Examination of Witnesses (Questions 520-539)
MR ANDREW
GILLIGAN AND
MR MARK
DAMAZER
19 JUNE 2003
Q520 Sir John Stanley: Can you remember
whether the classification of that document was just top secret
or was it a top secret code word?
Mr Gilligan: I am afraid I cannot.
Q521 Sir John Stanley: The office
you referred to, was that office on Ministry of Defence premises?
Mr Gilligan: I cannot answer anything
about this as it would compromise the source.
Q522 Sir John Stanley: When you had
your discussion with your source in the context of the 45 minute
claim, are you saying to us that that was the same source with
which you had the office conversation and were shown the top secret
document in relation to the al-Qaeda linkage issue?
Mr Gilligan: No, it was a different
source. As I said, there 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 claim and the suggestion that
that claim was unreliable, did that source convey that to you
verbally or was that based on offering you sight of a different
document?
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
than the single word of 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 this 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 the 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 handling of classified UK documents?
Mr Damazer: In the context of
this story, that did not arise. As Andrew has suggested, there
was no transaction involving a document.
Q530 Chairman: Surely the document
was shown?
Mr Damazer: We are talking about
the 45 minute allegation?
Mr Gilligan: That was a separate
story.
Mr Damazer: I beg your pardon,
but I thought you were referring to the 45 minute story. In the
context of the 45 minute story, there would have been no need
to worry about transactions involving documents because there
were no transactions involving documents.
Chairman: And in respect of the other
matter?
Q531 Sir John Stanley: Can I just
clarify this. The whole discussion, I am quite certain the witness
was quite aware of it, the discussion in relation to the document
was solely in the context of the document which Mr Gilligan has
said related to the rebuttal of the Government's claim about linkage
with al-Qaeda.
Mr Damazer: In the context of
the al-Qaeda documentation, I would not have been involved and
would not have expected to have been involved in a direct conversation
with Andrew about the legal risks, if any, involved in pursuing
that story. I would have to say on a day-to-day basis I would
expect our journalists to be in receipt of information which could
potentially be embarrassing and damaging to a number of government
agencies and not merely government agencies. It is part and parcel
of what we do in the news-gathering of a story. There clearly
has to be a sensible estimation of the degree of risk involved
in each of those transactions and for the vast majority of them
it is established that the risk is very low. In this specific
instance, there would have been a discussion, as there was with
the 45 minute story, between Andrew and his immediate editorial
line management who would have plenty of experience in doing investigative
stories. That is one of the Today programme's specialities
and they would have immediate access to a lawyer if they felt
that the risk was sufficiently large that they needed to have
access to a lawyer.
Q532 Chairman: So we are told that
a top secret document was shown to one of your employees. What
is the advice given by the BBC in such circumstances?
Mr Damazer: Each circumstance
will vary. Would I allow any of our journalists to be in receipt
of top secret documents? Of course I would if I felt that the
document was properly procured, that is to say, that there had
been no bribery or malfeasance and the document contained 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 Illsley: When you say "bribery
or malfeasance", does that exclude payment or include payment?
Mr Damazer: 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
journalists 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 Illsley: Could I ask you,
Mr Gilligan, did you pay for any of the information you referred
to?
Mr Gilligan: No.
Q535 Mr Illsley: 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 Gilligan: No, I am not saying
that.
Q536 Mr Illsley: 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 Illsley: 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 Gilligan: Well, I am sorry
to be boring, but it really does depend and it is impossible to
generalise.
Q538 Andrew Mackinlay: 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 and security service, "What
a rotter Gilligan is. He has really spilt the beans. Those of
us who speak to journalists 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
yourself for the immediate future and also other journalists 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 might 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 Mackinlay: 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 Mr 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 think probably
something like three-quarters of the national media would be banged
up if seeing documents was an offence.
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