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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (109226)	8/1/2003 1:21:19 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Gilligan's testimony to Parliament is leaking...quelle surprise: Gilligan's secret evidence Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent Friday August 1, 2003 The Guardian Labour and Tory MPs accused the BBC reporter at the heart of the Iraqi weapons row of "leading the public up the garden path in a most staggering way", according to confidential transcripts of a cross-examination of Andrew Gilligan by the Commons foreign affairs committee seen by the Guardian. The transcripts, passed by MPs to Lord Hutton's inquiry, show that former Tory defence minister Sir John Stanley accused Mr Gilligan of shifting his ground. "I cannot tell you how serious it is to mislead a committee," Sir John warned him. The BBC has insisted throughout that Mr Gilligan did not change his story and is confident the Hutton inquiry will clear its journalism. Sir John made the allegations during a private session of the foreign affairs committee inquiry shortly before the death of David Kelly, the government's senior scientific adviser. Questioned, the BBC reporter said neither he nor his source had ever suggested Alastair Campbell, the government's director of communications, had insisted that the allegation that Iraq could fire chemical weapons within 45 minutes be included in the government's September dossier on Iraq's banned weapons programme. He said simply his source had alleged that Mr Campbell was responsible for transforming the dossier, and it was fair to draw the inference that Mr Campbell had been responsible for inserting the 45-minute claim. The head of the joint intelligence committee, Sir John Scarlett, has insisted that neither Downing Street nor Mr Campbell asked that the 45-minute claim be included in the dossier. The Guardian has seen extracts from the fierce cross-examination of Mr Gilligan. The leaking of the transcript comes on the day Lord Hutton launches his inquiry into the allegations which culminated with Dr Kelly's death. The transcripts reveal Mr Gilligan holding his ground that Mr Campbell was responsible for transforming the dossier in the final weeks prior to publication. At the time of the cross-examination, Dr Kelly had told the select committee he did not think he could be the source for Mr Gilligan's story. His suicide led to the BBC's revelation that he had indeed been the primary source. Mr Gilligan and the BBC chairman, Gavyn Davies, subsequently asked the select committee not to publish the transcripts. Under cross-examination, Mr Gilligan said: "The only point at which my source mentioned the name Campbell was in respect of the transformation of the dossier, not in respect of the insertion of the 45-minute claim. I am pretty sure that is right." He continued: "The only context in which my source mentioned Campbell was the context of the transformation of the dossier. The allegation was made that the 45-minute claim was inserted against our wishes - this is from memory - but it has not a specific name with a specific person tied to it." Sir John interjected: "Whatever conclusion members of this committee reached, I myself am in absolutely no doubt that every single member of the committee, indeed beyond this room, believed that you were repeating your source saying to you that Mr Campbell had been responsible for inserting the 45-minute claim." Following further cross-examination, Mr Gilligan said: "We may draw the inference and indeed the committee may reasonably draw the inference, and everyone else has reasonably drawn the inference, that the decision to include the 45-minute claim was a decision made by Mr Campbell. That was the allegation of the source." Pressed again as to why he asserted this in view of the denials made by Sir John Scarlett, Mr Gilligan said: "The source did not say either that Mr Campbell did not insert it or that he did insert it. I have never claimed otherwise. The claim was that the 45-minute claim was inserted 'against our wishes', against the wishes of the source and that the claim had been transformed in the week before it was published at the behest of Alastair Campbell." Sir John asked Mr Gilligan whether "he wished to issue a full and frank apology to this committee for having, in my view I believe, grievously misled this committee". Mr Gilligan denied the charge. He added he was happy for his BBC colleagues to have drawn the inference that Mr Campbell demanded the insertion of the 45 minutes. politics.guardian.co.uk