Examination of Witness (Questions 1120-1139)
MR ALASTAIR
CAMPBELL
25 JUNE 2003
Q1120 Mr Maples: You are both political
appointments.
Mr Campbell: Does that mean when
Jonathan Powell leaves a meeting with the Prime Minister he somehow
is less able or less qualified to write up a note of the meeting
and circulate it round the departments which need to be informed?
Q1121 Mr Maples: It does not mean
that, but it means you both have great positions of power not
having either been elected or gone through the Civil Service selection
and reporting and career procedure, and that is a novelty, and
it is a novelty to have people in such senior positions. You know
this, an Order in Counsel had to be passed—
Mr Campbell: No, the Order in
Counsel is the novelty.
Q1122 Mr Maples: The position which
you and Mr Powell hold are what is the novelty. We all know what
the facts of this are. What I am suggesting to you—
Mr Campbell: I think the facts
are sometimes hugely exaggerated.
Q1123 Mr Maples: I think people will
find it extraordinary that meetings were being held by the Prime
Minister at which neither Foreign Office officials nor ministers
were present but he held those with politically appointed—
Mr Campbell: What sort of meetings
are you concerned about?
Q1124 Mr Maples: I am concerned about
meetings that advance probably the most important foreign policy
decision this Government has taken.
Mr Campbell: There was no such
meeting about advancing foreign policy positions without ministers
if it was a question of formulating policy. Most days during the
conflict Jonathan Powell and I would go and see the Prime Minister
very early in the morning to discuss what he was going to be doing
during the day, what his diary looked like, what phone calls he
might be making, what meetings he might be having. The idea that
because I am a special adviser somehow there is something terrible
about that—I am sorry, I think it is absurd.
Q1125 Mr Maples: All I would put
to you, Mr Campbell, is—
Mr Campbell: Or the idea that
I am doing it for political reasons.
Q1126 Mr Maples: You and Jonathan
Powell are the first people who have been politically appointed
to hold the jobs of the Government's Chief Information Officer
and the—
Mr Campbell: I am not the Government's
Chief Information Officer, I am the Prime Minister's Director
of Communications. The person in charge of the Government's Information
Services is Mike Granatt.
Q1127 Mr Hamilton: Mr Campbell, can
I come back very briefly to the Andrew Gilligan accusations against
you. You have forthrightly and robustly corrected what you called
the lies told by the BBC. I wonder whether you can speculate as
to why so-called rogue elements in the Intelligence Services or
intelligence community should feed lies to the BBC's defence correspondent,
Andrew Gilligan? I am sorry if that sounds like a line out of
Chris Mullin's novel but I wonder if you could speculate.
Mr Campbell: I do not think it
is sensible to speculate. I do not know who this person is, whether
they are what Mr Gilligan says they are, I just do not know. Honestly,
I do not worry about what Mr Gilligan does, says, other than where,
as I say, he makes a fundamental attack on the integrity of the
Prime Minister and the integrity of the Government.
Q1128 Mr Hamilton: Why, when you
have very convincingly and persuasively shown that Mr Gilligan
has told lies about you and the Prime Minister as far as the 45
minute claim is concerned, were they not corrected?
Mr Campbell: I have no idea. I
have, as I say, a stack of correspondence, of exchanges, with
the Director of News at the BBC about trying to get some sort
of redress for this story which, as I say, is a complete lie.
I think his very first reply said to me something like, "I
do not think we are going to agree on this" and ever since
the posture has been, "We have to defend this story",
even though I know there are people within the BBC who have huge
concern about it, huge concern about what it does for the reputation
of the BBC. That is a matter for them but all I know is that I
am going to keep going until we get an apology.
Q1129 Mr Hamilton: Could it not be
laid to rest by using the JIC assessment or using the Intelligence
data and information, the basis on which you wrote the document?
Could it not be for once and for all sorted out by that intelligence
assessment being shown to certain individuals within the BBC?
Mr Campbell: I think that would
be a pretty extraordinary step, and I would be very surprised
if the intelligence agencies supported that.
Q1130 Mr Hamilton: But they are being
damaged at the moment, are they not?
Mr Campbell: I think the public
are a bit cannier about this than people think. I think they will
spot an agenda a mile off. As I say, most agendas in the media
are open, people avow them. When I was a journalist I went to
the Daily Mirror, I was avowedly pro-Labour, anti-Conservative
Government and never hid it. I used to see it as part of my job
to go on the television and say, "Vote Labour". I was
up-front about it. The Daily Mail loathes the Prime Minister,
loathes me, loathes the Government, does not hide it. That is
an agenda. People are aware of that. The BBC is different. The
BBC has got a deserved reputation around the world. I think some
of the best journalism during the conflict was on the BBC, I think
they have adapted to this whole 24 hour media thing better than
a lot of news organisations, but when they have bad journalism
amid the good then I think they have a responsibility to admit
that. We admit when things go wrong, we have done that in relation
to one of the issues we have been discussing today, but they have
broadcast it not just once but now hundreds of times.
Q1131 Mr Hamilton: Surely the canny
public must conclude they have very good evidence from very good
sources?
Mr Campbell: They may do. My experience
of the public, whatever YouGov polls say, which usually say whatever
they have been asked to say by the paper which has commissioned
them, my experience going round the country with the Prime Minister
is that actually when it comes to the big issues—and this
was a huge issue, taking the country into war in Iraq—they
listen to senior politicians, they listen to them with a certain
amount of respect because they understand the gravity of the decision
they have to take, and I think they believe, contrary to the way
the media portray politicians and politics, not just the Prime
Minister, not just ministers, but the vast bulk of politicians
are in politics for good reasons, trying to do their best by their
constituents and by the country. If I say that now, I can hear
journalists sitting there in vans outside, waiting and saying,
"Shall we say he did well or did badly?" rather than
actually give any sense of what was discussed, I can hear them
say, "Oh, God, blah, blah, blah", but that is the reality.
I think if we carry on with this constant denigration of politics,
the political process, we are going down a very bad route. People
can say to me, as they do and as I have admitted, "You were
pretty heavy when you were a journalist" but I never did
not have respect for the political process, Parliament, the politicians
and the work that they did, and that included politicians with
whom I fundamentally disagreed. I find it incredible and I mean
incredible that people can report based on one single anonymous
uncorroborated source—and let's get to the heart of what
the allegation is—that the Prime Minister, the Cabinet,
the intelligence agencies, people liker myself connived to persuade
Parliament to send British forces into action on a lie. That is
the allegation. I tell you, until the BBC acknowledge that is
a lie, I will keep banging on, that correspondence file will get
thicker and they had better issue an apology pretty quickly.
Mr Hamilton: That is very clear. I am
going to move on to a slightly different subject now.
Chairman: Let's hope the BBC covers that.
Q1132 Mr Hamilton: I hope the BBC
does cover that. I want to take up the point John Maples made
about the quality of intelligence. I want to draw your attention
to something in the September dossier which reported, and I quote,
"There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of
significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The claim
was repeated by President Bush in his State of the Union address
in January 2003 when he said, "The British Government has
learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities
of uranium from Africa. The documents relating to the alleged
agreement for the sale of uranium between 1999 and 2001 were passed
to the IAEA for investigation. The Agency concluded fairly rapidly
that the documents were in fact not authentic and the specific
allegations were unfounded. Subsequent reports suggested the documents
have been proved forgeries, one bearing the name of a Niger minister
who had been out of office for years." My question is, when
did you first become aware of the uranium from Africa claim?
Mr Campbell: The claim as it was
put into the dossier?
Q1133 Mr Hamilton: Yes. The claim
as it was put into the dossier. When did that become available
to you, that information?
Mr Campbell: From memory, when
it was in the first draft, but I would have to go back and check
that.
Q1134 Mr Hamilton: Is that something
you could confirm to us during the course of this week, if possible?
Mr Campbell: Yes[6]
Q1135 Mr Hamilton: Thank you very
much. Did you or anybody at No 10—you because you are the
person responsible for the production of the document—seek—
Mr Campbell: No, I was not responsible
for the production of the document.
Q1136 Mr Hamilton: Sorry, responsible
for the presentation of the document as Communications Director.
Mr Campbell: Yes, okay.
Q1137 Mr Hamilton: Did you specifically
seek to put the claim about Iraq's attempts to get uranium from
Niger, or anywhere in Africa, into that document? Was that a very
important part of the document?
Mr Campbell: I do not know whether
it was an important part but in answer to the question whether
it was I who tried to put it into there, no is the answer.
Q1138 Mr Hamilton: Was any attempt
made to highlight the fact that Iraq was trying to buy uranium
from Africa? The point is, we are being told on weapons of mass
destruction we have evidence of pre-cursor chemicals, or anthrax,
of growth media, but we have no evidence of any nuclear production
at all, and this was obviously a crucial bit of evidence which
was subsequently discredited. Was any attempt made to draw attention
to the fact that at the time that claim was being made through
intelligence sources?
Mr Campbell: I think there is
documentary evidence of Iraq's nuclear weapons programme ambitions
but in relation to this, I suppose what you are saying is, were
the discussions about how prominently to deploy that piece of
information. To be honest with you, I cannot remember the nature
of those discussions. I think it was an important point. As I
have alluded to earlier, it was one of the points I discussed
with the chairman of the JIC. When it says they have sought it,
I asked what has been the result of that seeking, has it actually
resulted in them acquiring any of those, to which the answer was,
"To the best of our assessment, no."
Q1139 Mr Hamilton: When it was clear
from the IAEA that the documents were forgeries—
Mr Campbell: I think there is
a dispute about this. I am not as qualified to speak on this as
the Intelligence people are. As I understand it, there is a dispute
as to whether the documents which are being described as forgeries
are the documents on which the claim in the dossier is based.
Again, I think that is something where I might be able to go back
and speak to the JIC chairman about and see if there is any more
he can add to that but I do not think that is for me to—
6 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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