Andrew Gitligan-INTERNET

From : Andrew Gdllgan-INTERNET

Sent : 30 June 2003 21 38
To- 'seddonzq1@aol com'
Subject. FW Campbell evidence analysis

-----Original Message-----
From : Andrew Gilligan-INTERNET
Sent : 30 June 2003 21 .14
To : 'seddonzql@aol com'
Subject: Campbell evidence analysis

Mark,

Thanks for this Please do say it's come from me, of course It's an analysis of the Campbell evidence we have done
for the legal action against Woolas

No dramatic smoking gun in the Campbell but cumulatively it is quite damaging to him Inconsistencies,
exaggerations, evasions and direct untruths
"
Some other material at the end - the BBC Is doing an official submission too and it expands on that

Andrew

Alastair Campbell's changes to the September dossier

Mr Campbell says in his memo that "he made drafting suggestions as the document evolved" and admits
in his evidence that the chairman of the JIC accepted some of the changes (Q975) . But the exact nature
of the changes he is prepared to admit responsibility for increases over the course of his evidence .

First he says the changes he made were only presentational changes (Q974) .

Then he is asked (Q1018) :

"Q: Can you try to visualise for us how different the September dossier would have been if it had not
been for your discussions on presentational issues?
A: Other than literally drafting points I cannot recall any substantlal changes being made to the
executive summary ."
This seems to imply that he did make substantial drafting changes to the executive summary . He also
falls to answer about the rest of the dossier.

Then he says (Q1092) that "the changes we made in relation to it [the dossier] had nothing to do with
the overriding intelligence assessments ." (my Itals .) What is the difference between an intelligence
assessment and an overriding intelligence assessment? Does that statement imply that No 10 could have
made changes which went against the detail of the intelligence assessments - the very point at issue?

Mr Campbell is also (Q1008) asked about another of my source's charges, which is that unreliable
information was given "undue prominence" m the dossier at his behest . He replies by misrepresenting
what 1 said to the committee about this and by attacking the BBC and nobody notices that he has failed
to answer the question .

Towards the end of his evidence Mr Campbell again refuses to deny, even half-confirms this charge
when he says: "I suppose what you are saying is, were there discussions about how prominently to
deploy [the uranium -to-Afnca claim] . To be honest with you, I cannot remember the nature of those
discussions . I think it was an important point." (Q1138)

When the 45-minute claim was added

Mr Campbell told the Committee that the 45-minute claim "existed in the very first draft" of the
I
 dossier (Q987) . This is untrue . As the Foreign Secretary has told the Committee, the 45-mmute claim
was added later . The relevant exchange is as follows :

Richard Ottaway : So it was added later?

Jack Straw: Well- that's what I'm trying to tell you .

Peter Rrcketts, FCO director-general, political, confirmed to you that in fact "there were drafts
discussed in March" - consistent with media reports at the time that the dossier would be issued that
month . But as we now know, or always have known if you believed my source, the 45 minute claim only
arnved in the dossier in September, days before it was printed .

Later the Foreign Secretary said he had been passed a note by Alastair Campbell : "Alastair Campbell
makes it clear m his letter to the Committee that the 45-minute claim was in the first draft which had
been presented to him ."

An important distinction, but a close reading of Mr Campbell's own evidence suggests - although not
conclusively - that this statement is not true either . Mr Campbell says (Q922) that the dossier was "the
product of months and months of detailed work with the intelligence agencies" (my italics .)

From a purely common-sense point of view, it would also seem implausible that the Government's
director of communications only became involved at the last minute with a draft document explicitly
intended as a communication with the public . Mr Campbell describes the dossier as "one of the most
important pieces of work developed dunng the entire build-up to the conflict" (Q916) . Are we really to
believe that he had no involvement at all with it, never even read it, in its five-to-six- month existence
before September?

The quote in Q922 above from Mr Campbell also corroborates other evidence that the document did
exist as a single "product" (albeit going through multiple drafts .)

All this must cast doubt on Mr Campbell's claim to the Committee that "the very first substantial draft
that was put forward by the JIC was very largely the basis of what was duty published and presented to
Parliament ." (Q1001 .)

On the dodgy dossier

The exchanges on the dodgy dossier offer no direct proof about my source's charges, because they all
relate to the September dossier. But since much of Mr Campbell's evidence on the dodgy dossier can be
" compared vnth other information in the public domain, it does allow us to test his use of language and
his general truthfulness .

At Q946, Sir John Stanley asks him about the "sexing up" of Dr at-Marashi's work in the February
dossier . Mr Campbell admits that it was done "for example, where `hostile groups' became 'terronst
organisations' ."

Actually, Dr al-Marashi's original words in his thesis were about "opposition groups m hostile regimes",
not hostile groups . Mr Campbell is trying to minimise the import of Downing Street's changes to Dr al-
Marasln by misrepresenting what he wrote in the first place . "Opposition groups" are not very close to
terrorists . "Hostile groups" are much closer .

On its own this does not amount to much. It could easily be a shp . But it starts to build up . Mi Campbell
also tells the Committee that "we have apologised in relation to Dr at-Marashi ." (Q994, my itals) . This
is sort of half-true - the Government has expressed general regret, if not quite apologised, for not
attributing, Dr al-Marashi's work. But it clearly gave members of the Committee - certainly Sir John
Stanley, see Q1152 - the impression that the Government had actually said sorry to Dr al-Marashi
himself AS we know, they had not .
At Q964 Mr Campbell is asked whether the Government acknowledged a mistake over the dodgy dossier
at the time the plagiarism was exposed . He replies : "The PM's spokesman m the very next briefing said,
'Something has gone wrong here, it should not have happened, mistakes have been made and we will
have to look at it."'

As the morning lobby briefing note of 7 February (on the Downing Street website) makes clear, the PM's
official spokesman did not in fact say anything like this . He said : "Some (sic) of the second section was
based on (sic) Dr al-Marashi's work which, m retrospect, we should have acknowledged . . .ln our view,
there was nothing for which we had to apologue. . .The document was solid and accurate and we stand
by it. . .We reject completely the comment that the Government [in the PM's statement on 3 Feb] misled
Parliament."

This continued to be the Government's position until the Foreign Secretary's evidence to you last week .

Some more general questions

Is the BBC's source right?

Some of the claims made by my informant were nght. His allegation that the "45-minute" claim was
from a single, uncorroborated source was right and had not been publicly known before .

My source was also right to say that the 45-minute claim was inserted into the dossier at a late stage .

My source's general claims about friction between Downing Street and the intelligence services over the
dossier, and their unhappiness wtth it, are supported by one of your other vntnesses in a position to
know. Dame Pauline, in her evidence to you, said that "there clearly was turbulence in the machine and
some people have been talking, " (Q382) though she was not sure if they were representative .

My source's general claims, and some of his specific ones, particularly those about Mr Campbell, have
also been backed by a wide body of independently-sourced reports in many newspapers after the BBC's
story . The BBC is only one of many news organisations to have reported such claims . The following are
some examples :

Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian 30 May : "Bntish intelligence sources expressed fury at Downing
Street's behaviour . They were reluctant to allow Downing Street to use their intelligence assessment
because they feared it would be manipulated for political ends . . . .Caveats . . .were swept aside by Mr
Blau, egged on by Mr Campbell, well-placed sources said."

Daniel McGrory, Times 30 May : "Senior sources say they received a barrage of phone calls from staff at
No 10 demanding more evidence . Intelligence chiefs insist that the dossier was wntten by someone
inside No 10 and not by British Intelligence . . .agents were wary that fnghtened defectors who wanted
asylum would say what the Bntish and Americans wanted to hear . . there was debate amongst
intelligence analysts whether the [45-minute source's] claims should have been passed to No 10, as
senior figures doubted whether it was true, but were under pressure to deliver 'compelhng evidence ."'

Glenn Frankell, Washington Post 30 May . "One official acknowledged that there had been what he
described as 'pressured and superheated debates at the time' between Downing Street and intelligence
officials over the contents of the dossier "

Francis Elliott, Colm Brown, Sunday Telegraph 1 June, quoted a "senior minister" as saying, "It was
Blair gilding the lily as usual . It [the 45-mm claim] was an extrapolation ."

Peter Beaumont, Gaby Hinshff, Observer 1 June: "What we are seerng is something very new, and very
3

(~f~, C (I I 'l / c~cj Lki-~

strange . MI6 is sticking its head over the parapet as much as it ever wall . . .Ml6 feels totally discredited
and used." ("source")
"MI6 feels that it has been pushed rather unvnllmgly into the limelight by the Government . It is a shot
across the bows." (a second "source")

Nick Fielding, Sunday Times 1 June, reported that the dossier was the result of a "deal after months of
bitter disagreements between intelligence chiefs and Blair's aides. Campbell had attempted to
persuade the agencies to include hard-hitting conclusions . They were reluctant to agree because they
said the case was not proven ."

One of these reporters, Peter Beaumont, foreign editor of the Observer, has since written that I
reported what was being "widety bnefed to journalists - including myself - by Ml6 officers and the
Foreign Office that Number 10, Campbell m particular, had gone out of its way to overstate the threat
posed by Iraq to make the case for war ." Mr Beaumont adds : "What [the spooks] were saying [in their
own rounds of the media] pre-war was that Iraq did not pose an immediate threat to the UK, contrary
to the September dossier's most alarming headhne. . .the same case [was] made by one of MI6's most
senior officers in meetings with editors and senior Labour figures, including Robin Cook and Clare
Short." (Beaumont, "The BBC reported what we were all told - and it was right," Observer, 29 June
2003 .) It is fair to say that Beaumont does believe I got some of the details wrong .

These are tong-standing, respected reporters in the field . It is not clear whether the Government
accuses all these people and their newspapers of being liars as well.

The other specific claims are disputed - including the claim that that insertion was made under pressure
from Downing Street officials ; that the dossier was sexed up at Alastair Campbell's behest; that the
Government knew the 45-minute point was probably wrong before it put it in, and his claim that the
point was inserted "against our wishes ."

The assertions of the Government witnesses, however vehement, that our source's claims are untrue
are no substitute for evidence that they are untrue . No such evidence has, to my knowledge, yet been
produced to the Committee . Curously, evidence does exist which would allow the Committee to make a
better judgment on some of the disputed claims (the drafts of the dossier, access to intelligence
officials .) But it is being withheld by the Government .

Do remember what my source never claimed . Contrary to almost continual Government

misrepresentation of our story, he never claimed that anybody tied, only that they exaggerated their
information and suppressed doubts about its accuracy . He never claimed that any of the claims in the
dossier were made up by the Government, Alastair Campbell or anyone else . He always made clear that
they were based on real, but unreliable, intelligence information .

The BBC's decision to run the story

They are sending you a memo about this but basically it boils down to :

The BBC's defence of its reporting is exactly the same as the Prime Minister's defence of the 45-minute
claim . We both believe our information to be credible, even though it comes from a single source

However, there are also many important differences between us Unlike the source for the 45-minute
claim, my source's claims were made more credible by a large body of contextual evidence already in
the public domain . This included :

" the Government's admitted embellishment, or sexing-up, of the February dossier ;

" the failure of the September dossier's claims to be borne out by evidence in Iraq;
" the disquiet already expressed by intelligence sources to many )ournalists, including myself, about
4

~ 0 c / c ~~. / o 0 Z,,~_
 the Government's use of intelligence material on Iraq
the fact that, as the Committee has noted, the claims
were noticeably harder than those in the body text;
the virtual disappearance of the "45-mmute claim" m
publication, despite the Government's urgent need to
below) .
(see above) ;
made in the executive summary of the dossier
the weeks and months after the dossier's
make a case for action against Iraq (see

All these played a part in the BBC's decision to publish the story . If there is a similar body of contextual
evidence which can support the Government's decision to publish the 45-minute claim, it has yet to be
presented or described to the Committee by the Government.

Denials

Campbell told the Ctte Downing Street had denied the story within an hour of the broadcast - this is
untrue . They denied only allegations which the source never made, such as that the 45-mmute claim
was not intelligence material, or that it had been made up . They didn't deny the substantive allegations
for six days .

They still are denying things on the basis of subtly and not so subtly misrepresenting what our story said
- for instance they deny that Campbell made changes to the drafts when the actual claim was that the
changes were made "at his behest" - ie the spooks did it, under orders, but they weren't happy about it.
Less subtly they keep saying we say they lied - the source's actual charge was of exaggeration, not lying.

Other things

- On June 4th the Pnme Minister told Parliament: "I stand entirety by the dossier and the intelligence
contained in it ." Yet m the same debate Mr Blair also said that he was "not in a position to say"
whether the uranium-from-Africa claim, part of the dossier, was in fact true. "Until we investigate
properly, we are simply not in a position to say whether that is so," he added. What exactly is the
Government's position on this claim?

- The 45-minute and uranium claims were the most newsworthy aspects of the Government's case on 24
September . Both received saturation coverage in all the next day's newspapers . However, after that
week, ministers almost never mentioned them again. In the nearly six months between October 1" 2002
and the outbreak of war, we can trace no further mentions at all by ministers of the uranium claim and
only two further mentions of the 45-minute claim . There was no mention of either claim by any minister
in the severat House of Commons debates on Iraq over this period - even though they had a lot of
persuading to do. The Pnme Minister never mentioned either claim again .

C, c~c 1( :~/ 0o z t~ fd