Examination of Witnesses (Questions 420-439)
MR ANDREW
GILLIGAN AND
MR MARK
DAMAZER
19 JUNE 2003
Q420 Mr Pope: Is this the September
dossier?
Mr Gilligan: Yes.
Mr Maples: One of the senior officials
in charge of drawing up the dossier.
Q421 Chairman: And a source of longstanding.
Mr Gilligan: A source of mine
of longstanding.
Q422 Mr Maples: But the other three
people spoke to you, you said, about the al-Qaeda links and the
"dodgy dossier" but they also spoke to you about these
weapons of mass destruction dossier.
Mr Gilligan: No. As I say, the
other three people spoke generally to me about their concerns
about the use of intelligence material on Iraq by the Government.
One spoke to me about the link being made by the Prime 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 Gilligan: He let me read it.
Another spoke to me about the "dodgy dossier", the February
dossier, produced by the Government, plagiarised or partly plagiarised
from internet sources and to tell me of his concern about that.
The third person was the source of this story and the fourth person
was somebody who has come forward since the story was broadcast
to talk about similar issues.
Q424 Chairman: Just one point on
that. The individual who left you the document, what was the classification
for that document?
Mr Gilligan: 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 consider what his motive might be?
Mr Gilligan: 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 person'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 which there was little evidence.
Q427 Chairman: And it could equally
well have been someone who did not get the promotion he wanted
or who had some sort of grudge.
Mr Gilligan: I think it is unlikely.
Of course it is always a possibility, but I think the possibility
I 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.
Mr Gilligan: That is right.
Q429 Mr Maples: The source of your
story, I think you used the phrase or they used the phrase, "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 servant or worked for the intelligence
agency.
Mr Gilligan: I cannot add anything
to what I have already done because it would compromise him, I
am afraid.
Q430 Mr Maples: Okay. I mean, I understand
that but obviously I want 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 subsequently
came forward.
Mr Gilligan: That is right.
Q432 Mr Maples: To you and has talked
to you again about . . . I do not want to put words into your
mouth. Which of these issues did they discuss with you.
Mr Gilligan: He in fact drew my
attention to a story in The Independent and said that the
story was "spot on"—those were his words. The
story was about the demand by the intelligence services at MI6
that any future dossiers, any future government dossiers, should
make it clearer which of the 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
to the weapons of mass destruction dossier or the "dodgy
dossier"?
Mr Gilligan: No, you will remember
there were a couple of stories that appeared a week after the
45-minute story broke about the intelligence agencies laying down
ultimata to the Government. The source, my source, the fourth
source, drew my attention to these stories and said they were
correct.
Q434 Mr Maples: By the time that
happened, the "dodgy dossier" had been published as
well, had it not?
Mr Gilligan: Absolutely. Yes.
Q435 Mr Maples: What I was trying
to get at is: was that unhappiness that was expressed to you by
the fourth source in relation to the September dossier or the
February one or both?
Mr Gilligan: Both.
Q436 Mr Maples: In relation to these
two dossiers, what has 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 of it came off the internet,
even including punctuation mistakes, and seems to 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 is not 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 originally 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 Gilligan: It was issued under
the Prime Minister's imprimatur. He said on the 3 February in
the Commons, "We 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. They are
not publishing 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 people." That is what the Prime Minister
said in the Commons about the "dodgy dossier" the week
after it was issued.
Q437 Mr Maples: We asked the Foreign
Secretary some formal written questions, one of which was: "On
what dates were drafts put to ministers?"—this is on
the "dodgy dossier". His answer was: "No ministers
were consulted in the preparation of the document." Can you
corroborate that.
Mr Gilligan: 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
Rangwala, who was a politics lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge,
that he had spotted similarities between the dossier and this
PhD thesis. Unfortunately Channel 4 News beat me to the
story. Then, after it, to be told 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 about ministers.
Q438 Mr Maples: It is the same person,
Dr Rangwala, who says that when the document first appeared on
the 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 Hamill, a Foreign Office official; John Pratt, a
junior official from the Prime Minister's strategic communications
unit; Alison Blackshaw, Alastair Campbell's PA; and Murtaza Khan,
the News Editor of the No 10 Downing Street website. Do you know
whether that is correct or not?
Mr Gilligan: No, I do not. I did
not see the dossier on the internet before those names were removed.
Q439 Mr Maples: Was your impression
from the people who talked to you that this was almost a freelance
operation by Alastair Campbell's people?
Mr Gilligan: There was concern
expressed to me about the role of No 10 in the production of the
dossier and there 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.
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