Examination of Witness (Questions 260-279)
17 JULY 2003
MR ANDREW
GILLIGAN
Q260 Mr Olner: But we have no proof,
no proof whatsoever.
Mr Gilligan: There is no proof
either way other than the word of my source, who has been right
on a number of other things, as the Committee has found.
Q261 Mr Pope: Just on this specific
point. The Committee can only reach a conclusion based on evidence
and the evidence that you gave us on 19 June when you said that
the source's claim was that the dossier had been transformed in
the week before publication, you asked how the transformation
had happened and the answer was a single word, "Campbell".
We put that allegation to Alastair Campbell who denied it. He
said it was a lie, that was the word he used. The Foreign Secretary
has denied it. Alastair Campbell has now written a letter to the
Committee that was cleared by the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Committee, John Scarlett, which denies that he did this, and frankly,
literally, not a single piece of evidence backs the assertion
that you made to the Committee on 19 June. I think that is a matter
of massive concern that not a single other person has backed you
up and, in fact, it has been denied by Alastair Campbell, the
Foreign Secretary and the Chairman of the JIC.
Mr Gilligan: Assertions that something
is untrue are no substitute for evidence that it is untrue, and
the Committee has been denied the evidence which it might need
to establish that it is untrue, namely the presence of the Chairman
of the JIC and access to the draft of the dossier.
Mr Illsley: The Committee has been given
evidence of the 45 minute claim.
Q262 Mr Pope: I have just a couple
of other things that follow on from that. I wanted to check that
you stood by an answer you gave on the 19th to Mr Maples in which
you said that in relation to the September dossier there was a
single source. You said you wanted to be very specific about this,
there was a single source. Is that still your position?
Mr Gilligan: The quotes and the
source for the story which began all the fuss came from a single
source, absolutely.
Q263 Mr Pope: The Committee has now
had a meeting with a source, Dr Kelly, who met with you, because
he told us he met with you, and when asked the question "Do
you believe that the document was transformed", this is the
September dossier, "by Alastair Campbell?" Dr Kelly
replied, "I do not believe that at all". It is not sustainable
to believe that there was only a single source who spoke to you
when we have interviewed a source who spoke to you who denies
it. Either there was more than one source or the evidence which
you gave to us was incorrect.
Mr Gilligan: As I made clear in
my letter to the Chairman, when I spoke of four sources to the
Committee, I was speaking of people within the intelligence community
who had expressed disquiet to me about the Government's use of
intelligence in Iraq. I do, of course, also have many other sources,
including Ministry of Defence officials at all levels, and I spoke
to a couple of them in an attempt to either corroborate or dismiss
my primary source's story, getting no result either way. Clearly
I have more than one source in the totality of my career.
Q264 Mr Pope: Let me put it again.
You said to the Committee: "I want to make the distinction
between a specific source for this specific story, which is a
single source" and you are standing by that. We have now
interviewed a source who told us that he did not say this to you.
In fact, when the question was put to him, he said "I do
not believe that at all", that Alastair Campbell transformed
the dossier. It cannot possibly be the case that there was only
one source, there must have been more than one source, or Dr Kelly
lied to the Committee when he said that he did not believe that
Alastair Campbell transformed the document. Which is it?
Mr Gilligan: The Committee has
come to the judgment that Dr Kelly was almost certainly not my
source and, as I have said to you, I have spoken about the issue
of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction to quite a large number
of people. Some of those interviews were attempts to corroborate
or refute elements of my story from my original primary source,
and—
Q265 Mr Pope: So there must be a
source other than Dr Kelly?
Mr Gilligan: I really do have
very little to add to what I have already said to you about—
Q266 Mr Pope: I am not asking you
to disclose the source, I am just asking you to confirm that there
must be a source as well as Dr Kelly because Dr Kelly said that
he did not say this about the document being transformed. Either
there must be another source or you invented the phrase about
Alastair Campbell transforming the document against the wishes
of the intelligence services.
Mr Gilligan: As I have made clear,
I have many sources.
Q267 Mr Pope: You said you have a
single source.
Mr Gilligan: Based on a comparison
of my evidence to the Committee and Dr Kelly's evidence to the
Committee, the Committee has already come to the judgment that
Dr Kelly was not the source. He met me in an hotel, okay that
is the same; he said he did not have access to intelligence information
about the 45 minutes; he said he did not bring up Alastair Campbell's
role in the dossier; he said he was not a member of the intelligence
community; he said he was not in charge of drawing up the dossier;
he said we did not start off by talking about the railways. I
really do have nothing to add to my evidence or the evidence of
Dr Kelly.
Q268 Mr Pope: What you are suggesting
is that Dr Kelly was not the source. I am prepared to accept that
but you cannot then stack that up with your original statement
that there was a single source, there was clearly more than a
single source. The concern that I have got in this is that the
Committee has been misled very seriously on an incredibly grave
allegation that Alastair Campbell exaggerated the claims for war
and inserted it against the wishes of the intelligence community.
It has been denied by absolutely everybody and every opportunity
has been given for people to put a different case but nobody has.
Mr Gilligan: As I say, no actual
evidence that that is untrue has been produced, merely assertion.
A careful reading of the Committee's evidence—
Q269 Mr Pope: I have read it carefully.
Mr Gilligan: —does not in
any way disprove the allegation about Alastair Campbell. I note
also that several Members of the Committee were unwilling to clear
Mr Campbell.
Q270 Ms Stuart: Mr Gilligan, may
I ask you one simple question. I understand that you have revealed
your source to the BBC, to the Governor, and that is right and
proper. Did you give him one name or several names?
Mr Gilligan: The source for the
story was a single source. I gave them one name. It was not to
the Governors, it was to the Director of News.
Q271 Ms Stuart: So there is one person
who has that name and it is one name?
Mr Gilligan: Yes. As I have said
in my evidence, the source for this story was a single source.
Q272 Ms Stuart: You are drawing inferences
as to the Committee's conclusion as to whether Dr Kelly was the
source of the story, that is assuming we are not being lied to.
Mr Gilligan: Absolutely, of course.
Q273 Mr Illsley: Can I just clear
up this other bit about whether 10 Downing Street, Alastair Campbell,
issued a denial to the BBC after your story went out on radio.
This came up in a debate on the floor of the House yesterday and
I interrupted the Shadow Foreign Secretary because he had made
a claim that 10 Downing Street had not issued a denial on that
story and yet Alastair Campbell gave evidence to the Committee
and said that a denial was issued within an hour of the story
being broadcast. Are you saying that denial never happened or
are you saying that the denial was in a form of words which did
not deny the accusation that you were making?
Mr Gilligan: The latter. The denial
denied a number of things that the source had never actually alleged,
they firstly denied that the 45 minute claim was not derived from
intelligence material, the source never alleged it was not. They
secondly denied that anything had been made up, had been fabricated.
Again, the source never alleged that anything had been fabricated.
Those were the two denials they made. It is noticeable, as I said
before, in the days immediately after the story every other journalist
on Fleet Street with intelligence connections spoke to their intelligence
connections—I do not know whether this is official or unofficial—and
they were hearing the same sort of things. There is a whole list
of quotes which I recommend to you, particularly the quotes in
the Guardian, the Times, in the Sunday Times,
the Observer, the Independent on Sunday and indeed
in several other newspapers. It is pretty clear not only were
denials not being made, confirmations were being given to other
journalists.
Q274 Mr Illsley: Alastair Campbell
insists that he denied involvement in the allegation of "sexing-up"
that dossier. As well as that the Committee has read to it by
the Foreign Secretary the exact wording of the joint intelligence
assessment which made reference to the 45 minutes. It has been
read to us, we have been told by the Foreign Secretary it was
in the dossier before it was even presented to Alastair Campbell.
Mr Gilligan: Let me read you the
JIC assessment, this is from page 62 of your own volume, which
is, I think, one of the most interesting things that the Committee
has uncovered. The question is from the Committee's expert adviser,
Dr Tom Inch: "Was the wording of the '45 minutes' claim...
exactly the same as it was in the intelligence assessment supplied
to the Government? If not, was it accompanied in the intelligence
assessment by qualifications not included in the public document?"
The answer from the Foreign Office is: "The same report was
reflected in almost identical terms in the JIC's classified work.
There were no further caveats used".
Q275 Chairman: Was that the question
or the answer?
Mr Gilligan: That is the answer.
Then on page 71 of the evidence volume, this is a question from
Tom Inch to the Foreign Office: "It is important to find
what the raw data actually said about 45 minutes". The Foreign
Office's answer is: "The JIC assessment said that some CBW
weapons could be delivered to units within 45 minutes of an order
being issued". Now, delivered to units is completely different
from the Prime Minister's statement in the foreword to the dossier
that they could be ready within 45 minutes. Even on the narrow
trainspottery point of how long it takes to get a weapon ready
once it has been delivered to a unit it takes a further hour to
several hours. We have taken expert advice on this. I have spoken
to Rupert Pengeley, the technical editor of Jane's Information
Group, who is an expert on this. He has given me a very long memo,
which I would be very pleased to submit to the Committee on exactly
the stages that something has to go through between it arriving
at the door of the unit and being ready for use. His opinion is
that it would take between 30 minutes and several hours, depending
on the weapon and the levels of preparedness of the operators.
However, there is an even more telling point about that particular
JIC assessment. It is absolutely explicit that chemical and biological
weapons were not held with units, they were not with any unit
at all.
Q276 Mr Illsley: We are not talking
about whether they had them or not.
Mr Gilligan: You were talking
about the validity of the 45 minute point, you put it to me. You
have discovered evidence in your own memorandum that invalidates
it.
Q277 Mr Illsley: I am saying that
we have had the 45 minute piece of evidence read to us. The allegation
was that Campbell "sexed-up" the document by insisting
on the insertion of that information. He agreed he did not insert
it. We have seen, we have had read to us—I have seen it—that
piece of the joint intelligence assessment was read to us. Whether
it is accurate or whether they had the weapons is a different
point altogether.
Mr Gilligan: Page 71 of your own
evidence volume makes clear the original JIC assessment, they
could be delivered to units within 45 minutes was significantly
hardened. That was transformed to "deployed within 45 minutes"
in the body of the dossier and "ready in 45 minutes"
in the Prime Minister's foreword. That is a hardening. There is
ample expert evidence, which we can produce, if you wish, to support
that point.
Q278 Mr Illsley: Whose evidence are
you quoting to me here?
Mr Gilligan: Firstly the Foreign
Office's account of what the original JIC assessment said about
45 minutes, this is on page 71 of your own evidence volume. In
a memorandum to the Committee from the Foreign Office.
Q279 Mr Illsley: The point I am making
is whether the 45 minute claim is accurate or not is not the point,
it is the allegation of who put it in the dossier?
Mr Gilligan: I am sorry, I thought
that was the point.
Mr Pope: The point is, nobody other than
you thinks that Alastair Campbell inserted that into the document.
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