessment of waat they
could ... . .(?) in to the public domain, and based upon the
knowledge wluch was out there the whole world latow what
 14

Saddam fiussern was up :o in terms of the weapons of mass

destruction, that's why we prosecuted :hat war, that's why we
have a right.

JH: Adam Ing.am . Many thanks .

END OF T'dIRD PIECE

 source mail or Sunday
Page 26
Date' 01 06 .2003

TI-Mlocation was a centra:

London hote: aid the source was
watting as I got there We'd bon
been too busy to meet for nearly
a year, but there was no sign Ln:s
would be ar.ything more than a
routine get-together.
We started off by moaning about
t1-- railways Only after about haLf-
an-nour did the story emerge that
would dotnmate the headitn.es for
48 hours, ruin Tony Blair's Basra
awayday and work the Prime Mtu:-
tster ma) a state of controlled fury
The source agreed with B ;= aocon:
one thin, He, too, was adamant 'that
Iraq had had a Weapons of Mass
De ;truc:ion programme m the :ecent
past . He pomted out some tell-tale
signs that the chief UN weapons
inspector, Hans Bi .x, seemed to rave
missed But he knew, better than any-
one, that it didn't amount to the
`unm:n er. : threat' toa:ea by bfsL<sters
and he was gently despatrmg about
the way No 10 had spoiled its case
by exaggeration 'Typical Downing
Street,' he said, half smiling, half
annoyed
We'd discussed the famous BlaFr
dossier on Iraq's weapons at our
previous meeting, a few months before
it was published :ast Septernicer. 'It's
really not very excising, you know','
he'd told me So wrat.I asked hun now.
By had char.ged?
'Notnmg clha-Fged, he said 'Until the
week before, it was just like I told you
It was transformed the week before
~°t [[
ANDREW ~+ publication, to make n seuer'
What On you meaa~ Can I take notes2
Rd~ i.~YfT.f
L. \ 'The classic,' he said 'was the state-
ment that WN:D were ready for use in
DEFENCE AND DIPLOMATIC COrtRESPONDEIvF 45 minutes One source said it took 45
OF BC RADIO 4's TODAY PROGRAMIdE tnmutes to launch a m :ssile and that
was ml=mterpreted to mean that WMD
could be deployed in 45 minutes Tlhere
was no etndence that they had icaded
convennonalFmssdes with WWD, or
could do so arivhing like mat quickly'
I asked hua how this trarsformathon
happened The answer was a smgle
wcrd 'CampoeIL'
What-, Czmpoell made it up7 `No, 11
"as real information . But it was
included against our wishes because it
wasn't zehable.'
NOTHBR saucepan had been
thrown m wnat looks like ,he
:ncreasingly truL .oled mar-
nage between Do wang Street
and the secret woric
Last week's was only tne
most recent in an unprecedented
series of mtetItgence leaks dtr-
ectly challenging the Prime
M,"  te : After the teachers ano
the firemen, the spooks have
becomethe latest group o: public

ThE PHOTOCOPYINC OF THIS ARTICLE, w'THOUT LICENSE CONSTITL'TEb AN INFRINGEMENT

OF THE
NEWSPAPER PURLISHEP'5 COPMOHT ANY SUCH CDoYINO COULD R:S'JLT IN -ECAL PRGCEED,NGS
ALAINST THE EEC AND AI50 THE EIdPLDYEE DR OTHER INOIVIOUAL INVOLVED FD? =URTHER
INFDRMA710N P-EASI CON7ACT ),50720

Fazie 32
 r,~cto : workers with a grudge
agamst _New Ianour
politicians love m-.ellrgence
KnowIedge is power, and secret
knowledge makes t1 " arn feel
even more powerful i' can be
meal for pub.ia .ty purposes, top
Describing some claim as the
p :oduct of secret intelligence
gives . ; authority, while also
providing the perfect reason to
block further an qu :rtes on The
cla-rn's exact D, igins .
But Ministers have obhgations
to 'he security services, too
Though sometSmes players of
ire spin game themselves, toe
spies see their work as ob)eot :ve
-and, of Course, secret
'we :ake pride m our mdenen-
aence,' said one official of tne
.lDint -intelligence Committee,
a- coard :natmg body for Brit-
'n intelliganoe, 'And we are
~appy to see our work being
oted m public' Tracmonal .y,
'y've kept that unhappiness to
.tnselves But over 1 : aG, some-
thin o snapped .
In Febr-Cia7y, the intelligence
services made clear tnetr anger
at claims by Mr B :a :r lmocmg
Saddam with .A1 Qaeda Several
reporters with u-sTelligen :-e con-
tacts were encouragea to wnte
that there was no evicence of a
curren : link, and tnat the ser-
vices were unhappy at the PR4's
attemp : to maice one
Then came the extraordmary
leak-to my radio programme-
o : a top-secret documen "- from
the Defence Intelligence Staff,
exphcatly dismissing the Osama-
Saddarr connection r havenever
befo-e recen~ed sucT a htghly
classified document It achieved
ine destr" en result IT shu'. the ?:K
I-, or the subject
,ban :t came to the second
_-sster on Saddam's secur .ty
a -att:s, thisJar.ue .^y, Dow"nmg
F doesn't even seem to have
' ~nleethemtelhgenceservices
much Despite dsscribmg it
as based on'carreatmteLrgence',
the author turnea out to have
copied g .-ea : Chunks striagn- off
the Internet, like some GCSE
student overdue with his cc .:rse-
worx essay Tae final version
was not shown to tne Joint intel-
Itgence Comntttee They were
funous about that, too
In A-mencEt, as wall., Dissent is
rising A grotp of retired sties
last week wrote to Pres :dent
Bush saying 'There :s one ur-par-
donablesm Cooiar" gLitelhgence
to the recipe of high policy,
There :s ample ev .der.ce that this
'as been done Ll i.-aq'
One member BE the Pentagon's
Defence Intelligence Agency
was ,lust as blunc 'Tne Amertcar.
People were manoulated,' he
told Tire New Yoilk Times
Intelligence today is mostly
T- .E PHOTOCOPYINC 5~ Tdls AR71CLt WITHOUT LICENSE CONSTIT'J-ES AN IN =RINCEV,ESi O' THE
NEWSPAPER PUBLISl-ER'5 COPYRIOHT AN" SUCI- COPYIYr COULD F25ULT Ib LGAL PROCEEDINCS
AGAINST THE BBC AND AL90 7HE EM PLO"EE OR O7HER IN71V~nUAt INVOLVED FOR FURTHER
INFOPMATION PLEASE CDNTaCT g50'2D
arajysis, and the people who sift The Foreign Office denies therr
the ca :a from pnone-taps, spy meeting tooK place as reported
satellites, defectors and agen.s some say none of this :s :mpor-
know fu:l well Drat It's a-^. art, net tant Ail that matters is East a
a science . tyrant was toppled, a people
Occasronally same wondeBrfil were freed But tne dosste :- saga
information will be produced touches on an even more unpor-
During the first Gulf War, the tant goal than the freemg of
Ame :-tcan National Security oppressed foreign peoples Tnat
Agency managed to "so Saddarn is, that your words should be
H ".vssem's nnone calls to his TJN credible, and your own peoele
ambassador- But you mteht be s'no_Id be told the cutn
surprised a- how few spies,
agents or other resources we had
m Iraq under Sadeam, and how
very Little we knew scout day-to-
day events there.
C)-,: nave to beware, also,
of the motives and agen-
das of your informants
Many of me Bush wbtte
House's favounte'facts'
on Saddam's WINED turn
out to nave come from, Anmed
Cha :abt, the would-be :uture
nler of Iraq and a figure with at.
obvious interest m welcommg-
regttne change .
The language of inlelligeace is
inconclusive The :ar.guage of
sDm Editors micl: iess Doubt T`he
GDVern-nent thinks we read an
easy neadhne-Sadcam's nuclear
bom o, Saddan's ;5-m :nute wam-
mg . I'm not so sure we re that
stupla The Prune Munster and
his sraff have spent the past few
days denvmg claims that no one
has ever actually made-that
ma'e : :at in tIL;t Dossier was
invented, that .; am e from non-
mtell .gence socrces, and so on
Tray have, however, nonceaoly
failed to den: several o: the
claims which me BBC's source
did make . There's Been no oacial
of has allegation tnat the dossier
was r°_wnttea the week before
pubhcanon Nor .,as there been
any denial that the lv-ie about tne
45-mmute deployrnI of weap-
ona was mserte~z: a tate stage
when we put both cuestnons to
Downing Street, they refused to
discuss 'processoiog'9'
we'll never know me process
inside Downmg Street whereoy
a dossier Described by a wmte-
hall source cn Augus, 29,2N2, as
'not revelatory', By publication
day - September 24, 2002 -
became verp reve,atory moeed
The spooks may have been too
ready to give way to tne stnn-
ners BUT if things ha6 been left
entirely to the intelligence prc-
fessLonals, tt seems clear that the
dossier woule have been much
less bold and assertive than the
one that was published
Now there is a new claun that
the Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw and his LS Counterpart,
Co1m PoweL, admitted to each
other the fragility of their :.-deLt-
gence-even as they were aooL.,
to present it as grourds for war
Paa= 2 of 2
Pa :? 33
B6c IS/02S2_ w,
Oral evidence Pa_-, 1 05 36
Flh'C PfAf2( 1' ~

Search

Aavanced 5

Home Glossary Index Contact Us Parliament Live section . . .

Oral evidence

Taken before the Foreign Affa~rs Committee on Thursday 19 June 2003

Members present :

Donald Anderson
Mr David Chldgey
Mr Eric Ilfsley
Andrew Mackinfay
Mr John Maples
Mr Bill-0Iner
Mr Greg Pope
Sir John Stanley

Witnesses : MR ANDREW GILLIGAN, BBC Defence Correspondenc, and

MR MARK DAMAZER, BBC Deputy Director of News, examined

Q386 Chairman : We continue today our inquiry into the decision to

go to war in Iraq and I welcome as our witness Mr Andrew Gilligan, the
BBC Defence Correspondent . Mr Giliigan, you have asked that you be
accompanied by Mr Mark Damazer, the BBC Deputy Director of News,
in case any questions of editorial policy were to arise during the course
of our inquiry . -1 hey may not do so and then obviously, Mr Gilligan, you
are the main focus, because some might say that it is in on your report
that much of the current controversy has arisen . I was just a little
amused to note that of course you came from a stable mate of The
Daily Telegraph, namely The Sunday Telegraph, and The Daily
Telegraph stated on 6 June in respect of you : "In 1999, after five years
at the paper" - that is The Sunday Telegraph - "Gi!Ilgan was poached
by the Today programme's then editor, Rod Liddle, with a brief to
cause trouble ." Is that your understanding of your brief?

Mr Gilligan ; Not entirely, no . I think my brief was to -----

Q387 Chairman : Not entirely .

Mr Gilligan : -- report ---~ -

O_388 Chairman : Partly or . . .?

Mr Gilligan : Well, I think the role of any reporter is slightly to probe ~4^
and ask questions a bit . D^ S iV
P5 LX~ 1' 23 3
 Oral evidence Page 2 of 36

Andrew Mackiniay : Scme_imes that causes trouble,

Q389 Chairman : is there scmething equ ;valent to the lobby in

respect of =he agencies? Is there a way, if not of deep throats, of
schedulec regular briefing of newspaper and media correspondenrs?

Mr Gllligan : There is nothing as formal as the lobby . There are no

regular meetings . There are, to my knowledge, few, if any, group
mee .ings . The agencies do have officers whese particular 3ob is to zalic
to jeurnalists, and certain journalists have those people's contact
numbers . -

Q390 Chairman : T.°iese are 3ournalists who are specifically

designated for matters with the press .

Mr Gilllgan : Yes . They are serving intelligence officers as well,

actually . _ ---

Q392 Andrew Mac4ciniay : They are intelligence office-s7

Mr Gilligan : Yes .

Q392 Chairman : They are in-eliioence officers . What sort of mazters

are given to the press by those individuals?

Mr Gilfigan : It is difficult to discuss that actually .

Q393 Chairman : Are they defensive briefs when matters are raised,
criticisms are made of the agencies? Are they in-house matters, such
as the cost of the headquarters? Or are they matters like 45 minutes in
aiC reports-?

Mr Gilligan : In some ways, albeit in a more low key way, they act a
I!ttle like press of-~-icers . Sometimes you can go to them with questions
on an issue which has come up, like, for instance, the cost of
computerisation o- of buildings, and they operate a kind of response
service like _hat to certain journalists . The 45-minute question did not
in fact come from, if you like, the designared press spokespeople of
any of the agencies .

Q394 Chairman : Would you expect it to come in chese irregular

briefings"?

Mr Gllligan : I do think that when other journalists with intelligence

contacts, presumably including these same people, these designated
spokespeople, went to their contacts fo° corrobora :ion of my story,
then it was corroborated and we saw similar reports apoear in several
newspapers in the days after my story .

Q395 Chairman : When you talk about these contacts, these are
Sit
__ geCtS [a234-
 Oral evidence Fa_e 3 of ;o

serving members or the agencies who talk to the press informally,

Mr Gilligan : Yes, some of them talk to us informally, some or- :hem

talk to us with official sanction .

Q396 Chairman : But those who talk to you informally are doing so
agains : their professional code and their terms of engagement .

Mr Gilligan : No, I think that the agencies, like any other organ of
state and, indeed, any other .organisation, sometimes have a need :o
maintain relations with the press . That is really all _hey are doing . A lot
of the time it is authorised so they do noz fall outwith their professional
code .

0397 Chairman : You are saying that the agencies give licence to
some individuals to talk informally to the press outside these regular
meetings .

Mr Gilligan: That is correct, yes .

Q398 Chairman . Are you saying that the meeting you had with that
individual, unnamed, was so authorised?

Mr Gilligan : I would not like to cnaracterise how the mee:ing . . .

whether the meeting fell within that authorisazion or not . I can tell you
a bit about my source . I mean, essentially, the particular meeting from
which this story arose came about at my initiative . I have known this
man for some time . He is quite dosely connected with the question of
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and I asked for a meeting with
him . We have met several times before, we have spoken on the phone
rom time to time . We have both been rather busy over the last six or
seven months for obvious reasons, so this was t=ie first free moment I
had to ask for a meeting with him .

Q399 Chairman : So this individual meets you on a fairly regular

basis .

Mr Gilliganr I would not say that regularly, no . I mean, it was

sometning iike a year since I had last seen him face-to-face when we
met, but I have spoken on the phone in the interim,

Q4f?D Chairman : Clearly what he 'told you on this occasion by

definition was not authorised .

Mr Gilligan : It is simply impossible for me to know whether it was

autho°ised or not, Tr~at was not a quest~on I discussed with him .

Q40Z Chairman : But the Chairman of the JIC has repudiated what
you have said .
6t3CJ5 /02as
 Oral evidence -'--'age 4 of 36

Mr Gilligan; The Chairman of the JIC . The Join_ Intelligence

Commit:ee is not the same thing as the intelligence agencies . i mean,
they are represented on it, of course, but :he Chairman of the JIC is a
civil servant not an intelligence official .

Q402 Chairman : Well, all the civil servants .

Mr Gilligan. He is a civil servant in the non-secret part of the civil

service as distinct from the secret part .

Q403 Andrew Mackinfay : Not so secret, though .

Mr Gilligan. Not so secret, no .

Q4Q4 Chairman : Are you aware of anyone within the services who
has complained a- what has been published?

Mr Gilligan : Complained to us?

Q4C5 Chairman : No, complained through any formal channels to

tneir line management .

Mr Gilligarrr No, but I would not expect to be, ? am aware or- disquiet
within the intelhgerrce community over the Government's handling of
intelligence material related to Iraq, not just on this particular issue of
the September 24 dossier but on others .

Q406 Chairman : From this one individual?

Mr Gilligan; No, from several individuals . From a total of four different

people .

0407 Chairman : Four different people . And these are individuals who
see you from time to time .

Mr Gilliganc That is right.

Q408 Chairman : Contrary to their terms of engagement .

Mr Gilligan . Not all .

Q409 Chairman : So some are allowed by the agencies to speak to

you about their concerns about government .

Mr Gilligan . When we meet, we never quite discuss things like

whe-.her the meeting is contrary to thelr -.erms of engagement or not .

Q410 Chairman : But you know it )s, surely, if they tail ----
V(~
Mr Gilligan : Assumptions are made . (? eCIS f(P'Z
Oral evidence Page 5 of 36

Q411 Chairman : If they tell a press officer that there has been
undue interference, this must surely be contrary to any terms of
engagement of a public servant .

Mr Gilliganr In my experience, the intelligence agencies do sometimes

do things in a calculated fashion, and maybe some of these contacts
were such contacts .

Q412 Chairman : In a calculated fashion .

Mr Gilliganr They are not unlike any other part of government, in that
they sometimes want to get a message across .

Q413 Andrew Mackinlay : That is rather making Reid's point, is it

not? Rogue elements .

Mr Gilligan : No, I do not think it does .

Q414 Andrew Nlackinlay : I am sorry to interrupt but it just occurred

to me . Reid came into my mind then .

Mr Gilligan ; I do not think you should assume that these are

necessarily rogue elements, I do not think that has entered into it .

Q415 Chairman : You think they are doing a public service, do you,
by leaking their views to you?

Mr Gilliganr I have no opinion on what they do to me ; I am just

grateful for the information as a journalist .

Q416 Chairman : Grateful for the information .

Mr Gilligan : Yes .

Q417 Mr Maples : I wonder if we can just establish not who these

people are, because I am sure you are not going to tell us that, but
where they are coming from . I have been looking at the transcripts of
your appearances on the Today programme, May 29 and June 4 . On
May 29 you started by saying, "I have spoken to a British official who
was involved in the preparation of the dossier," and you say, "I want to
stress that this official and others I have spoken to . . ." Then on June 4
you say that, while the quotes came from a single source," . . . four
people over the last six months in or connected with the intelligence
community have expressed concern . . ." etcetera . What I want to try to
establish is : are these people all, or are some of them, actually
currently working in one of the intelligence agencies? Or, when you say
a British official, do you mean someone in No 10 or on the JIC
assessments staff? Could you try to establish where these sources are
coming from?
e)0dSE2-6
n -,
;7- 1S14
I- -11111~ 1-- -0, , I PQ 1~0
 Oral evidence Page 6 of 36

Mr Giffigan : First, I want -Lo make the distinction between the specific
source for this specific story, which is a single source, and the three
other people who have spoken to :ne generally of their concern about
Downing Street's use of intelligence material over the last six months .
They spoke to me about the allegations made of links between Saddarn
and al-Qaeda . They spoke to me about the so-called "dodgy dossier",
the one produced in February, and rhey spoke to me about this
dossier. The story that began the fuss came from the single source . I
really cannor characzerise the source any further than I already have
done because it would compromise him .

Q418 Mr Maples : No further than that he is a 3ritish official . I think

r makes a huge difference to us to know how much credibility to
attach to this . If it was somebody who actually works in STS or or-, -he
JIC assessments staff involved in this, that is clearly one thing, but if it
is somebody telling you some-office gossip, that a few people up_there
are unnappy about this, that is clearly differen_ to us. When you say "a
British official" - and this is presumably the person who gave you the
45-mimute story - can you not tell us which part of the Government
that person works in?

Mr Gilligan : I have described him as one of the senior officials in

charge of drawing up the dossier and I can tell you that he !s a source
of Iongs_anding, well-known to me, closely connected with the question
of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, easily sufficiently senior and
credible to be worth reporting

Mr Maples ; Could you say that again : an official of longstanding

involved in . . .?

Q4S9 Chairman : A source of longstanding .

Mr Gilligan; A source of longstanding and I described him in the

broadcast: as one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the
dossier. That is how I would leave it.

Q420 Mr Pope : Is this the September dossier?

Mr Gilligarr : Yes .

Mr Maples : One of the senior officials in c~arge of drawing up :he

dossier .

Q421 Chairman : And a source of longstanding .

Mr Gilfigan: A source of mine of longstanding .

Q422 Mr Maples : But the other three people spoke to you, you said,
about the al-O-aeda links and the "dodgy dossier" but they also spoke
to you about this weapons of mass destruction dossier . ~i~i^ IS
/(52Sg
 Ora: evidence Pa,--- 7 of 36

Mr Gilligan : No . As I say, the other three people spoke generaliy to

me about rneir concerns about the use of intelligence material on Iraq
by the Government. One spoke to me about the link being made by
the ?rime Minister between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, He was
kind enough to leak me a document on that link which said that there
was not one or there had not been one lately . Another spoke to me ---

Q423 Andrew Mackinlay: He actually gave you the document?

Mr Gilligarr : He let me read it. Another spoke to me about the "dodgy

dossier", the February dossier, produced by the Government,
plagiarised or partly plagiarised f-om internet sources and to tell me of
his concern about that . The third person was the source of this story
a--id the fourth person was somebody who has come forward since the
story was broadcast to talk about similar issues . --

Q424 Chairman : 7ust one point on that. The individual who left you
the document, what was the classiflcation for that document?

f+fr Gilli, .r-~,an ; He did not leave it with me, he sat with me while I read
it .

Q425 Chairman : And what was the classification of the document

you saw?

Mr Gilligan: Top secret .

Q426 Chairman : So the source in the intelligence agencies is

showing a top secret document to you, a Journalist . Did you ever
-onsider what his motive might be?

Mr GilligarF : It was fairly unusual - indeed, it is unprecedented, for me

anyway - to have received a document of that classification . Clearly
consideration of motive is part of any story . My understanding of this
oerson's motive was concern at claims, which this person felt were
exaggerated, being made by the Government about links between
Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda for whicn there was little
evidence .

Q427 Chairman : And it could equally well have been someone who
did not get the promotion he wanted or who nad some sort of grudge .

Mr Gilligan : I tnink it is unlikely . Of course it is always a possibility,

and I think the possibility T have given is more likely .

Q428 Mr Maples : Two of the other three, so to speak, talked to you

about the al-Qaeda links and the "dodgy dossier" but not about the
weapons of mass destruction dossier .
S&
 5/0
SIG
 Oral evidence Pas-- 8 of 36

Mr Gilligan: That is right,

Q429 Mr Maples : The source of your story, I think you used the
phrase or they used the pnrase, "to make it sexier'" about the weapons
of mass destruction dossier, came from, you said, a senior official who
was one of the people in charge of drawing up the dossier, but you feel
you cannot tell us whether he was a civil servan : or worked for the
intedigence agency,

Mr Gilligan : I cannot add anything to what I have already done

because it would compromise him, I am afraid .

Q43Et Mr Maples : Okay . I mean, I understand chat but obviously I

wan : to press you as far as I can, but that person is a currently serving
official .

Mr Gilligan: Yes .

Q431 Mr Maples : Then you say somebody else, the fourth person of
these four, is somebody who suosequently came forward .

Mr Gilligan : That is right .

Q432 I'Vir Maples : To you and has talked to you again about . . . I do
not want to nut words into your mouth . Which of these issues did they
discuss with you .

Mr Gilllgan; He in fact drew my attention to a szory in The

Independent and said that the story was "spot on" - those were his
words . Tne story was about the demand by the intelligence services at
MI6 that any fu :ure dossiers, any future government dossiers, should
make it clearer which of che words were derived from intelligence
material and which were the product of, you know, re-writing or sub-
editing inside government .

Q433 Mr Maples : Was that in relation -~o the weapons of mass

destruction dossier or the "dodgy dossier"?

Mr Gilliganr No, you will remember there were a couple of stories that
appeared a week after the 45-minu :e story broke about :he
intelligence agencies laying down ultimata to the Government . The
source, my source, the fourth soirce, drew my attention to these
stones and said they were correct .

Q434 Mr Maples- By the time that happened, the "dodgy dossier"

had been published as well, had it not?

Iyfr Gilligan: Absolutely . Yes,

Q435 Mr Maples : What I was trying to get at is : was that

 Oral evidence Paue 9 of 36

u5nappiness that was expressed to you by tne fourth source in relation

to the September dossier or the February one or both?

Mr Gilbigan: Boch,

Q436 Mr Maples : In relation to these two dossiers, what nas

emerged so far to us is that it is very difficult for us to evaluate the
truth or otherwise of the weapons of mass destruction dossier because
it is obviously based on intelligence material and we have not seen the
originals . The "dodgy dossier", on the other hand, we now know most
o i' t came o-"f the internet, even including punctuation mistakes,
L and
seems ~o have been generated almost entirely inside No 10 . i wonder
if you can help us about how that came about . We are told in a formal
answer by the Foreign Secretary that no minister - whether that
includes the Prime Minister or not :s no : clear - saw or played any part
in the preparation of-the "dodgy dossier" or saw it before it was
published - and I could come across that exact quote . When it
or!ginaily appeared on the internet, apparently it had four names
attached to it, three of whom worked for Alastair Campbell and one
who is a Foreign Office official who works in No 10 . Can you tell us any
more about how that document was produced and by whom it was
produced?

Mr Gil6igan ; It was issued under the Prime Minister's imprimatur . He

said on the 3 February in the Commons, "VVe issued further intelligence
over the weekend about the infrastructure of concealment . It is
obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports but I hope the
people have some sense of the integrity of our security services . Trey
are not pubhsning this or giving us this information and making it up ;
it is the Intelligence that they are receiving and we are passing it on to
~)eoole ." That is what the Prime Minister said in the Commons abou~
,-he "dodgy dossier" the week after it was issued .

Q437 Mr Maples : We asked ti,,e Foreign Secretary some formal

wr ;tten questions, one of which was : "On what dates were drafts put to
ministers?" - .his is on the "dodgy dossier" . His answer was : "No
ministers were consulted in -. .he preparation of the document ." Can you
corroborate that .

hfr Gilfigan ; I have no information either to confirm or deny that. My

involvement in the "dodgy dossier" story was being told, along with
others, by Glen Rangwaia, who was a politics lecturer at Newnham
College, Cambridge, that he had spotted similarities between the
dossier and his PhD thesis . Unfortuna .ely Channel 4 News beat me to
the story . Then, after it, to be =old of the intelligence services' concern
about the way this dossier had been produced . The claim made to me
was that the services had not been consulted . I do not know abouz
ministers .

0438 Mr Maples : It is the same person, Dr Rangwala, who says nat S%8
~3eC1 5%02 4--(
 Oral evidence Paee 10 of 36

when the document first appeared on tne Downing Street website it

had four names attached to it as people who were the authors . The
identity of the authors is as follows : Paul Hami!I, a Foreign Office
official ; John Pratt, a junior official from the Prime Minister's strategic
communications unit ; Alison Biackshaw, Alastair Campbell's PA ; and
Murtaza Khan, the News Editor o-, the No 10 Downing Street website.
Do YOU Know whether that is correct or not?

Air Gilligan. No, I do not . I did not see the dossier on the Internet
befo-e those names were removed .

Q43S Mr Maples : Was your impression from the people who talked
=o you that this was almost a freelance operation by Alastair
Campbell's people?

Mr Gilligan . There was concern expressed to-me about the roie of No

10 in the production of the dossier and :here was concern expressed to
me that the final draft had not been shown to the intelligence agencies
or to the JIC . That was essentially the limit of what my source told me
about the "dodgy dossier", They are not garrulous people, these
people .

Q44® Mr Maples : We know now that quite a large part of this came
from this PhD thesis but Dr Rangwala points out a couple of changes .
NJhereas the author of that thes :s had said that a particular Iraqi
security organisation had as part of its role to "monitor foreign
embassies in Iraq", that became in the "dodgy dossier", "spying on
foreign embassies in Iraq ." On the same page Ibrahim al-Marashi had
written _hat Mukhabarat had a role in "aiding opposition groups in
hostile regimes" but in the dodgy dossier that becomes "supporting
terrorist organisations in hostile regimes" . Are these the sort of things
that people were drawing to your attention as their complaints, their
concerns?

Afr Gilligan . Yes, among others . That was also one of the things which
led me to invest credibility in my source for tne 45-minute claim,
because it seemed to 'it with the pattern of behaviour by Downing
Street that had already been established in the "dodgy dossier" .

Q441 Mr Maples, So tne person who gave you the 45-minute story
had been involved in these other things and talked to you abou= those .

Mr Gilligan: No, I invested great credibility in my 45--nfnute source

for a number of reasons but one of the reasons was that Downing
Street had already been' shown to have embellished, to have "sexed
Lip", if you like, material .

Q442 Mr Maples : Over the "dodgy dossier" .

Mr Gilligan . In the "dodgy dossier" . C~Bc 1:5 1(3 2 v. 2 S19

Oral evidence Pa .
--- 11 of 3Do

Mr Maples- Thank you very muc,~ .

Q443 Chairman : You have said that the agencies were laying down
ultimata to the Government . What did you mean by tha=?

Mr Gilligan . UJculd you remind me of the context again .

Q444 Chairman : It was a phrase w .'~icn I wrote down as you were

saying it, that the agencies were "laying oown ultimata" .

Mr Gilligan . Yes, that is right . That was something that was reported,
as I mentioned, by the Independent and the Guardian in the week
a~ter the 45-minute story broke. i cannot remember the exact words
of the reporting but it was in terms of : the agencies have asked .he
Government to make a clearer distinction oetween material derived
from intelligence and material derived from Downing Street or
government with regard to your sub-editing in any future dossiers,
That was it.

Q445 Chairman : That is in respect of the January dossier rather t-,an

Mr Gilfigan: It is in respect of all future dossiers .

0446 Chairman : But it arose after the publication of the January

dossier.

Mr Gilligan : Tne story emerged after the row over the Se pternber
dossier, the 45-minute story . You will remember that the Prime
Minister was asked to answer some of the criticisms expressed at the
time by promising, I think, a third dossier, and I think this was in
relation to that promised future dossier .

Q447 Chairman . Was this suggested to you as well by your sources?

Mr Gilligan . As I say, an intelligence source contacted me and said,

"The story in The Independent is spot on ."

Q448 Chairman : Right . Were these ultimata meant to be in written

fo-m ?

Mr Gilligan . I do not know .

0449 Sir John Stanley : Mr Gilfiaan, could I go back to what you

describe as the 45-minute story and zo what you said on the Today
programme on May 29 . We are referring here not to the so-called
"dodgy dossier" but to the assessment of September 2002, You said
this : "I have spoken to a British official who was involved in the
preparation of the dossier and he told me that until the week before it
was published the draft dossier produced 'ny the intelligence servicesl~
~3~Is24352A
 Oral evidence Pa2e 12 of 35

adds little to whar was already publicly known ." He said, "It was
transformed the week before it was published to make it sexier. The
classic example was the statement that WMD were ready for use in 45
minutes . That information was not in the orieinal draft . It was included
in the dossier against tneir wishes because it wasn't reliable ." M :-
Gilligan, we have specifically put that issue to the Foreign Secretary
and we have received the Foreign Secretary's response . The question
vve put to the Foreign Secretary was this : "Was the wording of the 45-
minutes claim given on page 19 of the document Iraq`s Weapons of
Mass Destruction exactly the same as it was in the intelligence
assessments applied to the Government? 11 not, was ir accompanied in
the intelligence assessment by qualifications not included in the public
document?" The answer we have received 'rom the Foreign Secretary
is this : "The same report was reflected in almost identical terms in the
JIC's classified work. There were no further caveats used ." The
question I put to you is this : against what has been clearly stated now
by the Foreign Secretary, are you saying t~rat the Foreign Secretary is
lying to this Committee? Or will you now acknowledge that your source
was incorrect in saying thac the 45-minutes claim was not based on a
genuine assessment of the JIC, fully approved through the JIC
process?

Mr Gilfigas; ; I note the words "almost identical" in the Foreign

Secretary's response . i would simply say that it is not my business to
say whether the Foreign Secretary is lying or not . All i would say .s
that I invested strong credibility in my source, who is a person of
impeccable standing on this issue, and whose complaints have been
reflected m something like seven or eight newspapers and other media
outlets, including other B3C outlets, since my original story and his
complaints have also been reflected by named, on the record, former
intelligence officers from Australia, from the United States, and also, zo
som? extent, by other Members of the House .

Q45C3 Sir John Stanley : You are making, Mr Gilligan, a very, ve-y
serious allegation against the integrity of the JIC . The entire ----

Mr Giffigan : I am not making any allegations .

O_451 Sir John Stanley: I am sorry, may I just go on . You are

making, in my view, a very serious allegation against the in-Legrity of
tne JIC, all the membe-s of the JIC and, most particularly, against the
integri :y of :he JIC Chairman . You are saying that the )IC Committee
and its Chai-man, under pressure, which you are implying is political
pressure from, p,-esumably, 10 Downing Street, "sexed up" their
original assessment at the last moment and introduced material which
according to your source was unreliable . You are effectively saying that
the whole of the JIC system, including the Chairman, connived in a
political embellisning of a JIC assessment for political purposes . I
 Oral evidence Pam 13 of 35

cannot think of anything more damaging by way of an accusation -o

make against the professional integrity of those who serve on the J?C .

Mr Gilligan ; I would repeat, as I have said throughout, I am not

making any allegatcns . My source made the allegations . We were
reportirg the charge of my source, who is a figure sufficiently senior
and credible to be worth reporting .

Q452 Sir John Stanley : I accept you are reporting your source, but
you and your organisation chose to give this matter puolicity in this
country and around the world to the effect that -he JIC system,
including the Chairman, was effectively a party to including unreliable
intelligence assessments material in a document going round under the
JIC's imprimatur . I put it to you that is a very, very serious allegation
to give the sort of publicity which you have given .

Mr 6silligan ; As I nave said, the 7LC did not enter into my repo t . I
reported the source as saying there was unnappiness within the
intelligence services, disquiet within the intelligence services . The JIC
and the intelligence services are not the same thing . The JIC is a
Committee of the Cabinet Office and the intelligence services are
represented on it, but they are not the same thing .

Q453 Sir John Stanley : Can you say whether your source suggested
that any other pieces of the text that were put in at the last minute,
presumably following its approval to the JIC system, other than the
references to 45 minutes, were inserted at the last minute before the
document was made public?

Mr Gilliganr He was quite cutting about the claim that uranium had
been sought from Africa .

Q454 Sir John Stanley : Are you suggesting, apart from being quite
cuttmg, that that was a last minute addition as well?

Mr G'illigarr : I am not sure, No, I do not think I am because I do no-

think he qui-.e said that . He was of the opinion, however, tnat that was
unreliable information .

Q455 Sir John Stanley : In terms of your evidence to this

Committee, the only piece of evidence which you are specifying was
allegedly made at the last minute sub3ect to a po ;itical requirement to
"sex it up", to use your phrase, is the 45 minute claim?

Mr Gilligan : That was the only specific piece of evidence that my

source discussed, yes .

Sir John Stanley : Thank you .

Q456 Mr Olner : So the rest of the evidence that was in the dossier
f.~~
f3~CL~~Z L;
 Oral evidence Faoe 14 of 36

was reliable? By implication, if your source said ne was not happy

about t!~e 45 minute thing then he was happy with the rest of it .

Mr 6llligan ; The fact that my source was not specifically unhappy with
other elements of the dossier does not necessarily mean that other
elements of the dossier were reliable . Of course it might mean that,
but I do not think anything can be drawn from it the other way .

Q457 Mr C?1rser : Who from Number Ten asked for the dossier to be
changed?

Mr Gilligars : I asked this . The source's claim was that tne dossier had
been transformed in the week before it was published and I asked, "So
how did this transformation happen?", and the answer was a single
word, which was "Campbell" . I asked, "What do you mean, Camobell
mace it up-P",_and he answered, "No. It was real information" - this is
;he 45 minute claim - "but it was included in the eossier against our
wishes because it was not reliable . It was a single source and it was
~ot reliable ." He also said that Downing Street officials, he did not
name anybody else, had asked repeatedly if there was anything -else
that could be included on seeing the original draft of the dossier which
was considered done .

Q458 [Ar E31rrer : After having heard evidence on this Commi .tee
yesterday, I think the 45 minute thing is irrelevant in a way because if
an armament is found it can be used immediately .

Mr Esilligar ; Irrelevant to what?

Chairman : Let us get onto the subject .

Q453 Mr ®lrser : I thought it was a relevant question :o ask .

Mr G6lligarr ; The 45 minute claim is important because it went to the

hear of the Government's case that "here was an immediate t.~reat
from Saddam, it was not a mere detail and it was one of the most
neadline grabbing parts of the dossier. The 45 minute claim was far
from irrelevant to the case the Governmen : made against Iraq .

Q460 Mr Oiner : Not the Government's headlines, your headlines, the

meaia headlines .

Mr Gilligan : Yes, but it was clearly designed to elicit those so,-t of

headlmes . As I say, the implication of 45 minutes was that Iraq was an
imminent threa: . .

Q461 Mr Pope : Just on this issue of the 45 minutes, I want to be

very ciear about what your source is alleging . Is your source alleging

S13
that the 45 minutes did not exist in the assessment that was inserted
by Alistair Campbell?
 Oral evidence Pact 1-5 of 36,

Mr Gilligan . I will quote his words again . He said, "it was real
information . It was the information of a single source ." My source did
not believe it was reliable . He believed that tnat single source had
made a mistake, that ne had confused _he deployment time for a
conventional missile with the deployment time for a CBW missile . He
did not beiieve that any missiles had been armed with CBW that would
t')erefore be able to be freable at 45 minutes' notice, He believed that
claim was unreliable .

Q462 Mr Pope : But that view was not necessarily shared by the Joint
Intelligence Committee becat!se they did have, albeit a single source,
evidence of the 45 minutes .

Mr Gilligan : That is right, absolutely, yes .

Q463 Mr Pope : Has your source made any wider allegations or

expressed concerns about Number Ten in general and Alistair Campbell
in pa~Licuiar inteffering in intelligence assessments?

Mr Gilligar: He exoressed concern that Downing Street had spoiled its

case against Iraq by exaggeration . I want to make it clear that my
source, in common with all the intelligence sources I have sooken to,
does believe that Iraq had a weapons of mass destruction programme .
His view, however, was that it was not the imminent threat described
by the Government .

Q464 Mr Chidgey : On that very point, we took evidence earlier in

the week from Clare Short . Would you have a view on whether or not
your source might have been briefing her on this issue-?

Mr Gilligan : No .

Q465 Mr Chidgey : It seems rather similar .

Mr Gilligan. It is a hypothetical
. I 3ust cannot comment on it .

Q466 Mr Chidgey : Can i draw you back to the uranium from Africa
claim . You said that your source's response -o that issue was "crisp" .
Did you have any more detailed discussion with your source? Could
you share with us how your source analysed that particular issue and
came to the conclusion that his remark should be crisp?

Mr Gilligan . My source believed that the documents on which tne

allegation rested were forged .

Q467 Mr Chidgey : That has been proven subsequently, has it?

Mr Gilligan . Yes . I believe it was a letter from a minister wno had left
the Niger government several years previously . n,., "
ISI02(~~ ~ S,u,
 Oral evidence Paee 16 of 3o

Q468 Mr Chidgey: Forgery at what point? There have been some

stories ;n the press that the ,forgery occurred in _he UK .

Mr Gilligan: These people do not tell you everything, they are pretty
ca ciz,

Q469 Mr Chidgey : I: is clearly a very serious matter if somebody in

our intelligence services should have forged the documents that we are
referring to .

Mr Gilifgan : Thac r~as never been an allegation that we have made or

the: my source made .

0470 Mr Chsdgey: Have you any indication from your source of

where the forgery is thought to have occurred?

Mr Gilligars : No, I am afraic not .

Q471 Nir Chidgey : Have you any information at all about how it
came to be included in tne dossier, who picked it up and who
presented that informazion, forged or otherwise?

Mr GElligan: I did not go inro it in sufficient detail .

Q472 Mr Chidgey : It seems surprising that this suddenly aropped

out of the air at a stage when there was not enough time to check it .

Mr G6lligan : I did not go into chat in sufficient detail with my source to

answer that question, perhaps I should have .

Q473 Mr Chidgey: Do you think it is possible that it could have been

a deliberate plant by somebody?

Mr Gilligan : I have got no evidence on which :o base that view .

Q474 Mr Chidgey : It is possible, is it not?

Mr Gilligan ; I have got no view .

Q475 Mr Chidgey : Moving on, we have had a iot of very interesting

informazion P,-cm you regarding the intelligence community's view of
what was passed in the presentation of the February dossier, Is i : your
view that they are generaliy angry about tnat, is that what "as
mot'vated them to speak out now about the September dossier, even
though it happens to be~through sources such as yourself?

Mr Gilligan : Specifically about the February dossier?

Q476 Mr Chidgey : Yes .

8BC 'S /(5 STS
 Oral evidence Page 17 of 36

Mr Gilligan: Anger is too strong a word ; I would use the world

disquiet,

Q477 Mr Chidgey : Do you think it might stem no: so mucn from the
way the rni"ormation has been !sed in this particular case bu= from the
fact tnat it is a sort of chanae in the relationshiD between the
intelligence services and the Government o° the day and the Prime
Minister attempting to bring -he Parliament, the Government and the
country behind him on this view that we woulc have to prosecute this
war? He has ?ossibly gone further than any previous Prime Minister ;n
setting out the case using in°elligence information . Is this maybe the
sort of cultural change to the issue that is causing the disquiet
amongst the intelligence services in that they are not happy that the
previous informacion that was only shared with key members of
Government is now being perhaps slightly sanitised and shared with
the nation? _

Mr Gilligan : I think that is in part fair . We do need to stress, this story

took on the life it did because everyone else's intelligence sources wer e
saying the same things as mine were saying to me . One of the
complaints made by some of our intelligence sources, not just mine
but across the press, was that intelligence services are secret and they
do not like necessarily having their work exposed to the public gaze .
Yes, I think that is par-zly fair .

Q478 Mr IiEsiey : What you are saying is -hat your source told you
tha= the 45 minu :e claim was unreliable, is it not?

Mr Gilligan : Yes .

Q479 Mr E6Bsiey : So the claim existed in intelligence terms but it had

not been corrobora-.ed and was unreliable .

Mr Gilligan : Yes .

Q480 Mr Ilfsfey : Basically whichever commitree nolds an inquiry into

this will have access to t'ne raw data and they will find that claim
somewhere in the intelligence reports from the intelligence community .

Mr Gilligan : It was not a c;aim zhat was in any way made up or

fabr cated by Downing Street . Another one of the reasons why t'nis
story took on the !ife t~,at it did was that Downing Street denied a
number of things which had never beer, alleged . They denied, among
Other things, that mat=erial had been fabricaLed . Nobody ever alleged
that material had been fabricated .

Q48S Sir 7ofin Staniey : Mr Gillican, in one of tne responses you

gave -Lo Mr Pope your answer raised serious doubts in my mind as to
the technical knowledge of your, source in this area . You said in answer
to Mr Pope's question that your source based his view about the SE~
p 0-
 Oral evidence Paee 18 of 36

unreliability of tne 45 minutes claim on the assumption that the Iraqi

INMD would be delivered by 'ballistic missiles . I want to point out to you
tha : the Government did not make its 45 minutes statement on tha-~
delivery assumption . If you refer to page 19 of the September
assessment, the crucial sentence reads, "Intelligence indicates that the
Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within
45 minutes of an order to do so ." Encompassed within weapons is not
3ust merely Dalfstic missiles, it would be artillery pieces and so on . I
mus: make -he point to you that i` your source, as you have given in
evidence so far to tne Committee, was basing his assumption of
.anreiiability on ballistic missile delivery, that is not the proposition
which the Government put out in the September document.

hSr Gilligan: It was not ballis.ic missiles, just missiles . It is not my

source who raised the issue of missiles, it was tne intelligence source
whicn was the original source for the 45 minute claim as delivered to
the intelligence-community
. That original source of the 45 minute
claim, he was the one that spoke about missiles . Maybe he was
technically incompetent . Maybe that is a further reason for doubting
his accuracy .

0482 Sir Johns Stanley : So you are now acknowledging that your
source was technically not confident?

l1r Gilligan: No, not my source, the source of the original allegation to
tne intelligence services, the Iraoi source . I think he has been
described as a senior general or something like that in the Financial
Times . He was the one that spoke about missile delivery, not the
source of my story .

Q483 Sir John Stanley: Can I say to you that anybody who knows
about this business would say that anybody who couched an
assumption about a 45 minute threat based on a missile delivery
system, whether it be a cruise missile delivery system or ballistic
missile delivery system, would be certainly exposing themselves to
suggestions of unreliability . The key issue here is the Government did
not make any such claim . The Government put it in terms of weapo-~s
and very -elevan : here, of course, a-e artillery systems, where you
have potentially a very much shorter timescale that is available to you
between an order to deploy and making those avaitable, for example,
to a-tillery troops .

Mr Gilligan : The use 5y the original intelligence source to the

Government of the missile as a means of delivery was one of the very
reasons why my scurce-did not believe it.

Q484 Sir John Stanley : Yes, but I think tne point I am putting to
you is that if the assessment had been made that Iraq had a WMD

s21
capability particularly in the chemical weapons area, given the known
availability of large numbers of artillery troops, a lot of which were
860 S/07-50
~
 Oral evider,ce Mgt 19 of 30

deployed forward, providing the Government were satisfied that the

chemical weapon capability in particular was tnere then the 45 minute
assumption would not be inreasonable from a technical standpoint
anyway .

Mr Gilfigan: The claim related to missiles . That was the c',aim of the
original I-aqi intelligence source . We have the Defence Minister's word
for it that he was the sole source for that claim . So it must relate to
missiles whether it was said in the dossier or not.

Sir John Stanley: Thank you, Mr Gilligan .

Q485 Mr Chidgey : In earlier evidence, Mr Gillioan, the question of A5

minutes has been more or less considered to be irrelevant in terms of
modern oattlefie!d operations using chemical weapons . It is to be
expected that within 45 minutes of being properly deployed chemical
weaponswould bein use from giving the order, so the 45 minutes
question is taken as read . I just wonder whether there is a distinction
here between the favoured method of delivering them, a battlefieid
scenario, which would be a mo-car rocket launcher, and somebody
talking about missiles . Has anyone checked what the translation is
from _raqi into English and the distinction between a missile and a
rocket?

Mr Gifbigarr ; In order to deploy any form of weaoon at 45 minutes'

notice it would need to have been relatively openly held, it could on ;y
have oeen relatively ligntly concealed . One of the other things which
led me to invest credibility in my source was the fact that no such
discoveries had been made . As I say, the contention of the intelligence
community's original source was about missiles, but if any weapons of
any description, De it rockets, missiles, crop spraying aircraft, aerosols,
had been held at 45 minutes' notice the likelihood is that they would
have been found by now .

Mr Ch¬ dgey : That is a secondary ,ssue .

Q486 Mr Pope : I am -ust not convinced by the argument which says

the absence of any evidence is proof that there is an absence of
weapons of mass destruction . The claims that your source has made
are of the gravest nature, which .s that :he Government in the
September dossier exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq so as to
persuade Parliament to vote for war . There were two specific claims,
one about the 45 minutes and one about uranium from Africa . We
have already heard that it is possible to deploy certainly chemical
weapons at 45 minutes' notice, It may not be possiole to deploy a
missiie, but it is not impossible to deploy a whole range of chemical
weapons at 45 minutes' notice . The claim aoout uranium, which may
not have veracity but at the time was an extremely plausible claim
which was widely accepted in the intelligence community, that is that
Niger was a country which had proliferated uranium and it was
~3gcts /c~25 (
 Oral evidence z1aLT-_ 20 o: 36

certainly known that Saddam Hussein was trying to purcl-ase urariurn,

is not an unreasonable claim . Therefore, the general claim that your
source has made that the Government exaggerated their case agairst
Iraq has not been made unless you can give the Committee further
evidence of exaggeration .

Mr Gilligan ; My source said, as mary others have said, technical

experts and so on in the field, that if any weapons of any description
had been held a_ 45 minutes' notice they would have been found by
now, almost certainly because they could not have been particularly
deeply concealed . If they ha-d to be depioyable a : that short notice
they cannot have been particularly deeply concealed . That is the
testimony o` my source and that is the testimony of many others in the
field .

Q487 Chairman : You have conceded that we were talking about a

source which must have given that information prior to September,
possibly in May or June and tnere has been amble time and
oopor.unity since that time for concealment, destruction or whatever .
So the source could have been correct at the time i°_ was given .

Mr Gilligan ; My personal view is that I think it unlikely and illogical

that Saddam, faced with an imminent threat to his regime, his very
existence, would give up his weapons immedia-.ely before a war is
about to start.

Q4S8 Mr EB ¬ sVey: Is there any indication of the date of the particular

piece of intelligence which refers to 45 minutes? The reason I ask tha t
is because we have heard conflicting evidence as to Iraq's former
capability of deploying weapons in that it has been suggested to us
that in 1-991 Iraq did deploy chemical weapons on the battlefield but.
did not use them . i think that ties since been contradicted . Could it be
that that piece of evidence is a piece of evidence dating back to the
1990s; and simply been regurgitated later?

Mr Gilligam; I do not know, I just have not got the evioence to answer
t;~at, but I would hope not because it is 12 years old .

Mr Iifsiey: A lot of what we are looking at is 12 years old .

Q48S Mr Pope : I have a few questions on a diffe-ent topic . Yesterday

the Committee was told by a former chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Committee tha : people who work for the agencies do not speak to the
press and ~ndeed should not speak to `_he press, but you have told us
today that you have up to four sources who do . Does that not lend
sorre credibility to John Reid's claim that `there are "rogue elements" irn
the intelligence services briefing against t`ie Government?

Mr Gilligan : No . The person I spoke to on the 45 minutes story was in

the abso!ute main stream of this issue and could not be in any way
- aeclsl6zs ~`'
 Oral evidence Paz° ?1 of 30

oescribed as a rogue ejement, I do not thinK it should come as a shock

to anyone to learn that some people do talk to the press sometimes,
even when they are not supposed to,

Q490 Mr Pope : We are politicians so we are unlikely to be shocked

by people speaking to the press, but there is an issue here about
people in the security services not just talking to the Dress but acting
as a press officer, ie verifying factual information . What we have here
are 'people who work in the agencies briefing against the Government's
policy to members of the press . That is an entirely different issue,

Mr Gilligan : It is impossible for me to say the motives, but what I can

clearly say is that it went on in an extremely widespread fashion, Other
reporters in the BBC were told the same, at least two or three other
repor-Lers in the BBC, TV News, Newsnight, the security correspondent.
Equally, reporters on The Times were told it, a reporter on The
Guardian was told f-, a reoorter or. The Independent was told it, a
repor.er on The Sunday Times, the Observer, The Independent on
Sunday, :hey were all :old the same thing . It is not an isolated
occurrence,

Q491 Chairman : Could they have been drawing on the same source?

Mr Gilligarr : i think even Downing 5rreet has acknowledged that the

sources were plural . In that famous john Reid interview he spoke
about "rogue elements" in the pleural and "bad apples" pleu-al, so I
think it must have been more than one .

Q492 Mr C21ner : But your one became four .

Mr Gilligars: No, ,As I explained before, the specific story was from the
single source, The other three were over the last six months over
various other stories .

Q493 Mr Pope : It is a widespread practice for people who work in

our intelligence services to brier' 3ournafists, the effect of which may De
to undermine Government policy .

Mr Gilligan: i have no opinion and I have no evidence to judge

whether the intelligence agencies were seeking to undermine
Government policy . It is not my role as a 3ournalist to make that
)udgment .

Q494 Mr Pope : ? was not suggesting that the agencies were

undermining Government policy, I was suggesting that people who
work for the agencies; on a widespread basis brief journalists .

Mr Gilligarr : Again, it is not my role to judge either the agencies or

the people working for them, ~LX-~1'5/
J('~
 Oral evidence Paee 33 of 30

Q495 Mr Pope : You nave just given us a list of newsoapers that we re

briefed .

Mr Giffigan ; But that is just a fact, that happened .

Q496 Mr Pope : And is it still happening?

Mr Gilligan ; I= !s impossible to adduce the motives of al! this .

0497 Nir Pope: I am not crying to adduce tne motives, I am pointing

=o the fact that people who work for the intelligence services on a
regular and widespread basis bnef journalists and that is an on-going
practice .

Mr gilligan: Tha_ does seem -,.o be the fact of the case in this story
:ecause, as I say, it has been going on for several weeks . _

Q498 Andrew hRackinEay : The document which you read with the
ince!!igence officer present, which document was -..hat?

Mr Gilligan : It was a defence intelligence report from the defence

intelligence stalf terrorism analysis sub-group, D-TAG, dated about 13
January from memory . It was about !inks between Iraq and zerroris :
organisations and it said, among otber things, again this ?s from
memory, that 7-nere had been links between Saddam and al-Qaeda in
the pas: but they had floundered due to incompatible ideology . That
was shown to me in response to the Prime Minister's allegations tnat
there was a link between Iraq and a!-0-aeda .

Q499 Andrew Mackintay : Where did you see this document? I am

nor being facetious . Was it in the hostelry, was it in his office, was it on
your territory? Where did you see it? Paint a canvas for me as to where
you would nave seen this .

Mr Gilligan : It was in an office,

Q50o Andrew Mackinlay : Your o-fice?

Mr Gilligan : I did not say tha :.

Q501 Andrew Mackinlay : I do not blame you . If people are

prepared to talk to you then you cannot say, "I don't want co talk to
you" . Was this in his office?

Mr Gilligan : I cannot say any more because it would compromise the

source .

Andrew Mackinlay: You have helped us on something whic'n is at a

slight tangent to the main inquiry . As so often "llaDibers in inquiries,
some other impor:ant things have emerged . Clearly .,s I believed prior
hr. . .
I5 /Gas(+
Oral evidence Pa_e 2s of 36

to th ;s hearing, intelligence of-icers do talK to tne press .

Q5D2 Andrew Mackiniay : Do you sometimes solicit the information

or dc they approach you folk, in your experience?

Mr Gifligan : Both :s the answer .

0503 Andrew NBackinlay: And they have your --eleohone numbers

and you have theirs?

Mr tsiftigarrr Yes .

0504 Andrew Mackiniay: So you can pick up the phone and say, "I
want to bounce this off you", and they might say, "No comment", or
they might say, "It sounds credible", and sometimes they go to
extraordinary lengtns and say, "Come and have a cup of tea and I'll
leave something on the desk, I won't leave the room ." That is a -
possible scenario, is it not?

Mr Giiligars : That is rf7ht . It is normal journalistic contact .

Q5fk5 Andrew MackinEay : I want to come to this business of the

missiies =hat you were talking about a few moments ago . I think what
you were saying was that your source indicated to you that he felt -.hat
the intelligence source was flawed but that .his was the intelligence .

hfr GilFigan : That is exactly right .

Q566 Andrew Mackistlay: He was not flawed but he was saying the
intelligence was flawed .

Mr Gilligan: That is right . He was describing the information provided

by the original intelligence source, ie the -Iraq! General, if it was an
Iraqi General, to the British source or the Americans or whoever got it
in the first Place .

Q5f37 Andrew ISrackinlay: I cannot really see what the beef is . This
ousiness of the 45 minutes deployment, in a sense we wiil never know,
will we? Clearly the intelligence was there . There was sufficient
inrelligence _here to say that there was a pessibility of this being
credible . I have to tell you, if I may share this with you, I do not think
this 45 minutes question crossed my radar screen and it certainly was
not a material factor in how I voted . Even if there were leg!slators and
members of the public who were really exercised by this ~-'5 minutes
issue, af:er listening to the evidence yesterday and indeed to yours
today, I cannot-see how ;t was not corroborated by a second
intelligence source but it was sufficiently credible . Bearing in mind this
translation, and presumably intelligence sources come vita a rather
circuitous route rather like a Chinese whisper, some of it might have
got Icst there . Is that fairn QpcK1C 25s
 Oral evidence .'a=c 24 of 36

Mr Gilligan: All I can do !s pass o;~ to you what my source said . He

said that he was concerned about the authority of this source and
about its rel:aDility . The 45 minutes claim did make a pretty big splash
a : the time . There were two main stories out o` tnat dossier, the first
was nuclear and the second was about 45 minutes .

Andrew Mackinlay : The other story is the al-Qaeda linkage . I think

most people thought from, day one there was no linkage . On a numoer
of occasions I have willed -he Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister
to say the,e was no linkage and they did not co thaz . I thought tneir
rather coded phrases meant that there was no linkage . I am surprised
you have asserted today that Mr Blairsaid there was a linkage witn al-
0 aeda .

Chairman : Can you give us its source?

Andrew Mackinlay : I do not think he ever did that. I think he should

nave been candid and said there was no linkage,

Q508 Chairman : Can you give us the source of the linkage between
al-Qaeda and Iraq because cercainly the Prime Minister, to my
recollection, T--old the Liaison Commirtee on or abouz 9 3uly of last yea,-
;hat there was no linkage?

Mr Gifiigan : Shortly afterwards, I think at Prime Minister's Questions,

certainly in the Chamber anyway, I have not got the exact -eference,
he quite clearly said that there was a linkage between al-Oaeda and
Iraq .

Q5E39 Andrew MackinEay : Let us not labour the point . It wouid be

useful if you could point to what you think was this fairly unequivocal
statement . I did not there was one, buz I might, have missed it.

Mr Gilligan: I ca :-i give you the Hansard reference .

Q51D Andrew NEackiniay : I am not t-ymg to embarrass you . You falt

that Blair was doing this on one occasion or more and I am at a loss to
know when he did it . I was hoping he would go the whole hogg and
say there was no finKage .

Mr Gilligan: If you would like, I can write to you or I can give you the
Hansard reference .

Mr IiEsVey : His Junior minister made i-,- directly to me in a debaze on

Iraq on the floor of the House .

Chairman : We can follow that up as a point of fact .

Q511 Mr Maples : I have a couple of things I would like to ask you

about . It has been suggested -,o this Committee by various witnesses
6sC1sl6256
 O:al evidence Pa .~e ?5 of 36

that the 45 minutes issue is kind of irrelevant oecause if they had

weapons they orooably would be used vrithin 45 minutes . It seems to
me that the relevance of tr.is is it shows this is not just a weapons
programme, they have actually go : some weapons they can use . Is
that how you saw the incentive to bring this 45 minutes question
forward in your report?

Mr Gilligan : That is how my source put it . The 45 minute claim is an

important one, he believed and I eelieve, because it did make the case
that there were actual weapons with chemical or biological tips ready
to go . My source's belief on this is that trey had not managed to
weaponise CBW. His actual quote was that they had not got useable
weapons at that point. They had obviously weaponised in the past but
they had not got useable weapons at the point of the issue of the
dossier. What he said is that, "I believe it is 30 per cent likely tnat
there was a CW (Chemical Weapons) programme in the six months
before the war and, more likely, that there was a BW (Biological
weapons) programme, but it was small because you could not conceal
a large- programme . The sanctions were actually quite effective, tney
did limit the programme ."

Q'a12 Mr Maples : Like my colleague, I supported the Government

over this and I would again . If you were trying to make the case to an
audience with doubts about this and you were thinking how this was
going to play in the press, this seems to me to be a very important
claim to bring forward because I think you said to us it did provide the
headline for a lot of reporting .

Mr Gilligan ; I remember it was the headline in the Evening Standard

that day and I am pretty sure it was the headline in several of the
other aapers the next day . I want to make the point that the 45
nrnutes and tire uraniu n issues were the only two items of the dossier
which we discussed, but he was unhappy with the general tone and
tenor of the dossier as well . His words were, "Most people in
intelligence were not happy with it" - that !s the dossier - "because it
did not reflect the considered view they were putting forward ." I= is as
much a matter of language, phraseology --- As you know, an
intelligence ,-eport of any description is pretty unexciting to be honest .
It is couched, i_ is full of caveats, it is full of conditionals .

Q513 Chairman : Have you seen such reports?

Mr Gifligan: Yes .

Q514 Chairman : In what circumstances have you seen JIC reports?

Mr Gilligarrr In historical circumstances and in the Public Records

Office and once again when one was shown to me .

Q_515 Chairman : The Public :,~ecords Office, you mean of 30 years

166G1S/C2S ;z
 Oral --vidc,,nc-- Paz-- 26 of 36

ago?

Mr Gilligan : Yes,

Q516 Mr Maples : What he was really concerned about was he felt

.hat somebody was try'ng to make this report more newsworthy than
it would otherwise have been and if the: was the intention then it was
nugely Success ul,

Mr Gilligan: It did make rather a lot of news . That is essenz~~ally it,

_hat is exactly it. He started off by talking about the general tone and I
pressed him for specific individual problems in the dossier, but it was a
matter of the tone as well
. It is the belief or" some of my sources that
there is a slight - this goes to the heart of the question that Mr Cnidgey
was asking - cultural conflict between the world of intelligence, the
rather cautious and arid worldof shifting different bits and pieces of -
informaJon, trying to make something out of them, and the world of
politics .

Q513 Mr Maples : I am sure you are aware, but in November 1998,

after weapons inspectors had been tnrown out of Iraq and before the
Desert Fox bombing operation, the Foreign Office, under the signature
of the ther Minister of State Derek Fa=chett, did write a letter to all
,Members of Parliament and published a three page document on the
current situation with Iraq's WMD programme, obviously drawing on
intelligence sources and it was very much more cautious than this
document . :t said, for instance, that "the Iraqi chemical industry couid
produce mustard gas almost immediately and limited amounts of nerve
agent within months" . Saddam almost certa ;nly retained some BW
production equipment, stocks of agents and weapons . in the dossier
that we are talking about it says, ",As a result of the intelligence we
judged that Iraq nas continued to produce chemical and biological
agents ." Do those two statements strike you as they strike me, as
different, the latter one being much st,-onger7

Mr 6illigan : Yes . One of the other things that again led me to believe
the credibility of my source was that only a few weeks before the
publication of --he September dossier, the Blair dossier, Whitehall
officials had been desc-ibing it to the press as rather uneventful . I
remember Mike Evans, the defence editor of The Times, wrote a story
at the end of August in which a Whitehall official was quoted as saying
that che dossier would not be revelatory . Richard Norton-Taylor, who
the security editor of The Guardian, both those people very long
standing 3ournalists in their field, wrote a story at the beginning of
September, about a week after Mike Evans, saying that the dossier
wou!d no longer have a role because there was nothing to put ir, it,
that was a source to a senior Whitehall source, and then three weeks
after that the dossier appeared and it was more revelatory than those
accounts had it. So something had changed in that three week period .
~gcIsla25R-
 Oral evrdenee Pa.--- 37 oi 35

Q518 Mr Maples: When your source said to you it was the general
tone of the thing and as a result of you ?ressing him he gave as an
example the 45 minutes issue, what ~e seems to be saying :s an
attempt was beirg made to make this document much more
newsworthy _han it would otherwise be and strengthening up claims
like that which on the face of it do not seem to be a huge difference in
wording, but "continued to proauce" is different from "continues to
have a capability to produce", these are the sort of things we are
talking about.

Mr Giffigan : The words of my source was that it was transformed in

the week before it was published to make it sexier . Given all that you
have said and given the other things I have described, I think that :s a
credible allegation .

0519 Sir John Stanley : Mr Gilligan, in answer to Mr Mackinlay's

question you said that you had been shown- a defence intelligence staff
document in an office building which was a document that rebutted
what :he Government had said about a linkage between al-Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein . Was that document the document classified "Top
Secre-." to which you referred in your earlier evidence?

Mr Gif®igan; Yes, i; was .

Q520 Sir John Stanley- Can you remember whether the

~--lassification of that document was just top secret or was it a -Lop
secret code word?

tLfr Giffigan ; I am afraid I cannot .

Q521. Sir John Stanley : The office you referred to, was that office or;
4inistry of Defence prem!ses?

Mr Gidligar; I cannot answer anytning about this as it would

comoromise the source .

0522 Sir John Stanley: When you had your discussion with your
source in the context of the 45 minute claim, are you saying to us thac
-hat was --he same source with which you had the office conversation
and were shown tne top secret document in relation to the al-0_aeca
iinrcage issue?

Mr Gilfigan : No, it was a different source . As I said, tnere were four

altogether on this issue of Iraq and the use of intelligence material on
Iraq . .

Q523 Sir John Stanley . Coming back to the source for the 45
minute ciaim and the suggestion tnat that claim was unreliab ;e, did
that source convey that to you verbally or was that based on offering
you sight of a different document?
6&C 15/(n 25(y
 Oral evidence PaLT> 38 of 30

Mr Gilligan . No, it was conveyed verbally.

Q524 Sir John Stanley: Did you ask for any documentary evidence?

Mr Gilligan. I cannot remember . I think I might have done more in

the hope than expectation .

Q525 Sir John Stanley : So the whole of the 45 minutes claim rested
solely on non-documentary evidence from your one source that you
have been referring to?

Mr Gilligan: It rested on several things . As I said, it rested on the

comparison between what those Whitehall officials told the newspapers
at the end of August or the beginning of September and what
subsequently emerged in the dossier that seems to indicate a change .
It rested on the authority and credibility of my source, which is
substantial, it rested on what he said . It rested on the events which
had taken place in Iraq after the end of the war, the failure to find
weapons of mass destruction . It rested on a statement by Donald
Rumsfeld and it rested on the Government's previous admitted track
record of embellishing material in intelligence dossiers, as was shown
with the February one. So it rested on a number of things other tnan
the single word or" my source, but the single word of my source was
the centre of it .

Q526 Sir John Stanley: Going back to the meeting you had in the
office at which you saw the top secret documents in relation to an al-
Qaeda linkage, was the document volunteered to you or did you solicit
it?

Mr Gilligan. Again I think I had better not say because I think it would
be too much of a compromise to my source, I am sorry .

Q527 Sir John Stanley : And does your employer, the BBC, give you
any guidance as to your personal potential position in being in a
position where you may be soliciting highly classified material?

Mr Damazer; Mr Chairman, may I answer that?

Q528 Chairman : Yes, I think this is a matter of policy which you can
probably answer, Mr Damazer .

Mr Damazer; All of our journalists who deal with sensitive stories of

~ his kind would have access to the BBC's own legal advice . Andrew,
being one of the more experienced journalists in defence and
intelligence matters, would be aware of tne broad background of the
Official Secrets Act and would be able to avail himself of legal advice at
any point in any story that he was pursuing .

Q529 Chairman : And what is the specific advice in respect of the

~ 15 IG26 0 S11
 Oral evidence Page 30 of 36

information which was appropriate to publish, and then

of course I
would think that it was the job of our journalists to pursue such
information and to publish it in an appropriate way .

Q533 Mr Il[sley : When you say "bribery or malfeasance", does that

exclude payment or include payment?

Mr ©amazer; There is no blanket for the way an individual transaction

of documents and information which leads to a story should or should
not be considered to be appropriate . What I can say, on sensitive
stories, is that BBC 3ournaiists are not only expected to be aware, but
they have line management who can check with them about the basis
on which information has been derived . There may very well be
circumstances in which the transaction is accompanied by a meal,
some hospitality, some arrangement of some kind . I would not expect
serious documentary evidence of this kind to be the kind of
documentary evidence for which there was a cash transaction .

Q534 Mr 1fls6ey : Could I ask you, Mr Gilligan, did you pay for any of
the information you referred to?

Mr Giltiga¢r : No .

Q535 Mr Fllstey : You have referred to four sources of your own,

receiving top secret documents in an office, having sight of intelligence
reports, and you have referred to a number of your colleagues in
different newspapers who also have their own sources . Basically what
you are saying is that the intelligence services leak like a sieve
basically .

Mr Gilligarr : No, I am not saying that .

Q536 Mr I9EsEey : Well, you could forgive me for thinking that.

Anybody reading today's evidence would draw the immediate
conclusion that our security services have easy access to journalists .

Mr Gilligan : No, I am not going to have words put into my mouth . I

think the intelligence services leak from time to time, like many other
branches of the state, but probably less so than many others.

Q537 Mr Illsiey: Would you say that your access to your sources is
relatively easy and it does not really take a lot of digging to get the
information you need?

Mr Gilligart : Well, I am sorry to be boring, but it really does depend

and it is impossible to generalise .

Q538 Andrew Maekintay : It has struck me, listening to this

evidence, that a lot of your fellow journalists in other news outlets will
be saying, and indeed sources of yours and theirs in the intelligence

88C1s/62 b (
 Oral evidence Pa 2c 31 of 36

and security service, "What a rotter Gilligan is . He has really spilt the
beans . Those of us who speak to 3ournalists are going to have to clam
up", and I imagine, as we are talking, there are memos going out,
saying, "Don't speak to anybody" . It did occur to me that you have
probably killed off these geezers speaking to anybody like you-self for
the immediate future and also other 3ournalists will also have their
sources clamming up, The other thing is that I would have thought you
would have compromised your source because if the intelligence outfits
cannot find out who this person is from what you have said, I would
have thought we migh : as well pack up and go home . One day you
spoke to them on the telephone and obviously went into their offices
and photographs were done--in the offices, they know the documents,
et cetera, et cetera, but it struck me that this is all a bit clumsy unless,
and this is the question I am coming to, unless there is a culture in the
intelligence and security services where they will stick together . In
other words, they will not at this moment be pursuing who spoke to
you and showed you these top secret documents, in which case it does
raise the issue of whether they are a law unto themselves if they do
not like the Government.

Mr Gilligan: Again as I said at the beginning, I cannot really offer a

characterisation as to whether this was authorised or not . You have
said that this story might shut things down, but what it actually led to
was a sort of flurry of disclosure to lots of other newspapers and
broadcasters and I Just think people are going to have to draw their
own conclusions about this, as about so many things in this sort of
secret world .

Q539 Andrew Mackinfay : The other question I want to ask you is

this : I might be wrong, but certainly Members of Parliament have had
unsolicited, on occasions,. top secret documents land-on_ their-desks
and I know on at least one particular occasion 11r Plod came round .
You will gather I appreciate your views, but I think it is a nonsense the
Official Secrets Act in many respects and one of them is that actually
to see top secret documents can be deemed an offence . Is that your
understanding as a journalist?

Mr Gilligan : I :hrnk probably something like three-quarters of the

national media would be banged up if seeing documents was an
offence.

Q540 Andrew P4ackinEay : I am sure you are right on that and I

share your view of cynicism, but I think that is the law, is it not, Mr
Damazer?

Mr Damazer: There are circumstances in which obtaining and

publishing top secret information would be considered to be a
prosecutable offence .

Q54I Andrew Mackintay : I did not say publication of, but just
+~Sctsl~'Z.~ 2 i939
 Oral evidence PaQe 32 of 36

actually to have sight of.

Mr Damazer; I am not certain about that and I would need to refer

back to the books in order to answer that .

Andrew Maekinlay: The only thing that many Members of Parliament

will be concerned about, and you might share this view, is that there
clearly is this continuous dialogue, relationship between the journalists,
and I understand what your duty is, and that of the security a-~d
intelligence services, yet Members of Parliament cannot see these
people, we are not supposed to know who they are, and then the
Security and Intelligence Committee go away in a white van or
something or other. There really is something very wrong .

Chairman : It is an interesting comment, but not for this witness, I

think .

Q542 Mr Chidgey : If I can just take us back, Mr Giliigan, to some

comments you were making, it seems, a long while ago now and back
to the discussion we were having with you around the 45 minute claim
can I just check with you first to see if I have understood this
correctly . Was it the same source to whom you were speaking who
discussed the credibility of the 45 minute claim, the uranium from
Niger claim and the one who discussed the capability of Iraq in its
chemical weapons programme, was that the same source?

Mr Gilligarr : No, there were four different people, as I say .

Q543 Mr Chidgey : The reason I ask that is because I particularly

wanted to ask you a little more about the preparedness of Iraq on the
chemical weapons front . You said that there was, was it, a 30 per cent
chance that they had small quantities?

Mr Gilligan : Yes, this is a quote from my source and I will give it to

you again . "I believe it is 30 per cent likely there was a CW programme
in the six months before the war and more likely that there was a BW
programme, but it was small ."

Q544 Mr Chidgey : When you say "small", can you quantify that?

Mr Gilligan: Small enough to be heavily concealed .

Q545 Mr Chidgey : Yes, but there is a difference between having a

sufficient chemical weapons arsenal for a particular type of military
action and, if you like, a country-wide action . It depends what the
Iraqis were preparing for .

Mr Gilligan: He did not quantify that, I am afraid .

Q546 Mr Chidgey : Did you at any time discuss with any of your, ~O

0e P%-^4`_LS /02 6~
 Oral evidence Pa 2-- 33 of 36

sources, as you might have done as a )ournalist, what the intelligence

services foresaw as to what would happen next? I will give you an
example . Did you discuss with them at all whether or not Saddam
Hussein may have a plan B in the event that if war was inevitable, he
would immediately leave the country with most of his `amily, his
entourage and a huge amount of cash, which would not just happen
instantly, but there would have to be planning about that, and whether
or not there was any indication that, as was subsequently reported,
there were plans to move chemical weapons out of the country and
just ship them out to somewhere else, moving them around the world
in converted cargo vessels? Were there any of those sorts of
discussions?

Mr Gilligan: I was personally quite concerned about what might

happen next because I was in Iraq during the war . It was the subject
of a lot of anxious speculation among the journalists there . I was in
Baghdad . This-was not something discussed by my source, I am arraid .
Clearly there are a number of hypotheses and we can go through them
if you want, but I do not think my hypothesis ----

CF543 Mr Cfiidgey : No, I want to stick fairly close to the terms of the
inquiry . The real issue I have here ;s that you did make a comment
earlier on that one of the reasons which verified the views which you
have expressed was that we had not found any evidence of weapons of
mass destruction . I want to test with you that one of the options was
that they actually had been removed and removed from the battlefield
before the war even got underway .

Mr Gilligan: I said earlier, and this is really a personal view, I think it

would be illogical to do that in the face of an imminent existent ;al
threat,

Q548 Mr Chidgey : Not if you have decided you are going to leave
the country, and you might have pfanned already to take billions out of
the bank .

Mr Gilligars : I think i : is a bit difficult to say because there is just no

final certainty on this issue .

Q544 Mr Chidgey : But it did not just happen, it must have been
planned . That !s the point I am making to you .

Mr Gilligan ; It is just a li_tle bit difficult to get into this kind of

hypothesis on what is almost cerainly insufficient evidence . Saddam
may have d ;spersed or abandoned the programme because of the
activi :ies of the UN ratner than because of the imminence of the war .
He may never have had a particularly big programme, but wanted to
maintain strategic ambiguity m the belfef that that would deter
potential aggressors, a sadly mistaken belief obviously because that
was exactly zhe thing that encouraged the United Stazes to attack it. 641
Bac(S162b L~
 Oral evidence °age 34 of 36

He always had manoeuvrability ----

Q550 Mr Chidgey : It does rather reinforce the point made by Mr

Pope earlier that just because we have not found them does not mean
they do not exist .

Mr Gilligan: All I would say is tnat none of these things can be said
with any certainty .

Q551 Mr Ch6dgey : Precisely,

Mr Gilliganr And certainiy-cannot be said by my source or by anyone

else in the intelligence community and I would not wish to characterise
my source .

Q552 Mr Chidgey : So the only degree of certainty that your source

has or had was that he did not believe the 45 minutes?

Mr Gelligan: No, as I say, my source was reasonably sure, as are all

the other intelligence people I have spoken to, that Iraq had a WMD
programme of some description, but it was smaller and less of an
imminent threat than that claimed by the Government . That was the
view of my source and the view of several other people's sources in the
rest of the media and indeed other sources I have spoken to,
intelligence and non-intelligence .

Q553 Mr Diner: Given that the 45 minutes is in no doubt because it

was in both documents, was your source really wanting to highlight it
to get at the Government or his immediate Doss who was not listening
to him?

Mr Gilligan: I just cannot describe that kind of motive . I just have no

evidence to do that, I am sorry .

Q554 Mr U6ner : I cannot understand where a non-story became a

story because the 45 minutes was in both documents . If you have got
one intelligence officer doubting the data which other intelligence
office7s have gathered, that does not seem to me to be something that
perhaos should be laid at the door of Number Ten,

Mr Gilligarr ; When you say both documents, you mean the JIC
assessment and then the public document presumably . Without
knowing the contents of the JIC assessment, it is difficult for me to
comment on 'that, but I can say, I think, that, as I said before, one of
the concerns of my source was about the tone of the whole production,
the Slair dossier . It is perfectly possible for the same evidence, for the
same essential 45 minute intelligence to be presented in different
ways . In the )IC dossier, and I have not seen it, it might have been
hedged about with all sorts of caveats, it might have appeared buried
very deep in the paper somewhere ---- 64L
0/-
1gc)L~IS/62.65
' Oral evidence Pa-2t 115 of 36

Q555 Chairman : And it may not .

Mr Gilliganr Indeed, absolutely, whereas in the Blair dossier my

source's complaint was that its importance was given undue
orominence . It appeared no fewer than four times in the Blair dossier,
let's not forget .

Q556 Mr Pope : Did you approach your source over the 45 minuze
claim or did he approach you?

Mr Gilliganr No, I initiated the meeting, but not specifically over the
45 minute claim . As I said, I initiated the meeting to discuss Iraq
generally .

Q557 Mr Pope : And it was he who raised the 45 minutes then?

Mr Gilligan : He spoke of his concern that the dossier had been sexed
up, that "it had been made sexier" were his words, and then I asked
for spear'ic examples .

Q558 Mr Chidgey: You did?

Mr Gilligan: Yes .

Q559 Chairman : Can I sum up the position as this : you approached,

on your initiative, a source in the intelligence services?

Mr Gilligan: Yes .

0560 Chairman : Is that correcz?

Mr Gilligan : Absolutely, yes . Well, I would characterise this source in

the same way as I characterised him on the programme .

Q56Z Chairman : You took the initiative in calling to see him, You had
met this individual on a number of occasions in the past?

Mr Gilligan : Yes .

Q562 Chairman : You were in an office and clearly you referred to

no:es, so you took ex,ensive notes of that conversation?

Mr Gilligan : Yes, I took notes certainly, yes .

Q563 Chairman : How extensive are your notes'?

Mr Gilligan : I am not really sure . What I was referring to was a

summary of what was broadcast .

Q564 Chairman : But did you make contemporaneous notes of the 643
gBc~s /6z66
Oral evidence laze 3G of 35

conversation?

Mr Gilliganr Yes .

Q565 Chairman : For how long did that meeting take place?

Mr Gilligan : A couple of hours perhaps, an hour and a half.

Q566 Chairman : So the man of probity, you have mentioned, was

prepared to come to you for a couple of hours at your instigation and
give you that sort of information over that period?

Mr Gil/igan : Yes, that is right .

Q567 Chairman : Because he felt deep unease7

Mr Gilligan: Well, that is what he said . I can only tell you what he
said .

Q568 Chairman : And such deep unease that the man of probity did
not use any official channels to voice his disquiet?

Mr Gilligan: I do not know whether he did or not.

Mr I[Isiey : Thac ;s not strictly true because you just said that you
arranged a meeting generally on Iraq, not specifically about the 45
minutes .

Q569 Mr Ilfsley : Because you asked this man to come to you .

Mr Gilligan : Yes, we talked about a number of things to do with Iraq .

I was genuinely curious as to where the weapons of mass destruction
were . We moaned about the railways for five minutes .

Chairman : I think we have covered the ground and thank you both
very much .
 F4C uf
Search

Advanced &

Home Glossarv Index Contact Us Parliament Live section ..

oral evidence

Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday 25

June 2003

Members presenz. :

Donald Anderson, in the Chair

Mr David Chidgey
Mr -Fabian Hamilton
Mr Eric =1lsley
Andrew Mackinlay
Mr John Maples
Richard Ottaway_
Mr Greg Pope
Sir John Stanley
Ms Gisela Stuart

Memorandw"n submitted by Mr Alastair Campbell

Examination of witness

Witness : MR ALASTAIR CAMPBFLL, Director of Communications

and Strategy, 10 Downing Stree=, examined .

QB97 Chairman : One preliminary announcemenu, which I hope

will be to the ber-efit of evervone . We expect a division at
around four o'clock and I then "intend 7:.e adjourn for a
oeriod of some 15 minutes . Nr Ca_-r,abell, welcome to whac sor~e
will see as the lion's den, hut which o= the roles you play
remains to be seen . I note that one newspaper 7ialiced o=
"Campbell in the soup", :o~ct we will wait to see . We would
prefer to see your appearance ~Defore the Foreign Affairs
Commit--ee as one ir_ which we are carrying ou : our task of a
proper responsibility Lo Parliament and the public in a
mat-_er of very serious concern, namely the decision to go Lo
war in Iraq . You know our remit is to test whether the
informai~'_on presented to Parliament was complete and
accurate in the per_od leading up to military ac-:ion. in
Iraq, particularly wi7:h regard to weapons of mass
destruction . You know the charges which have been made
against your role, effectively that in your zeal to make zhe
case you embellished the evidence to Lhe point of misleading
Parliament and the public at a vita'_ time relating to peace
and war . There are four relevant documents in 1998 the la=e
Derek Fatchezt and Doug Henderson pr°_senced -o Parliament a

S4s
http .ilwv,w.~ publications .parliament uk/pa/cm200203/cmselectdcmTaffiuc813-ix/uc~81~3 ...~ 04/07~-/y20~03
_ ~L'9.~ 5 !6 GC3 ~
 Oral evidence PaQe 2 of 70

three page paper . Again, we are =old that in March of last

year there was a joint Intelligence Committee assessment
which the Independent of 9 June claimed was s=pressed afte r
being put up '--y the JIC as not being sufficiently strong .
The more relevant dossiers are =hose of 24 Sertember of last
year, based on a Joint Intelligence Committee assessment,
and the dossier published in early Febriuary of this year
where clearly alterations were made to enhance --he eTfect,
alterations to existing docunents which had been
plagiarised, for example "opposition" changed to
"terrorist" . Obviously my task is to -crovide the pla~:fo=-m
and I anticipate that ry parliamentary colleagues on the
Comm_tr_ee will be ready to question you on all the relevan=
ma=ters, particularly on ::he document of 2a_ Sep~e:r.ber of
last year and that of 3 February of _his year . First, some
prel_minary questions . Mr Campbell, looking back now, is
there anything that you did which you regret?

Mr Campbell-: In relation co :he briefing paper that was

issued in February 2003 I obviously regret the fact tha~ a
mistake was made within the drafting process whereby - --

Q898 Chairman : A mis':~ake'?

Mr Campbell : It was a mistake, and I have set ou~ the

background to -that in my memorandum to you . If you want =
can go through and explain how I believe that s_stake
occurred, or I can answer more generally on whether yo-_
think there are more areas where I should regret . From the
general perspective, I believe that we were _nvolved -n
comm.unicating on a very, very serious issue way the Prime
Minister and the Goverr-Tient felt as strongly as :.hey did
about the =issue of Iraq and Iraq's weapons of Iilass
descruczion . At various stages we were communicating the
intense diplomatic activity that was going on as the ?rime
Min :ster and the Government so-aght to avoid military
conflict . At a further stage we were communicating d-irg
wha :: was a military conflict . Now, during all t :.a= time with
a media -::hat we are opera=ing w-' 7h around the clock, around
_he world, on an issue like that, we are involved in and
responsible for a huge nu--nber of, if yo-,: like, pieces of
commuaication . -Within one of them, and = have exo=ained the
background in the memorand-xn, there was a --mistake .

Q899 Chairman : You say "a m-stake" . Are you saying you are
par :icular-sing a single mis=ake?

Mr Campbell : I am saying that, yes .

Q900 Chairman : What was that single par--icu_ar mis~ake?

Mr Campbell : The mistake was as follows : in relation to the

second paper, the paper that was issued in February 2003,

l3~c/s/0269 $Nb
http :/hn ww oubhcatUons .parl] ament uldpa/cm200203/emselectlcmfaff/uc813-ix/uc813 . 04/07/2003
the idea for that came from a group _hat I chair, continue
to chair, and have chaired for some time now, called the
Iraq Comrunications Group . That is comprised of people from
the Foreign office, from the MoD, from DFID, from the
intelligence agencies, it is comprised of people from the
unit that we can come on _ ., discuss, the CIC . During January
at one of those meetings the intelligence agencies gave
information that had come to light, new information, which
wus releasable in the public doma:n, and they gave
nermission for that to be done, about the scale of the Iraqi
apparatus that was working against the interests of the
United Nations' weapons inspectors . In other words, the
efforts that the Iraqis were making to prevent the weapons
inspectors from doing their 'oh . It was interesting . It was
info--ma=ion, =or example-, about the fact that ----

Q901 Chairman : You give more particulars, but `here was new
intellicence information nrovided?

Mr Campbell : That was, if you like, the catalyst for the

idea for the aaper that followed .

Q902 Chairman : What was the mistake?

Mr Campbell : This was discussed over a period of about three

weeks at these weekly meetings that I chair . The mistake
that was made was around about 20 January what had happened
was this : I had asked the CIC to prepare a draft paper, at
this s_age we were not exactly clear about how we were going
to deploy that paper, I can come on to how we did deploy it
in the end, ----

Q903 Chairman : Colleagues w_11 no doubt come in on that .

B?r Campbell : -What happened was I commissioned the CIC to

begin drafting a paper whic_-i would incorporate the
intelligence material, some of the intelli_aence material
that had been authorised for use in the pub--c domain, and
other information about t:^_is theme, the whole theme of Iraq
being coa=ig~ared as a state and its state appara=us designed
to conceal weapons of mass destruction from the Un_ted
Nations' weapons inspectcrs . ^he C-C then asked around the
system if you l- :~-e, the Foreign Office, MoD, other
Government departmeats that may have an interest in this
area, for any papers that they _.ad on -this, information =_-at
they might have on this in their research departments .
People talk about this 12 year old PhD thesis, it was not a
12 year old PhD t:-iesis, ----

Q904 Chairman : "v4hat was the mistake?

Mr Campbell : I will come to the mistake but I think it is

imaortant that I explain the background because [.his is hc)-v,7

9BC IS /c)2--+ c) 941

http ://www publications parliament uidpa/cm200203/cmselect/cmiaff/uc813-ix/uc813 04/07/3003
 viui .. ul.1R.G

the mistake happened . During that process the Foreign Office

research department sent this journal from September 2002 by
Dr al-Marashi, who you interviewed recently . That then wen-_
to the CIC . At that point within the CIC work from that
paper was taken and absorbed inro the draft that was being
prepared within the CIC . That was the mistake, without
a ttribl .tion .

Q905 Chairman : So the mistake in the February document was

to transpose that learned article w_thout attribution?

Mr Campbell : It was to take parts of that article and put

them into the draft that was being developed without
attrib-iz~ion .

Q906 Chairman : Why did you ther. send a letter of apology t o

Sir Richard Dearlove, because he had nothing to do with
that?

Mr Campbell : I did not send a letter of apology to Sir

3i-hard Dearlove .

Q907 Chairman : Have you sent letters of apology to anyone?

Mr Campbell : I rave not sent a letter of apology to Sir

Richard IDearlove .

Q908 Chairman : Have you sent letters of apology to anycne~

Mr Campbell : Not _n relation to this

. I do not th-nk we have
actually got to the impact of that mistake .

Q909 Chairman : That will be pursued lazier . = aim now on a

separate e_-nestion . Have you, as a result of that February
dossier, sent letters Of aco--ouy no anyone?

Mr Campbell : No . What I have done, and what I did

immediately when the mistake subsequently came to liaht
sometime after the Fe::ruary paper had been published -
because azi tha= stage I did no= know this had happened, nor
did anybody else outside the CIC know that this had happened
- when that draft paper was cl=cula~ed to us we assumed Li"_1s
was 3ove1"nI^ent ITiaterlal, Go'veriTllen'C source3 material, so
therefore some of the changes that you have been discussing
4r_ earlier hear :ngs were made by experts within Government
or_ a draft which they believed to be a Government draft .
That was izhe mistake .

Q910 Chairman : Back to my cp:estion . Have you, as a result

o= zhat document, apologised to anyone7

Mr Campbell ; On the day that the mistake was revealed, firs7i

or_ Channel 4 and then on B3C IVewsnight, and Dr al-1Narasri

13~Bar'/ :5/02-7-1
http/lwwwpubiicathons .parliam entuldpalcm200203/cmselecYlcmfaffluc813-ixluc8 1 3 . .04/07/2003
went on to the media, --he following day - this indicates how
seriously we took it - I spoke to the security intelligence
co-crdinator, I spoke to the Permanent Secretar-y of the
Foreign and Commonweal-
:h Office, I spoke to the head of the
Secret Intelligence Service, = spoke to the Chairman of _he
Jcint intelligence Committ:ee to explain that soiret:h_ng had
gone wrong . Equally, the other thing that we did was the
Prime Itinister's snokesman on behalf of the Prime Minister
at a briefing that day acknowledged that mistakes had been
made and we said that this should not have happened, and
obviously subse .;ient to thaz we sought to establish what had
happened .

Q911 Chairman : what you did in those conversations could

no~ be construed as an apology?

Mr Campbell : What i- was, was saying to the intelligence

services that the care that should have been taken in the
production of a document which contained some of their
material was not sufficient . - have a sufficiently good
relationship with these intelligence officials not -for them
or me to ~aresent that as an apology but as a discussion
about how ~his had happened and how we stop it happening
again .

Q912 Chairman : You had that discussion . Save you thought of

having a discussion with mr al-Narashi who told this
Committee last week, as you know, that certain of his
relatives could have been put ir. danger as a result o= the
careless use of his material~

Mr Campbell : I have =: had a discussion with Dr al-biarashi .

I read what he said to the Commitzee and obviously that is
somer~hrng that you have zo take seriously when somebody
makes that sort of ----

Q913 Chairman : 3ow would you take it seriously?

Mr Campbell : I am happy to say ~o Dr al-Marashi 7-hat the

mistake that occurred should not have occurred and apologise
for that . S have to say in relation to what he said co the
Committee, it does not really sit with the -act that this
plagiarism was exposed by him on the BBC and, as he said to
your Committee, he 1s the first person that you go to on 7:he
Internet if you look into these issues . =c _s not as :f his
extertise in this area and the fact that he has contributed
material on this area was new . Having said all 1:,hat, ----

Q914 Chairman : It was not the :act of his expertise, it was

the use made of his expe=ise in this documer_r. which could
harm him. .

Mr Campbell : I accept there is a palpable difference between

BBC 1 SfG2~~ Sy
http l/www publicatons .parliament uk/pa/cm200203icmselect/cmfaff/ucS13-ix/uc813 .. 04/07/2003
Oral evidence I'age 6 of 70

somebody writing for a journal like the Middle East Review

and somebody's mater-'al being used in a British Government
paper . I should 'us- emphasise on that, the criticism at -the
_ime was that we did not acknowledge him, noc that we did .
At :he time o-' publication, with the exception of people
within the CIC, nobody knew that that was where it came
from .

Q915 Chairman : Do you accept that the effect of that 3

February dossier was to cast doubts on :.he credibility of
the rather more imnortant dossier of 24 September?

Mr Campbell : Only if Parliament and the public were to -view

them in exactly the same light . What I mean by that is ::.hat
they were very, very different in their scale, in their
breadth and in their intended impact .

Q916 Chairman : So it is less important as to whether one

was well-founded :

Mr Campbell : No, I did no-- say that . "_'he dossier _n

September 2002 was one of the most important pieces of work
developec during the entire build-up to the conflict .

Q917 . could have been red:icecl by

Chairman : And its impact
the rather slapdash negl :gena way of putting together the
February document?

Mr Campbell : I do not accept tha-_ because I think the two

have to be seen in isolation . The dossier of Septeribe- 2002
was put together, as I say, over many months, it had the
Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee in the lead on
every aspect of its production, and i= was a serious,
thorough piece of work setting out wny it was so vital to
tackle Saddam and ih= . The second paper -was not .

Q918 Chairman : It was not a serious tiiece of work?

Mr Campbell : No, the second paper was not vital _o the case
of why we had to deal with Saddam and Vdl'IID .

Q919 Chairman : Do you accept it was a "complete Ho--licks"?

tCr Campbell : I accept that a mistake was made and I accept

that it was right that we apologised for that mistake, and I
i::h-ir_k I have identified whe-e the mistake was made .

Q920 Chairman : Do you feel now that you regret publishing

it in the first placel

Mr Campbell : I think -:.he idea of a paper setting out, as it

sought to do, the scale of Saddam russe-n's apparatus of
concealment and intimidation against the UN was a good thing

CIs 10273
httD //www .publicahons parhament uiJpa/cm200203/cmselecUcmfaff/uc813-ix/uc813 . 04/07/2003
 Oral evidence :a~c r ui iv

to do . It should not have happened in the way tha= it did . I

have explained as best as I can, having gone over it, why
=hat happened . The rea=_ty is tha= had it not happened like
tha= it would have been a perfectly good thing =o do, but it
did ha-,DQen like the-. .

Q921 Chairman : And in the c_rcums .ances you were sorry it

was done?

Mr Campbell : Yes, obviously I think it has been regrettable .

Q922 Sir John Stanley : Mr Campbell, I have to say I found

some of the answers you gave ~o the Chairman less thar_
credible . First of al'-, I must put Lo you your suggestion
that _he issue o= concealment was some sort of ceriuheral
iss~le as far as Members of Parliament were concerned in
deciding whet:er or not to su-jport the Government is wholly
unfounded . The -issue of concealment was absolutely central .
The issue was why could the weapons inspectors not find the
weapons cf -mass desLruction and was iz worthwhile going on
pursuing that par_icular avenue of search . The Goverr_~ent's
justi_'icatior_ for the war was that we could noc rely on
further time being given to the weapons inspectors because
of the pro_aramme of concealment . I have to put it to you
that the ]udgmen= you have gained that zae issue of
concealmer_t was p=riph=ral, I think was profoundly mistaken .

Mr Campbell : I did not say the issue of concealment was

peripheral, I said that paper was not remotely as
slgP_i2lcant as the dossier in Je'J7:.ember 2002 . The dossier in
2002 attracted, I think I am right in saying, more incerest
around -he wcrid . Number 10, the Foreign Oifice and the BBC
websizes virLually collapsed on the day . It had a massive
nrint run It was the product of months and monchs of
detailed work w_th the intelli_aence agencies . It was a huge
break with precedent . it was a very important document . The
briefing paper in February was given -o six journalists on a
.lane to America . The reason that it was subsequently put
-
into the house was co _nform MPs o-i it because the Prime
Minister, as you may recall, was in A .-ner?ca at the time and
was returning to make a scacement on his talks with
President Bush . I am not saying the issue of concealmenz was
not hugely important, I a?n saying thaz that briefing paper
was not nearly as signi=icar_z as tae dossier .

Q923 Sir John Stanley : You have Dust touched on the second
reason why I found your initial answer less than credible .
You said that you were unaware, apparently, of this mistake,
that yoi believed the so-called 'dodgy dossier', the one
which in your memorandum you said you conceived, so it is
your 'dodgy dossier', was a dossier which had the same
=ntelligence veracity, the same level of intelligence
approval as the original September docunent .

13~C JS ~62~- l~-

http //wwu~ .pubhcatior,s parLament u1Jpa/cm200203/cmselecicmfaff/uc813-ix/uc813 04/07/2003
 Oral evidence E'aee 8 of 70

Mr Campbell : No, I did no : say that .

Q924 Sir John Stanley : You said you assumed it was a

document on a11 fours with the previous one . You said that
in answer to the Chairman .

Mr Campbell : No . The procedures that the dossier of

September 2002 went through were wholly different from thosa
of February 2C03, that -s why as a resul= we have actually
put in place new procedures about how in=elligence material
is handled in any documents pun into the public domain .

Q925 Sir John Stanley : So you knew that the Procednres that
had been followed were wholly different from the ones than
were followed for the September dossier?

Mr Campbell : Not until the misoaice was exposed by the media .

Q926 Sir John Stanley : Mr Campbell, you are responsible as

the Director of Government Communications non merely for
whao goes on inside Number 10 but also for the C=C unit
inside the Foreign Office . You can-Zoo seriously pretend to
this Commitcee that you did not know the procedures that
were being followed for the clearance or not of the second
'dodgy 3ossier'?

Nlr Campbell : I an, well aware of what che procedures were . I

am simply saying no you that the procedures were differenn .
on the dossier of Septeri .er 20C2 tae lead person was the
Chairman of the Join= Intelligence Committee, it was
produced by the Joinu intelligence Committee ; the dossier Lin
February was not . The point - am making, and that I have
made in the memorandum I have given to you, is a mistake was
made within the CIC . I was not aware that had been done
until Channel 4 and then Tv'ewS .^.1Qht revealed that . I had
never heard of Dr al-Marashi, nor had =he other people who
had commented on the paper . The changes them the Chairman
referred to on the next were made by people nhir_ :-_ing they
were making changes to cake more accurate a Government
draft .

Q927 Sir John Stanley : So you are saying so the Comrintee

now, which _s confirming whac the Co7mittee's evidence is,
than you were aware of the different procedures and when the
document came to you for final putting to the Prime
Minister, you were aware that i= had not been through the
normal intelligence clearance processes?

Mr Campbell : It had been through the procedures as they

existed at that time . We put in place new procedures
thereafter . The difference is that the joint intelligence
Committee Chairman was responsible for the production of the
WND dossier in 2002, the second one I was responsible for as

+Be~[slo27
S

_ .u . .... . .. . .., .t,~ . ..,. .. .., ., . .1 . . .,e.,I lrl..,l....,~(1Mf111r,cP7>rt/rmiaffA,rRl'A -ir/rtr$,°li

04/n7nnni
 Vldl eV1QBDCe

t'r.e Chairman of the group which commissioned it . The

intelligence agency which provided inzelligence for use in
the public domain had author-sed its use in the normal way
as the procedures exist~ed at that tine It was a result of
the mistake in the way that it was made thaz~ subseq,ient to
that we agreed new procedures so that anything with an
intelligence input has to be cleared by the Chairman of the
Jo=nt Intelliaence Committee .

Q928 Sir John Stanley : When you briefed the Prime Minister
before he made his statement in the House on 3 February, did
you tell the Prime Minister thac the docLL-nent which he as
Prime Minister was placing in _he Library of the House, the
'dodgy dossier' that day, had neither been seer_ in draft or
in final form by :.he Chairman of the Joint intelligence
Committee'P

Mr Campbell : There was no need for the Chairman of ~the Join7:~

Intelligence Commi_,~ee to see it under the procedures as
they were then .

Q929 Sir John Stanley : That is not t:-ie queszion I put :o

you, r'ir Campbell,

Mr Campbell : The answer is no, because it did noo arise .

Q930 Sir John Stanley : The answer '_s no .

Mr Campbell : The answer is no, because it did not arise .

There was no need for the Chairman of the Joint Inte-lrgence
Co.--lmittee to see something which the issuing agency had
already cleared for public use properly, according ro the
procedures as they were then, for public use in --hac
document .

Q931 Sir John Stanley : We will see in a moment whe=her it

was necessary for you to re'_1 the -Prime Minister that .
will come to t_.a~ in a moment . Were you aware that the draf-_
of the 'dodgy dessier' had neither been seen in draft or in
final forn by the Secretary of the Cabinet?

Mr Campbell : I was not aware or unaware of --hat . The Cabinet

Secretary is not part of --he groua that I chair of senior
peop-_e fro-r
. various Government departments, including the
CabineL 0=fice . I had not sent it to the Cabinec Secretary .
The Cabir_e~ Office is represented on tnac group . -

Q932 Sir John Stanley : Do you think you should have senz it
to the Cabine : Secretary, given the fac~: that it was going
to be placed in the Library of the House of Commons?

Mr Campbell : It was not the sort of document that I felL

shou'_d be senzi as a matter of routine to the Cabinet

~c ~s ~bz~s
http~//www .publlcauons parhament uk/pJcm?00203/cmselectlcmfaff/uc813-tx/uc813
,~3
04/0712003
 Oral avidence pa2e ] 0 of 70

Secretary .

Q933 Sir John Stanley : In your _nemcrandum to us, Yr

Campbell, you say in relation to the Septenber dossier : "I
emphasised at all times both in our discussions and in any
writcen outcomes of our various meetincs circu-ated within
tne system that nothing should be published un_ess the JIC
and t:e intelligence A_aencies were 100 per cent happy" .

Mr Campbell : Correct .

Q934 Sir John Stanley : _inrnen you ca-me to brief the Prime
Minister on 3 February about =he nature of the 'dodgy
dossier', did you make clear to him that at no point had the
-ntel-igence agencies been consulted as to whether they wer e?
100 per cent happy with the document?

Mr Campbell : That there relates to the Sept-ember 2002

dossier on "vJN1D .

Q935 Sir John Stanley : It is equally applicable to this

document .

Mr Campbell : It is not because, as I :ave explained, the

procedures were different . I explained to =he Prime N_inister
the purpose of the briefing paper, which was to give -t to
six Sur_day newspaper journalists on a flight to Washirgton .
I explained where there was new intelligence which had been
cleared for p~_b-ic use and I explained that there was other
material within the document abou= the nature of Saddara's
infrastruc~:.ure of ccr_cealment and in-zimida7~ion . I certainly
c.id not say to him, -or example, that this was taken from a
Middle East ;orirr_al because I did not know that to be the
case .

Q936 Sir John Stanley : Buz. you must cer-..ainly have been
aware that oper. sources were being used and the material '-,ad
been culled off the Internet because the computer records
show quite clearly thac merioers of your ovan staff :nside
.Number -0 were involved in the put=ing of this material or.
co the Internet ar.d were involved in a ma :)cr way -n the
dra= :ing of it .

Mr Campbell, iti'ell, if you read -the memorandum that I gave to

you, I think this story of the four people who allegedly
authored the report says a huge amount more about the
reporting of these issues `han it does about the reality . If
I may, Chairman, I would like zo explain that in some
detar 1 .

Q937 Sir John Stanley : Car_ I just finish my line of

guescionrng and perhaps we can come back to =hat .

cIslG2-7 -~ 55#
b+*n/hzlww .uubhcations .oarliament uk/pa/em2002031cmstlectlcmfaffluc8 i3-ix/hrc813 . .. 04/0712003
 Ural evidence YaQe 1_1 of 70

Mr Campbell : Yes .

Q938 Sir John Stanley : As you know, Mr Campbell, the clear

inadequacy of your briefing of the Prime Minister led the
Prime Minister to - I am sure inadver=ently - very serio~--sly
mislead the House of Commons or, February 3 . The Prime
Minister said, and I will quote it in full : "We issued
further intelligence over the weekend about the
infrastructure .,= concealment . It is oh-r-cus_y difficult
when we publish intelligence repo=s, but = hope that people
have some sense of the integrity of our security services .
They are not publishing this or giving us this information,
making it un, iz is the intelligence that they are receiving
and we are passing it on to people" .

Mr Campbell : That _s wholly accurate .

Q939 Sir John Stanley : Every Member of the House of Commons

who heard rhat would have been in no doubt that this second
dossier was taken through the full JIC process, had jIC
approval, had full JIC status . In fact., as we know, it was
very largely simply culled off the Internet and the House of
Commons a few weeks later took a decision on whether or not
to go to war on this country and _his particular document
was an elemen= in that decision . The :. was a very, very grave
failure of briefing of the Prime Minister by yourself, I
suggest, Mr Campbell . Do you acknowledge that to be the case
nova?

Mr Campbell : I think that is a very, very grave charge and I

think it is one that I reject . If you look at the -front
cover of the document : "The report draws upon a n"imber of
sources, including intelligence material, and shows how the
Iraai regime is constructed =o have and to keep WMO and is
now engaged in a campaign of e'as=ructicn of the IIN weapons
inspectors" . That is accurate . In relation co the processes
with .re intelligence agencies, the SIS - the lead agency on
this - volunteered the information for public use . They were
conten-_ for it to be used in -this paper . The reason I keep
coming back to the difference between -the two things is the
JIC urocess that vou describe in relation to the first and
the mosc subs tant. I' al report, that was a JIC document, it was
produced by the joint: Intelligence Committee ; this was a
briefing paper produced by the team that I chair . T:e Prime
Minister put it into the House, he did not present =t -n the
same way . If you recall with the =_rsc report, Parliament
was recalled for the Prime Minister to make a statement and
a debate to be held upon it . The procedures for that were
different . The procedures traL have now been put in place
have been strengthened so that the procedures that applied
to the inl":D dossier of Sep-e=er 2002 now apply to all
documenLs with an intelligence input . That was a change that
I was instrumental -in putcing in place after this mistake in

.~~~ ~~ lo2~g s3so

http~llwww.publ :cati ons .parhament.uklpalcm2002031cmselect/cmfaffluc813-ixlucgi 3 . . . 04/07/2003
 Oral evidence PaP 1? of 70

_he C-C was exnosed .

Q940 Sir John Stanley : D'L Campbell, do you not recognise

that a hugely greater area of mistake resulted than simply
the indefensible plagiarisat_on of material off the
Irternet? The hugely greater mistake _hat resulted in
parliamentary and cons tiz~utional te=rLs was your total
failure to brief the Prime M_nister correctly as to the
process that had beer_ used, the fact that none of this
material had come through with the Joint =noe1_igence
Committee Chairman's approval, and the House of Commons was
left under the illusion , as indeed was the Prime Minister,
_hat in terms of the authen_icity and reliability of this
information it came with the JIC seal o= approval on it when
that was not the case?

Mr Campbell : The Prime Minister did not say it was with the
JIC seal of approval and as the Prime Niirister made clear iri-
rhe ---

Q941 Sir John Stanley :" . . . issued further intelligence over

the weekend" ; d--'d any Member of Parliamen:: chink the :: did
not r,earn something with JIC approval?

Mr Campbell : - think any Member of Parliamenc wou_d

recognise the difference between a docu--nent such as that
one, with the detail that is in it and the kind of
oroduction that it is and the way that it was put ou :: at the
:i.ne, as I say, as part of a massive, global communications
exercise, and this paper that was given to a few Sunday
journalists travelling with the Prime Minister . The Prime
Minister, as he made clear again. in the House today, was
ccnze_^_t with the paper as it was . What he
not content is
with, and nor am I, is the fact that in its prod-action a
mistake was made . We have acknowledged that inistake, we have
apologised for that mistake and we have put forward these
new procedures to make sure ic does not happen again, and -
do not honestly see _here is much more _hat we can do than
=hat .

Q942 Sir John Stanley : Mr Campbell, I have to put it co you

=he concrast between the covers makes it absolutely ---

Air Campbell, --- - think the contrast -is far greater than
that .

Q943 Sir John Stanley : The contrast between the covers

makes iL absolutely clear that you should have alerted the
Prine Minister unmistakably to the fact that the preparation
of these two documents was quite d==ferenr ---

Mr Campbell : He knows that -

dff- ls/b z-7q SSC
i,*t rn",~x .,x, n hi,^ar,nnc narl,am~nt .ul<lna/cm200203/cmselect/cmfaff/uc813-ix/uc8l3 04/07/2003
 Oral evidence rage tD OT iv

Q944 Sir John Stanley : --- That the second document had no
J7C approval and that he, I am quite certain, if he had
known that and had beer. told that the-re '_s no way he would
have said what he did =o the House of Commons when he made
h_s statement on 3 February . That statement suggested that
this was zr_telligence of veracity coning from Inteillgen-e
sources with intelligence approval ; we now know that to be
false .

Mr Campbell : Had the Prime Minister had those concerns he

would have raised them directly with me ; he has not .
Equally, I have had many, many discussions with the
intelligence agencies, and the intelligence material that
was in that document was- accurate . The reason I keep coming
back to the difference 1n these docllSilents 1s the fact that
that first document of September 2002 was hugely important,
it was a huge break of precedent for the intelligence
agencies to be sharing so much information like that wi :h
Parliament and the nublif . The second doc=ent was a
different sort of communication, and the Prime Minister has
not said to me, "I should have been told that this had not
gone through the J-C clearance", because he knew that where
there was i:1=e11igence nater-al in that, document it. had beer_
cleared for use by the issuing agency, and that was =he
procedure at the tine .

Q945 Sir John Stanley : Yes, but I air, sure the Prime
Miniszer is sufficiently aware of the huge dangers of mixing
incellioence mater-al with macerial taken off the inrerne=
and I am sure the Prime Minister is also aware that L= he
_:ad been properly briefed on _hose dangers the first thing
he would have said to you is, I'M-- Campbell, make certain
this is --!eared by the Cha :r-
.,an of the -TIC before it is put
in the Library ."

Mr Campbell : All I can do is refer you to what the Prime

Minister said in the House of Commons coday where he makes
clear ---

Q946 Sir John Stanley : He made the statement today,

absolutely rightly, that he was left completely in the dark
at the time he made his staterent on 3 February that the
greater part of this document had been culled off the
internet and there were these two si_onificanu '-naccuracies
in it .

Mr Campbell : Can I just say on that a-- that point, neither

he nor I nor anybody in a sen_or position on my Iraq
Communicat'_ons Group was aware that chat was the case . That
is the poinL I keep coming back to . In relation to the
changes, I have explained those changes were made by experts
within the government commentir_g upor, what they did no : know
to be Dr al-Marasri's work . It is only, for example, where

Bec,- Is1G zt6

http~//ww°w pubhcations .parhamen : uldpe/cm200203/cmselect/cmiaif/uc813-ix/uc813 . 04/07/2003
 Oral evidence Paz-. 14 of 70

"hostile groups" became terrorist organisations", and it

was because they said, "Hold on a minute, you are not
talking about host_` 2e groups, yo--, are talkir-g about
terrorist organisations, you are talking aoout =slamic
Jihad, you are talking about Hamas, yc-,i are ta=king abo'~ :.
some of the groups that are ti-y--Inc to destabilise the
Iranian regime .

Q947 Sir John Stanley : Is it not a fact --hat the Prime

Minister has, rightly, -nstructed that a11 published
material that contains intelligence material must -'in fuz-are
he cleared by the Chairman o-' the Joint Intelligence
Committee? Does that not o- itself make ' t self-evident that:
the procedures you were following and the briefing of the
Prime Minister were grossly inadeauate?

Mr Campbell : No it does not because it was not initially the

Prime Minister who got in place these new procedures, it was
me with the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Securi~y-
and intelligence Co-ordinator, and the Prime Minister is
content with the decisions that we came to .

Q948 Sir John Stanley : I am fascinated to know that in this

matter apparently you seem to determine 'the Government's
procedures .

Mr Campbell : I do not determrne _re Government's procedures

and that totally misrepresents w:~at I said . - entered into a
discussion with the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service,
the Chairman of --he JIC and the Security and Intelligence
Co-ordinator, Si- Dav_d . The procedures were agreed in an
exchange of correspondence between me and Sir David, having
been discussed with the agencies, and they were signed off
by the Prime Minister . Those procedures are now in place

Chairman : Thank you . Mr Mack_nlay please?

Q949 Andrew Mackinlay : Mr Campbell, on page ^-_ of your

statemenc you make it clear, as you have over the past few
minutes, and you say : "When new SIS intelligence came to
light, which was authorised for use -~n the puhlic domain,
which revealed the scale of the reg-'me's programme of
deception and concealment.iz was my idea to base a briefing
pacer for the media =on it . You also went on a few moments
ago to explain o.~ 3 February and you said : "I explained" -
_ha-- is to the ?rime minister - "where 7-_
.ere was new
intelligence ." inreuld you be ab=e this afternoon to take us
through those paragraphs or sections of this document whic_-i
were the new intelligence materia-l'

Xr Campbell : The bulk of any new intelligence material- was

principally in sections one and three . It related to the
activities of the Iraqi regime It is the material abou- the

~CIs /GZ,gI
htto /lwww.publicaiions.t)arliamentuk/pa/em200203/cmselect/cmfaff/uc813-ix/uc813 . 04/07/2003
Oral evidence

bugging of hotels, abou : the :non_toring of the movements of

officials, it is the material about tine organisation of car
crashes and the like .

Q950 Andrew Mackinlay : Indeed, it is very precise, and

_herefore it would be possible for you overnight, would i-,
ncu, with a highlighter to highlight precisely that which is
above the =ine in terms of this intelligence material and
that which is "other sources"?

Mr Campbell : It would be but I would also rave --c) check if

Lhe agencies were happy for that to be done .

Q951 Andrew Mackinlay : You, overlook the chasm you are

{all_ng into . You have said repeatedly uhat they have signed
this information off .

Mr Campbell : There may be information within that paper

which is intelligence information but not necessarily
identified as such .

Q952 Andrew Mackinlay : You have conf~,~sed me because zhe way

I was following you, you said =hat new information came to
light which was authorised for use in the public domain
That is all I am asking for, that category which was
authorised for use in the cublic domain .

Mr Campbell : I have referred to some of that in the answer

that - gave to you earlier .

Q953 Andrew Mackinlay : You unders--and the category S am

asking about . Overnight would you highlight, or however way
you want to indicate that which is in chat cazegor-Y?

Mr Campbell : I think it would probably take longer than

that .

Q954 Andrew Mackinlay : why°

Mr Campbell : 3eca-ise I would have to go through the kind of

processes that Sir John has ;i:.st been talking about .

Q955 Andrew Mackinlay : Sy Friday morning?

Mr Campbell : S would hope to be able to do that and :he

Foreign Secretary could perhaps bring it, but that is
something that would have to be agreed by probably all of
the intelligence agencies .

Q956 .Andrew Mackinlay : I= it was nor, I think you would

need to come up with an explanation as to why because I just

car-not understand the i.ocic of 1t . I do not want -to labo'.:r

secIsl62$2 SS9
http .liwww publica.ions parliament uklpa/cm300203/cmselect/cm:affluc613-i3Juc8l3 . . 04/07/2003
 Oral evidence Page 16 of 70

the point . It was or_ly when the "plagiarism" issue came to

light that med_a attention grew, you say . When did you rave
that aw-u1 moment when you discovered row what has become
krown as the "Hor-icks" . -When -was chat moment, =hat sinking
feeling (we have all had it_) of "whoops"?

Mr Campbell : As I recall, thac moment was on the way back

from an interview the Prime Minister had done wi=h Jeremy
Paxman and I think - this is from memory, dredging rry memory
here - when we were going -hro~igh what we described as our
"masochism" s=-rategy whereby the Prime Minister basical=~y-
went out and was getting beaten up by the public in
. I think I am right in saying Channel 4 made a
interviews
reference to this story on the 7 o'clock news and Newsnignt
did a very brief interview with Dr al-Marashi in the
evening .

Q957 Andrew Mach-inlay : Approximate "-y, which day was chat

Lhen?

Mr Campbell : That was the day ---

Q958 Andrew Mackinlay : It is beyond 3 February, _s it noc?

Mr Campbell : I think it was the 7th . 1 think it may be in my

note .

Q959 Andrew Mackinlay : Okay, car. I assume chat within an

hour or two the Prime Minister was told?

Mr Campbell : I_ may have been the 6th . The Prime Minister

was told pretty quickly, yes . He by then, i think from
memory, had gone on to his conscicuency and I was on the way
back to London .

Q96D Andrew Mackinlay : I have zo say to you I have been

reading this afternoon and I have listened carefully :io Sir
John Stanley reading out che precise words of the Prime
Mir_ister's szatemen= of 3 =ebruary . You .r.igh: think me
stunid -

--Mx- Campbell : --- no .

Q961 Andrew Mackinlay : --- but I cannot conclude any other

reason, reading those words again and again, than that this
document was an intelligence document . lo is no=
conditional . In fairness to you, it says the document draws
upon a number of sources including intelligence sources, but
did you and the Pr'-me Minis~:er discuss him making a formal
sta~ement or using a ~ariiaznentary occasion (taking the
initiative rather :her responding to guesc_ons) to clarify
that pointP
~ s/~2~3
.._ fi . . .---- _ . .,_i .~,; t .  .a r  t-r. /~*.,~~n~n2lrn,ePlPrrlrmfaff/nrR73-ix/urR13 _ 04/07/2003
Oral evidence ra.~re i r u1 ~ U

Mr Campbell : The briefing paper that had been given to the

Sunday papers on the trip :~o Washington was put in the
Library in the House on the Monday in advance of the Prime
Minister's statement on his talks with President Bush .

Q962 Andrew Mackinlay : I 'nave told you on =he receiving end

of his statement what I interpreted it to be .

Mr Campbell : All - can say on that is if you look at the

first dossier, the 2002 dossier, it actually makes a very
big po-inE, of the fact that this is an unprecedented
development . It explains what the JIC is, who is on it and
how it works . I think i= you do look at the other one,
particularly, as I say, the way it was used, this is a huge
communica-zions exercise I think all I can do is point to
the front of the paper which says it draws upon a number of
sources including intelligence .

Q963 Andrew Mackinlay : By the =i_ne it has gone beyond this

awful momen" what I cannot understand is, bearing ir- mind
i7. is noz just Andrew Mackinlay who is confused, clearly it
is a loc of other people, probably 650-odd MPs, why did the
Prime Minister and/or yourself (you counsel rim
legitimately) no-- say we really ought to clarify this in a
formal stai:ement or ever_ a written statement to the House?

Mr Campbell : The Prime Minister was asked about it, again

from memory, in the House and has also had a number of
written cuestions about the issue .

Q964 Andrew Mackinlay : But he was never proactive on

was he?

Mr Campbell : On the day Channel 4 and the B3C exposed the

fact. that some of uhis m .,ateriaL had come from Dr al-
?'.arashi's ar-ziic=e in September 2002, the Prime Mini ster's
spokes_man i-^_ the very next briefing said, "Something has
gone wrong here, it should not have hapnened, mistakes have
been made and we will have to look at it ." It did not. take
us that long to establish what had happened . Those in the
CIC responsible admitted what had happened and -,'z was as a
result of that we then discussed and put in place -ahe new
procedures

Q9o"5 Andrew Mackinlay : Who reoresents the Cabiner Office on

the CIC . You said they are represented ; who is he cr she?

Mr Campbell : From time to Li_ne it is the Chairman o= the

Joinc intelligence Commitcee, it is sometimes his deputy,
and that is who it usually is

Q966 Andrew Mackinlay : So the Joint Intelligence Committee

were privy to the document of 3 February7

r~c ~s 1
http .//www .publicat)ons parliament uldpa/em2002031emselectJcm:afiluc813-ixluc813 . . 04J0712003
 Oral evidence PaRe 18 o-'70

Nlr
. Campbell : They were part of the discussions about _he
deployment o- the paper . Ultimately the decision finally to
use the paper ir_ _:~e way that we did was made as pu=t of our
media strategy for the trip to the States . To go back to the;
po-nt that I was discussing with Sir John, the issuing
agency, the Secret Intell-gence Service, had already
au7horised us to use the intelligence material in the public
domain .

Q967 Andrew Mackinlay : Yes, bLz presumably the Cabinet

Office Sec-etary was re?resented at the critical momen= when
-t was decided to go with this information, albeit it might
have been delegated to you to sign it off?

Mr CampbelS : There was a process that went on over a period

of weeks . I think I am right in saying it was 7 January the-.
the SIS said there was this new material which could be
deployed in the public domain . Over the next three weeks
there were three different meetings d_,scussing ail sorts of
other ---

Q968 Andrew Mackinlay : --- Would the Cabinet Secretary be

privy to the =act, to use the term, that there were other
sources o=her than the intelligence material going to be
drawn into this doc~_:.~nent?

Mr Campbell : I am not aware that the Cabinet Secretary

himself was involved at all .

Q969 Andrew Mackinlay : No, but his representative .

T+lr Campbell : Certainly because what my group did was

commission ---

Q970 Andrew Mackinlay : Who is that person?

fix- Campbell : I cannot remember who =or sure was around the
-able at that ti_ne .

Q971 Andrew Mackinlay : It is :ninuted so you could let us

know, please

Mr Campbell : On 7 7anuary'

Q972 Andrew Mackinlay : Or if you think there are a number

of meetings you could say Joe 3loggs on that day and se-and-
so or_ that day .

Mr CampbeSl : In relation to this particular document there

were four meetings .

Q973 Andrew Mackinlay : Let's have whoever is n=`i " ry to,

BE?)ctSI(52SS
hrrn llwwu nnhhcar,nna narliament uldna/cm200203/cmselecUcmfa$/uc813-tx/uc813 . 04/07/2003
 Oral evidence Pa-
.e 19 ot /0

present or the circulation, alease~

Mr Campbell : Yes .

Q974 Andrew Mackinlay : On the September docu.-nent, on page 2

of your stazement you say discussions with the Chai=r,an of
the JIC on presentational -ss,:es, which is your job as a
journalist . Mr Campbell : Former,

Q975 Andrew Mackinlay : Very good . The poin :: is

presentational issues, drafting suggest=ons and ?M's
suggestions, --hose were your words . Did he accept your
suggestions'P "

Mr Campbell : Some he did and some he did not .

Q976 Andrew Mackinlay : Okay, would you be able to tell us

which ones (not now) were _ncluded in, even i-f you cannot
tell us the ones whic :-i were excluded ou7-?

Mr Campbell : I can probably say sore of both .

Q977 Andrew Mackinlay : Overnight perh-aps?

Mr Campbell : I think, for example, the first draft was pu-

forward by the Chairman of the JIC and I looked at it . For
example, there was a paragraph about Saddam Hussein's
illicit earnings and it. sa_d about £3 billion of earnings,
the bulk o£ which was illicit . I asked whether it is
possible co quantify just, how much of that was illicit and
the answer came back from John Scarle_t 100 per cent, that
kind of thing . In another area - and I know the accusacicn
'_s I sexed it up, I think this is sexing it down - :n the
passage on human rights, for example, there were some very
graphic descriptions of the nature of the regime which the
draft described as "vivid and horrifying" . I felt we should
lec it speak for itself . Do you need to say that? The Prime
Mir_isuer also made suggestions .

Q978 Andrew Mackinlay : Do you know which they were?

Mr Campbell : He made suggestions about the structure o£ the

document a :~ quite a late stage in the drafting and the
Charrr.an of the JIC, as it happened, said he did no : think
that was a becr-er structure than his and stuck with his .

Q979 Andrew Mackinlay : Did you write the Executive Summary?

Mr Campbell : No .

Q980 Andrew Mackinlay : Who would have done -_ha~~

aBCIs/o2~6 fCr
http .//www pubhcanons .pat'ltament .ulc/pa/cm20O03/cmselecUcmfaff/uc813-ix/uc813 ... 04/07/3003
Oral evidence Pa~e 20 of 70

Mr Campbell : The Chairman of the JIC wrote the Execu=ive

Summary .

Q981 Andrew Mackinlay : Did subsequently any nember of the

SIS comrolain about the production or the conclusion,
anything about the doc=ent or the manner of its
presentation?

Mr Campbell : Not to me and no-- to =he Prime Minister .

Andrew Mackinlay : You are not aware of that? Thank you very
much .

Q982 Richard Ottaway : Mr Campbell, the Prime Minister --oday

and you this afternoon have said that every word of both th~
dossiers is true . As you are well aware, -the Se,,-)te--nber 02
document has nine main conclusions of the current posi--ion,
one of which is that uranium had been sought in Afr :ca and
had no civil _^-uclear application in Iraq . Are you still
saying tha= is true?

Mr Campbell : I am saying :hat is the intelligence that the

JIC put Forward . I am not an -ntelligence exper :. and my
Dosi :~ion on this is if something comes across my desk that
is from John Scarlett and the JIC, if it is good enough -or
him, i- is good enough for me .

Q983 Richard Ottaway : Given that the documen=s on which

that claim was based have been passed to the Inzernational
Atosic Energy Authority and found to be false, have uhe J=C
notified you they had doubts about ~his?

Mr Campbell : I am aware of the issue - am equally aware,

and this is probably something bes-~:. raised with the JIC than
with myself, that the JIC say it does not necessarily negate
the accuracy of the material they, the JIC, put forward .

Q984 Richard Ottaway : You are saying rather w"-.a7. the

Foreign Secretary said yeszerday and saying this is not my
claim, we are just passing on ir_zelligence here .

Mr Campbell : I am cerzainly not and che reason why I say if

it is good enough for John Scarlet_ it is good enough for me
is =hat I cenple-ely accept the in-:egrity and
professionalism. of their process .

Q985 Richard Ottaway : As far as you are aware, he is still

standing by thaz claim?

Mr Campbell : As far as I aware the claim he a=s in this

document, whilst I nnderstand there is chis issue to do with
forgeries, my understanding (and again this is something
that is not necessarily my expertise) is that that is nct

~-ISjG2g J`~
t. . . ./ . . . . . . . ., .. hl .~ ..ra,r.~r.~ .-I ., -+.r .,lll a/rm'>(Vh(1'~l~^mcrlPr`irmfaffhirRi4-ixhrrRl'~ (14/l1'7/')(1m
Oral evidence Pa2-e 21 of 70

British intelligence material thaz is being talked about .

Q986 Richard Ottaway : The second main conclusion that is

being queried =s the 45-minute point, which you have dealt
with qL:ite extensively in your memorandum . The Foreign
Secretary made a similar point yesterday about the 45
m-nutes . Are you saying the same today that this is what the
intelligence people are telling yc~a and it must be tr~.:e?

Mr Campbell : When the firsc draft of the September 2002

doss_er was presented to Number 10, I think I an right in
saying that was the first time = had seen that and again, as
I say, having seen the meticulousness and the care that =he
Chairman of the JIC and his colleagues were taking in the
wnole process, I really did not think it was my place, to be
perfectly frank, to say, "Hold on a minute, what is this
about?" What is completely and totally and 100 per cent
untrue - and this is the BBC allegation, which is ostensibly
I think whv the Chairman called me on this - what is
completely and totally untrue is that I in any way overrode
that judgment, sought co exaggerate that intelligence, or
sought co use it in any way that the intelligence agencies
were not 100 per cent co .-_tent with .

Q987 Richard Ottaway : You use some rather interesting

wording in your memorandum that to suggest it was inserted
against the wishes of the intelligence agencies was false .
Was it put in at your suggestion?

Mr Campbell : No, otherwise --- It existed in the very first

draft and, as far as I am aware, that parL the paper stayed
like `hat .

Q988 Richard Ottaway : Have you _gone back to the JIC on chat
point since publicacionP

: - can assure you that = have had many, many

Mr Campbell
discussions about this iss~_ie with the Chai=-nan of the JIC,
not least in preparation for this hearing .

Q989 Richard Ottaway : And --hey are still standing :Dehind

it?

IMr Campbell : Absolutely, absolutely . In relation to that

paru_cular story, which as Sir Jonn Stanley said to the BBC
correspondent last week, is about as serious an allegation
as one can make, not j-=:i against me but against =he Prime
Minister and the intelligence agencies, they are bas'_cally
saying that the Prime
. Mir_isrer took the country into
military conflict and a11 that entails - loss of military
and -raqi civilian life - on the :oasis of a 1=e . Now that is
a very, very serious allegation .

8~1s/02r~s 565
http //www publications parliament uk/pa/cm200303/cmselect/cn :faff/uc813-iT/uc813 0-a/07/2003
 Oral evidence Pzae 23 of 70

Q990 Richard Ottaway : Can I suggest =t is Parliament that

took the country into war .

Mr Campbell : The allegation against me is that we helped th a

Prime Minister persuade Parliament and the country to go
into conf=ict on i~he basis of a lie . - think that is a
pretty serious allegation . It has been denied by the Prime
Minister, it has beer. denied by :he Chairr .an of the Joint
Intelligence Committee, -it has been denied by the Security
and Intelligence Co-ordinator and it has been denied by the
heads of the intelligence agencies involved, and yet the BBC
continue to stand by that story .

Q991 Richard Ottaway : You believe -_hat time will prove you
right on that one?

Mr Campbell : I know that we are right in relation to that

45-minute point . It is com_pletely and totally untrue, and--I
do not use this word ---

Q992 Richard Ottaway : I am talking about the substance .

Mr Campbell : It is actually a lie .

Q993 Richard Ottaway : You are being accused of being

invcived in its insertion in the document . _ am q:izzing you
on its veracity .

Mr Campbell : I am saying in relation to that if it is good

enough for the Joint Intell_gence Committee, it is good
enough for me . I am not q :a_ified to o-uestion their
Dudgement upon it but I have seen and been privy to _he kind
of trocesses and the meticulousness with which they approach
:ha= . When you have a situation when a=1 of those people,
=ror'u the Prime Minister down, the Foreign Secretary, the rC0
Permanent Secretary, the heads or all the agencies deny a
story and the BBC persist i : saying it is true, persist in
defending the correspondent whom you took evidence from las`
week, when T_ know and they know that it is not true, I think
something zas gone very wrong with the way that these issues
are covered .

Q994 Richard Ottaway : One of yo'a --s wron g

Mr Campbell : I know who '-s right and who is wrong . The BBC
are wrong . 'Ale have apologised 'in relation to Dr al-Yarashi
and I --hink it is about time the BBC apologised to us in
relation to the 45-minute point .

Q995 Richard Ottaway : I will leave that to the BBC, _f you

do not mind . Can I move on, in the preparation of the
September 2002 document did the Government ever receive any
information from the intelligence services that Iraq was not

H3c 1s /G2e q S1W

},ttn ll,xnznx, nnhl,rat,nnc narl,am-nt nklna/r-n'JfICl~C141rmcrlPrt/rmfa=f/ rRl ~-,r/rRl~ (11/(17/7CV14

Oral evidence YaQe 23 ot 7U

an immediate _hreat?

Mr Campbell : Sorry, can you j us= repeat tra= aoinc?

Q996 Richard Ottaway : Did the Government ever receive any

-nformation from intelligence services that Iraq was not an
imirtediate threat?

Mr Campbell : Not to my knowledae . I really do think that is

a question for the intelligence agencies .

Q997 Richard Ottaway : You were looking at the intelligence

there .

Mr Campbell : I do not see all the intelligence and I would

not expect to see a11 the intelligence .

Q998 Richard Ottaway : Bu= you were having meetings with the
JIc . -

Mr Campbell : I was but that is not a point of which I am

aware . You asked whether the Pr--'me Miniszer received any and
I am saying it is not for me to know .

Q999 Richard Ottaway : You w_11 be well aware of the source

of t:nis question because it was on the radio _his morning ;
is ic tr"ie that the intelligence agencies produced a six-
page dossier March 2002 which stated there was no new
ev;dence of a threat from Iraq?

PYr Campbell : Not that I have seen . The genesis of the

September 2002 document, as again I set out in the
memoran du_.n, did start out as a broader document that was
being prepared in the Foreign office about the general issue
of wea-oons of mass destruction, including other countries
that i= was looking at . It was as the Iraqi issue developed
during the course of that year ~:ha~ a decision was taken by
the Pr ; .ne Minister and his colleagues to focus on Iraa and
focus -n the way that we duly did on the report on the
intelligence assessment of Iraq's = .

Q1000 Richard Ottaway : So the answer to that is no, yo,_ d-d

not see anything?

Mr Campbell : No .

Q1001 Richard Ottaway : Three weeks before the dossier was

publ4shed "vvY.itehall sources were quoted as telling the
Defence Editor of The Times that they would not be
-evelationary . A few days later another Whitehall soi-rce
tells the Security Editor of The Guardian that :.he dossier
would no longer play a central role because there was very

b~C f 5/G2`1
little new °_n it . Then comes a document which you have

10
sci
http /Iwww publications parliament uk/pa/em200?03/emselectJcmfaff/uc813-ia/uc813 U4107/2003
 Oral evidence Pa 2e 24 of 70

described as a very importanz document . How do you account

for the d-fference in t_ne comments and the dossier that
emerged just a few weeks -ater'~

Mr Campbell : I happen to think that the Defence Editor of

The Times is an extremely good journalist . I have probably
ruined his career by saying that' All I can say about that
is that it is not true . There has been this vein of
reporting for some time that the 'o.TKD dossier was transformecl
in the last few days prior to publication, and that was not
the case . The very first substantial draft that was put
forward by the Joint Intelligence Committee was very largely
the basis of what was duly published and presented to
Parliament .

Q1002 Richard Ottavray : Fine . Car_ I _co to a question which

:.he Chairman brought up at the beginning about whether you
apolog4_sed to anyone and, frankly, I thought you slightly
skirted -round some of the direct questions . Did you
apologise co the John Scarlet t, the Head of the JIC, for
what had happened?

Mr Campbell : Again it depends --- I phoned up and said to

John, who is a friend of mine and who I work with closely
and regularly, "Something terrible has gone on with this . We
have got to sort it out because I do not want anything that
we do to reflect badly upon you and your reputation and we
have gor to sort that out ." I have got no doubt in 7:h--
various conversations during that period - and I spoke to
him, I spoke to the head of the SIS, I spoke to Sir David
Omand, I spoke to a number of people in the intelligence
agencies - I will have said, "I am really sorry this has
happened ." I saw there was some story which appeared
recently that I wrote this grovelling personal letter of
apology to the Head of the SIS . I am not saying this because
I do noz believe in apologising, it is just as a matter of
fact I did not send him a letter, but no doubt I have
acknowledged many times our regret about the mistake made in
the production of the February 2003 briefing paper .

Q1003 Richard Oztaway : So you did apologise verbally?

Mr Campbell : I certainly said, "I am. really sorry for the

mess this has caused and for the fact it is going to be said
that this casts doubt upon you guys ." The fact is my
assessment of the.n within the government and large parts of
the public at large is that their integrity is pretty much
unchallenged .

Q1004 Richard Ottaway : Can I quickly ask you about the

Coalition -nformation Centre ; who appointed them?

Mr Campbell : The Coal-'7 : on Information Centre started as an

E3~1 s 1029 (
htm llu,w,+w .pubhcatons .paTliament ulvpa/em200203/cmselectJcmfaffluc813-isJuc813 . . 04/0712003
vld1 cviucii:,c 14~_ -J V1 11

entity during the Kosovo conflict where it was made up o=

people from different government departments and also from
people from other overseas governments, the United States,
Spain, France I -think at some po-nt, Gerirany, a nu-nber of
governments . In terms of how they are appointed, once we
were setting u-o this cross-departmental team, which
continues in a smaller form now, essentially what happens is
we trawl departments =o try to find people who can be
seconded, so on that, again from memory, I think there were
discussions between myself, the head of personnel at the
Fcre:gn Office, Mike Grana-it who is in charge o'- the GICS
and trying to find people who could be seconded for three
months, six months, what have you . The other personnel
issues are resolved by me getting on to my opposite numbers
in d_fferent parrs of the world and saying, "Can you spare
anybody good to come and work on this operarion?"

Q1005 Richard Ottaway : What sort of data did they have

access to?

Mr Campbell : It would depend on the level of clearance that

they had wit'-4r their home departments . For example, the
person who was its last head until recently (who is now on
secondment to the CPA in Baghdad) - would think had precty
high security clearance . Most of them I suspect would not .

Q1006 Richard Ottaway : And are they st=11 in operation?

Mr Campbell : It is not operating in the same way that it did

and, as I say, the people who were there during che height
of the recent military conflict have actua=-y gone to
Baghdad .

Chairman : We have now come to the poinz where there is one

minur-e before 4 o'clock . So I think it probably best rather
than start with Greg Pope i= we adjourned at this stage for
a cn:arter of an hour and Greg Pope will begin immediately
when we return a= quarter pas= four .

?'he Comznictee suspended from. 4 .00 pm to 4 .15 am ~or a

division in the House .

Chairrnan : The division is over . xr Pone°

Q1007 Mr Pope : Thank you, Chairman . Mr Campbell, the

charges against you really are of the gravest nature : that
you exaggera--ed the evidence to persuade a reluctant
Parliament to vote for a war which was not nopular . We heard
in evidence from Nr Gill_gan of the BBC last week and he
alleged that you transformed the original September dossier,
and if I can just quote wha~ he said in evidence, my
"source's claim was that the dossier had been -transformed in
the week before it was nub-ished and I asked" - chat is

8ec l5/o2q2
lap //www.publicanons parliamunt .uldpa/cm200203/cmselectJcmfaff/uc8i3-ix/uc813 04/07/2003
 Oral evidence Past 26 of 70

Gilligan - "'So how did =h-is transfcnna=ion happen?', and

the answer was a single word, which was 'Campbell"' . That is;
an incredibly damaging allegation . Could you comment on its
veracity'~

Mr Campbell : As I explained earlier, the story that I "sexed

up" the dossier is untrue : the story that I "put pressure on
the intelligence agencies" is untrue : the story that we
somehow made more of the 45 minute command and control poin t
than the intelligence agencies thought was suitable is
untrue : and what is even more extraordinary about this whole
episode is _hat, within an hour of the story first being
broadcast, it was denied, emphatically : it then continued .
We were in Kuwait at the time - .he Prime Minister was abou =
to get a helicopter to Basra - it was denied : the story kep t
being repeated : the following day the BBC returned to it and
it was denied - by now we were in Poland and I remember
-being called out of a breakfast with the Prime Minister and
the Polish Prime Minister because I had asked to speak --o
John Scar"-ett, the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Committee, just to absolutely double/triple check thaz there
was nothing in this idea that the intelligence agencies were
somehow unhappy with the way that we behaved during the
thing and -,:.hat there was no truth at all that anybody at the
polit-lcal level put pressure on the 45 m_nute point and john
said, "P.bsol~i_ely . Ir is complete and total nonsense and you
can say that with my author__y' . Then the Prime Minister had
to come out of the breakfast with the Polish Prime Minister ;
he was about to do a press conference about the Polish 3U
referendum campaign and, of course, the 3rit_sh media are
all asking about this lie, which is what it was .

Q1008 Mr Pope : On the 45 minutes, what vou have refuted up

until now is the allegation that you inserted the 45 minute
claim into the dossier and I am trying to make a d-fferent
point which is that there is an allegation not thaz_ you
inserted it but you gave it undue prominence ; :hat this was
a background piece o= infors.ation ; it was based on a single
niece of uncorroborated inte'-liaer_ce advice and yet. it was
g_ven undue prominence . It =s mer_t_oned in the foreword by
the Prime Minister and it is mer-t_oned three other times
zhroughout the document and it is a chilling allegation -
that our trocps in Cyprus or our troops perhaps if they went
into -raq could face a 45 minute threat of the cleployme?:t of
a chemical attack?

Mr Campbe2l : V7e11, it is true that when the BBC

representative came to the Committee last week he claimed
that all he had ever alleged was that we had "given it undue
torominence" . I am afraid that is not true . What he said last
week was not true . It was a comalete backtrack on what he
had broadcast and written about in the I:ail on Sunday, The
Spectator and elsewhere . Now the reason why I feel so

f)6c Is !Qn3 _\\~'~fo

httn llwwu~ n l,hrat,nne na1-11ament tikInaJcm200203/cmselecUcmfaffluc813-ixluc813 . 04/0712003
Oral evidence pag= 27 of 70

strongly that we, the government, from the Prime minister

down deserve an apology about this story is it has been made
absolutely clear not ;ust by me - you can put -me to one side
and I am well aware of the fac-_ that I an defined in a
certain way by large parts o= the media, but when you put in
the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Chairman of
the Joint intelligence Committee, the Head of the Secret
Intelligence Service, the Government Security and
Intelliaence Co-ordinator all saying emphatically "This
story is not true" and the 33C defence correspondent on the
basis of a single anonymous source continues to say that it
is true, then I think something has gone very wrong with BB_-
journalism .

Q1009 Mr Pope : P.re you saying that he lied not just to the
Committee but on the rad4_o? I have the transcript of the
Today programme of 4 June . He said, "The reason why this
story has run so as long" - and this is a direct quote - "is
nobody has actually ever denied the central charge made by --
my source" .

Mr Campbell : The denial was made within an hour o= the lie

being cold on the radio . -Now, I am not suggesting tha : he
has not had some"aody poss ;bly say something to him but
whatever he has been told is not true, and I think in
relation to the briefing paper, when that mistake was
discovered, we put our hands up and said "There is a mistake
here" and we found out where it happened and we dealt with
it, and - would co^ .pare and contrast with an organisation
whicn has broadcast something - not just once but hundreds
o= times since - that is a lie .

Q1010 Mr Pope : And on the other charge that you pressurised

the intelligence agencies to exaggerate the evidence, 7ihat
is also a lie?

Mr Campbell : Totally untrue and what is more, again, the

Chairman o= the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Head of
SIS, the intelligence and Security Co-ordinator have all
au-hor ;sed me to say with their full support that is not
true .

Q1011 Mr Pope : Can I move on to a different area about the

machinery of government? Clare Short ca_ e before zh e
Com.-nittee recently and she said that crucial decisions _n
the run-un to the conflict with Iraq were made by an
entocrage in No 10, that this entourage sucked the decisior_-
ma :.ing process out of the Foreign Office into No 10, that
the oeonle who make up the entourage are not elected, that
the members of the entourage are yourself, Sally Morgan,
David Manning, Jonathan Poweil~ Is that the case?

Mr Campbell : No, it is not . What is true is that I would

8)6C1,S/G2_qq-
f) -
Sf
http ://w,Alw .publi cations parla araclit uldpa/crn2OO2D3/~~ip~sc-lezt/cn-if aff/ucS 13 -ixhic 813 D4/07/2003
 Oral evjdence a2= 28 of 70

say, if you were to say who in relation to Iraq were the

officials in Downing Stree :~ who spent ;he most time with th ~-_
Prime Minister in terms of the many foreign trips that he
was doing, in terms of briefing, in terms of general
meet-ngs, it probably was the four, but in relation to that
whole period =2e had meetings every single day with the
Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary in par=icular,
with the Deputy Prime N_inister, With the group that
comprised those three plus the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
the Home Secretary, the Leader of _he House - now the Home
Secretary, with Margaret Beckett, and with Clare Short, and
also with officials including some of the intelligence
officials zrac we have been discussing .

Q1012 Mr Pope : What I am putting to you, though, is there

is a lacuna here in that the Defence and Overseas Policy
Committee of the Cabinet has not met since 28 June 2001 ; the
War Cabinet, the ad hoc- com.-ni7.tee on Iraq ; did not start
meeting ~.:ntil mid-March, so we have this long period of time
when there is no Cab-net Sub-committee meeting, ~he ad hoc
committee, the sub-commiz:.tee of the Cabinet or_ Iraq, had no=
started mee~:ing and in that gap the decision-making process
on a day-to-day basis about Iraq was essentially being made
by an unelected coterie around the Prime N_in-scer .

Mr Campbell : ICo . I really do not accept that because the

decisions were being taken by the Prime Minister and by
ministers and it has always been the case that ?rime
Ministers and minis7:ers have advisers and I just do not
accept the pic=e as it was portrayed by Clare Short when
she came to the Committee . As I say, in the build-up co the
conflicL and during the conflict that group was meeting the
whole ti-.e . Prior to that the Prime Min :ster was meeting
with his ministerial colleagues all che time . As -Robin Cook
said co the Committee last week there was regular discL:ssio-i
in the whole Cabinet . I do not think a week went by where
Iraq for some months was not the dominant issue .

Q1013 Mr Pope : A couple of brief questions about -the second

dossier, the February one . I notice that in your memorandum
to the Committee on page 6 you said that during the third
week of January the material, that is Dr Maras'ni's -material,
was simply absorbed into the briefing paper . Could you tell
us who abscrbed -t into the br_efing paper :

Mr Campbell : I think it would be wrong if I were to name the

individual within the CIC who did that because = think it
would look like, and I no doubt would stand accused of,
seeking to evade responsibility . I ~ake responsibilizy for
i:hat paper . It was done 'ay an official no whom had been
passed a number of different papers and, as I Say, I do not
think there was any malign intenz, I do not think there was
any attemp= co mislead, and i-: is also wort:-i pointing out,

66c[SI0 2?
I,tr  /1<,,..*,Y,l,..,r:.,*,o *,a.1,~mP t nlrina/rm~(1l1~(14irmcrlarT/rmfaff/nrRl ~-ivitirRl'3 (!4/(1'7/')lNlq
 Oral evidence Ya`= 39 of 70

as the Prime Minister did again today, that nobody has

seriously challenged the substance . Also a lot of the
changes which were discussed earlier were changes, as I say,
made by experts with-'n government who possibly had more up-
to-date information than Dr A1-Narashi, which is not to
undermine him or his work . I think that is probably as much
as I really should say about the individual . It was simply
within the CIC .

Q1014 Mr Pope : Bit you can see why the Committee is

concerned and why Parliament is concerned, because what you
have essentially got here is an academic thesis that has
been down-loaded, it has been used without --

Mr Campbell : No . We keep going back to this myth about the

twelve year old PhD thesis . It was an article from a Yiddle
East journal .

Q1015 Mr Pope : But the artic=e is used without Dr Pl-

N_arashi's permission, he is not credited with it, and worst
o= all, I think, is the possibility --he :: his relatives back
in Iraq may have been persecuted because of =ha-- .

Mr Campbell : Well, were that -he case it would be very, very

regrettable and I completely accept that, and I certainly
hope that is not the case but, as I said earlier, the
accusation that we faced when - was having the horrible
moment coming down from the IJewsnigh= studio in Gateshead
was that we had not drawn aztention to him and, as he sa_d
himself to the Committee, he is well known in this field,
but I do accept there is a world of difference between
writing something in the Nid31e East Review and something
being subsequently discovered to be part of the Br_tish
government's briefing paper that we issued to the Sunday
press .

Q1016 Mr Pope : Just finally, do you share the Foreign

Secretary's assessment that the second dossier in hindsight
was a mistake? In fact, a complete Horlicks~

Mr Campbell : I certainly accept lt was a mistake . You and he

both su_qport Blackburn and maybe you drink Horlicks down
there inut = think down the road in the rather less effete
Burnley they will prcbably say it is a storm in a teacup -
or drink Bovril!

Q1017 Mr Chidgey : Mr Campbell, I would like to come back to

an area that Mr Mackin'-ay was discussing with you earlier 4T,
this session in relation to the September dossier . You, I
think, confirmed for the record then that you discussed with
the Chairman of the JIC the presidential issues - I should
not say that - _he presentational issues regarding the

r3cnkCistG2~s S~.i
dossier?

http //www .publications.parliamen` ulOpalcm200203lcmselecr/cmfaffluc813-ixluc513- 04107/2003

Oral evidence Pas-- 30 of 70

Mr Campbell : It is not even a word, "presidential" issues .

Q1018 Mr Chidgey : I bet there were . Anyway, let's come back

to the issues . It is rather complicated but I think the
Committee really does want =o get to the bottom of this . Cari
you try to v'_sualise _'or us how different the September
dossier would nave been if it had not been for your
discussions on presentational issues?

Mr Campbell . The short answer is not very much . -t was

agreed fairly early on in the process that the Pr--me
Minister would write a foreword . Other than literally
drafting poin7.s I do not recall any substantial changes
being made to the executive summary . As the draft evolved
there were discussions about structure and the ordering
material and the use of graphics and the use of pictures and
such like and some of the titles of the different chapters,
but the honest answer is not very much . This is the work of
the joint Intelligence Commiutee .

Q1019 Mr Chidgey : You appreciate how important th4s issue

is . The accusation has been :nade that this document was
adjusted, altered, sexed up - whatever - for a particular
po-itical purpose so one has to be somewhat pedantic and get
exactly to the bottom of how the process worked . You said,
and -= is on the record elsewhere, chat this process took_
many nonths to evolve . I think it would be very helpful if,
perhaps not today but shortly afterwards, you could let the
Com.-r.it-,-ee have information on the suggestions that were mad e?
by you and your team as this document evolved . For example,
it must be the case surely that in this process, as the
drafts were continuing or continuously upgraded or amended,
copies of ear-ier drafts would have been kept electronically
within you,- Department, within your team . It would be very
help=u-~ if it was possible for us to have copies of those
earlier drafts so -haz. we could satisfy ourselves that there
were no attenpts to change the essence of the document in
order to pursue a particular political po_nt . Is that
poss- ;ole?

Mr Campbell : Can I say again on that the SIC would have to

be content that they were willing to do that but that is
certa_nly so_net .-i_ng I can take back and ask them if they
are .

Q1020 Mr Chidgey : I accept that, of course, bu : this is at

the heart of the issue - that this document was deliberately
changed for po-itical purposes .

Mr Campbell : I accept that .

Q1021 Mr Chidgey : And anything you can give us to .

demonstrate otherwise would, of course, be very helpful, by

~C /.S 1029 :~-

 Oral evidence Pa.- -_ 31 of 70

Friday .

Mr Campbell : As I say, I do not think I can make that

judgnenz for the intelligence agencies who were producing
_he various drafts as they evolved, but in relation to the
changes ,_hac I was suggesting on either changes that I was
suggesting or that I was putting forward to the Chairman of
zhe Joint Intelligence Committee on behalf of the ?rime
Minister, and I have gone and looked at all of them, I have
no difficulty with you seeing any of their. but . again, I just
have to be sure that the joint Intelligence Committee are
happy that there is nothing in there thaL does reveal th-ngs
they might not want revealed .

Q1022 Mr Chidgey : I understand thaL but can you also let us

have them in calendar order so we can have them dazed so we
can see how the nrocess evolved from the CIC?

Mr Campbell : I think I am right in saying that the CIC -

this is where I think these things, I have to say, I think
in large parts of the media deliberately have been
completely confiaced .

Q1023 Mr Chidgey : In your discussions with the Joint

Intelligence Committee, put it that way .

Mr Campbell : Yes . I have no problem with that . As I say, I

cannot sit here a_-id say on behalf of the Chairman of the
Join : InLelligence Committee that he wo-ild be happy with
every single drafc being put into the p~.iblic domain . I just
do not know .

Q1024 Mr Chidgey : Well, perhaps you can have that

discussion and do what is necessary from that position . Yo-.:.
mentioned also earlier in response zo NL Mackinlay that zhe
executive summary of the dossier of September was written by
the Chairn.an of the Joint Intelligence Committee . Did you _n
any way assist with the presentational issues in that
foreword?

Mr Campbell : Given that the presentational issue says

"Executive Sum-nary" and then it is the Lext there is not
ir~ach by way of presencation there . I accept that but, again,
I would have ro go back and look at all the differenz
drafting suggesc-ions that I made but, in terms of any
substance, none az al- .

Q1025 Mr Chidgey : -hat would be helpful . Also I chink Mr

Miackiniay asked you whether anyone in che SIS or any other
security agencies was unhappy with the end result of the
dossier Can you confi`-m chat nobody expressed any concern
or reservation about the dossier as it was f'-nally published
from our security intelligence?
B2-C/5 /0248"
,.».. u,=,= . ~, ,-aw *,~ a,-1,amPnr lzk/nalcrn200203/einselecUemfaff/uc813-ix/uc813 . 04/07/2003
Oral evidence Paze 32 of 70

Mr Campbell : None of the people who were involved ir, its

produccion that I was dealing with expressed any misgivings_

Q1026 Mr Chidgey : So you were unaware should there have

been anyone who was so described?

Mr Campbell : - was nor aware of anybody w-thin intelligence

agencies who was saying to us in relation to the production
of th_s dossier they were unhappy with it .

Q1027 Mr Chidgey : You mentioned in your note to us, and I

am paraphrasing to save time, rhaz it was a major break witrn
precedence for the inteiligence community to allow
information from them to be put inzo the public domain,
which of course we underscand, and that this break with
precedent was no~ something taken lightly . Did any of the
people involved in the intelligence and security agencies at
any time question rhe wisdom of this procedure, =his
precedent in breaking with the -traditional method of keeping
their inforr.ation close to the secret? Did anyone resist
your dec-sion to break wit: the established policy~

Mr Campbell : No . I have no doubt at all there would have

been a debace within -.:.he intelligence communicy, because i~
was such a hreak with precedent, as --o whether it was the
right th'_ng -o do and all I can say is that the Joint
Intelligence Co-uritcee, which as you know includes the heads
of the agencies and obviously the Chairman, expressed no
such reservations to Prime Minis= or to me .

Q102B Mr Chidgey : So as a result of the debate thaz was

held with the joint Inuelligence Committee, ac the end of
Lhat debate al- those involved were contenc'~

Mr Campbell : That is correct .

Q1029 Mr Chidgey : And there would be no reason for anyone

therefore to pursue the route that we have discussed at
lenc_h with the BBC?

Mr Campbell : No, and thac is why I was so confident in

issuing the denial that we did of the initial BBC story, and
then, once the srories persisted, why I went back and said,
"Look, this thing -s still kicking around somewhere, is it
tr".ie~", and they were emphatic, "It is not" .

Q1030 Mr Cinidgey : You say in your note chat the

_ntelligence judgments contained in the dossier were
entirely those of the Joint Intelligence Comm.zttee . Can you
tell us ar all what in the dossier falls into the category
of intelligence ju3gmenus, and what does not?

Mr Campbell : I think I would have to say it all does in that ~

86C/5 /02-99 v T6
- 11 -------- _ . .t.,_  ~..:,._, . ... .. .-7 .,._.- .. ., .t .l .,l, . . IIVn7l1'lh .,,,olArrlr,-,foff/nrRl'3_iYinrR14 (1^l(1'7/'>(Vl ;
 Oral evidence ":'a.--- 33 of 70

the document is, if you like, their assessment of the state

of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme .
Now, if you are saying which of it is, as it were, secret
intelligence then that is really something for theirto say,
but this is the distillation of the join-. intelligence
Committee assessments that were being presented to the -rime
Minister .

Q1031 Mr Chidgey : For example, we know from evidence we

have taken from the Foreign Secretary chat the Foreign and
Commonwealth Off_ce takes the credit -or _Darts 2 and 3 of
the dossier, so I presume --

Mr Campbell : In the drafting .

Q1032 Idr Chidgey : I see . ?'here is a distinction .

M-- Campbell : But the document has-the imprimatur of :.he

Joint Intelligence Committee . It is their document and, as I
said in my written statement to you, this process evolved at
the start though the initial drafting was being done in the
Foreign Off--ce . Once the decision was taken for this no be
primarily an intelligence-based document, the Chairman of
the Joir-t Intelligence Committee took responsibility for _t .

Q1033 Mr Chidgey : And so --

Mr Campbell : Not the Foreign Office .

Q1034 Mr Chidgey : So he, as the Chairman of the Joint

Intelligence Committee, signed off the whole dossier . He was
not ;ust signing off z~hat which involved a judgmen~ on the
intelligence?

Mr Campbell : The whole thing, and what is more I literally

mean "signed off" because the foreword was agreed - the
Joinu Intelligence Committee had to be happy that the
foreword was a fair reflection ; it was obvicusly going _o
form part of the basis of wha7- the Prime Minister was going
to say to Parliament when he presented it when Parliament
was recalled ; when -the docunenL after ail the various
drafting processes was presented, it literally was
presenLed . The Chairman of :he Joint Intelligence Co7a-,iittee
said. "Stighz, here you, here it is", -not "Here you are, have
another go at rewriting it" . T=at is not how it worked .

Q1035 Mr Chidgey : Can I Just make some specific references

to the documents, and I will try not to be too long on this
but when you look in some detail and read very carefully I
think 'it is chapter 3, page 19/20, where we talk about
chemical agent production capabilities, chat struck me as a
particularly even-handed written explanation of Iraq's
capabilities, or potential in terms of their ability to

6I3C1516~ ~
hrrn~llwwu~ .nu}hlications .oarliament ulJpa/cm200203/cmselecrJcmfaffluc813-ix/uc813 . 04/07/2003
 Oral evidence PaMe 34 of 70

produce chemical weapons in relation to the basic

infrastructure and processing ec^iip_nenc thao would be
necessary for an industrialised country zo produce the
chemicals that that economy would need . It seemed fair=y
even-handed . But when we go forward in the document to the
foreword or to :he very summary that occurs the language
becomes much tougher and I am sure, Mr Campbell, as an
extremely experienced journalisz you understand exactly hcw
words can 'ae used with a slighcly different emphasis which
~ogether in a document create a much stronger emphasis . The
impression I got reading this through was that, whilst -n
the foreword in the early par--s o_' the document it would
appear that the-re was absolutely no cpaes7icn at a!-', the :
Iraq_ had not only the capabili ::ies but the stocks, the
incent, the delivery systems - the whole charabanc, if you
like - to launch a very serious threat against its region
and ourselves if our forces were in the theatre through
chemical weapons, the actual de~ail within the document did
no-- put that emphasis on at all . It poinred out
capabilities, possibilities, maybe, could be - yo~i
understand where I am coming from?

Mr Campbell : i do .

Q1036 Mr Chidgey : I wonder if you could help us or_ how has

that happene3. in the drafting of uhe reporc which you were
so closely involved with, clearly?

Mr Campbell : On ::.ha-L:. specific I cannot . I think _hat it is

not for me to saeak for the Chairman o- the Join-.:
=ntelligence Coru-niztee but I think if he were here he would
iDoint ou': that there are various ways in which intelligence
can be assessed and -,udged . ,or example, I can recall, I
think Mr O~toway earlier asked for the sorts of changes tha-_
we migh,:~ have discussed and you are absolutely righz .-_ha :.
words can say different things . I remember in relation to
the uranium issue, and I think _t says in the documenu, -_hat
chey had "sought to secure" and I can remember saying,
"Well, can that be explained-, Have they actually secured
anyth-ng?", and he said, "Well, intelligence, our best
assessment of =t, is not, therefore 'sought to secure' is
the best way to express the real-icy of our currenr-
intelligence assessment" . Now, I am happy to look aL the two
passages you have drawn attention ~o --

Q1037 Mr Chidgey : That would be very helpful .

Mr Campbell : I was very conscious when this process was

being gone through of how assiduous :.he Chairman of the
Joint InLelligence Co_nmittee in particular was at spotting
potential inconsistencies, things being expressed in
slightly differen= ways =hat ,night lead to cause '-or doubt
or confusion, and my experience at the time was that chey

r,51o30 1 "
r~
Oral evidence PaQe 35 oil 70

did an extraordinarily good joh at addressing those and, as

I say, I am happy to look at :.hat ore in particular .

Q1038 Mr Chidgey : Can I just take that sl_ghtiy differenc

aspect of this discussion? On page 1E =:e dossier sets out
the quantities of various chemicals tha :~ were unaccounted
for, and I am not going to record these figures of course -
they were used by the Foreign Secretary and I think again by
the Prime Minister at various times - but whac to me is
m=ssi_Ig from this report is any indication of the
implications of the degree of threa : the-- those quantities
could pose . For example, 8 .5 thousand lizres of anthrax
sounds an awful lot but -in facz it is less than a quarter of
a petrel tanker load leaving the terminal in my corszituency
seven-zy times a day, so there is no indication here what
degree of threat these quantities or other quanticies that
could be produced could cause . Was that ever discussed? Was
there ever any discussion with the intelligence services _-
that one should try to puc some scale on ::his?

Mr Campbell : No . This is often described as a dossier tha :

was use :! to "make the case for war" . Now, it actually was
not . -~ was a dossier r-haz was produced to set ou- --he
reason why the British governmen= were so concerned about
the issue and the Joi_^_t InLelligence ConuniLtee put together
-ts best assessment of that situation . "v'rnat it did not do
then was speculate as to how these might be used, the sort
of damage that they might do, and I think if it had been
that sort of document we would have fallen foul of the
criticism that we were trying to exaggerate, alarm . I- we
were suddenly to say, ,with this much of anthrax you could
do This" - there were other pieces of cor,ununica-_ion around
the syszem that were doing zrat kind of thing but 1:."n-'s was
not one of them .

Q1039 Mr Chidgey : 3Lt those assessments must have been made

because you say the dossier is not making the case for what
we were considering but we were clearly considering chat as
an option, so assessments must have been made of what the
impact of the capability that
it was claimed Iraq _-lad or
Saddam Hussein had on our troops or armed forces . That must
a--1 have been done .

Mr Campbell : Again, I cannot recall tha~:. there was a

discussion about developing the document in t'-_ way zhat you
are suggesting . It think it was always envisaged as chis
kind of doo~i .-nent .

Q1040 Mr Chidgey : You are aware that in evidence yesterday

the Foreign Secretary - I think his phrase was that the
document did make "the best case"?

our best assessment

~~.~sl 0 3a 2
Mr Campbell : =t made the best case, of

},ttn " /hsnvtvnnhltraTtnncnat'~tamPMn~C/nA/f'TTt~nmni%l'T71CP~PCt%CTf9ff%llC~t~~-17 :%llC~]J . 0=}%07/7nnJ

Oral evidence Pase 36 of 70

the state of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction --

Q1041 Mr Chidgey : Not the best case for going -o war?

Mr Campbell : It is not that sort of document .

Mr Chidgey : Thank you .

Q1042 Ms Stuart : Mr Campbell, may I refer you to your own

statement in submission to the Committee? You say in opening
that the overall strategy for Iraq was laid down by the
Prime Minister?

Mr Campbell : And other Cabinet _ner.iners

Q1043 Ms Stuart : And others, yes, "from where I sat" . Can I

go just a little bit further, a_-id precisely where you did
sit? Did you sit in or. ~hose meetings only-wearing the hat
of Director of Communication, or would you in that process
have an input into policy and s--rategy?

Mr Campbell : No . In relation to poli cy, as I say in the

note, policy decisions are taken by the Cabinet headed, as
you know, by the Prime Minister . Now I was involved in a lot
of the discussions about policy and strategy on Iraq and I
am there as an adviser to the Pri-ne Minister .

Q1044 Ms Stuart : In that context, if I follow up a

submission made by Mr Pope and drawing reference to Clare
Short's evidence, she drew the conclusion from the
information she had been given and discussions within the
Cabinet t:aac i= was quite clear that the decision was made
by the incerna=-ona1 community or others chat we would go to
war _n February and March, and that from abol:t September
onwards the rest of it was si7^ply preparing the country for
that fact . How would you assess that statement?

Mr Campbell : I reject it . I was with the Prime Minister, for

examnle - I cannot remember exacoiv which weekend it was -
when he seer.,ed to spend literally into double figures of
hours on the telephone to I think at the time the leaders of
Mexico and Chile and others seeking to keep the whole issue
of the United Nations' route as a way or avoiding conflict,
and that was the scrateay at that time . Equally, however,
the Prime Minis= made clear before that in his phrase the
United Nations had to be the ulace where this was resolved,
not avoided as an issue . I just do not recognise this
characterisation of the Prime minister as somebody who had
taken a prior decision and that then we were all just - no--
just me but the intelligence agencies a.-id everyone else -
pawns in his game to take the country into a war with George
Bush . Z do nor recognise that . Or. the contrary, I saw

Rd
somebody who was working round the clock, flat out, trying

6 nr,
1ZX-15hosq,
I I
0,

~ 11 - ,I ~ I
Oral evidence PaQe 37 of 70

to keep this thing on the United Nations' route as a means

of avoiding conflict . Clare Short has to speak for herself
in relation to what her imrression was of what the ?rime
Minister was doing at the time but, as she said, I spent a
lot of time with the Prime Minister and that is the Prime
Minister I saw . Again, I just think that sometimes people
make assumptions about not just this Prime Minister but any
senior politician that they are acting out of some terrible
mot_ve, and __ is nonsense . I have seen the Prime Minister
now in re_a :ion to several conflict situations where he is
very, very Conscious of the responsibility of saying, "We
are going to send British~ forces into military action and
some of them may die" . Nov:, the idea that you just do that
glibly or that you try and "sex up" a dossier as a way of
trying to persuade _he public that you should do it actually
- I know scepticisn is fine but are we really so cynical
that we think a ?rime Minister, any Prime Minister - forget
the fact it is Tony Blair, any Prime Minister - -is going to
make prior decisions to send British forces into conflict
and would not rather avoid doing that?

g1045 Ms Stuart : I think it would be useful to have your

internretat :on of this but can I come back to the second
dossier and again your own evidence on this where you make
reference to how you commissioned that dossier back in
January, which was then subsequently used as a briefing for
six 3ournalists on the way to the United States? What were
the ir-struct :or_s as to the purpose of this second dossier
back in January? What did you tell them to prepare? For
what?

Mr Campbell : As you say, I del-berately, both in giving

evidence to you and in my paper - as far as = am concerned
the dossier was the WLYD dossier of 2002 . The purpose of the
briefing paper chat we commissioned '_n January was to get
our media to issue of the extent to which Saddam
cover this
3ussein was developing his programme of concealment and
intimidation of the United Nations' inspectors because, if
you remember, at the time there was a lot of discussion "Vv'h;T
is it so hard for the inspectors to get -n and find these
weapons?", and in a sense this was a part of that answer .
actually was not the full answer . As i have said -in my paper
to you, I never envisaged this as being a significant thing,
and I can send to you the coverage at the time . It was
minuscule It got a few paragraphs in the Sunday papers, it
got no broadcast coverage, it was only when this 7r Al-
Marashi issue came to light on my train journey from
Gateshead that ir. started to get any coverage at all, so it
was intended - it was a tactical decision, if you like, in
relation to giv-ng it to those journalists as opposed to any
other group of journalists or p~_tcing it out on the website
or whatever we might have done . This was Just a decision
=aken at that time just as the Prime Minister was going to

fo in c.15L3o
>,**., .n. . ,t,t,~ar,~ a,-t;amPnt nklna/rm2(1(l2(13/cmsel~cJcmfaf`/uc813-ix/uc813 . 04107/3003
 Oral evidence PaP_ 38 oi 70

see George Bush, but it was never meant to be a huge deal . S

always felt that the information within it that they would
find interesting, which, indeed, was the case, related to
the fact that there was this ratio of 2D0 :1 - 2D0 Iraai
agen~s to every UN inspector - and also some of the things
they were doing in relation to bugging and following and
organising car crashes and ail the rest of it was
interesting but it was not making the case for war, and I
think in relation to both of -hese documents all of these
facts were well known when it came to the most imoortant
debate in Parliamen-_ about ce:raritting British forces ; a11
these issues were well known by then . People knew by then
that something had gone badly wrong in relazion to the
second document and as I recall it, in relation to the
first, nobody in that debate raised the issue of the 45
minutes point . So this idea that we had pumped this out as
the most significant piece, if we had we had done it pretty
badly because it did not appear to resonate wi`th members of
Parliament at all .

Q1046 Ms Stuart : But what I am still not clear about is ycu

must have given some indication of what you wanted th_s
document prepared for . It then ends up being in the House of
Commons and it is being referred to by Secretary of State
Colin Powell . Are you suggesting that any _MP would have beeri
able to know the difference between the significant one --

Mr Campbell : No .

Q1047 Ms Stuart : Yet he qaoted it so it was taken

seriously?

Mr Campbell : Okay . ^o answer your question directly, wha7:

was it intended for, it was intended to generate some media
discussion and debate abou= this issue . 'Why was it so hard
for the UN weapons inspectors to do their job, -hat -s what
iL was for, and I think ? probably have Lo take some
responsibility for Colin Powell raising it because w=en we
were out in Washington I gave a copy to my opposite number,
and I s-:spect that is possibly how it got into, as -it were,
the American system . I do no= think there has been quite the
fuss there that there has been here, 2 have to say .

Q1048 Ms Stuart : On the bottom of page 6 of your submission

you say, again in relation to the second dossier
: "The
changes were made because the officials making them believed
they rendered -the account more accuraze" . Now my
understanding of a process which would render something more
accurate would indicate you go back to source . How else do
you know the changes you are making would make it more
accurate?

Tdr Campbell : No . The point I am making on page 6 o= my note er .~

1-~~(~/0 ~5 - ^~

,., , .  ----'--`'---I -I ,---  -`--~,,  . , ... ..

Oral evidenoe Page 39 of ?0

is that those commenting upon it were not aware of who the

source was and in any event, within that document, there was
government-sourced material so, for example, in relation to
some of the changes that were made, as I say, -n some cases
as has been pointed ou7z there have been changes that you
could argue make the situation more drama-:ac, for want o= a
better word . In others, Dr A1-Marashi's paper has suggested
there are more Iraqi agents involved in certain operations
than our experts believed co be the case, so again this was,
as it were, "sexed down" rather than u-o .

Q1049 Ms Stuart : But I think I still have a slight

difference with your de=inition of how you render something
more accurate because if I render = .. more accurate then - go
back to check my sources and change rry wording rather than -

Mr Campbell : No . The point I am making is that the CIC asks

for chese various pieces o-' work, all sorts, whether it is
an article or a briefing paper or whatever, they go in and
somebody puts together a draft ; it absorbs part o= this
material ".aitho~_~t attribution and, as I sa-d before, tha-. was
the mistake . The attribu-c:ion was not puc on to it as it
should have been . Now, had those then looking at this known
that was where parc of this source material came from, you
are quite right, you could have got on 7:he phone and said to
Dr z1-Marash'_, "Look, you say in your paper this . Wo~-ld you
m_nd if we use cris?", and ;udging from his evidence he
might well have said "No", in which case that would have
been tine end of the matter . Had he said "Yes", you night
have said, "Well, it says uhis, we have information based on
- whanever it might be, intelligence or whatever - that, in
fact, it is this . Is =hat something you would think is right
or wrong?" Or what you might do, and this I do not think
would have decracted anything from the paper at all because,
as I say, nobody seriously challenged most of the cor.zen"
is say to him, "Could we use i-: simply with your name
attached to ir~`

Q1050 Mr I11sley : Just following on from that I am go_ng ro

challenge some of che serious concent of it . The one thing
that we have received evidence on in this Committee which is
worrying -me from starc to finish is the o-iali-_y of the
'-nnelligence macerial which you have obviously %,,orked wich
and which has gone into the document .

Mr Campbell : On the second dossier?

Q1051 Mr Illsley : Yes . I am just going to follow on from

what my colleague, Gisela, was speaking aboi:,t . There is a
sec~ion at the beginning of the document, page 3, which
relates to Hans Blix and the UNMOVIC team and the document
says that, "Journeys are monitored by security officers

13BC151G~6
lrmfaff/~,ic813 - x/uc813 04/07/2003
Oral evidence Page 40 of 70

stationed on she route if they have prior intelligence . Any

changes of destination are notified ahead by telephone o=
radio so _ha= arrival is anticipated . The welcoming party is
a giveaway" . =:-iac was in the second document published on 3D
January . On 14 February, two weeks later, Hans B1ix. told the?
United Nations, "Since we arrived _n Iraq we have conducted
more than 400 inspections covering more than 300 sites . All
inspections were performed without notice and access was
almost always provided promptly . In no case have we seen
convincing evidence that the Iraqi site knew in advance that
the inspectors were coming" . Now, granted chat was two week--s
after your document was-published but _t tends to suggest
that some of she intelligence you were working with or whicla
had been provided to you was either out of date or wrong .

Mr Campbell : Well, in relation to that, again, all I can say

is that this, from my perspective doing the job I do, cane
no light through one of the chief intelligence agencies . It
was their intelligence .

Q1052 Mr Illsley : I am not disputing chat .

Mr Campbell : I know there was some co-operation between Hans

B1ix and the intelligence agency but I am not aware of what
Hans Blix would or would rot know abouv - what he said is
not inconsistent with the idea that there was a significant
campaign of intimidation and deception . That was the point
the document was meant to make . In other words, when they
get these welcoming parties, is than because they know where
they are going and they have managed to clean up :he place
they are going to? I think that is partly the point that is
being made . Now that has come, as I say, as intelligence,
and the issuing agency was the SIS .

Q1053 Mr Illsley : As I say, I am challenging the contenT of

the document because, in my opinion, I do not think in is a
document that adds anything to the argument basically and I
think the whole thing is a complete mess - but anyway .
Coming back to the point about intelligence, did you see raw
intelligence material that security services had or were you
provided wish assessments from the senior intelligence
community?

Mr Campbell : In relation to this~

Q1054 Mr Illsley : In relation to the first dossier now . In

general, the intelligence you were able to see up to
September before and after, did you see raw intelligence or
was this material pro-aided to you as assessments from she
intelligence services?

Mr Campbell : Again, I am nor sure how much or how little of

this I am supposed to divulge but I certainly saw the joint

BeCISjo303 S~
Oral evidence Page 41 of 70

Intelligence Committee assessments on which the September

report was based .

Q1055 Mr Illsley : Did you ever have any discussions with

the intelligence services as to the quality of the material
that was coming your way? Were you happy with it? Did you
ever pass any comment on it? I think you said to one of my
colleagues earlier that if the head of intelligence service
said this was a kosher piece of inforr.ation, that was fine
by you . Did you ever argue with them? Challenge them?

Mr Campbell : It was not a question of arguing . On that =raq

Communications Group that I chair, as I said in my note,
there is a senior representative of the S-S - in =act, two -
so you have discussions with them the whole time, and o'-T:en
if at a particular time as a com= :ications strategy might
be evolving there is a pwrticilar theme that you were
seeking to pursue, there are people within the intelligence
services who will just - and I am not saying these are full-
time presentation people - think "well, I know that No 10
has got an interest in this particular theme at the moment,
rrdghz this be somethirg they m :ght be interested in'~ Should
I discuss iL?" They might come and see me and say "Look,
this has come from this or that", but I think I probably
have to leave it there in relation_ to what they showed me
and how we discuss it .

Q1056 Mr Illsley : Does nothing occur that would have led

anybody witr_n the intelligence services to resent your
involvement or your presence on these committees, and I am
thiricing now in terms of the Gilligan argumenr and the leaks
fro :n intell_ger_ce sources pointing the finger at you for
every t__ing -~

Mr Campbell : The BBC' s defence corresoonoenc cane here and

talked about his weird and wonderful meetings with his
source, and that may be the person he knows within the
intelligence community . I do noc know who that -s, I do not
know how serious a persor i_ is or how senior . All I know -s
that the people that I deal with and have dealt with now
over some years -l n several very difficult sets of
circumstances like Kosovo, like Afghanistan, like Iraq, I
find of the highest professionalism and, in many instances,
the highest bravery . Now it is not a question of me just
saying, "Well, if it is good enough for him it is good
er_ough for me" . You form judgments about people over time
and, as I say, the people that I have dealt with or this are
the people '-n the leadership of the intelligence community
who, I think, are people of very high standard .

Q1057 Mr Illsley : 3'.i~ ycu are adamant that you never

BERC-.151G 30$
_ ..nn1n-2_,vlr,rRl'~ (14/C17/2n03
Oral evidence Paz-- 42 of 70

throughout the whole of this went to the ir_=elligence

services and rejected a piece of evidence that they put
=orward, enhanced it, exaggerated it, doctored it~

Mr CampbeIl : Absolutely not and there are many reasons why =

wanted to come to the romir,i7zee and I agree with some of th E-
comm=nts that have been made in recent weeks and i think it
would nave been very odd to rave done this incrairy had I not
- that is something we can discuss but I felt ~hat =rom the
starr. - but one of the reasons from my own oersaectilve,
because the tru=h is, i= you are in my position or even _nore?
if you are _r. the Prime minister's position, lots and lozs
of things get written about which are completely untrue, an d
to be roerfectlv honest 95 _car cent of them do not matter a
dairs. and are forgotten the next day, but I think to say, not
just in the Daily Mail or the Dai_y Telegraph bu : on the
BBC, that I was involved conniving witih the _ntelligence
agencies zo do 7-his - I just cannot think of- a more serious
allegation cran that, and to have a culture that says,
"Well, it is just another story . Who cares? What are you
bothered about?" - and, as I think I expla:ned to you in my
no~e, I have been trying to gez an acknowledgement from the
BBC tha :~ this story is wrong for weeks . I have a s:-ieaf o=
correspondence with them about it . Now, w.-.at are you
suouosed to do?

Q1058 I+Ir Illsley : That is the point I am going to come on

to in a second . I think we could place on record here as
well that perhaps your inresence would not have been required
had zhis Committee's request for scientific intelligence
r,aterial been agreed Lo by the Prime Minister and z-he
Foreign Secre--arv- We could have satisfied ourselves had we
seen that information .

Mr Campbell : Can I just say on that, in relation to the

scrutiny of the intelligence services for which the Prime
Minister has sinisLerial responsibility, there have been a
lot of changes and developments on that but it is fair to
say chat that particular one, to go back to your point, is a
bit above my pay grade .

Q1059 NL 211sley : Just on the question of the evidence, we

did hear in relation to journalists and intelligence
sources, were we to believe what vie were told the other day,
that every major newspaper has two or three, perhaps even
four, contacts within the intelligence agencies ; that they
have got each other's telephone numbers, arid they have easy
access to information . Do you believe thaz, given your
background as a journalist and given your posi=ion over the

S"6
last few years working with ~he intelligence agencies, or do
you accept that there is that amo~Lua of leakage of material
to journalists?
W"JIS/G3O9
Oral evidence Paz-- 43 of %0

Mr Campbell : No . There are systems, and again It is probably

not for me =o explain them in detail but there are systems,
that allow the press to make inauiries of the -ntelligence
community but this picture that was pa-r_red by one of the
w_tnesses last week of intell-gence agencies wandering a11
round T~ondon meeting BBC correspondents --

Q1060 NL- Illsley : In their own offices .

Mr Campbell : i am sorry . Maybe = am. terribly naive and maybe

Chris Mullin's book was spot on about it but - have to say
that _s not my experience, fine book though it was .

Q1061 Mr Illsley : Are you just going to take it on the chin

then as regards the 33C, or is there anything you can do as
regards those allegaticr.s? Can you challenge them or do you
think _t is just not worth the candle?

Mr Campbell : No . As I say, a lot of the stories are not

worth the candle ; I think this one is . One of the reasons I
raised that -joint with you in my memorandurn was because =
er_visagec that one of the qaescions night be, "Well, :-f this
story is so ;-ad what have you done about ic"~", and the trut :t
is privately we have been trying to seek acknowledgement
abou-_ this for some weeks and it is absolutely hopeless,
because when you are dealing with the BBC I an afraid they
just will not ad
.-nit that they can get things wrong .

Q1062 Richard Ottoway : Now you know how the Tory 'Darty
=eels~

Mr Campbell : - an. really not here to make political poir.cs .

Q1063 Mr Maples : Vou used to encourage them!

Mr Campbell : Encourage --hen to -- ? The point is that i

think -here is a world of difference between tolitical
exchanges and the -rest of it and a story b-roadcast or_ the
BBC followed up by every slingle national newspaper, followed
up ;_II newsJat>er s around the world, that says the Prime
Mir._ster, the Foreign Secretary, w1~h the connivance c)f- me
and ohe intelligence agencies, persuaded Parliament and :he
country to go to war on a false basis I think is a pretty
unbe-_evable allegation to make unless You can sustain it,
and _ :nave not seen a single thing that sustains it . I have
_
seen the defence correspondent change his story time and
time again, talking about one source, then there were four
sources, then his sources were journalists on other
newspapers - if that is BBC ~ournalisrn, then God help them .

Q1064 Mr me-pies : Can 1 take you back to what we

affectionately now he--e call the "dodgy" dossier --

wash-60 S79
 Oral evidence Pa=-e 44 of 70

Mr Campbell : I have noticed the phrase being used

repeated'-y .

Q1065 Mr Maples : I Dust wanted to make sure we were ~alk~ .^-g

about the same doc-anen-_ . I am interested in the role of
these fo-ar officials whose names were originally on the
website and you have gone some way :.o explaining their role
in your rote to us and let us just go chrough them. The one
who yo-,: do not know who you say was a member of the CIC was,
I believe, a Foreign office official called Peter Hammil!-?

Mr Campbell : That is not the name, no . The-re was a -

actually, I think his background is not ?oreig-i office, I
think he may be MoD, bun tinere was an official who was
working in the CIC ohao is cerLainly one of the four names .

Q1066 Mr maples : well, the r.ame that was on the websize --

0

Mr Campbell : Was Paul Ham.-nill .

Q1067 Mr Maples : I am sorry . My mistake . W'na-_ was his role

in this? He was part of the CiC?

Mr Campbell : He was a full-time member of the CDC .

Q1068 Mr Maples : So he was an importanz person in :he

preparation of this assessmenz.?

Mr Campbell : He was a member of the CIC team .

Q1069 Mr Maples : Did you know that in the Foreign Office

register his job cit=e -s "Head of Story Development"?

Mr Campbell : I did no~::. know that but

Q1070 Mr Maples : Do you think that is an appropriate title

for sormebody involved in --

Mr Campbell : I can see why, if you are no-:. involved full-

Lime in com-nunications issues, it mighu sound a hit odd bit
actually what that means :s somebody who z-akes a brief, an
issue - as I say, we are oalking about different. themes chaL
we are crying to ou-sue, and then turns them into products
thaz r. .-gint be cf interest to the media . That is what trey
do .

Q1071 Mr Maples : Kr Campbell, I put it zo you that no

government before this one has ever had an official with -zhe
join title "",Head of Story Developir.ent"?

Mr Campbell : I do not know that was the job title that was 5

~38C.I51 G3t 1 ~r"

Oral evidence Pa_e'-5 of 70

given to him . I know what he did 2-n the CIC and what he did
in the CSC and what he continues to do on behalf of the
gove==Tner_t is perfectly legit-=mate and necessary work .

Q1072 Mr Maples : Whare is he now?

Mr Campbell : I honestly th:nk - _I do nct think it '_s right

for me to talk about -ndivid~al officials-

-Q1073 Mr Maples : S put it to you t^a7: he is in- Baghdad .

Mr Campbell : He still works for the Iraqi inforrr,acion

ona raticn .

Q1074 Mr maples : -n Baghdad, and I -wonder wheLher he is

there to keep him from us or whether that is where you put
people who offend?

Nlr Campbell : No, iz is not .

Q1075 Idr Maples : Let us go through zhe other people in

this . Alison Blackshaw is your PA and you say that her
involvement was that she typed changes that you made, so you
had an editorial input into this document . You actually made
cha.^_ges to it .

Mr Campbell : As I have explained in the memorandur. .

Q107o Mr Maples : Yes, but you made changes obviously at a

~ai_rly late stage .

Mr Campbell : I made changes at the very final stage . i

c~iai yeCa the -title and _ str~I~)'Jed out ~,7_,at. I consl3ered to be
re ;')et_'t=ons .

Q1077 Mr Maples : And that is as far as it went?

Mr Campbell : That is as far as it went and in re_--c-ion to my

personal assistant - and forgive me if I feel quite strongly
about th_s one as well - the journalists who have been
writing these stories know her beCatlse her job on zhese
tr177s ov_°rsBas is to look after LP2°TII and '_T~a :e sure they have
visas and their bags are picked '1D and i~lle rest CS i-~_, and
Lhe idea that she would 'write a paoe= like this is totally
absurd .

Q1078 Mr Maples : I am. not suggesting that for a moment ;

,what I am simply saying --

Mr Campbell : Well, the newspapers have, and ;n question=ng

to witnesses it has been puz by members that that is the
case .
- 8BC6 /C)3IZ
~-a OA imrnnn^.
Oral evidence Page 46 ol 70

Q1079 Mr maples : -t has, but you have expla:ned what her

involvement was and I am simply saying that was to put in
place amendments whicn you had made to the doc=ent . Now,
one of these people was the Downing Street news editor on
the website, and I accept your explanation of his
_nvolvement, but you dismissed John Pratt as, I t:ink you
say, a junior --

Mr Campbell : No . I do not say "jur_-or", I say he is an

assistant .

Q1080 Mr Maples : I cannot find it now .

Mr Campbell : He is an administrative support assistant in mlr

office .

Q1081 Mr Maples : 'You describe-him as a "member o= the

s~.ipport team in my department" . ih7ho does he wor]c zor'~

Mr Campbell : He works obviously for me but the person he

works for is Peter Yyman .

Q1082 Mr Maples : Pid Peter Hl:r.an have input into this

document?

Mr Campbell ; Absolutely not .

Q1083 Mr Maples : No_hing at al-?

Mr Campbell : Nothing at all .

Q1084 Mr maples : But he is a pclitica=ly appointed

snecialist adviser in No =0~

Mr Campbell : Who? John Pratt",

Q1085 Mr Maples : No . Peter Hyman .

Mr Campbell : Peter Hymar_ is . He _.ad nothing to do with this

whatever .

Q1086 Mr Maples : Somebody w'_-io works for :-iim does, ;Du~ he

had nothing to do with it~

Mr Campbell : Can I explain what John Pratt's rcle in this

ridicl .loias storv was? John Pratt - and I -,h--'n{ when people
hear this t---v w;ll be stunned that this is how stories get
into newspapers - this story appeared in The Guardian as I
explained in my note and it said these four people worked on
this report . I can explain to you what the people in my
office did, and I think somebody has got hold of the record

IsgcIsJ~3~3
of this thing and it appears apparently ,in today's
Oral evidence Pa.-e, 47 of 70

Independent newspaper . St was e-maiied frc_r the CIC to one

of my staff in No 10 because I wanted to ::ake the latest
draft on :.he plane to Asner=ca . The nerscn to whom it was
sent sits next to John Pratt . She said, "John, have you got
a s=are disc that I can copy this on to?" John Pratt gave
her a disc . I : was copied on to the disc . The disc was then
handed to my personal assistant . My personal ass'_stant took
it on the p=ane . I made some changes in manuscript, she
typed =hem in . On bringing it back to .3o 10, she gave it to
the webslte editor . or., those prosaic re_allt-Zs 1s bu at the

most absurd mo-.L'1ta1.n of cons-j=racv and nonsense .

Q1087 Mr Maples : Well, you have gone some way to correcting

that in your memo to us and - accept that, but when we =_nd
that somebody is a relatively junior official and all he did
was lend somebody e--se a d:sc but he works for a politically
appointed special adviser who works for you - there are more
politically appointed specialist advisers 1n Downing StreeL
under this admin=straclon than there have ever been -z the
past and :heir fingerprints are awfully close to all these
documents, and I am just suggesting here is another link .

Mr Campbell : I am a special adviser and I have taken

responsibility for the second paper . -n relation to this,
there would be no reason ;^,y the v:ay, -r-ad I felt it
appropriate for Peuer Hyman to be involved in this, thac :,e
should no= have been, bu= the fact is he was not and 7 do
think - you were saying this was a time for politica-
d-scussion but I do think there is a political point .

Q10B8 Mr Maples : Let re ask something in relation to the

Foreign Secretary . In h:s note to us the Foreign Secretary
said in rela=io: to th-is document, "No FCC ministers or FCO
spec_alist advisers were consulted in the document . No 10
officials -nclcid_ng special advisers asked for some
chances" .

Mr Campbell : That _s me .

Q1089 Mr Maples : T_iac is only you?

Mr Campbell
: That is me . I an a special adviser .

Q1090 Mr Maples : It says '--ciLding special advisers", in

the plural . is thaL 7us : a grammatical thing?

Mr Campbell : All I know is the-- the special adviser v.no was

invo=ved in this is the spec_ai adviser who was the chair of
the Iraq_ Communications Group and that is me . Peter Hyran
had no .-_h-ng to do with __ whatever .

Q1091 Mr Maples : Could we move on Lo the dossier of the

weaaons of mass destruction because I war.z to put to you

__ 3 ~3C1S1631~ J ~ ~
 Oral evid-_nce Paae 48 of 70

tha= we were cold by two of our witnesses, Dame Pau~_-ine

Nevi'_le-Jones who is a former C'-.airman of the Joint
Intelligence Committee and a former Australian in~elliger.z
agent, that this document did not read like a joint
Intelligence Committee assessmen= . The language was rot li',Lce
a Joint intelligence Com.mit :ee assessmer.=, and =here may he
perfectly accen=able explana-ions for .har but --he Joirt
Ir.tell_gence Commitcee assess-merits tended =o be fall of
qualifications and amhic-uities, and 'maybe this" and
"perhaps _hat" and equivalents, whereas the document, ac
least _n its executive summary, is much more certain . I do
not know if you are aware of the docu.roen : nhat was publishe d
ir_ 1998 before Desert Fox, and again this is puhlished over
the name of Derek Fatchett, the minister at the Foreign
Office at the t_-'me and _s an in--eiliger.t assessment, and I
want ~o quote 7:o you -wo short lines from it : "The Iraaai
chemical industry could produce mustard gas almost
imrced_ately and limited amounts of nerve gas w1t_1in months"
- "could" - "Saddam almost cerrainly retains some SsT
production equipment, stocks of age-1--s and weapons But in
the summary to this docuner_-, admittedly four years la~er,
we have, "Irac has cor_tinued to produce chemical and
biolog-cal agents . Some of these weapons are deployable
within 45 minutes" . The language is m-.ich more defi :ire . Wha=
Dame Pauline P?eville-Jones said to us is to have been able
to co from one to the other there would have to he some new
piece c= ir_~ell_geace which really substantiated in a much
r_arder form the secondszai:emenc, because it is not
fundamentally differe= bur cerr~ainly dif-erent in c_-.iali,:v
to zhe first, and I wonder if you saw such intelligence
which j~,ist~=ied the making of a much stronger claim?

Mr Campbell : I am nor ir_tima7ely acquainted with the Derek

Fatchett paper but _`_ you go back to the whole backgro~i^d to
the vJMD noss_er of Se_ntember 2 ;102 I _hir_k the Pr-me Driin`ster
said p'ahl_cly that one of the reasons why h°_ wanLed ~o do

this was because ziaere was continuing new ini:e111CJence L_1az,

he was seeing tha- made h--am feel there was a growing 7hreat
from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction crogramme . Nov.,,
again, it _s noc for me to talk about _he intel==gence or
t'-e assessments that are made by che Joint -nte11_gence
Committee but I car_ only assume -that:, if there was a change
in posi-_ion, i-::was as a resu~_~ of new intelligence whieh,
as :he ?rime Minister said, was cross_ng his desk -the whole
tire .

Q1092 Mr maples : But would you agree the language --s

dif-erent, ic is more definite in this dossier? There is
another point too, if you look at what is acLually sa=d in
the dossier =he Government nublisred in September, it said,
"The JIC concilded _hat Iraq had sufficient expercise,
equipmenr and mater-'al to produce biological warfare agents
w=thir_ weeks using =--s legitimate bie-technology ~ 7

_ LC)S(03E S
Oral evidence Pa .--- 49 of 70

facilit-es" and that, "The JIC assessed that Iraq retained

some chemical warfare agents, precursors, production
equipment and weapons from before the Gulf War . These stocks
would enable =raq to produce significant quantities of
mustard gas within weeks and of nerve agents within months ."
But in =he sum:<ary that
has beco_ne, "Iraq has continued to
produce chernical and biological agents ." I saggest -,:.a you
71-at the summary is a much stronger statement than act-ially
what the main body of _he document says . Can I give you
another example before you respond to 7:.hau or the 45
minutes piece on page 19 of the dossier it says, and this it
seems to me is a rr:ach lower degree of certainty remark,
'Intelligence indicates not, "The JIC has concluded"
tiat the Iraqi rtilitary are able to deploy chemical or
biological weapons within 45 minutes, " The s~.:mmary says,
"Some of t;ese weapons are deployable within 45 minutes ." i
am p'1tting to you that 'there are three respects in which the
s~i .-r4m.ary is, T would suggest, almost fundamentally different
£ro_^iwhat the body o£ the document suggests .

Mr Campbell : All = can say to you on that is tha~~. --he

executive s=-nary - and this goes for the ent,_re document -
was the product of the pen of the Joir_t Intelligence
Co_-nnittee chairman . So if these are intelligence -_'udoencs
t:.at he is putt-ng --nto :he dossier, that is because they
are tae best assessment of the 7oi-it Intelligence Commic-_ee .
Again, I do not think it is for me _o sit and do textual
analysis on them . That document was zhe document which was
uresented _o us . The changes we made in relation to iz had
no_hing to do with the overriding intelligence assessments .
I think the point you are trying to put to me is that the
er,ec a ive suasnary was harder than the body of the text . A-_1
I know is that the Joint Intelligence Committee chairman
stands by every word of the document .

Q1093 Mr Maples : That ::tay be, hut it does no= necessari-y

belie the point I air. making . Tine ?rime Minister in his
introduction says, "The document aublished today -s based,
in larce part, on the work o_' the joint Intelligence
Co :nmi=tee" ----

Pr Campbell : yes, a lot of _-, for example, -'is UNTSC0111

reborts . There is reference to ( -naudible ) The J=C
-rprir,atur is on _his but it is not as if `Js issue Oust
sort of started in Se~atember 2002 .

Q1094 Mr Maples : we 7-mow how Government doc=ents are

prepared, somebody prepares w draft, it ,_s circ~rlated,
points go in and = am perfectly prepared to acce=t what you
say that the first, draft cam- from the JIC and the final
product was signed off by them, but I suggest that when you
s a,'d, "I had several discussions with the chairman of the S- -
JIC on presentational issues and made drafting suggestions" (~/, `_j,
PA C~SCQ 3 L 6
Oral evidence Palae 50 of 70

you had some respcr.sibili. :~y for =he sort of things I was
saying .

Mr Campbell : I can say that _s not the case . Ls - poinoed t c>

" earlier exchances, there were points that I raised, on
some of them the Jo_nt Innelligence Com.r,tittee chairman would
say, "That is absolutely f":ne, I have no =rouble with tha7:
a .-_ all" on others he would say, "We cannon say That because
it would not be our best assessment" or "In fact I think th a
way we Have done it is better . 11 It was that kind cf
discussion . It was, as presented as a firsz~ draft, a very
good and thoroug""^. piece of work . So I do not accept the
premise, I am afraid

Q1095 Mr Manles : The prohlem with this is that when this

document was produced eve-°ybody, even your polirical
opponen-ts like me, believed it because here is the
I~overnment publishing something which is the product of =he
Jo_nt Inoelligence Committee and we believed it . Then along
comes the dodgy dossier and it turns out to be certainly not
what -_t said but an amateurish, irrespo"-"sible and misleading
piece of work, and it was presented by the Prime Minister to
Parliament as the product of- the incelligence services, and
we all find out then what it was . Then we start to think,
"Hang on, it casts th-s ir. douat" . That, I suggest, is the
problem you have got . That incredibly ama-eurish,
_rresponsible, dodgy dossier is what Has crea--ed your
Problem . I do not think people would give much time to the
allegations that you and the people who work with you
`-m~aroved - to use a neutral word - this document i= i= had
not been for =he whole story of the dodgy dossier .

mr Campbell : People can make whatever allegations 7ihey like,

the serious allegation agains : me is -that I abused
_ntelligence, and -hat is a precty serious allegation which
we should take seriously and I hope I _`lave made clear tha-_
With the authority of the intelligence comrunioy leaders_._p
I can say that is completely untrue . I made the point
earlier that the second briefing paper got next uo no
coverage . It has had hundreds of thousands, possibly
millions, of words written about it since that one mistake
a%ithin the CIC was made . .s I said to you in my memorandum,
I simply do no-,:. think that should be allowed to define the
toua':ity of a huge amount of communications which went on
between the Prime M4riszer and the Government, Parliament
and the public . I have given you one example . how many times
have you heard on the television or the radio, "This repor`
which was authored by four people working in my office" . I
have explained to yo--,, that is simply not true . We have said
co The media time and again it is no-- true, but they still
run it .

Q1096 Mr Maples : T am not responsible for ttiem .

1
~~Q~
%~I5 c5`3 I ~-"
Oral ev)dence Pa.-e 51 of 70

Mr Campbell : I know you are no-, bu : a lot of the questions

you are putting to me are based upon -false stories whose
authcrs somehow -feel that _f they say =hem often enough
people will believe zhem .

Q1097 Mr Maples : The basis of the questions on the c5odgy

dossier is us discovering the extent to which you used Dr
al-varashi's aaUer ---

Mr Campbell : And I have explained how that happened .

Q1098 Mr Maples : I know . --- and thau chau w=k was altered
in what "is obviously an incredi~D=y amateurish way in which
this -----

Mr Campbell : No, i= I may . Iz was not alrering Dr al-

l.arashi's work, because the people who were suggesting
changes had no idea who Dr al-harashi was . You can accept
that or not . That is where the mistake was s,ade .

Q1099 Mr Maples : Precise sentences ---

_Mr Campbell : How many times do we have to acknowledge == was

a mistake, apolooies were given, new procedures put in
place . I can say i-,- hundreds of _-mes if -n helps buz that
is the fact, t__ere was one mistake in u=-iis .

Q1100 Dir Maples : Wha-_ I am pointing CUE to you is wren the

,ublic, media and Parliamer_= ---

Mr Campbell : I accept that .

Q1101 Mr Maples : --- they suspecc everything else . Whau I

puL --o you -s char- whar will probably happen is thac it is
perfectly poss_ble you, and Andrew G-=ligan, actually told
the trurh and what happened here was u_-at everybody slightly
exaggerated their position .

Mr Campbell : I did not . I did no7: have a position . This is

the joint Inuel-icence Committee . Andrew Gilligan's
allec_ar :ons were about the joint Intelligence Commit=ee
paper, not the other one .

Q1102 Mr Maples : He said .hat you soughc to change _t ---

Mr CampbelZ : No, he said, I sexed ir up and I made changes

against the wishes of the agencies . Tha~: is a lie .

Q1103 Mr Maples : I am suggesting to you _c is possible that

you sought changes to chis docLmenz which did nor involve
countermanding intelligence . Af~er all, your craft is
preser_--ation, that is what you are extremely good at, and it

_ t~. ~s103~ ~
 Oral evidence Page 52 of 70

would De almost unbeli°_vable if you did not. have some 'input

into how this doc=.ant was presented .

Mr Campbell : ks I have sa_d many times before, there is a

:egitimate place in the pclitical process for dealing with
issues of n=~ese_~tation and commur__cation now we have a 24-
hour inedia, round the world, round che clock . He did not say
=hat . He said that I abused Bri--l'sh Intelligence . 3e weac
-urther and sa=d done acrainst the wishes of the
it was
intelligence agencies ; not true . I think that is a pretty
ser-ous allegation which is why I am very, very grateful fo r
tae oppor_uni-y =o rebuL i= .

Q1104 'Mr Maples : The same allegation has apparenc=y been

made - I do not know whether you have seen it - in
yesterday's New York Tires . It says, "'A top State
Department exp=rt cn chemical and biological weapons zold
Congressional Co :ri.'ri :tLees in closed oral hearings last week
that he had been pressed co tailor his analysis on Iraq, and
other .natters to conform with the Bus :. Admin :s`_=:: ion's
views', several Congressional off-icials said today ." You may
say, "Here is some rogue agent in the State Department
saying th_s to a rogue journalist", bun it is interesting,
i5 1L not, how this allegation crops up here and now _'t has
cropped up in Washington as well .

Mr Campbell : Can I explain w:y = th_nk the allegation crops

up . Again, I think this goes co the hearc of the way some of
these issues _re covered by the media . I do not ch--nk we
should make any bones abouL -this . There are large parts of
the media which have an agenda on zae issue of Iraa . For
mosi: of chose parts of the media their agenda is open, it -s
avowed . If you bought the Daily D:irror _n che run-up -::o ti-:e
confl ;ct, you kr_ew that paper was against o~,jr position . T=
you hought The SllrP, you knew that paper was o _onate~y
osirio= on deal_inc_w_= Saddam . I would
idertify three stages in--t?:r~' I~ the run-up to conflict
* there was an agenda in large pa=s of the BBC - and I ~:^_-_nk
i the BBC is different from the rest of the media and should V
be viewed as d_fferer_t fro :n the rest of che media because it
is a different organ ; sation ir_ terms of -ts repuuat=on, in ~1
rerms of .-:is global reach and all the rest o- iu - and there I
was a disproporrionace focus upon, i-° you like, the disser_t,
f _he opposition, to our _aosiL-on I think that in the
confl=ct itself the prism zha~: many were creating within tine
BBC was, one, i= -s a=l going wrong, and I can give you an
er,ar.p? _ - - - - -

Q1105 Mr Maples : V,7e11, I think probably many of -s wo~ald

agree with that .

_Mr Campbell : And now what is happening now, the third, the
conflict not having led to the Niddle Eas= going up in

B~c.ts(a~I
. ~+if/`w,l
Oral evidence Pa=t 53 of 70

flames, not having led to us getting bogged down for months

and months and months, these same peop-e now have 'co find a
d_fferent rat--onaie . The--r rationale is chat the Prime
Minister led the country into war on a false basis, that is
what this is about .

Q1106 Mr Maples : It -s _erri'aly important for all of us

t_:a= that allegation _s laid to rest . I agree it is
incredibly serious . I suggest to you the problem we have got
now is that it is your word against Mr G-1ligan's .

Mr Campbell : No, = do not accept :.net . Ic is my word ----

Q1107 Mr Maples : Can I make a suggest-on about how it might

be possible f or
i -as to resolve -this . I am not quite sure
whether you answered this question before . _- we as a
Comm_ttee were able to see the JIC assessment on which this
document was hased - because I do not c_-ink cY:is-4r itself
was a SIC assessment - and ~= it takes out re=erer_ces to
bics of sensitive intelligence ----

Mr Campbell : That is a matter for the Prime Minister, not

for me .

Q1108 Mr Maples : Bu7: you have some input into these

decisions . If that were available to us and, as is your
view, that is substancially the same as what the JIC
assessment says, iL would resolve the iss~ae . Can I move for
a couple of minutes to these issues of 7:he machinery of
government . IT: 'Is worrying to some of us -who understand, or
thought we understood, how the Government works, that the
DOP has not met virtually since the election, through
Afghanistan, the war on terrorism and the run-up to the
Iraqi war . The procedure as I understood it always used 70
be that the relevanc Cabinet Committee would meet, with
papers setting out options, really considered Civil Service
assessments o- what the position was, they would discuss iz.,
make decisions which would be renor :ed to the Cabinet _t
savs there have been a lot of discussions :n Cabinec buc
those are 23 peoale . they get 12 minutes each or whatever,
they never -et into che issues . ~o find that conanictee does
n= meet and has beer_ substituted iDy informa-_ ad hoc
_neez:inas ---

Mr Campbell : They were not informal ad hoc meetings .

Q1109 Mr Maples : Minutes were taken of them?

Mr Campbell : Minisuerial meetings, certainly .

Q1110 Mr Maples : But you said rl_ac those people who met -
David Manning is an c=ficial of the Foreign 0=fice but the q
other ~ihree of you are political appointments in Downing

-- ~3~ [5 I632.~
 Oral evidence Paz-_ 54 of 70

Street - Sally Mor_can, yourself and Jonathan Powell - you

said you were at meet-ngs wich the Pr_-'me Minister, was ==ne
Foreign Secretary always at titose mee .ingsP

Mr Campbell : No is the answer to that because the =orei_cn

Secretary does not work in Downing Street . I 2I2_t -r_ an
office and my phone goes regularly during the day, "Can yo-.
pop round and see the Prime M_nister" . He does not say, "Cat-1
you bring Jack Straw every r---'-re you come ."

Q1111 N'x Maples : So there were meetings which the Pr-me

Minister called at wh_ch h--'s special advisers were present
and his foreign policy adviser but no other minister?

Mr Campbell : Absolutely, of course there were .

Q1112 Mr Maples : Quite a lot?

Mr Campbell : For example, m_nis_ers do not come to m.eetir_gs

with the Prime Minister when he is preparing for Prime
Minis_er's Questions, unless he ----

Q1113 Mr Maples : No, I do not mean tha~ .

Mr Campbell : _ :ose are the scrt of meetings I am ta--krnc

about .

Q111a Mr Maples : I -mean meetings at which decisions were

made about advancing ---

Mr Campbell : I did not make decisions .

Q1115 Mr Maples : No, but were you at ::he meetings?

Mr Campbell : I was at a huge number of meetings with --he

Prime Linister during the Iraq conflict, and before and
s_nce .

Q1116 Mr Maples : No, the meetings at which decisions were

ta}cen at which no other Tr_`niszer was Present .

Mr Campbell : It depends what sort of decisions you mean . If

I were having a meeting with the Prime Minis=er about
whether he should do I~ewsn_falzt with Jeremy Paxsnan or ITV
with Trevor McDonald ----

Q1117 Mr Maples : No, no .

Mr Campbell : That is a meeting, that 4 s a decrs :on . If you

are say-ng that there --s a decision about whether the Prime
Min_ster might go to see President Bush on a Tuesday or a 'w
Thursday, tha_ is the so=c of decision we might take in --ha t "V~~~`~`~j,

~Cf5/6 321
Oral evidence Pa=-- 55 of 70

groua . If you are calking about a decision about whether the

?-rime Minister was going tc commit 3ritish forces :_.to
action, ti-_e idea something like that is going to be taken
without full cor_sulta .icn of his m.inisterial colleagues in
the Cabinet is nonsense . Likewise in relation to something
like the nrod-action of the iA2~'!D dossier . _he decision to have
such a dossier would have beer taken with -ministers . I j1 :st
think it is absurd if you c:-iir_k that the prime Min'Ster, who
is one of the busiest, most high profile, most written-
about, most talked-about, scrutirised person in the world,
does not have a support team around him, whether they halo-Den
to be soecial advisers --and - am well aware the aim of the
Conservative Party is somehow to contaminate the concept o-`
special advisers . I work for the Prime Minister, I work ver",J
hard for the Prime Minister, I work very hard for the
Government, and I do so because I believe in whac the
Governr,~enc is doing and I do so not because I am a special
adviser but because I work for the Government_

Q111B Mr Maples : I do not think people would find it

extraordinary to find that the prime Minister had meetings
that ministers did not attend, but I tr_r_k they would find
it very surprising that there were meetincs at which neither
ministers nor officials attended .

Mr Campbell : Sorry, I am. an official .

Q1119 Mr Maples : Well, you are a special adviser

Mr Campbell : Jonathan Powell is -:.he Chief of Staff in

Downing Street .

Q1120 Mr Maples : You are both political appointmenzs .

Mr Campbell : Does that mean when Jonathan Powell leaves a

meeting with the Prime Minister he somehow is less able or
less qualified to write ,:p a note of the mee-::ing and
circulate _z round the de_~Dar-__ner-cs which need to be
informed?

Q1121 Mr Maples : It does not mean o__at, but it means you

both have great positions of power not having either been
elected or gone through the Civil Service selection and
reporting and career procedure, and that is a novelty, and
it is a novelty to nave people in such senior posizions . You
know chis, an order in Counsel had to be passed ----

Mr Campbell : No, the Order in Counsel- is the novelty .

Q1122 Mr Maples : The position which you and Yr Powe=1 hold

are what is :he novelty .-SVe all know what the =acts of this
are . What I am suggescing to you ----

_ ~BC SV
Oral evidence Paee 56 of 70

Mr Campbell : - think the facts are sometimes riuge=y

exaggerated .

Q1123 Mr Maples : S thiz;c people will find it extraordinary

that meetings were being held by the Prime ?rin_ster at whicl-a
neither Foreign Office offic'-als nor m-nisters were presenr
hut he held zhose with po?_oically appointed ---

Mr Campbell : What sor= of ireeLizgs are you concerned abo',it?

Q1124 Mr Maples : I am ,-^oncerned

_ about meetings that advance
probably the most important foreign oo-icy decision this
Government has taken .

Mr Campbell : There was no such meeting about advancing

foreign policy positions without ministers if it was a
question of fo=ilating policy . Mos-_ days during the
conflict Jonachan Powell and I would go and see the Prime
Minister very early in the morning -o discuss what he was
going to be doing during the day, what his diary looked
like, what phone calls he might be -making, what meetings he
Tight be having . The idea that because I am a special
adviser somehow there is something terrible about that - I
am sorry, I think it is absurd .

Q1125 Mr Maples : All I would put =o you, Mr Ca=-bell, is --

Mr Campbell : Or the idea that I am doir_g it for political

reasons .

Q1126 Mr Maples : You and Jonathan 2owell are the firs=

people who have been politically appointed to hold the jobs
of the Goverrcnent's Chief Information Officer and the ----

Mr Campbell : I am not c_^e Government's Chief information

officer, = am the Prime -Minister's 7ireccor of
Communications . The person in charge of the Government' s
information Services is Mike 2ranat ::

Q1127 Mr Hamilton : Mr Campbell, can = come back very

brie=ly to the Andrew Gi'-=igan accusations against you . You
have forthrightly and robustly corrected what you called the
lies told by the BBC . I wonder whether you can specula~:e as
to why so-called rogue elemer_ts in the _ntelligence Services
or intelligence com-nunicy sho~ild feed lies i:o the BBC's
defence co_respondenr, Andrew Gilligan? I am sorry if that
sounds like a line out of Chris Mullin's novel but I wonder
if you could speculate .

Idr Campbell : I do not think it is sensible to speculate . I

do not know who this person is, whether they are what Mr
Gill' gan says they are, I just do no,:. know Honestly, I d L~+(w\o

-Bi3cts I6-s2z
Oral evidence Pa`_- 57 of 70

not worry abolit what Mr Gilligan does, says, other than

where, as I say, he makes a fundamental attack or. the
integrity of the Prime minister and the integrity of the
Government .

Q1128 Mr Sainilton : why, when you have very convincingly and

persuasively shown that Mr Gilligan has told lies about you
and the Prime minister as far as the 45 :n_nuce claim is
concerned, were they not corrected?

Mr Campbell : I have no _dea . I rave, as I say, a stack o=

correspondence, o= exchanges, w_th the Director of News at
the °BC about trying to get some sort of redress for this
story which, as I say, -s a complete lie . I think his irery
first reply said to me something like, ^S do not think we
are goir_g to agree on this" and ever since the postLre has
been, "We have to defend this story" even though I know
there are people within the BBC who have huge concern about
it, huge concern about what it does for -,:.he reputation cf
the BBC . Tha~ is a matter for them but all I know is tha= I
ca-n going :o keep going unri1 we get an apology .

Q1129 Mr Hamilton : Could it not be laid to rest by using

the JIC assessment or using che Intelligence data and
in=orma~ion, the basis or. -which you wrote the documenT?
o u i'd it not he for once and for all sorted out bv that
intelligence assessment being shown to certain individuals
within z:he BBC?

Mr Campbell : - think that would be a pretty extraordinary

step, and I would be very surprised if the intelligence
agencies supported that .

Q1130 Mr Hamilton : But they are being damaged at the

moment, are they not?

Mr Campbell ; I think the nublic are a bit cannier about zhis

than people think . I think they w-11 spot an agenda a -mile
of f . As I say, most agendas in the media are open, people
avow then . When I was a -journalist I went to the Daily
Mirror, 1 was avowedly pro-Labour, anti-Conservative
Gover=ert and never hid it . I used to see it as part of my
job to go on the =e-evision and say, "Vote Labour" . I was
up-front about -t . The -Daily I.ail loathes the Prime
Min_ster, loathes ne, loathes the GovernmenL, does not hide
it . 'hat is an agenda . People are aware of that . The BBC is
different . The BBC has got a deserved reputation around the
world . I think some of the best journalism during the
conflict was on the BBC, I think they have adapted :o this
whole 2L hour media thing better than a -'Dz of news
organisations, bl :t when they have bad journalism amid the
good then = think they have a responsibility to ad-rit that .

CAI
We a3m.it when things go wrong, we have done that in relation

I3~cts/ 32c~ M~ I
6
Oral evidence Page 58 of 70

to one of the issues we have been discussing today, but. :hey

have broadcast it not ~ust once hut now hundreds of tlires .

Q1131 Mr Hamilton : Surely the canny public must conclude

they .'lave very good evidence from very good sourc°_s'~

Mr Campbell : -hey may do . My exper :ence of the public,

w:-iatever YouGov polls say, which usually say whatever they
have been asked to say by the paper which has commissioned
them, my experience aoing round the country with -the Prime
Minister is that actually when _t comes co the big issues -
and this was a huge issue, taking the country into war in
7raq - they listen to senior politicians, they listen to
them with a certain amount of respect because they
understand the gravity o= the decision they have co take,
and I chink they believe, contrary to the way the media
portray politicians and polizics, not just the Prime
M-nister, no= just ministers, but the vast hulk of
policicia_^.s are in politics for good reasons, trying to do
their best by their constituents and by the country . If

say that now, I can hear journalists si=ting there _`n vans
outside, waiting and saying, "Shall we say he did well or
did badly?" rather than actually give any sense of what was
discussed, I can hear -them say, "Oh, God, blah, b-ah, blah",
but that -s the reality . I -think if we carry on wach this
constant denigration of politics, the political process, we
are going down a very bad route . People can say to me, as
they do and as I have aosr.-cced, "You were tre=y heavy when
you were a journalist" but I never did not rave respect fcr
_he oolitical process, Parliament, the politicians and the
work that they did, included politiciar_s with whom
and that
I fundament-ally disagreed . I find it incredible and I mean
incredible unat people can report based on one single
anonymous uncorrobora-red source - and let's get to the heart
o= what the allegation is - that the Prime Minister, the
cabinet, the intelligence agencies, people liker myself
connived to b-rsuade Parliament to send British forces into
action on a lie . That is the allegation . 2 tell you, until
the BBC acknowledge that is a lie, I Will keep banging on,
that correspondence file w-=1 get thicker and they had
better issue an apology pretty quickly .

Mr Ha .milton : -hat is very clear . - am going to move on co a

slightly different subject now .

Chairman : Let's hope the BBC covers that .

Q1132 Mr Hamilton : I hope the BBC does cover chat . I want

co take up the poinc John Yiap-es made about the cnialicy of
intelligence . I want to draw your attention to something in
che September dossier which reported, and I qqucte, "There is
intelligence that Iraa has sought the supply of significant.
Tiantities of urani~= frc^t Africa " The claim was repeazed

T~ IS 1G'3nc- .5
Oral cvidenc-. Pa=t 59 of 70

by President Bush in his Sta-te o= the Union address in

January 2003 when he said, "The British Government- has
lear=L that Saddam Hussein recently sough= significant
auantities of uranium from Africa . Tae documents relating =o
:he alleged agreement for the sale of uranium between 1°°9
and 2001 were passed to the =AEA for investigation . The
Agency
7~ concluded fairly rapidly that the documents were in
fact not authentic and the specific allegations were
unfounded . Subsequent reperts suggested the documents have
been proved forgeries, ore bearing the name of a Niger
minister who had been out of office for years ." My question
is, when did you first become aware of the uranium from
l.frica claim .

Mr Campbell : The claim as it was put into the dossier?

Q1133 Mr Hamilton : Yes . The claim as -it was out into the
dossier . When did chat become ava_lable to you, that:-
information?

Mr Campbell : From memory, when it was in the first draft,

but = would :~ave to go back and check that .

Q1134 Mr Hamilton : Is that something you could confirm ~o

us during the course of this week, if possible?

Mr Campbell : Yes .

Q1135 Mr Hamilton : `"hank you very much . Did you or anybody

aU Not 10 - you because you are the person responsible for
the productior. of the document. - seek ------

Mr Campbell : No, = was not responsible =or the produc_ion of

-the document .

Q1136 Mr Hamilton : Sorry, responsi ;.^,le for the presentation

of the document as Communications DIreccor .

Mr Campbell : Yes, okay .

Q1137 Mr Hamilton : Did you specifically seek to put u:--°_

claim about Iracr's accempzs to get urariu- from Niger, 02:
anywhere in Africa, into chat. documer-z? Was that a very
important part of the document?

Mr Campbell : 1 do not know whether i= was an important part

but in answer to the c_uestron whether it was I who tried to
out it into there, no is the answer .

Q1138 Mr Hamilton : Was any attempt made to highlight the

fact that Iraq was trying to buy urani= from Africa? The
point is, we are being --old on weapons of mass destruction
we have evidence of pre-cursor chemicals, or anthrax, of

- 3Sc~S10 32b 1_,~/~V1

Oral evidence Page 60 of 70

growth media, bu= we have no evidence of any nuclear

production at al-, and this was obviously a crucial bit of
evidence which was subsequently discredited . Was any attemp t
made to draw atten=ion to the fact that at the time t-hat
claim was be_r.g made through intelligence sources?

14r Campbell : I think there is documentary evidence of Iraa's

nuclear weapons programme ambit_ons but in relation to this,
= suppose what you are saying is, were the discussions a:oou t
how prcminencly to deploy =hat piece o= information . To be
honest with you, 1 cannot remember the nature of those
discussions . I think. it was an important point, As I have
alluded to earlier, it was one of the points I discussed
with the chairman of che JIC . When it says they have sought
--t, I asked what has been che result of that seekirg, has --'-z
actually resulted in them acquiring any of those, to which
the answer was, "To the best of our assessment, no ."

Q1139 Mr Haxailton : When it was clear fro_n the IAuA that LhP
documents were forgeries ---

Mr Campbell : I think there is a dispute about this . I am no ~

as a4aiified co srpeak on _his as the Intelligence people
are . Fs = understand _t, there is a dispute as to whether
the documents wh_ch are being described as forgeries are the
documencs on which the claim in the dossier '_s based . Again,
I think that is something where I might be able to go back
and speak to the JIC chairman about and see if there is any
more re can add to thac but I do not think that _s =or me to

Q1140 Mr Hamilton : I accept it is not for you to do tha=

but I think for =his Committee that info=a :iion would he
ouite im-oortant because if the claims that differen~: -oarzs
of different doc~aments were based on dodc_ry intelligence are
disproved, that greatly strengthens the case that we,
Parliament and c'r_e public and the media, were being told
some pretty correct bi~s of -information abo "at Iraq's weapons
of mass des--ruction and their threat to the region a^_d to
'the rest of the world . It would back up the Gover=er.z very
strongly, I would have thought .

Mr Campbell : I am aware of the public dispute there has been

about that . I think it is probably be=ter that I go back and
ask the JIC whether there is any more they can or should say
abou-_ that .

Q1141 Mr Hamilton : That would be very helpful . Thank you `

very much . Can - briefly no-,7e on to a few cuestions about
your role in Intelligence and foreign policy mak-ir_g . I know
you have been through this quite a lo= and you have had a
_'airiy long session wit: us today, and = am grateful for
that, b-at I want to clarify one or two points in my own On"
~15 fa3~-
Oral evidence Pa` e 61 of 70

mind . Are you responsible as Communications Manager for the

terms on which memuers of the intelligence agencies talk to
the press?

Mr Campbell : No .

Q1142 Mr Hamiltor_ : Pdho has that responsibility?

Mr Campbell : I presume the agencies the_nse-ves .

Q1143 Mr Hamilton : You do not have any input into that at

all~ "

Mr Campbell : I know the people who do that but how they

operate is entirely a matter _'or them .

Q1144 Mr Hamilton : I appreciate you may not be able to

answer :.his but why is it-that certain members of the
inLelligence agencies are author=-sed to talk ~o the press
but not to Members of Parliament, apart from those on the
Intelligence and Security Committee?

Mr Campbell : =t is very rare for officials like me to talk

to Members of Parliament . Ministers are accountable to
Parliament . The fact is - and I do not know how long this
has gone on - the intelligence agencies are more in the open
than they were in the past and They do have, if you like, a
media profile what they do is try to have people who
]Curnallsts with an interest -n some of the areas that the
-_ntelligence agencies are involved with can at least have a
dialogue with, but - do not think it is as it were any
stronger than t :-_at .

Q1145 Mr Hamilton : Do you see all CIC papers that come to

Downing Street?

Mr Campbell : '<CoL necessarily because a lot of the zime they

w i- I he assessing things which will not necessarily be of
of relevance to the kind of issues = might be
involved _n at any given Lime
. I can go days and weeks
without seeing intelligence if my focus professionally is
something to do with public serv-ces for a -e~s, weeks .
obviously during something like the Ira= conflicL or post-11
September there was u lot of intelligence relevant to what 2
was doing . I think one of the interesting developmenzs there
has been _n relation to the intelliger_ce agencies 'is
act~,ially their very sophi's-zicated understanding of how
within all these conflict situations in particular - and
Lhis is something which evolved through Kosovo, Afghanistan
and then Iraq - how che realities of the -modern media have
changed the terms of conflict . We may not like that bu :: it
is a fact . So, for example part of our strategy in those
three conflicts was actually to deal wiLh the communications

- ~Islo ~
~ '`~2
Oral evidence Paz-- 62 of 70

strategies a dlctatcrship, under Milose-vic, of the

o-
Talibar- and of Saddam, and therefore it was helpful to have
as much information as poss-b-e about what their
com.-sun'cations plans were . - have to say they relied in
very, very heavy part upon the free speech of the United
7ingdom and they exploited i : pretty ruthlessly .

Chairman : Some col-eagues have further craeszions .

Q1146 Sir John Stanley : Mr Campbell, as you have made very

clear to the Committee, you have been the su]Djecc of
extremely sericus personal allegations which have been made
against you, most particularly _he charge that you were
responsible for sexing up the JIC-approved dossier of
Seotember 2002 . The Committee will want to reach a
conclusicn on that based on the maximum evidential basis it
can o;ota :z and I would like to repeat what my colleagues, Kr
Mackinlav and Mr Chidgey, said : I think it Would be most
helpful if you could put in Writing to this Committee a list
of the dra=ting amendments you proposed as that document
evolved and those tha-_ were accepted by _he chairman of --he
JIC a-ad those that were not . If we can have that as fas~:as
possible, that would be very heipful to us .

Mr Campbell : I hope sorebody has been taking note o- the

various requests you have made . On severs-, of them I have no
doubt rhere will have to be discussions -n the intelligence
commu-~_ty as to what can and cannot be d_vulged .

Chairman : can ass-are you that the Clerk has been taking a
I
list of the recqaesos being made by -:his Committee . Of
course, w= understand if some are oral d-scussions during
the course of the meetings you mentioned . Io would help this
Com.miotee enormously, one, if we could have any wricren
a-terations which you have made . We are under a time
constra-nt i: that we hope ~o produce our report by 7 July
so ideally we would like them by Friday morning when we meet
the Foreign Secretary .

Q1147 Andrew Mackinlay : Just as a point of order, Chairman,

that is not quite what I asked for . The narrow issue I asked
for was if you would ring-fence that Which was zhe
ir-telligence information wh_ch was in the so-called dodgy
dossier, bearing in mind i= had been s_gned of= and, yes, -
want to see what Sir John has asked for I cannot see there
would be any difficulty because the gay said, "Here,
Campbell, you can have this, --his is in the public domain ."
kll I want is a ring-fence .

Mr Campbell : Yes, but he might have said, "By the way,

Casmbell, there are bits in here which we do not necessarily

L~~ 15/0 2~ ~
want to be identified as intelligence ."

-
Omal evidence Pas-- 63 of 70

Andrew Mackinlay : Okay, I hear what you say .

Q1148 Chairman : We can provide you with a list this evening

of chose further discussions and questions we would like to
be clarified by you .

Mr Campbell : Okay . SoTe of them will have =o go through the

Joint Intelligence Committee and that nay not be able to be
done very quickly .

Chairman : As speedily as yo"i can .

Q1149 Sir John Stanley : Mr Campbell, I phrased my rec-iesz

spec_fically in terms of the drafting amencx=7s which you
had pro-cosed to what was a non-classified document which is
going to be made public . _ did it in these terms because -
believe that cannot raise any intelligence issues . In terms
of those amendments which we-re rejected, we are rot looking
for reasons why they were rejected, which might ra-se some
intelligence issues, but what you proposed and the list of
whar was accepted and rejected . I do not bel_eve it car.
raise any intelligence issues and - hope we can have that .

Mr Campbell : It might if within _he responses there were

intelligence issues giving exp-anations as to why something
was or was not ooss_b--e .

Q1150 Sir John Stanley : I am not looking for that at ali .

am. looking entirely at your requests and whether they were
met or not, full-s~op .

Mr Campbell : Fine .

Q1151 Sir John Stanley : Mr Campbell, you have made a very

strong pitch on a personal has-'s for why you require an
apology to ycursel- from the BBC .

Mr Campbell
: It went beyond myself .

Q1152 Sir John Stanley : I vaould -_ ;ke to turn to another

apology which I think is very seriously outstanding and on
which you may wish co correct your evidence . I= I heard you
correctly you suggested the Government had made an apology
to Mr al-Marashi . Mr al-Marashi's work was 1ifced off the
internet without aztrib~~r_lon, it was used in a highly
political context. r.o help make the GoverrL-nenz's pcl-cy case
for _going to war against Iraq which was a matter which
concerned him very greatly . His thesis or '.is article in the
1~'iddie East, Review in certainly one crucial respect was
subszantially changed to suggest terrorist linkage between
the Saddam 3usse-n intelligence agency and al-Qaeda which
was not what he said in _-iis Review article, and rerioers of
his family were endangered . I questioned 1-him on the issue as

BBCl~~3~,
Oral evidence Pase 64 o : 70

to `J;zether he had had an apology, "Has ::he Govern-mart rrade

any expression of regret or apology to you for the
plagiarisation of your thesis'~ Mr al-?Viarashi : I have never
been contacted d1reCL_y, either by phone call nor in
writing, since February 2003 up to the present . Me : Do you
think you might be owed an apology . Mr al-Marashi : I zhi nk
the least they can do -s owe me an apology . I do not
believe ;e has received an apology, I think Mr Campbell you
said earlier he had, I hope he will receive a personal
apology from you .

Mr Campbell : As I say, I take responsibility =or --her- paper .

I have explained why the mistake was made . I am happy to
send an apology to Dr al-Maras'ni on behalf of -zhe entire
communications team at No 10 and _he C=C, I am happy to do
that . As I said earlier, the moment this mistake was escnosed
by Channel-4 and subs equer_t"=y by Dr a_-Marashi hi:r.self on
Newsnight, .-_hat next morning the PriTe Minister's spokesman
has never attempted to avoid it, hands ap, it should not
have happened, we are going to look at how it happer_ed, we
are going to cu-_ procedures in place and --hat has been done .
I have no desire here at a=1 to do any ::ning other than
deliver :ha-- apoloolr and do that sincerely . If it would he--P
to do rhaz in wri--ir.g to Dr al-LSarashi, I am perfectly happv
to do that .

Q1153 Sir John Stanley : I am sure he would appreciate that .

M= Campbell : Fine . I noticed, when I read Dr al-Marashi's

evidence, that one of the Committee members - I think it was
Mr ?ope - said he would be recommendir_a _hat we did
apc'_ogise, _hat the Committee would be seeking to recommend
thao we did apologise to Dr al-Marashi . I am happy to do
that . If I can pray you in similar aid in relation co Mr
Gilligan's story in the BBC, T would be very grateful .

Q1154 Sir John Stanley : Can I turn :.o what I think is a

fundamental aspect of your evidence and your position . Do
you recognise =hat the launching by you of the so-called
dodgy dossier has done very, very serious damage -o -he
wider perception of the veracity of the Government's case
for -crosecut-'ng the war against Iraq?

P1r Campbell : I accep~ uha~ is stated and I accept there may

well be people who believe chat
. That is why I chink it is
importanL, as I have cried to do, to separate out the two
documents, underline the si-ar_i_'icance of the first one,
underline :he responsibleness and thoroughness with which we
in the intelligence agencies approached thaL, explain the
difference in rela--ion Lo the second one and its intended
purnoses and intended use . As I say again, we are involved
in an awful lot of pieces of co^imunication, as I have said
several times, and when we make a mistake we hear about it

~15~ 03~ ~
Oral evidence Pas-_ 65 of 70

for quite a long time . I actually do not think we have made

that many mistakes . This was a mistake, this one we have
acknowledged many, many times, it is one which the person
respons'_ble for ruakiag that mistake feels wretched abcur,
and I know the-- because I work w_-.h the guy . Mistakes do get
made . I just ask the Comr,itcee, as I have said in r.".y note,
to ur,derstand --he wider concext of the amount of
communications work we are involved in _n crying to deal on
a really difficult complicated issue like this with
different audiences around the world . We had strategies `or
the UK, =or the Moslem community in the UK, for Et:rone, for
Asia, for the United States, for the Middle East . I know
people talk about, and John Maples has alluded no, the whole
issue of this so-called explosion of special advisers in
Down_r_g Street, I have a pretty small teair and, yes, I can
call in some circu.'r:stances on resources across government,
but in Downing Street I have a pret~y small team . We do a
lot_ of work and occasionally T.istakes get r.ade .

Q1155 Sir John Stanley : Can we continue on my parL-cular

line of questioning it is a ra_ter of concern to me that
you still do not apjreclate the fundamental issue which is -

Mr Campbell : I do .

Q1156 Sir John Stanley : I am sorry, I do not believe you

do, which is the re-acions__ip between tte communications
part of Governmer_7:~ and intelligence . As you know, I was a
_ninisLer_al recipient of -intelligence for rnany years and
there is one particular sentence I read in your memorandurn
which =il_ed me with very considerable concern and -c is the
sentence which reads, in relation to the Septe-mber 2002
dossier, "I had several discussions with the Chairman of the
J=C on preseniacional issues arising from the dossier and,
in coru°ton wich other officials, made drafting suggestions as
the document evolved ." The most crucial aspect of the
interface between intelliger_ce and policy - and you, Mr
Campbell, sic right down in the middle - is that
ir_celligence helps to fornulate policy and that po--cy
never, never helps to formulate intellicence . The pos-cion
which you have now 7.aae clear to the Committee, and i
believe this is the first t_=ne this has come into the nLblic
domain, that you are _n the business of makina and .:rafcina
suggest ; ons to the cha-rman of the L,-oint Intelligence
Committee, than in rry ludgme^t, unia_r as this may be to
you, is seriously going to ccmpromise the integrity o= such
docur.ents in the f+~-cure, as indeed they have been
comvromised in the case of the two Iraq dossiers . You are a
very, very skilled conununicacor, you are 'Known universally
as the Government's spin uoccor, your business is to put the
best possible presentat_on on the Government's policy, a
perfectly bona fide role, everybody understands chat, but I
1%1%ft
)=k_
ts 1:!) `~
xxon
r~ A In', !nn~~
Oral evidence Pa-e 66 of 70

:nave to put __ =o you - and = do not put this to you in an

offensive or persor_al way b~,ic in all seriousness because I
share one th'-ng in common with you, you said you were
concerned to safeguard zhe integrity of the inze--ligence
services and =hat is absolutely my position as well - as
long as that policy in your paper is known, that you are i;
the business of making drafting suggestions to the chairman
of the JIC, that Alastair Campbell's fingerprints are going
to be on JIC source documents, I have to say I do not
believe that is conducive to the integrity of the
intelligence services .

Mr Campbell : I suspect that is because you may be not

persuaded by my integrity in relation to the work that I do
That, if true, is obviously from my perspective regrettable .
All I can say is --hat the memorandum that I submitted to you
was seen by and cleared by the chairman of the JIC who had
uiscussed it-with the agencies . Like you, I think the
intelligence agencies 3o an extraordinary job '-or the
country, and the reason why i felt zhac the briefing paper
mistake was so serious was because it did obviously lead `o
z:he controversy about which we are still oalking . The reason
wny I moved so quickly to speak to the leadership of the
intelligence com:aunity and to agree the new procedures now
in place was because I do value that huge-y . Provided the
intelligence services and -he leadership are sat-isfied wrch
the role I play on behalf of the Prime Minister at 1-_is
instruction, I chink that is a perfectly proper thing to do .

Q1157 Sir John Stanley : My colleague, hr Ottaway, yes=erday

asked the Foreign Secretary, "Do you think on balance -t
would be better -not to have published -z in the first
place . . . , referring to =he dodgy dossier, and the Forei_an
Secretary replied, "Yes,
given what happened --- Certainly
it would have been better not to have nublished it _n that
form or if it was going to be pti.blished to have ensured thaL
it went tnroug_ the same rigorous procedures as the dossier
that was published in Sep--ember ." Do you agree with _he
Foreign SecreT:ary it would have been Tar bezze= in 17=nd.5igRL
LOr the Go'ver=en-_ _= the second dossier, the dodgy dossier,
had no :: been published?

Mr Campbell : Clearly-

Sir John Stanley : Thank you .

Chairman : _~!r Octaway, if you could be brief

.

Q1158 Richard Ottaway : I will . During the interval I have

been m,_Ising that a c_riescion I put to you may only have been
parrially answered . I would jusc like to put exactly the
same questior_ co you again . Did the Government ever receive
any information from intelligence services thau Iraq was not

~gG~5~6333 GO
 Oral evidence Pa----- 67 ol 70

an i_nmediaze threat~

Mr Campbell : Not that I saw .

Q1159 Richard Ottaway : That was not the cquestion I asked

though .

Mr Campbell : ' cannot answer for what the 3overnment may

have received if = was not aware of i7~ .

Q1160 Richard Octaway : You were chairing a cross-

departmental --- _

Mr Campbell : I was not sitting there looking at raw

intelligence the whole time .

Q1161 Richard Ottaway : I an not saying raw intelligence .

L)-:-d you get any assessment from the intelligence services
tha7. -=aq was not an -rc_nediate threau?

Mr Campbell : -n relauion to this point abou-_ the immediate

immir_enZ threat, the Pr-'me Minister is on the record , -
think either in the House or to the Liaison Comm`t-ee,
saying nobody -s saying Saddam 3ussein is about to launch
weaDOris on the i.'Y next week, the week after, this year, next
year, so I am not clear .

Q1162 Richard Ottaway : Did you get any intelligence reports

that Iraq was noz. an i_nrr.ediate threat?

Mr Campbell : None that I can recall tha :~ 1 saw . I do not go

around looking for every piece of in--e--ligence .

Q1163 Richard Ottaway : You were chairing a group %,.,hich

- covered a heck of a lot of departments .

Mr Campbell : -c covered the commun-cation issues on Iraq .

Very few of those meetings would have discussed
at 'c.ll . The discussions ~haz. We were involved .~n there were

-ssues like, for example, when we were trying to get the

second resolution . They would have been about whic__
countries we should be s_oeak-ng to their media . This was nor-
a group that sac with a sheaf of intelligence on _he table,
:n fact it never did tzat . As I have explained in Try
memorandum to you, the idea for this second br_efing paper
arose when one o= the SIS representatives at that meeting
said there was some new intelligence which could be used
publicly on this theme . We did not then sit around saying
"well, let us have a look at this", that was not how it
worked .

Q1164 Richard Ottaway : Everyone knew that you were putting

together an -intelligence case to argue that Iraq was an ~, .

_ PRPC /5 / O~ \,4-
r,1 nnmrr,~nn0
 Oral evidence Pa,e 68 of 70

immea_ate threat and no-one -involved in that a= any time

picked up any ir_tel_igence that =his was not the case coming
from a different assessmenz or different approach or
different line?

Mr Campbell : I am sorry if I am being thick but I do not

-nderstand the point given that the position of the
Government was throughout the entire theme that nobody was
ever saying :ha= Iraq was going to whack cff a missile at
Peterbcrcugh .

Q1165 Richard Ottaway : Did you get a report saying "It is

imp=obable that they are going to whack off a missile
anywhere"?

: Not that I have seen .

Mr Campbell

Q1166 Richard Ottaway : Has anyone seen?

Mr Campbell : How can I answer that if I have not seen things

t;at other tDeotn=e have seen?

Q1167 Richard Ottaway : It is possible that someone might

he 've?

Mr Campbell : I really do not know . As I say, forgive me if i

am thick buc I do not really get the po_nt .

Q1168 Richard Ottaway : -he point is i= is craite possible

.-hat such an assessment was made .

Mr Campbell : But I am not aware of it, therefore how, can I

co-n.-nent upon its existence or non exister_ce .

Q1169 Mr Hamilton : just a very minor point, Mr Ca_npbe=l .

Wher_ it was d=scovered that the February dossier included
plagiarised macerial, would you have expected the Permanent
Under Secretary of -::he Foreign Office, Sir Michael Jay, to
=ave been informed straight away?

Mr Campbell : ~,'ell . he was .

Q1170 Mr Hamilton : He says he was not informed stra-'aghz

away or -the morning o_ 3 February .

Mr Campbell : No, no, we did not know until 6 February . 3

February was wren the document was put in the Library o£ the
House of Coirmons .

Q1171 Mr Hamilton : Right .

Mr Campbell : At which point none of us knew .

18 rIIV_
 Oral evidenc° Paoe 69 of 70

Q1172 Mr Hamilton : 0k-ay . So he was informed immediately or

'o February when it was discovered, as far as you know?

Mr Campbell : He prebably had exactly i:he same sinking

'-ee'_ing as I had when I saw the news . He and I had
discussions, not on the intelli_aence side o'_ things bu-
abou : procedures for the CIC, and there was an exchange
benween me and him . What was agreed there was any material
kept wirhin the C-C, used by the -_IC, had to be properly
so,:rced, which is the system which operates in Number 1C
anyway .

Q1173 Andrew Mackinlay : Just 15 seconds . You understand the

thing I =nave asked, and I understand your point saying you
have! t0 clear it in case there was intelligence which was iri
the so-called 'dodgy dossier' but there might be - might be
- a relucLance to identLfy precisely what it is . just for
the purposes of this conversation, _--f chat is what is told
to you, and you relay it back to us, that would rather infer
they m-gbt have sa_d "Do a document but bring in some other
material in order to disguise what is intelligence"
.

Mr Campbell : No .

Q1174 Andrew Mackinlay : I have misunderstood then . = cannon

for the life of me undersziand wry, in a sense, you have cot
to go back to these fellows because if they sa=d 11-Here, J
Alastair Cam.pbell, is intel'_igence . Sign _t off In can be
in the p~abl_c domain" .

Mr Campbell : Yes .

Q1175 Andrew Mackinlay : Then vie know the hisLCry of the

'OroQllCtiOr .'. Of this document and also --n=ngs which were
I brDUQl"1t in . I cannot 52e, therefore, how it is impossible

identify with clarity precisely what was handed over?

Mr CasnpbeZl : As S say, I did noc work on the ed_cor-al of

this until it was time :o sign ii off . In the process that
went over =our weeks there were discassions as the thing was
evolv:ng between the peocle in the CIC working on it. and the
S-S . Now I am simply saying I do no : personally -cnow the
judgments which were applied as to what could be rdencified
as in7ie111ge_1Ce and wi"_at Ia1gRt be 1nt°_111Ge_'lce Lhaz was not
thus identified .

Q1176 Chairman : Mr Campbell, one final observation from you

which is nut that th'e choice before the Commi-_Lee is whether
we believe Gill igan or you, what are your observations on
that?

P+Ir Canzpbell : All I can say --- _`

-88C I's 11 -~~ Q03
Oral evidence 'as-- 70 o: 70

Andrew Mackinlay : I am not sure that 'is so

Q1177 Chairman : Let me ask the question .

Mr CampbeIZ : - work in a p=etcy exposed position . I wcrk -c-

a Prime Min_ster who is answerable to Parliamer_t . The media
can handy a11 sorcs of allegations abo~.it what I do and they
can say things about the Pr_rne Nin_sner but the one thing
you cannot do, as everybody in this room knows, _f you are
an elected uolitician is lie to the House of Commons . Now,
t:ne allegation that has-been made by the BBC's defence
correspondent, repeated in large parLs of the media, as I
say, and around-the world, is that the Prime Minister
here
did exactly that, he put to the country ar_d to Parliament a
=alse basis for puzting at risk -he lives of Bri~ish
servicemen . That is an
accusation aaalinst the Prime
-Minister, against the Foreign Secretary, against the
Cabine=, against the intelligence agencies, against c:e and
aaairnst the people who work with me . Now ~hat is why I take
i-- so seriously, not because of me because, as I say, I am
absolutely used to being described in all sorts of ways by
journalists wno, frankly, = would match a politicia;'s
inzegrity against theirs any day o~ -Ehe week . I simply say
-in relation to the BBC story : it is a lie, i :. was a lie, it
is a -_ie tha` is conLinuaily repeated and until w? gec an
apology for it I will keep making sure the :. Parliament,
people like yourselves and the public know t=-iau it was a
lie .

Chairman : mr Campbell, this is the Committee's first meeting

wit~^ you, I hope it will not be the las7: . Thank you very
m~,ch .
 c
~cPsf k-CS~(2 C/~ eej~ <<--- Z- t7-~r-o

2G, JUN ?M 3 ii 5f1 ND i!04 P 4 .- ;

z~~6(3

10 DOWNING STR:,ET
LONDON SWLt,2hls

Ducnur otCor-Aimaica :ions ar-c Sr.ateoy 26 June '-IOC3

As you know, I have been engaged m private correspondence with you in

recent weeks about the allegations on the BBC on the conduct of the Government,
and of me, m relarion to the GVMp dossier of Sept°rnber 2002

I beard your interview on the Today programrne this mornmg and would
like now, in view of the continuing interest in this, to ask a number of questions
You said that the BBC had nevcr alleged that we took the country into conflict on a
false'oasis . I disagree . Indeed, could I point you to the introduction by Jo'nn
Humphreys before he spoke to your correspondent on the: Today progran.-ne -inor
to my appearance at the FAC . He said-

'T& Campbell will answer questions about

allegations mad-- on this programme by Andrew
Gilligan that the case for going to war was
exaggerated, specifically that one of the dossiers
presented by IvL. Blatr had been sexed up to make it
appear that Sadda-n was a great--
: threat to the West
than the mtellt~ence Justified.''

That is one of many statements on the BBC by reporters and presenters

making clear that Mr. Gilligan made these allegations, and ffiat they amour-t to
charges that the Government, from the Prime Minister down, misled Parliarr.t-at
and public about the case on which he had led the country into confl)ct .

I think you, will agree that trus was certainly the allegation as I`LP's, press
and public understood :t at the time, as the voluminous coverage and the
Parhamentary concern have shown . Cou1d I have a response by the end of the day,
given that is the time scale I am seeking to meet in relation to the issues the FAC
;7a& asked me further to address 1 think it is :air and reasonable . And of course,
like me you wal already be immersed in the detail as a result of our previous, thus
far pnvate exchanges .
. 2(1 . Juld. 2003 15 5 0 NC I 04 P 5 ';

-Z-

The questions are these

"Do-s t_2e BBC still s:and by the allegation :t made on 29`° May that Number
Ten added :n the 45 minute claim to the dossier? Yes or no2
" Does it still stand by the allegation made on the same day that we did so against
the w)shes of the intelligence agencjes~ Yes or no?
" Does it still stand by the allegation made on that day that both we and the
intellioence agencies knew the 45 minute claim to be wrong and insetted it
despite P.no~,vix:g that? Yes or no?
" Dots it still sand by the allegauor., again on the same day, that we ordered the
_ September dossier to be "sexed up" m the period leading up to its publicat)on -
and that Gilltgan had found what Humphreys called "evidence" that it was
`cobbled together at the last minute with some unconfirmed material tl:athad
not been approved by the security services"? Yes or no?
" Does it still stand by the statement made on 6"' June by Gilltgan that the .ITC is
not part of the intcliigence community, but a NIu.-nber 10 Committee which
exists to arbitrate between government a_rtd the intelligencc agencies?
" Does it stan d by the claim on the 3 " of 7i-it that the chairman of t1he J71C oa:y
"kmd of bureaucratically signed offhis report"? Yes orno?

Could I also ask-

" How many sources was the original "45 mLzute" allegation being added in
hased on? Was it one source or more. than one source? You will be aware of
the BBC Guidelines on this .
" Is that source on the JIC, a.-id do you agree that any source not on `.he 7IC did
not have the full picture?
" -Was the source, as Gtlltgan has said, "a se-nor official involved in drawing up
the dossie:", or is he, as vou said today, a source, "in the intelligence servlce3"?
i'm sure you at least understand the signtficance of the difference to which I am
alluding, -
" Is it now -or-.na'. BBC practice not to seek to cot-roborate sinale source sto-ies~
" Finally do you believe that Gilhgan's statement to the FAC that all he had ever
alleged was that we gave "undue promumence" to the 45 minute pomt, or do you
sha:e my views that this is utterly tnconsistent with what he and otl:ers or the
BBC havc said and what Gilhgan has said, writing as a BBC ;outr.alist in. the
Mail on S tnday, the Sunday Telegraph, ar.d The Spectator,
" Ptnal'.y, have you seen today's Spectator, an which 1[r
. Giliigan, writing not m a
pe:soaal capacity but as a BBC correspondent, writes an article concludm_e that
the Pntne Minister is a "push over" in his relations with Presiden: Putm. Is that
't () JUN 2003 12 ro Q . 1 104

-3-

the BBC's vtcw? If it is a personal view, could you tell me what rule govern s
what BBC correspondents may or may not write in a freelance capacity to boost
;hell" BBC earnings? What are the procedures and were they followed in
rela6on to this arttcle? I am interested too, in respect of :he many BBC
journalists who boost their incomes by wrrsmg for national newspape.-s, what
procedures govern their conduct and this wntmgs? You will be aware that
NtP's have also expressed concern or, this .

As our previous correspondence has achieved little on this subject, other

than further exposing the BBC's refusal ever to apologise, even on a story that is
potentially so damaging to the int-,;rity of the Prime Mmrster, the Gove;nmer.t arnd
the political process, I am relea3ing this to the press I look forward to your reply
fatertoday.

lr-~

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL

Mr . Richard Sambroos
- 26 J'JN. 2003 15 50 16 11C4 1 7, ;

BBC bzckinQ away from its original_story

Z'ftis morning the BBC's Director of News denied the BBC ever alleged
anything other than that there was simply `disquiet' within the
intelligence services about `one piece' of information
.

"What we have said quite simply is that a senior and credible source said
eh= was disquiet within the inrelligence services about one piece, that one
forty five minute claim.' Richard Sambrook, 26 June 2003

In his evidence to the FAC last week Giliigan said he had `reported his
source as saying' there was disquiet because the 45 minute claim had
been given `undue prominence' .

`4 reported thz source as saYino there was unhappiness within the

intelligence services, disquiet within the intelligence services- .my-
source's complaint was that its (45 minute claim] importance was tzi-v=
undue prommence."
Andrew Gilltgan, evidence to the Foreign fiffairs Comunittee, 18 June 2003

This is not true, and he therefor misled the Foreign Affairs Committee.

He reported a number of allegations including:

"most ptople m the intelligence weren't happy with the dossier . "
Andrew Giliigan, Break?ast Radfo 5 Live, Thursday 29th May 2003 0750

He reported that the Government knew the 45 minute fact was wrong:

"we've beon told by one of the senior officials m charge of drawma up

that dossier was fnat actL:alh the Government orobablv latew thai that
forty-five minute t:eure was wrong, even before it fiec ;ded to put ;t m."
Crilhgan, Today Programme 29 May 2003

"what I havc been :old is that :he Government knew that claim was
questionable even before: the war, even before they wrote i' in their
dossier,"
Gilligan, Today Programme, 29rh May 2003 0732

He reported that the intelligence agencies also knew it was wrong:

" the inteihoence agencies say thev

don't realiy believe it [45 minute claim]
was necessarily true "

~-~~r 151o3o 6i$

26 1k 2003 15~50 N0 . 11 ~J4 F, 8. S

Gilltgan, Today Programme 29 May 2003

He reported that the Downing Street had ordered the dossier to be `sexed
up':

"this official told ~.ts that the transformation of the dossier took place at the
behest of Downing 5tree: "
Gilligan, Today Programme, 29th May 2003 0732

"What this person says is that a week before the publication date of rhe
dossier it was actually rather a bland production . .. . the draft prepared for
Mr Blair by the intelligence agencies actually didn't say very much more
than was public knowledge already and Downing Street , our source says,
ordered a week before_pubiication, ordered it to-be sexed up, to be made
more exciting and, and, ordered more facts to be, to be discovered ."
Gilligan, Today Programme 29 May 2003

And in the Mail on Sunday he reported that Alastair Campbell had been
personally responsible for adding in the 45 minute fact:

"I asked him how this transformation happened

.The answer was a single
word . 'Campbell.' What? Campbell made it up? 'No, :t was real
infor.nation. But it was included aaainst our wishes because it wasn't
reliable .' " (Andrew Gilligan -Mail or. Sunday - 1/06/03)

John Humphrys exaggerated this further when he said Gilligan had

found `evidence';

"Andrew Gilligan has found evidence that the Government's dossier on

Iraq, that was produced last September, was cobbled together at the last
minute with some unconfirmed material that had not been approved by the
securitv services ."
John Humphrys, Today Programme, 29rh May 2003 0732

When the dossier was first published Andrew Giiligan described ii as :

"rather sensibly cautious and measured in tone on the whole"

(Today, 24" September 2052)

But after he broke his `sexing up' story he subsequently described it in

the Mail on Sunday as :

"bold and asserive " ".9ndrew Gilltgan, June 12003, Mail on Sunday
26. aNi. 20D3 '5 51 ND. 1104 P

BBC confusion over its' `source'

The BBC's Director of IVews said this morning that the source is in the
intelligence services:

"We've always said that we had one senior and credible source in the
intelligence services who had told us that some of those involved in
compiling the Septernber dossiet were unhappy a; how it was finally
presented. ."
Richard Sambrook, 26 June 2003

But Gilligan has said he is a senior official:

"And what w:'ve been told by one of the semor official-, .in charge of
drawing, up that dossier. . ."
Gilligan, Today Programme 29Iv'ay 2003

He has confirmed he is not a member of the Joint Intelligence

Committee:

Mr Gilligan : As I have said, the 7IC did not enter into my reoort.. . ."
Andrew Gill:gan, evidence to the Foreign Affairs Criee, 18 Iune 2003

In a letter to Alastair Campbell of 11 June 2003, the BBC's Director of

News said that a `variety' of sources had voiced concern over the
September S'VMD dossier.

"The fact is that a variety o! sources, over a period of time, have indicated
their concern about the way intelligence was used and presented in
September and they lliave voiced this concern both to Andrew and also to
other BBC journalists ."

But Andrew Gilligan told the Foreign Affairs Committee last week that in
fact only one source had spoken to him about the September DPMD
dossier.

Mr Maaies: Two of the other three, so to speak, talked to you about the al-
Qaeda links and the "dodgy dossier" but not about the weapons of mass
destruction dossier.
Ivfr Gilligan : That is right, (Foreign Affairs Cree, 18/6/03)
 rc..c-~r e " V- -
f C k AV,-, 0 ~ Lf M VsX- ° If

Dear Alastair

Thank you for your letter of 26th June . I chose not to reply yesterday as I
wanted time to examine fully the questions you asked and to write a
considered reply. That was not possible in the timescale you gave me .

Before I answer the questions in detail I wish to explain the wider context
in which we came to broadcast the story in question . I will summarise this
under three headings :

" Your general ciaim that the BBC's reporting of the war and the
events both before and after was biased .
" The impact of your February dossier being discredited .
" The general concern expressed by members of the security
services that intelligence reports were being exaggerated- __

1 . Alleqations of biased reoortinq

In your evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee you made it

clear that you believed the BBC had an anti-war agenda . It is OUF firm
view that Number Ten tried to intimidate the BBC in its reporting of
events leading up to the war and during the course of the war itself. As
we told you in correspondence before the war started, our responsibility
was to present an impartial picture and you were not best placed to
judge what was impartial . This was particularly the case given the
widescale opposition to the war in the UK at that time, including
significant opposition inside the Parliamentary Labour Party. For
example, you will remember when the key division on the war took place
in the House of Commons in March you wrote to me to suggest that we
had given too much prominence to the vote which recorded the largest
backbench parliamentary revolt in modern history .

During the war you again accused us of unfairness - in particular

criticising our reporting from Baghdad . You know that we strongly dispute
that charge and the BBC's Board of Governors, after detailed discussion
both during and after the war, have expressed their complete satisfaction
with the impartiality of BBC News coverage .

In your evidence to the Select Committee you extended your attack on

our journalism suggesting that we have been animated by a rationale
"that the Prime Minister led the country to war on a false basis" . It seems
you have missed the many reports we have filed from Iraq about mass
 graves, torture and political repression - evidence which has been used
to justify the war.

2 . The February Dossier

It is impossible to discuss our reporting of the September 2002 dossier

without seeing it in the context of what we knew by then of the February
2003 dossier -- the dossier which even the Foreign Secretary described
as °a complete Horlicks" earlier this week.

What was by then clear was that your department had plagiarised an
article from the internet, based on an old University thesis, changed
crucial parts of it and then used it unattributed to strengthen the case for
Britain going to war. Thatwas the provenance of the February dossier -
which might still stand were it not for the intervention of a Cambridge
academic .

The discrediting of the February dossier inevitably influenced questions

asked about any similar dossiers . In these circumstances any decent
journalist would inevitably question whether similar tactics had been
used when wriiing the earlier dossier .

In addition, in early March, the Director General of the IAEA, Dr

Mohammed El Baradei, described the documents on which an important
claim in the September dossier was based (the Niger uranium claim) as
"not authentic" - and indeed cast doubt on other aspects of the
September dossier's claims about a nuclear weapons programmes .

We thus made a judgement that the information provided by the source

Tfitted into a pattern of concerns - and that it was perfectly proper to report
the allegations made by Andrew Gilligan's source . Your correspondence
and evidence to the FAC ignores this background - which is central ?o
any understanding of the BBC's journalism .

3 . Unease in the Securitv Services

As we have told you before, a number of BBC journalists who have close
contact with both the military and the security services had reported that
their contacts were concerned that intelligence reports were being
exaggerated to strengthen the case against Saddam Hussein . In

B'BCI,~(G3 (~5
particular they were saying that whilst low scale Weapons of Mass
Destruction existed they did not pose the level of threat the government
was suggesting . Many journalists in other news organisations were
receiving similar briefings .

For example :

Peter Beaumont and Gaby Hinsliff wrote (Observer 24 February 2003) of

disagreement between the intelligence services and Downing Street -
"the essence of the disagreement is said to have been that intelligence
material should be pre"sented 'straight' rather than spiced up to rriake a
political argument ." Their article also talks about "fairly serious rows"
between at least one member of the JIC and Alastair Campbell .

Raymond Whittaker (Independent on Sunday 27 April) wrote of "a high

level UK source" saying that "intelligence agencies on both sides of the
Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were
distorted" . He went on to write : "You cannot just cherry- pick evidence
that suits your case and ignore the rest . It is a cardinal rule of
intelligence," said one aggrieved officer . "Yet that is what the PM is
doing ." Another said : "What we have is a few strands of highly
circumstantial evidence, and to justify an attack on Iraq it is being
presented as a cast-iron case . That really is not good enough ."

Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian 30 May: "British intelligence sources

expressed fury at Downing Street's behaviour . They were reluctant to
allow Downing Street to use their intelligence assessment because they
feared it would be manipulated for political ends . . . . Caveats . . .were swept
aside by Mr Blair, egged on by Mr Campbell, well-placed sources said "

Daniel McGrory, Times 30 May: "Senior sources say they received a

barrage of phone calls from staff at No 10 demanding more evidence .
Intelligence chiefs insist that the dossier was written by someone inside
No 10 and not by British Intelligence . . .agents were wary that frightened
defectors who wanted asylum would say what the British and Americans
wanted to hear.-there was debate amongst intelligence analysts whether
the [45-minute source's] claims should have been passed to No 10, as
senior figures doubted whether it was true, but were under pressure to
deliver 'compelling evidence ."'

Glenn Frankell, Washington Post 30 May : "One official acknowledged

that there had been what he described as 'pressured and superheated
debates at the time' between Downing Street and intelligence officials
over the contents of the dossier."

Peter Beaumont, Gaby Hinsliff, Observer 1 June : "What we are seeing is

something very new, and very strange . M16 is sticking its head over the
parapet as much as it ever will . . .Ml6 feels totally discredited and used ."
("source")
"M16 feels that it has been pushed rather unwillingly into the limalight by
the Government . It is a shot across the bows ." (a second "source")

Nick Fielding, Sunday Times 1 June, reported that the dossier was the
result of a "deal after months of bitter disagreements between
intelligence chiefs and Bfair's aides. Campbell had attempted to
persuade the agencies to include hard-hitting conclusions . They were
reluctant to agree because they said the case-was not proven ."

Furthermore on 22 March, the UN Chief Weapons Inspector, Har ;s Blix,

criticised the manipulation of intelligence to make the case for war -
accusing the coalition of using "shaky" evidence . Robin Cook - s©on after
his resignation - echoed that, questioning the Government's evidence
(such as that in the September dossier) that Iraq presented an irnminent
threat : "it was difficult to believe that Saddam had the capacity to hit us ."

It was in this context that we judged that reporting the claim made by
Andrew Gilligan's source was in the public interest .

Having dealt with the context, let me turn now to the report on the Today
programme . This week you have misrepresented our journalism .

" You have said we accused the Prime Minister, the Foreign
Secretary and other ministers of lying . We have not.
" You have said the BBC deliberately accused the Prime Minister of
misleading the House of Commons and of leading the country into
war on a false basis . We have not .
" You have accused the BBC of damaging the integrity of the
political process . We believe we have done the opposite

The nub of what the BBC reported was :

" unease among some of the intelligence community about the use
of intelligence in government dossiers
 " the assertion of one senior and credible source-who has proved
reliable in the past - that the "45 minute claim" was wrong and was
inserted late into the dossier .

In response to this we have provided the Government with frequent and

ample opportunities to state their position and rebut the allegations and
this you have done . This is a perfectly fair and proper journalistic process
which we stand by .

Now to your questions-and I make no apology for repeating some of the

points I have just made .

Does the BBC still stand by the allegation it made on 29"hMay that
Number 10 added in the 45 minute claim to the dossier ?

The allegation was not made by the BBC but by our source - a senior
official involved in the compilation of the dossier-- and the BBC stands
by the reporting of it.

Andrew Gilligan made it clear that according to his source the 45 minute
claim was real, but unreliable, intelligence information .

We do not report everything that every source tells us . In this instance

we believe that the source is credible and that it was legitimate to place
his concerns in the public domain given what we knew of the February
dossier and the other points I have listed above . We stand by this
decision .

0 Does it still stand by the allegation made on the same day that we
did so against the wishes of the intelligence agencies?

Again we reported accurately what we had been told by the source that
the 45 minute claim was included in the dossier "against our wishes ."

o Does it still stand by the allegation made on that day that both we
and the intelligence agencies knew the 45 minute claim to be
wrong and inserted it despite knowing that.

Andrew Giliigan accurately reported the source telling him that the
government "probably knew that the 45 minute figure was wrong" and
that the claim was "-`questionable ." The basis for this assertion by
Andrew Gilligan's source was that the information about the 45 minute
claim had been derived from oniy one intelligence source - whereas most

~c 1s~.53 ~, ~
of the other claims in the dossier had at least two . Gilligan's Source
also believed this single Iraqi source had probably got the infornnation
wrong .

C- Does it still stand by the allegation, again on the same day, that we
ordered the September dossier to be `sexed up `in the period
leading up to its publication - and that Gilligan found what
Humphreys (sic) called "evidence" that it was "cobbled together at
the last minute with some unconfirmed material that had not been
approved by the-security services?"

We stand by our reporting of the source as saying that the dossier was
"sexed up " and that had happened at a late stage in its preparation -
and that the "sexing up " relied on uncorroborated material not approved
of by all in the intelligence agencies .

I note today that Mr Peter Rickefts, Director General of the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office has told the Foreign Affairs Committee that the
"45 minute" claim was not in the first draft of the dossier .

Does it still stand by the statement made on 6th June that the JIC is
I not part of the intelligence community, but a Number 10 committee
which exists to arbitrate between government and the intelligence
services?

We never said that the JIC was not part of the intelligence community .
What we actually said was the JIC is not the same thing as the
intelligence services .

C~ Does it still stand by the claim on 3'd June that the chairman of the
JIC only kind of "bureaucraticalfy signed off his report?"

It would have been better if Andrew Gilligan had attributed this answer to
his source and that was a slip on the day . However he had frequently
reminded the audience that claims were derived from the source . What
Andrew Gdligan did in this section of the report was to acknowledge that
the JIC chairman had indeed 'signed off ' on the dossier - but that did
not of itself mean that all members of the intelligence services were
happy with its contents .
Further we know from other sources that some senior members ©f the
intelligence community were reluctant to use intelligence material in tnis
way .

C How many sources was the original "45 minute "allegation being
added in based on ? Was it one source or more than one source?
You will be aware of the BBC Guidelines on this.

I have repeatedly made it clear that the particular allegations made in

Andrew Gilligan's report of the 29th May came from one source and I
have outlined why we felt it appropriate to broadcast the information . The
audience was told time and again on the 29th May that the criticism of the
dossier's compilation was being made by one source . The sourcs was
credible and what he chose to tell Andrew Gilligan was highly plausible
given what we knew by then about the preparation of the February
"dodgy dossier" . Other journalists, including some within the BBC, had
been told of concerns held in the intelligence community about the way
intelligence was used in the run-up to war in Iraq - and they had been
told this by sources other than the one Who spoke to Andrew Gilf igan .
In the light of this it would have been wrong for the BBC to decide not to
put into the public domain the information provided to Andrew Giliigan by
his source - and we did so with transparent attribution to a single source .

As for your point about the BBC Guidelines let me quote :

"Programmes should be reluctant to rely on only one source,,*'

That is true . The BBC would have preferred it if the source had been on
the record . But you well know that in this field sources very rarely - if
ever -- choose to speak on the record . I do not accept your inference
that means we cannot publish information on intelligence matters if only
derived from one source - particularly in light of what we knew about the
February dossier .

There is a clear editorial procedure involving referral up to senior

managers which was followed in this case .

We also note that Adam Ingram told us on May 29`h that your "45 minute"
claim is based on a single uncorroborated intelligence source .

Is that source on the JIC and do you agree that any source not on
the JlC did not have the full picture?

~~3C 15/~35C? (00P

 I do not intend to say anything more about our source . You well know
that it is a matter of principle for us not to reveal our sources . I wi II do
nothing to help you in this regard .

0 Was the source, as Gilligan has said, `'a senior official involved in
drawing up the dossier, "oris he, as you said today, a source "7n
the intelligence services?" 1'm sure you at least understand the
significance of the difference to which 1 am alluding .

I refer you to my previous answer.

E Is it now normal BBC practice not to seek to corroborate single

source stories?

Of course we would prefer corroboration . The fact remains that we made

a judgement about whether in the particular circumstances it was
appropriate to place the allegations made by our source into the public
domain . I have already outlined the context which justified this decision .

L1 Finally do you believe that Gilligan's statement to the FAC that all
he had ever alleged was that we gave "undue prominence" to the
45 minute point, or do you share my views that it is utterly
inconsistent with what he and others or the BBC have said and
what Gilligan has said, writing as a BBC journalist in the Mail on
Sunday, The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator?

It is incorrect to say all Andrew Gilfigan ever said to the FAC was the
single charge made by the source . His evidence was more wide ranging
and it corresponds with what was broadcast . I quote from his evidence to
the FAC :

Q450 Sir John Stanley: You are making, Mr Gilligan, a very, very serious
allegation against the integrity of the J1C. The entire ----
Mr Gilligan : I am not making any allegations .
l would repeat, as 1 have said throughout, l am not making any
allegations. My source made the allegations . We were reporting the
charge of my source, who is a figure sufficiently senior and credible to be
worth reporting .
1 reported the source as saying there was unhappiness within the
intelligence services, disquiet within the intelligence services."

B(3CfS/G351 W
Q455 Sir John Stanley: In terms of your evidence to this Committee, the
only piece of evidence which you are specifying was allegedly n,7ade at
the last minute subject to a political requirement to "sex it up" to use
your phrase, is the 45 minute claim?
Mr Gilligan : That was the only specific piece of evidence that my source
discussed, yes .
Sir John Stanley: Thank you.
Q456 Mr Olner So the rest of the evidence that was in the dossier was
reliable? By implication, if your source said he was not happy about the
45 minute thing then he was happy with the rest of it.
Mr Gilligan : The fact that my source was not specifically unhappy with
other elements of the dossier does not necessarily mean that other
elements of the dossier were reliable. Of course it might mean that, but I
do not think anything can be drawn from it the other way.

Q552 Mr Chidgey: So the only degree of certainty that your source has
or had was that he did not believe the 45 minutes?
Mr Gilligan : No, as 1 say, my source was reasonably sure, as are all the
other intelligence people 1 have spoken to, that Iraq had a WMD
programme of some description, but it was smaller and less of an
imminent threat than that claimed by the Government. That was the view
of my source and the view of several other people's sources in the rest of
the media and indeed other sources 1 have spoken to, intelligence and
non-in telligence.
The words of my source was that it was transformed in the week before it
was published to make it sexier. Given all that you have said and given
the other things l have described, 1 think that is a credible allegation .
As for newspaper articles - Andrew has not written on this subject for
The Sunday Telegraph . The only significant difference in any piece he
has written is when he wrote in the Mail on Sunday that the source had
indicated your own involvement in the story .

Finally, have-you seen today's Spectator, in which Mr Gilligan,

writing not in a personal capacity but as a BBC correspondent
writes an article concluding that the Prime Minister is a `push over'

BBc1sl~3s2 62l
 in his relations with President Putin. Is that the BBC view? !f it is a
personal view, could you tell me what rule governs what BBC
correspondents may or may not write in a freelance capacity to
boost their BBC earnings? What are the procedures and were
they followed in relation to this article? 1 am interested too, in
respect of the many BBCjournalists who boost their incomes by
writing for national newspapers, what procedures govern their
conducts and this writings? (sic) You will be aware that MPs
have also expressed concern on this.
This piece was submitted in advance to an appropriate editorial manager
as is our procedure. Our guidelines on conflicts of interest cover what our
journalists are allowed to write . These guidelines are in the public
domain . As for this specific article the BBC does not impose a single
view on its correspondents .

Alastair, I have set out my views at considerable length . You will see
that I do not accept the validity of your attacks on our journalism and on
Andrew Gilligan in particular. We have to believe that you are conducting
a personal vendetta against a particular journalist whose reports on a
number of occasions have caused you discomfort .

Given the context described in the first part of my letter and given the
credibility of our source are you really suggesting that an independent
broadcaster should have suppressed this story because it only had one
source?

In my previous letter to you (June 16th) I drew your attention to our

complaints procedure and invited you to make a formal complaint if you
so wished . You chose to ignore this . That avenue remains open . I
should also say that if the information provided by our source is proved
to be incorrect we would make the fact very clearly known to our
audiences and we would express regret. As we stand today, that is
simply not the case .

Yours sincerely,

Richard Sambrook'
Director, BBC News

t3~ls/ 6S-C's!3 W
13Bcfs jos5t.~ 631
C3eclsk3ss Q3-
 Jg /~Lr5 7-a4rR C4 cL LZ~AD

Z7~!~?

IQ DOWNING STREET

Pr~.~s No'ce
29 June 2003

LETTER FROM ALASTAIR CAMPBELL TO RICHARD SAMBROOK

Thank you for your letter of 2' June .

I am saddened that you have failed to answer the direct questions I put to you. One rnonth to
the day since you broadcast these allegations, surely you have been able to establish whether
or not you are satisfied that they are true . I was also very surprised that your defence now
rests on the principle that you can report anything that a source says, regardless of its
veracity, provided that you report accurately what the source has told you.

I note m particular that you have been unable to substantiate the most damaging allegations -
namely that we "sexed up" the WMD dossier by inserting, against the wishes of the
Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Intelligence Agencies, the 45 :ninute
intelligence whilst knowing it to be untrue, and so helped the Prime Minister to persuade
Parliament and the country to go to war on a false basis .

The BBC's report of 29 May - the allegations from which have been repeated by the BBC
many times since and, thanks to the BBC have been repeated by broadcast and print media
around the world - was wrong um every material respect. The BBC has, in effect, been
standing by a single, uncorroborated anonymous source wbo gave you wholly false and
inaccurate information - a source- who seems, to put it at its kindest, to have been operating
away from the cen:re of events

Your editorial team showed poor professional judgement and competence in relying on such a
source without making any further checks, or putting the allegations to the people against
whom they were being made. You and other senior BBC executives, for your part, seem
unwilling to grapple with the fact that you broadcast a manifestly inadequate piece of
journalism ; that you are standing by a story that is simply untrue .

I respect, however, the BBC's independence, if not in this instance its competence. Given
how far apart we remain, 1 see little purpose in continuing our exchanges m advance of the
Foreien Affairs Committee report being published. You wi11 also be aware of the separate
inquiry by the Intelligence and Security Committee which will also have a bearing on these
issues. Let us first await the outcome of the Foreign Affairs Committee report . I reserve the
right at that time, or subsequently, to pursue my case further, possibly, in the way that you
suggest, through the BBC Programme Complaints Unit .
Telephone 020 7930 4433
www.nurnber-10.gov .uk pw I5/~35
b ~
S
 +~~4r'r~~~l Ac ffS c S~-B^^ rrr~ ~ ~ ~hf

jo F% C

PuB~rsuEpJ
Dear Chairman

I wrrte to clarify some points that arose from Mr. Campbell's testimony (Wednesday 25'h Jun e) and the
subsequent exchange of ietters and statements involving Mr. Campbell, a number of government
min,sters and the BBC Although these exchanges have received a great deal of media coverage I
believe it right that the Committee should hear from the BBC itself .

Firstly I would like to remind the Committee of the BBC's role Our task is to report the news . Tne BBC
ooes not have collective editorial opinions What is at issue here is the difference of opinion between
the governmen :'s views and the content of a single BBC report, authored by a single BBC jourr~alist
based on information from a valuable and accurate source

Mr. Campbell and government ministers are accusing tne BBC, in the strongest terms, of a string of
journalistic misdemeanours, including lying to the British public . I wish to set out in two secti0ns the
BBC's response to tne charges made.

" First- why did the BBC choose to run Anarew Gilligan's story on 29th May?
" Second - wry did it not retract the story (or apologise) when Mr. Campbell and government
ministers Denied the various allegauons made by Andrew Gdligan's source?

Mr Campbell - and other ministers - nave in recent days asserted that transmission of this story was in
breach of the BBC's gJldahnes . This is untrue. The Guidelines are availaDfe on the BBC s websrte
(http ://sites eateway bbo.co uk/nubhcrpolicy/DrodGuidelines/rndex html) . I quote from them below

"Programmes should be reluctant to rely on only one source" (Page 44)

`The autnonty of programmes can be undermined by the use of anonymous contributors

whose status the audience cannot iudge But there are times when anonymity is app-opnate,
ror example

" for reasons of safety

" to avoid undue embarrassment
" for legal reasons

"Anonymity should not normally be granted to anyone trying to evade the law m the United
Kingdom" (Page 56)

The committee should be assured that before transmission of the story there was proper consideratior
of the difficulty of proceeding with one off the record source The BBC abided by its pro oer process
of editorial referral Of course we would have preferred the source to have gone on the record - but
that simply was not possible in this instance

1. THE DECISION TO RUN THE STORY ON MAY 29TH

Mr. Campbe!I continues to assert that the BBC should not have run the story. ,'1e does so in vivid
terms

"if the BBC is now saying its journalism is based on the principle they can report what a-)y
source says, then BBC stancards are now debased beyond belief . . .. It means the BBC can
broadcast anytning and take responsibility for nothing"
(Alastair Camobell s:atement Friday 27" June 2003)

This completeiy misrepresents the position . At the risk of re peainng some aspects of Mr Gdligan's
testimony of Wednesday 19'° June, I should like to point out why the BBC's decision to run the story
conforms to our standards and practices

. The source had been used before by Mr Gilligan and his information had proved to be accurate .

~c/s /G3s ~ 6~,t~1

 argument ." Their article also talks about "fairly serious rows" betwee n at least
one member of the JIC and Alastair Campbell .

o Raymond Whittaker (independent on Sunday27 April) wrote of "a nigh level UK

source" saying that "intelligence agencies on both sides of tne Atlantic were
furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted" He went on to
write "You cannot lust cherry- pick evidence that suits your case and ignore the
rest. It is a carainat rule of intelligence," said one aggrieved officer . "Yet that is
what the PM is aoing." Another said "What we have ;s a few strands of hjghly
circumstantial evidence, and to justify an attack on Iraq it is being presented as
a cast-iron case That really u not good enough."

It should now be clear that the source was credible and there was ample context to justify
publication . -

2. WHY DID THE BBC NOT RETRACT THE STORY?

. We published what the source had alleged and, of course, the denials that followed

. It is worth noting that when Mr Campbell said m his evidence to the committee that "the aerna!
was made within an hour of the lie being told on the radio", this is not the case At about 07.15,
a Downing Street spokesman called the programme to insist that "not one word in tne dossier
was no" from intelligence sources . . " In fact Mr Gilligan's source never alleged that the material
was not rrom intelligent sources The programme made a note of the Downing Street statemen--
and later broadcast it. However, when asked questions about when the 45 minute claim was
first in the dossier and about Downing Street's role m drafting the dossier, we were told, "We will
not discuss processology." In other words, their response to questions about how the claim got
into the dossier, was - in effect - no comment

The source was raaidly proved right on one matter of importance -the fact that the 45 minute
WMD claim, contained within the dossier, had emanated from a single, uncorroborated source
That emerged on 'Today' snortly after B DO a.m on the day the Gilligan report was transmitted in
an exchange between John Humphrys and the defence minister, Adam Ingram .

The source has subsequently been substantiated on another issue --the late arrival of the 45
minute WMD claim Your committee heard from Peter Ricketts and Jack Straw that the 45 minute
claim was no ; included in a draft until early September .

Without disclosing anything further about the identity of the source, i` must therefore be clear to
any observer of these events that the source was indeed someone with, accurate inside
knowledae . As we have indicated, the source is a credible figure, who has been right on certain
crucial points . As yet, there is no proof that the source was wrong about anything.

What the BBC has a duty to do is to report faithfully government denials and to give them
sufficient prominence so that the public could make up its own mind . It would be improper for the
BBC to disown its source on the allegations made without proof that the source was wrong. It
would be very poor journalistic ethics to do so . It would discourage other potentual contributors
on other stories . It would undermine faith in the BBC's resi6ence ana inaependence if it retracted
a story on the basis of official denials - without any other evidence . As things stand there :s no
proof the source was wrong - only official denials .

It is not, of course, the BBC's experience thai all denials from government ministers and press
officers are without foundation Bu' equalry governments of all persuasions have been known to
issue eenia;s that have subsequently needed considerable modification . In ~ecent years the
government and/or Downing Street has had to change its story on matters such as the resignation
of Martin Sixsmith, the advice given by Peter Foster to Cherie Blair, the Bntishness or otherwise of
LNM - the company owned by Mr. Lakshmi Mittal, the nature of a phone call between the then
Italian Prime Minister (Romano Prodi) and Mr . Blair involving discussion about Rupert Murdoch's
business interests . Of course tne BBC well understands these changes to official statements

s&,-/s/o&sg Z
 ---~U~~ISrr .vA
F .4 C, t~1717
~nrs,6n ¬a.na~cast,~~ "w3c~ax~s*, kacr.: `~J! 5,~ a ~e~wK+rs ~ean'a tVC~t !.nrtr v.a~n YV!_'.-Y?i'7s!epkx:,le LT9 'c_? s* 7! T 3ar +2q F~F7 [2+

L rJ 0 P In~GCtS"(E,D ~

Pvam G+rc..ca.x . Nex" s

The i?t. Hon . Donald Anderson NIP .,

Chair Foreign Affairs Committee,
House ~~ Commons,
LONDON .
SW1 A OAA

A July, 2 003

Dear Chairman,

I a}-r3 writing to you again in the hope tna? I can provide some further
con;eXI to the controuersy surrounding -,ha period leading UP-to t;ne
publication of the September dossier on Iraq .

1 well understand that your Committee has concluded its

proceedings but f nevertheless thought, as a courtesy, it would be
proper for you and your fellow Committee members to near directly
frorn the BBC about furtl-rer intormation we may well use t:irat has
already been in the public domain,

During the course ot Mr. Gilligan's evidence to the CornrnitYev fQ

449 and 0 490 r he referred to the fact that 3ther journalists
- including BBC journalists - ware being briefed about the degree o`
unease among some in the intelligence services about the way
intelligence 'nad been used to make the government's case . And in
my letter to Mr. Campbell responding io his various attacks on our
journalism i -pointed csu-that Andrew Gifligan was one of many
journalists who had been briefed about concerns within the security
s~~~loe: .

Throughout the last week the BBC has tried to argue the case on
the specific details of the jrJumalism which have been criticised and
I batieve it right to point io a detailed example or a report on
intelligence by another BBC journalist working -,or a different
programme .
On ..jurra 2na Ne~vsnight transmitted a long report by the
programme's Scienc- Edirorcontaining the following alletgations
I have enc#osed the iranscript and a cassarte of the i.ern .

o In the run-up to publication cf the dossier the Government was

"absessed'with finding intelligence on immediate Iraqi threats.

o The Government's insistence the threat was imminent vk1as a

Downing Street interpretation M intelligence conclusions-

c, People at the top of the ladder didn't want to hear the case that
there was a threat hut that it was not immediate.

e Cnc~the 45 minute claim "popped Lip" it was seized on by the

Cabinet Office/Number 10 and "it was a statement that was made
that was got out of all prcporEierr . . . .+Gnce they have picked up on it
you can't pull it back from them .'.

ru "So many people were saying 'I'rrn not so sure about that.' Orthat
they were happy with ii being in but not expressed the way that it
was . Because the wordsmithtne is actually quite important."

I mus± stress at this point that Susan Watts and Andrew 3Giliigan
have never mei, spoken or corresponded. These reports were
pracfucreci separa:eiy . I beiieve Lhdt ihe Waits report makez, it clear
that Gilligan four days parfier had correctly reported his scurce's
concern . Susan Watts, of course, will protect the identit-ty of any
source . Further the absence of any campaign against Newsnignt
tar c`.s iournaiism on this subject cnrTfrrrns what 3 said in my letter to
Nastair Campbell lasi week - that a campaign has been launch-ad
against one journalist, Andrew GiEligan, whom the Government has
consisten;iy aaackad .

i `,~'aurs since.rely,

r
(Richard 5amhroak)

Encs .
j9~~5~a~~
NEWSNIGHT TRANSCRIPT
2°d June 2003
WEAPONS OF MUSS DESRUCTION
Susan Watts
L'1'I'RO.
Good evening Tony Blair is flying
back from the Evian summit into
heavy turbulence . His angry dental
Clare Short's allegation that the
public was duped over the question
of VTIvSD has not reduced the
temperature . Robin Cook has called
for an independent inquiry . 73 Nips
including 50 Labour backbenchers
have signed a motion deploring the-
failure of the coalition to find
any weapons of mass destruction,
and the Opposition is threatening
to drop its support for the
Government. Now we've spoken to a
semor figure, intimately involved
in the drawing up of the Blair
weapons dossier, who says the
intelligence commumty was uneasy
at the way some of its information
was handled Here's Susan Watts .
CLAIRE SHORT:
They weren't saying there was a link to Al-
Qaeda and they weren't saying it was
weaponised and threatening us in 45
minutes . That's where the spin came in
UNNAMED MAN:
It is beginning to look as if the
Government's committed a monumental
blunder
SUSAN WATTS :
Over the weekend, the storm over the
missing weapons of mass destruction
focused down on one key point. Was the
British public duped over the urgency of
dealing with Laq's banned weapons? The
Government's claim that Saddam could
mobilise these within 45 minutes is already
look shaky. But Jack Straw has suggested
it had never been a key part of tae
areument .
JACK STRAW:
&' you look at, for example, the key speech
faat the Prime Mimster made on the 18
March before the House of Comrnons,
from my quick rereading of it this morning,
I can for example, find no reference to this
now famous 45 minutes .
WATTS :
But the reference to 45 minutes was there
m the Prime Minister's speech to the
Commons on the day he published his
famous weapons dossier .
TONY BLATR :
It concludes that Iraq has chemical and
biological weapons, that Saddam has
continued to produce them, that he has
existing and active military plans for the
use of chemical and biological weapons,
which being be activated within 45
minutes, including against his own SFna
population.
WATTS :
And it features in the dossier itself four
times . Notably m the Prime Mutister's
foreword and the executive summary .
Today at the G8 summit in Evian, Tony
Blair found himself in rebuttal mode.
BL-AIIL:
The idea that we doctored such intelligence
is completely is totally false . Every piece
ofintelligence we presented was cleared
properly by the Joint Intelligence
Committee .
WATTS :
It's a surprising claim to make, given that it
encompasses the other dossier which was
plagiansed. In any case, today Tony Blair
appeared irritated that the weapons issue
won't go away.
BLAIIZ:
I think it's important that ifpeople dully
have evidence, they produce it But it is
wrong, frankiy for people to make
allegations on the basis of so-called
anonymous sources when the facts are
precisely the facts we've stated .
WATTS :
But in some cases, anonymous sources are
the only way to gain insight into the
intelligence world . We've spoken to a
senior official involved with the process of
pulling together the original September
2002 B1air weapons dossier . We cannot
name this person because their livelihood
depends on anonymity Our source made
clear that that in the -Lm up to publishing
the dossier, the Government was obsessed
with finding intelligence on immediate
Iraqi threats . The Government's insistence
the Iraqi threat was unminent was a
Downing Street interpretation of
intelligence conclusions. His point is that
while the intelligence community was
agreed on the potential Iraoi threat in the
future, there was less agreement about at
the Iraqis posed at that moment . Our
source said:
UNNAMED SOURCE :
That was the real concern - not so much
what they had now, but what they would
have in the future. But that unfortunately
was not expressed strongly in the dossier,
because that takes the case away for war -
to a certain extent. But m the end I was
just a flurry of activity and was very
difficult to get comments in because
people at the top of the ladder d3dn't want
to hear some of the things .
WATTS :
Our source talks of a febrile atmosphere in
the days of diplomacy leading to the big
Commons debate of September last year.
He also talks of the Govemment seizing on
anything useful to the case, including the
possible existence of weapons that being
be ready within 45 minutes .
LfifiIAMED SOURCE :
It was a statement that was made and it just
got out of all proportion. They were
desperate for information, they were
pushing hard for information which could
be released. That was one that popped up
and it was seized on and it's unfortunate
that it was . That's why there is the
argument between the intelligence services
and the Cabinet Office I Number Ten -
because they picked up on it and once
they've picked up on it, you can't pull it
back from them.
WATTS:
And again specifically on the 43-rrunute
pomt:
UNNAMED SOURCE-
It was an interestmg week before the
dossier was put out because there were so
many people saying "well I'm no so sure
about that", or in fact that they were happy
with it being in, but not expresses the way
that it was, because the word-smithing is
actually quite important . The intelligence
Community are a pretty cautious lot on the
whole, but once you get people presenting
it for public consumption then of course
they use different words .
WATTS :
The problem is that the 45 minutes point
was not corroborated . For sceptics it
highlights the dangers of relying too
heavily on information from defectors
Journalists in America are accused of
running propaganda from the Iraqi
National Congress.
RAY MCGOVERN :
All these folks have their own personal
agendas, all have axes to grind, The most
unreliable source are sources that come out
of the immigrant or defector circles . More
so when you're talking about a fellow like
Chalabi, he's been out of Iraq since fne
Po(~CS/63~2
Brooklyn dodgers have been out the New
York City and that's a long time indeed .

WATTS :
Back in February. Colin Powell talked of
the existence of mobile weapons labs,
material from defectors is behind the
confident insistence bypohtician on both
sides ofthe Atlantic that they've now found
them. But our source who is in an excellent
position to know and spoke ofbeing 95%
confident on the day the Pentagon showed
the trucks to the world, now puts that
confidence level at just 40%. A CIA report
last week says the Iraqis claim the trucks
were used to produce hydrogen for military
weather balloons . But with the war over
does all this really matter? Perhaps -
intelligence service concern about a future
threat from weapons of mass destruction
was enough to justify military action. But
the Government's critics say that wasn't
the basis that the British public or MPs
were sold the case for war.

IviALCOLM SAVIDGE:
This is extremely grave. Politicians who
we have to take seriously have made
allegations that Parliament and the people
were led to war on false grounds . That is a
more serious allegation than anything
we've faced in recent times. Effectively if
it were true it could he the Prime
Minister's Watergate .

WATTS :
Of course, overwhelmingly convincing
evidence of weapons may turn up
tomorrow and former inspectors say that
documents still being read may be key
But until something compelling is
produced the pressure looks unlikely to let
up . .As for thepromisod new dossier on
new weapons evidence, the question will
be "Is there sufficient trust in our
government remaining for the public and
MPs to believe what ever it nught say?"
NEWSNIGY.T TRANSCRIPTS
04/06/03 WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION, WATTS 2
PAXMAN :
Well the Government's
fighthack focused on the
assertion that intelligence
chiefs stood behind the
contents o= the Iraq dossier
published last September . Only
so-called rogue elements of
the security services were
unhappy, Yet, the concerns
voiced to this programme and
others do reflect a wider
unease at the way intelligence
about Iraq was handled . Our
science editor Susan Watts
reports .
SUSAN WATTS :
The row over intelligence
information and how coalition
governments used it in the
build-un to war reverberated
around the capitals today . A
senior Australian intelligence
officer, who resigned over his
country's involvement in the
war with Iraq, kept up the
barrage of highly damaging
assertions .
ANDREW WILKIE :
I feel that all three
governments =n Washington in
London and in Canberra, in all
cases were dishonest in
selling the Iraq problem to
their people and trying to
persuade them to go to the
war . Yes, they were dishonest .
Some people would call that
lying .
I AY MCGOVERN :
I sympathise with your
professional intelligence
ex_verts because I know a lot
of them and I know the degree
of care and arofessionalism
they bring to the task . And to
see them watch Lheir product
be prostitutedireally to
higher purpose is something
that is almost, there '_s
nothing more painful for an
intelligence p~ofessional to
watch . ,
WATTS :
The questions for any inquiry
are piling up . First, how
sound was the Government's say
certification - assertion that
Saddam could launch hanned
weapons at 45 minutes' notice .
The issue dominated today's
debate . Tony Blair flatly
denied that the 45-minute
comnlain had unsettled the
intelligence services.
TONY BLAIR :
The claim about 45 minutes
provoked disquiet amongst the
intelligence community who
disagreed with its inclusion
in the dossier . Again, tnis is
something I've discussed again
with the chairman of the Joint
intelligence Committee . That
allegation also is completely
and totally untrue .
WATTS :
But a source we've spoken to,
a senior official intimately
involved with the process o=
pulling together the original
weapons dossier in which the
claim was made,' told us that
he and others $elt
considerable discomfort over
it .
ACTOR'S VOICE :
I was uneasy with it . My
problem was that I could give
other exnlanations wrich I've
indicated to you, that it was
the time to erect something
like a Scud missile or it's
the time to full a mtiati-
barrel rocket Launcher . All
sorts of reasons why 45
minutes micht well be
imnortant .y
WAmmS ;
In other words he is saying
thac Saddam might have rocket
hardware that takes 45 minutes
to assemble out -lot
necessarily the weapons of
mass destruction to which Tony
Blair referred in his weanons
dossier, when he said of "
Saddam : The document discloses
that his military planning
allows for some of the WMD to
be ready within 45 minutes of
an order ::o use them . The
Prime Minister appeared to
want to shift the focus of the
argument, moving away from how
the 45 minute claim was used
to who put it in the weapons
dossier .
TONY BLAIR :
. .,including the judgement
abouz the so-called 45 minutes
was a judgement made by the
Joint Intelligence Committee
and by them alone .
WATTS :
Our source was not disputing
that the 45-minute assessment
was included in the dossier by
the intelligence services
although he did say he -felt
that to have been a mistake .
His taint was that the
emphasis placed on that
element of the intelligence in
the forward to the dossier
went too far . 3°_ felt this
emphasis turned a possiole
capability into an imminent
threat and a critical part of
the Government's case for war .
Our source cannot be described
as a rogue element . On the
contrary, he is exceptionally
well placed to judge the per
veiling mood as the dossier of
September last year was put
together . ,
MCGOVERN :
It's fair to describe thes e
folks as rogue,elements enly
i= you are part of a
government that has a lot of
defensiveness and a lot of
need to dismiss such
allegations asib=_ing untrue .
You are not a xogue elemerit if
vou have a devotion toward
truth that transcends t his or
that regulation .
WATTS :
The Government ldenied, today,
that the 45 minute claim
originated from an Iraqi
defector,- whose credibilit y
some might doubt, but instead
from a reliable source trusted
over many years . Nevertheless,
its inclusion was unusual
since a minister has conceded
that the information came from
a single source' .
WILKIE : '
I don't think it should have
been included at all . One of
the wore worrying things about
this whole Ira4 mess is the
way =he intelligence process
has been allowed to break
down . Intelligehce off=cers
would never rely on a single
report as evidence of such an
important point! .
WATTS :
Is the intelligience
information itself sound? Tonv
Hlair was also asked about the
conclusion by nuclear
inspectors forged documents
were behind claims included in
the same Sentember dossier
that Saddam was~trying to
obtain uranium ¬rom Niger for
a revived nuclear programme .
The Prime Minisr-er said he was
not able to say if this was
accurate or not' .
MCGOVERN : former inspectors, succeed
What I would sugges= is that where the coalition forces
Mr Blair needs to talk with have so far failed?
the secretary Powell and find
out why _t is that secretary
Powell has conceded that that
was a forgery .

WATTS :
Can we rely on the
Government's dossiers? It's
not as if :he British
Government's records is clean
when it comes to
embellishment . A Cambridge
academic uncovered that a
second dossier nublished in
January, shared ten of its 19
pages, with an article written
by a lecturer in Middle East
studies in California . But
where the original talked of
the Iraqi intelligence service
aiding opposition groups in
hostile regimes, the British
document translated that to "
supporting terrorist
organisations in hostile
reg_mes ."

WILKIS "
There was no doubt that Iraq
was pursuing some sort of WAL7
programme . That is what all of
the intelligence agencies were
assessing . I agreed with it at
the time . The issue is one of
degree, the fact that in all
three countries the
intelligence agencies were
coming up with reasonably
measured assessment . 3uz in
all three countries it was the
governments chat were taking
those measured assessments and
exaggerating them to quite a
substantial degree .

WATTS :
The Prime Minister said the
real hunt for weapons begins
today, with the Iraq survey
group . The question now is can
th=s team, which includes

&Bcls/G36-6
013
 P29oC., CfJCs' Sc, r 12 EL I &~c5

BBC Producer Guidelines

ACHIEVING ACCURACY
Accuracy can be difficult to achieve. It is important to distinguish between first and second-
hand sources An error m one report is often recycled in another. Material already broadcast
and newspaper cuttings can get out-of-date quickly or simply be wrong . Programmes should
be reluctant to rely on only one source . Simple matters like dates and titles may well need to
be checked and checked again. It is helpful if clear, contemporaneous notes are made of all
significant conversations and other details

Accuracy is often more than a question of getting the facts right All the relevant facts and
information should be weighed to get at the truth of what is reported or described If an issue
is controversial, relevant opinions as well as facts may need to be considered If an item ma%,
be legally contentious, its accuracy must be capable of withstanding scrutiny in a court of law

The reliability of news agency reports, especially from overseas, vanes according to the
agency, the bureau and the reporter It is good practice not to run a story from one agency
unless it can be substantiated by a BBC correspondent or another agency .

The World Service newsroom and lan.-uage services can often advise on agency and bureau
reliability, as well as providing context for foreign news stories and advice on pronunciation
and geography.

ANONYMITY
There is no absolute obligation to name all programme contributors, though m most cases
both contributors and audiences would expect it, if their contribution is significant However,
a deliberate decision to withhold or disguise the identity of a significant contributor raises
difficult issues .

The authority of programmes can be undermined by the use of anonymous contributors whose
status the audience cannot judge But there are times when anonymity is appropnate . for
example

" for reasons of safety

" to avoid undue embarrassment

" for legal reasons

Anonymity should not normally be granted to anyone trying to evade the law in the United
Kingdom There may be some exceptional cases, but Controller Editorial Policy must be
consulted, in advance

Where contributors make anonymity a condition of taking part in a programme, it is important

to establish the degree of anonymity sought. It may be sufficient simply to ensure that
contributors are not readily recognisable to the general public, or it may be necessary to ensure
that they cannot be identified even by friends or family Such matters should be resolved m
advance .
Where anonymity is necessary producers must make it effective Both pich:re arid vo~ce may
need to be dis;uised . A "voice-over "by another person is usuaay better than technically
:nduced distortion which can be reversed In such cases, s,idiences must be toid what they arc,
hearinla .

0-eat care needs to be taken over pictures . Bi~.irring :athe: than "pixilaton "(which can be
reversed) is the best way of ensutaiig znony-nity in pctires, if abso:ufe anonynniry _s esseat:a'_,
programme makers must ensure there is no evidence of the contrnbutors' identity even on the
original recording or in any documenta_ion. Editorial Policy can oiier advice on this .

Our international services often rebroadcast material ondally record--d for the H3C's
domestic services . If this mater:al might compromise the safety of contributors when :t is
rebroadcast, it may be appropnate to disguise the identi`-y of those concerned.

Producers should check with the contributor when anonymity is being discussed whether there
are any additional factors that need to be taken into account with rniematonal transmission.