Intelligence

Gilligan's notes left key questions unanswered

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

By Dominic Kennedy

ANDREW GILLIGAN, the Today programme reporter, made unfounded, grave allegations attacking the integrity of the Government and the Joint Intelligence Committee, Lord Hutton concluded.
In the light of the uncertainties in Mr Gilligan’s evidence and the existence of two versions of his notes, it was not possible to conclude definitely what David Kelly had said to the reporter.

But Dr Kelly did not say that the Government probably knew or suspected that the claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes was wrong before it had been inserted in the dossier, Lord Hutton said.

Nor did he say to Mr Gilligan that the claim was excluded from the original draft because it came only from one source and the intelligence agencies did not believe that it was necessarily true.

In his evidence, Mr Gilligan had accepted that he was wrong to broadcast these allegations on the programme. The reporter now acknowledged that the 45-minutes claim had been excluded from the original version of the dossier because it had come to the intelligence services late.

Mr Gilligan had wrongly inferred that the Government knew the claim was wrong and had wrongly attributed this opinion to his source. “The allegation I intended to make was one of spin, but . . . I do regard those words as imperfect and I should not have made them,” he told the inquiry.

It had been “my mistake”, the reporter said, to attribute to Dr Kelly his own interpretation that, a week before publication, Downing Street had “ordered” the dossier to be sexed up, made more exciting and more facts to be discovered. “I regret,” Mr Gilligan told the inquiry, “that . . . I did not report entirely carefully and accurately what he had said.” Mr Gilligan was definite that it was Dr Kelly and not he who introduced the name “(Alastair) Campbell” into their discussion at the Charing Cross Hotel in Central London on May 22, 2003.

There are two significant differences between the two versions of Mr Gilligan’s note on his personal organiser, Lord Hutton observed. The earlier version is dated May 21, 2003, and does not contain the name “Campbell”. The later version is dated May 22 and includes the word “Campbell”.

Mr Gilligan had also lost the manuscript note that he made the day after he met Dr Kelly, Lord Hutton said. The reporter’s memory of the discussion was not entirely clear, leaving considerable doubt about what his source had said to him.

However, Susan Watts, the Newsnight reporter, regarded by Lord Hutton as an “accurate and reliable” witness, did say that Dr Kelly had mentioned Mr Campbell to her and so, the law lord concluded, he may have done the same with Mr Gilligan.

Mr Gilligan claimed that he had given adequate notice to the Government the night before he broadcast his allegations, but the Government disputed this.

Mr Gilligan had acknowleged in his evidence that it had been “quite wrong” for him to send an e-mail to MPs suggesting that Dr Kelly was the source for a report by Ms Watts on Newsnight.

WORD FOR WORD

JOHN HUMPHRYS: The Government is facing more questions this morning over its claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq . . . is Tony Blair saying they’d be ready to go within 45 minutes?

ANDREW GILLIGAN: 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, erm, knew that that 45-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 says, 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.

January 28, 2004 at 08:23 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home