Examination of Witness (Questions 940-959)
MR ALASTAIR
CAMPBELL
25 JUNE 2003
Q940 Sir John Stanley: Mr Campbell,
do you not recognise that a hugely greater area of mistake resulted
than simply the indefensible plagiarisation of material off the
Internet? The hugely greater mistake that resulted in parliamentary
and constitutional terms was your total failure to brief the Prime
Minister correctly as to the process that had been used, the fact
that none of this material had come through with the Joint Intelligence
Committee Chairman's approval, and the House of Commons was left
under the illusion, as indeed was the Prime Minister, that in
terms of the authenticity and reliability of this information
it came with the JIC seal of 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
Minister made clear in the—
Q941 Sir John Stanley: ". .
. issued further intelligence over the weekend"; did any
Member of Parliament think that did not mean something with JIC
approval?
Mr Campbell: I think any Member
of Parliament would recognise the difference between a document
such as that one, with the detail that is in it and the kind of
production that it is and the way that it was put out at the time,
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 content with the paper as it was.
What he is not content with, and nor am I, is the fact that in
its production a mistake was made. We have acknowledged that mistake,
we have apologised for that mistake and we have put forward these
new procedures to make sure it does not happen again, and I do
not honestly see there is much more that we can do than that.
Q942 Sir John Stanley: Mr Campbell,
I have to put it to you the contrast between the covers makes
it absolutely—
Mr Campbell: —I think the
contrast is far greater than that.
Q943 Sir John Stanley: The contrast
between the covers makes it absolutely clear that you should have
alerted the Prime Minister unmistakably to the fact that the preparation
of these two documents was quite different—
Mr Campbell: He knows that—
Q944 Sir John Stanley: —That
the second document had no JIC approval and that he, I am quite
certain, if he had known that and had been told that there is
no way he would have said what he did to the House of Commons
when he made his statement on 3 February. That statement suggested
that this was intelligence of veracity coming from intelligence
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 in these documents is 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 with Parliament and the public.
The second document 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 JIC clearance", because
he knew that where there was intelligence material in that document
it had been cleared for use by the issuing agency, and that was
the procedure at the time.
Q945 Sir John Stanley: Yes, but I
am sure the Prime Minister is sufficiently aware of the huge dangers
of mixing intelligence material with material taken off the internet
and I am sure the Prime Minister is also aware that if he had
been properly briefed on those dangers the first thing he would
have said to you is, "Mr Campbell, make certain this is cleared
by the Chairman of the JIC 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 today
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 statement on 3 February that
the greater part of this document had been culled off the internet
and there were these two significant inaccuracies in it.
Mr Campbell: Can I just say on
that at that point, neither he nor I nor anybody in a senior position
on my Iraq Communications Group was aware that that was the case.
That is the point I keep coming back to. In relation to the changes,
I have explained those changes were made by experts within the
government commenting upon what they did not know to be Mr al-Marashi's
work. It is only, for example, where "hostile groups"
became "terrorist organisations", and it was because
they said, "Hold on a minute, you are not talking about hostile
groups, you are talking about terrorist organisations, you are
talking about Islamic Jihad, you are talking about Hamas, you
are talking about some of the groups that are trying to destabilise
the Iranian regime."
Q947 Sir John Stanley: Is it not
a fact that the Prime Minister has, rightly, instructed that all
published material that contains intelligence material must in
future be cleared by the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee?
Does that not of itself make it self-evident that the procedures
you were following and the briefing of the Prime Minister were
grossly inadequate?
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 Security 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 determine
the Government's procedures and that totally misrepresents what
I said. I entered into a discussion with the Head of the Secret
Intelligence Service, the Chairman of the JIC and the Security
and Intelligence Co-ordinator, Sir David Omand. 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 Mackinlay please?
Q949 Andrew Mackinlay: Mr Campbell,
on page 4 of your statement 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 in the public domain,
which revealed the scale of the regime's programme of deception
and concealment, it was my idea to base a briefing paper for the
media upon it." You also went on a few moments ago to explain
on 3 February and you said: "I explained"—that
is to the Prime Minister—"where there was new intelligence."
Would you be able this afternoon to take us through those paragraphs
or sections of this document which were the new intelligence material?
Mr 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
about the bugging of hotels, about the monitoring of the movements
of officials; it is the material about the organisation of car
crashes and the like.
Q950 Andrew Mackinlay: Indeed, it
is very precise, and therefore it would be possible for you overnight,
would it not, with a highlighter to highlight precisely that which
is above the line in terms of this intelligence material and that
which is "other sources"?
Mr Campbell: It would be but I
would also have to check if the agencies were happy for that to
be done.
Q951 Andrew Mackinlay: You overlook
the chasm you are falling into. You have said repeatedly that
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 confused
me because the way I was following you, you said that 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 public domain.
Mr Campbell: I have referred to
some of that in the answer that I gave to you earlier.
Q953 Andrew Mackinlay: You understand
the category I am asking about. Overnight would you highlight,
or however way you want to indicate that which is in that category?
Mr Campbell: I think it would
probably take longer than that.
Q954 Andrew Mackinlay: Why?
Mr Campbell: Because I would have
to go through the kind of processes that Sir John has just been
talking about.
Q955 Andrew Mackinlay: By Friday
morning?
Mr Campbell: I would hope to be
able to do that and the Foreign Secretary could perhaps bring
it, but that is something that would have to be agreed by probably
all of the intelligence agencies[3]
Q956 Andrew Mackinlay: If it was
not, I think you would need to come up with an explanation as
to why because I just cannot understand the logic of it. I do
not want to labour the point. It was only when the "plagiarism"
issue came to light that media attention grew, you say. When did
you have that awful moment when you discovered now what has become
known as the "Horlicks"? When was that moment, that
sinking feeling (we have all had it) of "whoops"?
Mr Campbell: As I recall, that
moment was on the way back from an interview the Prime Minister
had done with Jeremy Paxman and I think—this is from memory,
dredging my memory here—when we were going through what
we described as our "masochism" strategy whereby the
Prime Minister basically went out and was getting beaten up by
the public in interviews. I think I am right in saying Channel
4 made a reference to this story on the 7 o'clock news and Newsnight
did a very brief interview with Mr al-Marashi in the evening.
Q957 Andrew Mackinlay: Approximately,
which day was that then?
Mr Campbell: That was the day—
Q958 Andrew Mackinlay: It is beyond
3 February, is it not?
Mr Campbell: I think it was the
7th. I think it may be in my note.
Q959 Andrew Mackinlay: Okay, can
I assume that within an hour or two the Prime Minister was told?
Mr Campbell: It 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 constituency and
I was on the way back to London.
3 Ninth Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee,
Session 2002-03, The Decision to go to War in Iraq, HC
813-II, Ev 10. Back
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