Examination of Witness (Questions 1100-1119)
MR ALASTAIR
CAMPBELL
25 JUNE 2003
Q1100 Mr Maples: What I am pointing
out to you is when the public, media and Parliament—
Mr Campbell: I accept that.
Q1101 Mr Maples: —they suspect
everything else. What I put to you is that what will probably
happen is that it is perfectly possible you, and Andrew Gilligan,
actually told the truth and what happened here was that everybody
slightly exaggerated their position.
Mr Campbell: I did not. I did
not have a position. This is the Joint Intelligence Committee.
Andrew Gilligan's allegations were about the Joint Intelligence
Committee paper, not the other one.
Q1102 Mr Maples: He said that you
sought to change it—
Mr Campbell: No, he said, I sexed
it up and I made changes against the wishes of the agencies. That
is a lie.
Q1103 Mr Maples: I am suggesting
to you it is possible that you sought changes to this document
which did not involve countermanding intelligence. After all,
your craft is presentation, that is what you are extremely good
at, and it would be almost unbelievable if you did not have some
input into how this document was presented.
Mr Campbell: As I have said many
times before, there is a legitimate place in the political process
for dealing with issues of presentation and communication now
we have a 24-hour media, round the world, round the clock. He
did not say that. He said that I abused British Intelligence.
He went further and said it was done against the wishes of the
intelligence agencies; not true. I think that is a pretty serious
allegation which is why I am very, very grateful for the opportunity
to rebut it.
Q1104 Mr Maples: The same allegation
has apparently been made—I do not know whether you have
seen it—in yesterday's New York Times. It says, "`A
top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons
told Congressional Committees in closed oral hearings last week
that he had been pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and other
matters to conform with the Bush Administration's views', several
Congressional officials said today." You may say, "Here
is some rogue agent in the State Department saying this to a rogue
journalist", but it is interesting, is it not, how this allegation
crops up here and now it has cropped up in Washington as well.
Mr Campbell: Can I explain why
I think the allegation crops up. Again, I think this goes to the
heart of the way some of these issues are covered by the media.
I do not think we should make any bones about this. There are
large parts of the media which have an agenda on the issue of
Iraq. For most of those parts of the media their agenda is open,
it is avowed. If you bought the Daily Mirror in the run-up
to the conflict, you knew that paper was against our position.
If you bought The Sun, you knew that paper was passionately
supportive of our position on dealing with Saddam. I would identify
three stages in this. In the run-up to conflict there was an agenda
in large parts of the BBC—and I think the BBC is different
from the rest of the media and should be viewed as different from
the rest of the media because it is a different organisation in
terms of its reputation, in terms of its global reach and all
the rest of it—and there was a disproportionate focus upon,
if you like, the dissent, the opposition, to our position. I think
that in the conflict itself the prism that many were creating
within the BBC was, one, it is all going wrong, and I can give
you an example—
Q1105 Mr Maples: Well, I think probably
many of us would agree with that.
Mr Campbell: And now what is happening
now, the third, the conflict not having led to the Middle East
going up in flames, not having led to us getting bogged down for
months and months and months, these same people now have to find
a different rationale. Their rationale is that the Prime Minister
led the country into war on a false basis, that is what this is
about.
Q1106 Mr Maples: It is terribly important
for all of us that that allegation is laid to rest. I agree it
is incredibly serious. I suggest to you the problem we have got
now is that it is your word against Mr Gilligan's.
Mr Campbell: No, I do not accept
that. It is my word—
Q1107 Mr Maples: Can I make a suggestion
about how it might be possible for us to resolve this. I am not
quite sure whether you answered this question before. If we as
a Committee were able to see the JIC assessment on which this
document was based—because I do not think this in itself
was a JIC assessment—and if it takes out the references
to bits of sensitive intelligence—
Mr Campbell: That is a matter
for the Prime Minister, not for me.
Q1108 Mr Maples: But you have some
input into these decisions. If that were available to us and,
as is your view, that is substantially the same as what the JIC
assessment says, it would resolve the issue. Can I move for a
couple of minutes to these issues of the machinery of government.
It is worrying to some of us who understand, or thought we understood,
how the Government works, that the DOP has not met virtually since
the election, through Afghanistan, the war on terrorism and the
run-up to the Iraqi war. The procedure as I understood it always
used to be that the relevant Cabinet Committee would meet, with
papers setting out options, really considered Civil Service assessments
of what the position was, they would discuss it, make decisions
which would be reported to the Cabinet. It says there have been
a lot of discussions in Cabinet but those are 23 people, they
get 1½ minutes each or whatever, they never get into the
issues. To find that committee does not meet and has been substituted
by informal ad hoc meetings—
Mr Campbell: They were not informal
ad hoc meetings.
Q1109 Mr Maples: Minutes were taken
of them?
Mr Campbell: Ministerial meetings,
certainly.
Q1110 Mr Maples: But you said that
those people who met—David Manning is an official of the
Foreign Office but the other three of you are political appointments
in Downing Street—Sally Morgan, yourself and Jonathan Powell—you
said you were at meetings with the Prime Minister, was the Foreign
Secretary always at those meetings?
Mr Campbell: No is the answer
to that because the Foreign Secretary does not work in Downing
Street. I sit in an office and my phone goes regularly during
the day, "Can you pop round and see the Prime Minister".
He does not say, "Can you bring Jack Straw every time you
come."
Q1111 Mr Maples: So there were meetings
which the Prime Minister called at which his special advisers
were present and his foreign policy adviser but no other minister?
Mr Campbell: Absolutely, of course
there were.
Q1112 Mr Maples: Quite a lot?
Mr Campbell: For example, ministers
do not come to meetings with the Prime Minister when he is preparing
for Prime Minister's Questions, unless he—
Q1113 Mr Maples: No, I do not mean
that.
Mr Campbell: Those are the sort
of meetings I am talking about.
Q1114 Mr Maples: I mean meetings
at which decisions were made about advancing—
Mr Campbell: I did not make decisions.
Q1115 Mr Maples: No, but were you
at the meetings?
Mr Campbell: I was at a huge number
of meetings with the Prime Minister during the Iraq conflict,
and before and since.
Q1116 Mr Maples: No, the meetings
at which decisions were taken at which no other minister was present.
Mr Campbell: It depends what sort
of decisions you mean. If I were having a meeting with the Prime
Minister about whether he should do Newsnight with Jeremy
Paxman or ITV with Trevor McDonald—
Q1117 Mr Maples: No, no.
Mr Campbell: That is a meeting,
that is a decision. If you are saying that there is a decision
about whether the Prime Minister might go to see President Bush
on a Tuesday or a Thursday, that is the sort of decision we might
take in that group. If you are talking about a decision about
whether the Prime Minister was going to commit British forces
into action, the idea something like that is going to be taken
without full consultation of his ministerial colleagues in the
Cabinet is nonsense. Likewise in relation to something like the
production of the WMD dossier. The decision to have such a dossier
would have been taken with ministers. I just think it is absurd
if you think that the Prime Minister, who is one of the busiest,
most high profile, most written-about, most talked-about, scrutinised
person in the world, does not have a support team around him,
whether they happen to be special advisers—and I am well
aware the aim of the Conservative Party is somehow to contaminate
the concept of special advisers. I work for the Prime Minister,
I work very hard for the Prime Minister, I work very hard for
the Government, and I do so because I believe in what the Government
is doing and I do so not because I am a special adviser but because
I work for the Government.
Q1118 Mr Maples: I do not think people
would find it extraordinary to find that the Prime Minister had
meetings that ministers did not attend, but I think they would
find it very surprising that there were meetings at which neither
ministers nor officials attended.
Mr Campbell: Sorry, I am an official.
Q1119 Mr Maples: Well, you are a
special adviser.
Mr Campbell: Jonathan Powell is
the Chief of Staff in Downing Street.
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