Examination of Witness (Questions 1000-1019)
MR ALASTAIR
CAMPBELL
25 JUNE 2003
Q1000 Richard Ottaway: So the answer
to that is no, you did not see anything?
Mr Campbell: No.
Q1001 Richard Ottaway: Three weeks
before the dossier was published Whitehall sources were quoted
as telling the Defence Editor of The Times that they would
not be revelationary. A few days later another Whitehall source
tells the Security Editor of The Guardian that the dossier
would no longer play a central role because there was very little
new in it. Then comes a document which you have described as a
very important document. How do you account for the difference
in the comments and the dossier that emerged just a few weeks
later?
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 WMD dossier was
transformed 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 Ottaway: Fine. Can
I go to a question which the Chairman brought up at the beginning
about whether you apologised to anyone and, frankly, I thought
you slightly skirted round some of the direct questions. Did you
apologise to the John Scarlett, 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 got to sort that out." I have got no doubt in
the 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 not 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 Ottaway: 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 them 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 Information Centre; who appointed
them?
Mr Campbell: The Coalition Information
Centre started as an entity during the Kosovo conflict where it
was made up of people from different government departments and
also from people from other overseas governments, the United States,
Spain, France I think at some point, Germany, a number of governments.
In terms of how they are appointed, once we were setting up this
cross-departmental team, which continues in a smaller form now,
essentially what happens is we trawl departments to 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 Foreign Office, Mike Granatt who is in charge of 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 different parts of
the world and saying, "Can you spare anybody good to come
and work on this operation?"
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 within their home departments.
For example, the person who was its last head until recently (who
is now on secondment to the CPA in Baghdad) I would think had
pretty high security clearance. Most of them I suspect would not.
Q1006 Richard Ottaway: And are they
still 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 the height of the recent military conflict have actually
gone to Baghdad.
Chairman: We have now come to the point
where there is one minute before 4 o'clock. So I think it probably
best rather than start with Greg Pope if we adjourned at this
stage for a quarter of an hour and Greg Pope will begin immediately
when we return at quarter past four.
The Committee suspended from 4.00 pm to
4.15 pm for a division in the House.
Chairman: The division is over. Mr Pope?
Q1007 Mr Pope: Thank you, Chairman.
Mr Campbell, the charges against you really are of the gravest
nature: that you exaggerated the evidence to persuade a reluctant
Parliament to vote for a war which was not popular. We heard in
evidence from Mr Gilligan of the BBC last week and he alleged
that you transformed the original September dossier, and if I
can just quote what he said in evidence, my "source's claim
was that the dossier had been transformed in the week before it
was published and I asked"—that is Gilligan—"`So
how did this transformation 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 point than the intelligence agencies thought
was suitable is untrue: and what is even more extraordinary about
this whole episode is that, within an hour of the story first
being broadcast, it was denied, emphatically: it then continued.
We were in Kuwait at the time—the Prime Minister was about
to get a helicopter to Basra—it was denied: the story kept
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 to John Scarlett,
the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, just to absolutely
double/triple check that there was nothing in this idea that the
intelligence agencies were somehow unhappy with the way that we
behaved during the thing and that there was no truth at all that
anybody at the political level put pressure on the 45 minute point
and John said, "Absolutely. It is complete and total nonsense
and you can say that with my authority". 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 EU referendum
campaign and, of course, the British media are all asking about
this lie, which is what it was.
Q1008 Mr Pope: On the 45 minutes,
what you 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 different point which is that there is an allegation
not that you inserted it but you gave it undue prominence; that
this was a background piece of information; it was based on a
single piece of uncorroborated intelligence advice and yet it
was given undue prominence. It is mentioned in the foreword by
the Prime Minister and it is mentioned three other times throughout
the document and it is a chilling allegation—that our troops
in Cyprus or our troops perhaps if they went into Iraq could face
a 45 minute threat of the deployment of a chemical attack?
Mr Campbell: Well, 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 prominence". I am afraid that is not true. What
he said last week was not true. It was a complete backtrack on
what he had broadcast and written about in the Mail on Sunday,
The Spectator and elsewhere. Now the reason why I feel
so strongly that we, the government, from the Prime Minister down
deserve an apology about this story is it has been made absolutely
clear not just by me—you can put me to one side and I am
well aware of the fact that I am defined in a certain way by large
parts of 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 Intelligence Co-ordinator all saying emphatically "This
story is not true" and the BBC 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 BBC journalism.
Q1009 Mr Pope: Are you saying that
he lied not just to the Committee but on the radio? 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 of the lie being told on the radio. Now, I am not
suggesting that he has not had somebody possibly 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 I
would compare and contrast with an organisation which has broadcast
something—not just once but hundreds of times since—that
is a lie.
Q1010 Mr Pope: And on the other charge
that you pressurised the intelligence agencies to exaggerate the
evidence, that is also a lie?
Mr Campbell: Totally untrue and
what is more, again, the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee,
the Head of SIS, the Intelligence and Security Co-ordinator have
all authorised 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
came before the Committee recently and she said that crucial decisions
in the run-up to the conflict with Iraq were made by an entourage
in No 10, that this entourage sucked the decision-making process
out of the Foreign Office into No 10, that the people who make
up the entourage are not elected, that the members of the entourage
are yourself, Sally Morgan, David Manning, Jonathan Powell? Is
that the case?
Mr Campbell: No, it is not. What
is true is that I would say, if you were to say who in relation
to Iraq were the officials in Downing Street who spent the most
time with the Prime Minister in terms of the many foreign trips
that he was doing, in terms of briefing, in terms of general meetings,
it probably was the four, but in relation to that whole period
he had meetings every single day with the Foreign Secretary and
the Defence Secretary in particular, with the Deputy Prime Minister,
with the group that comprised those three plus the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary, the Leader of the House—now
the Health Secretary, with Margaret Beckett, and with Clare Short,
and also with officials including some of the intelligence officials
that 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 committee on Iraq; did
not start meeting until mid-March, so we have this long period
of time when there is no Cabinet Sub-committee meeting, the ad
hoc committee, the sub-committee of the Cabinet on Iraq, had not
started meeting 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 Minister.
Mr Campbell: No. 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
Prime Ministers and ministers have advisers and I just do not
accept the picture as it was portrayed by Clare Short when she
came to the Committee. As I say, in the build-up to the conflict
and during the conflict that group was meeting the whole time.
Prior to that the Prime Minister was meeting with his ministerial
colleagues all the time. As Robin Cook said to the Committee last
week there was regular discussion 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 Marashi's
material, was simply absorbed into the briefing paper. Could you
tell us who absorbed it into the briefing paper?
Mr Campbell: I think it would
be wrong if I were to name the individual within the CIC who did
that because I think it would look like, and I no doubt would
stand accused of, seeking to evade responsibility. I take responsibility
for that paper. It was done by an official to whom had been passed
a number of different papers and, as I say, I do not think there
was any malign intent, I do not think there was any attempt to
mislead, and it is also worth pointing out, 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 within government who possibly had more
up-to-date information than Mr al-Marashi, 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: But 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 Middle East journal.
Q1015 Mr Pope: But the article is
used without Mr al-Marashi's permission, he is not credited with
it, and worst of all, I think, is the possibility that his relatives
back in Iraq may have been persecuted because of that.
Mr Campbell: Well, were that the
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 I was having the horrible
moment coming down from the Newsnight studio in Gateshead
was that we had not drawn attention to him and, as he said 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
Middle East Review and something being subsequently discovered
to be part of the British 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
it was a mistake. You and he both support Blackburn and maybe
you drink Horlicks down there but I think down the road in the
rather less effete Burnley they will probably 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 Mackinlay was discussing
with you earlier in 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—the presentational issues regarding
the dossier?
Mr Campbell: There probably were,
"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 to get to the bottom
of this. Can you try to visualise for us how different the September
dossier would have been if it had not been for your discussions
on presentational issues?
Mr Campbell: The short answer
is not very much. It was agreed fairly early on in the process
that the Prime Minister would write a foreword. Other than literally
drafting points 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 Committee.
Q1019 Mr Chidgey: You appreciate
how important this issue is. The accusation has been made that
this document was adjusted, altered, sexed up—whatever—for
a particular political purpose so one has to be somewhat pedantic
and get exactly to the bottom of how the process worked. You said,
and it is on the record elsewhere, that this process took many
months to evolve. I think it would be very helpful if, perhaps
not today but shortly afterwards, you could let the Committee
have information on the suggestions that were made 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 earlier drafts
would have been kept electronically within your Department, within
your team. It would be very helpful if it was possible for us
to have copies of those earlier drafts so that we could satisfy
ourselves that there were no attempts to change the essence of
the document in order to pursue a particular political point.
Is that possible?
Mr Campbell: Can I say again on
that the JIC would have to be content that they were willing to
do that but that is certainly something I can take back and ask
them if they are.
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