BBC RADIO NEWS

04/06/03

WORLD AT ONE

1305

NICK CLARK

Weapons of mass destruction is a phrase that Mr

Blair may feel will one day be found engraved on

his heart . Today he found himself under

sustained assault at Prime Minister's questions

over the claim that the government beefed up

intelligence information to help make the case

for war against Iraq, and he did so against the

background of a striking new allegation by a

senior cabinet minister, the leader of the House

of Commons, John Reid, that rogue elements

WJ'thin the security forces have been leaking

such information to the press to undermine the

government . The Conservative leader Ian Duncan

Smith chose to concentrate all six of his

permitted questions to this single subject but

Mr Blair didn't give an inch of ground at Prime

Minister's questions . He knows that the main

weakness of his position is his failure so far

to answer a vital question, did number 10

elevate uncorroborated security information in a

way that the security services found

unacceptable, in particular the notion that

Saddam Hussein was capable of using chemical or

Q6c
i-Z~t
B3C RADIO NEWS
04/06/D3

biologics"- weapons within forty five minates . Mr

Blair insisted today that the Joint Intelligence

Committee, which brings together all the

country's security chiefs, stood behind the Iraq

dossier .

TONY BLAIR

There was no attemnt at any time by any official

or minister or member o°_ number 10 Downing

Street staff to override the intelligence

judgements of the Joint Intelligence Committee

and their judgements including the judgement

about the so called forty five minutes was a

judgement made by the Joint Intelligence

Committee and by them alone .

NC It's worth noting and not for the first time Mr

Blair was answering accusations that hadn't been

made, he went on to say that no-one in the JIC,

the Joint Intelligence Committee, had leaked

information to the press . He confirmed also that

the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security

Committee had asked to conduct an inquiry into

this issue last month, and that the government

would co-operate fully with such an inquiry . He

also tried to scotch the idea that because the

committee reports finally to him it would be

constrained in its activities .

~~C~'t~ ~~~26
BBC RADIO NEWS
04/06/03

TONY BLAIR

In relation to the intelligence and Security

Committee, it's not true that I will withhold

from them the Joint Intelligence Committee

assessments, I will give them all the Joint

Intelligence Committee assessments, in addition

they can in accordance with their normal

practice, interview those people in the security

services that drew up the Joint Intelligence

Committee report, now that is surely a fair way

to proceed, I will then publish the report, and

if I may say so to the right honourable

gentleman, he had intelligence briefings as

well, and I suspect the problem for him is the

problem for him is he's been wondering over the

past few days whether to jump on this particular

bandwagon or not and he's made the wrong choice .

NC Ian Duncan Smith hit back and he included a

reference to John Reid's attack on the security

services .

IAN DUNCAN SMITH

Nobody nobody believes a word now that the Prime

Minister is saying, that's the truth, and now we

have, we have the unedifyir.g sight of the leader

of the House being sent out to do his bidding

and attack elements of the security services,

~~3~ ~ ~ ~( dc=~~ I
~ 2~3
BBC RADIO NEWS
04/06/03

which is disgraceful . Will he now either publish

that dossier right now or held an independent

inquiry so that the public can judge for

themselves .

NC Ian Duncan Smith . Well now John Reid is a

cabinet minister often deployed by Mr Blair to

do battle with the demons that threaten the

Labour government, he has a reputation as a

political bruiser who takes no prisoners, but

even by Dr Reid's combative standards this has

been a remarkable day . First came his interview

in the Times in which he raised the current row

over the government's use of intelligence

information onto a new level of seriousness by

suggesting that rogue elements in the security

services had been using the media to undermine

Labour, that the government had been the victim

of skulduggery and that people in the services

had been anxious to settle scores with Alistair

Campbell, Mr Blair's communications director .

Such a breakdown between spies and their

political ma sters clearly ca nnot be allowed to

fester, but when he was asked about the

allegations on the Today programme Dr Reid

decided to turn his fire on one of that

programme's own journalists, Andrew Gilligan,

:)C)-7Z
Q'~c ~ 1~ C
BBC RADIO NEWS
04/06/03

who was the first to report the discontent in

the intelligence community .

JOHN REID

There's two more serious allegations which

actually Andrew Gilligan misrepresented this

morning again, the first is he said that the

other dossier had been presented by the

government - this is the so called dodgy one -

as being from intelligence sources, that is

untrue, the final untruth this morning from your

reporter was that his central claim was that we

had sort of over emphasised the information put

into the dossier last week, that was not his

central claim . At seven minutes past six last

week when this story started, Andrew Gilligan

said this, "the government probably knew that

the forty five minute figure was wrong, even

before it dec-ded ......... . ........ "

NC Dr Reid spent several more minutes answering

questions with questions and allegations of his

own . His main accusation against Andrew Gilligan

was that he had based his case on a single

source and only afterwards conjured up three

further informants, conveniently as Dr Reid put

it, and I asked Andrew Gilligan to respond to

that charge .
BBC RADIO NEWS
04/06/03

ANDREW GILLIGAN

The quotes come from a single source but the

story has also been corroborated by among others

Clare Short, and I'm curious how she and Robin

Cook fit into this, are they in league with

these so called rogue spooks as well, and the

general unhappiness in the security services

about the use by Downing street of information

from them has been communicated to me by three

other security sources .

NC I guess what Dr Reid was getting at was that the

main accusation or one of the main accusations

against the government was that it used a single

piece of information about the forty five minute

time frame in which weapons of mass destruction

could be launched, used that even as a headline

and a highlighted point even though it only came

from a single uncorroborated source, and the

suggestion somehow is that you are doing the

same thing with how you got the story

AG Our story has been partly corroborated by a

serving government minister, Adam Ingram, and

it's been entirely corroborated by a former

government minister, Clare Short, who said on

Sunday that the forty five minute threat had

~~C ~ ~ (S~ b~~ T

l ~-~h