Andrew Gilligan: hero of journalism…

Andrew Gil­ligan takes one more chance to defend him­self at CiF:

Although Hut­ton was, of course, a tac­tical tri­umph for [Alastair Camp­bell], with a knock­out vic­tory in the report and three good BBC scalps, it was an unpar­alleled stra­tegic dis­aster. If his aim in tak­ing us on was to dis­prove my story about the sexed-up dossier and restore trust in Tony Blair, it simply could not have been more counter-productive.

Here is Gil­ligan, who gave David Kelly up to John Maples and Richard Ott­away on the For­eign Affairs Select Com­mit­tee [PDF here]. Just read the email to them in full if you have any linger­ing regard for him as a journ­al­ist. Here it is:

John and Richard,

We have been doing some research on David Kelly. Aside from the MoD’s red her­ring of a source-hunt, he is an extremely inter­est­ing wit­ness in his own right — prob­ably, if he answers fully, the best you’ll have had.

• He is described in one of the stand­ard ref­er­ence works (Tom Man­gold and Jeff Gold­berg, Plague Wars) as “the senior adviser on bio­lo­gical war­fare to the MoD . . the West’s lead­ing bio­lo­gical war­fare inspector” with “world recog­nised expert­ise in every aspect of bio­lo­gical war­fare [whose] know­ledge can­not be overtrumped.”
• As has been repor­ted, he was the chief field inspector of UNSCOM, the pre­de­cessor to UNMOVIC. He led the first and last BW inspec­tions in Iraq car­ried out by UNSCOM.
• He was one of three offi­cials who accom­pan­ied Jack Straw when Straw gave evid­ence to the FAC about Iraq’s WMD pro­grammes on Septem­ber 25 2002, one day after pub­lic­a­tion of the Blair dossier. He said hardly any­thing, how­ever, Straw did all the talking.
• We believe he is cur­rently the chief Brit­ish inspector on the Iraq Sur­vey Group (the No.2 Brit in the Group under Bri­gadier John Dever­ell, the Brit­ish con­tin­gent commander)

Ques­tions for Kelly

What is the cur­rent state of the Iraq Sur­vey Group’s know­ledge about Iraq’s BW pro­gramme? Have you found any­thing?
Did you believe in Septem­ber 2002 that Iraq was an imme­di­ate danger?
Was every­one happy about the inclu­sion of the 45 minute point in the dossier in the light of what’s been dis­covered since?
Did you know the 45-minute point was single-source?
Were there any argu­ments between the intel­li­gence ser­vices and No 10 over the dossier?

Above all, he should be asked to say what kind of a threat Iraq was in Septem­ber 2002 in his opin­ion. If he is able to answer frankly it should be dev­ast­at­ing. Obvi­ously he works for the Gov­ern­ment and who pays the piper calls the tune. But if you could put some of these quotes (par­tic­u­larly the Watts) to him I think it would have some impact.

He is on record as say­ing that Iraq was NOT the greatest WMD threat. Leak­age from the Rus­sian pro­grammes, he believed, was a greater threat.

For instance, CBC (Cana­dian TV), 23 Octo­ber 2002. “Leak­age from Rus­sia is the greatest threat, because Rus­sia had a ded­ic­ated pro­gramme and a great under­stand­ing of how you use small­pox as a volat­ile weapon.”

On 18 Oct 2001, at the height of the US anthrax scare, Kelly told The Inde­pend­ent that if sus­pi­cion fell on any coun­try as the source of the US anthrax “the obvi­ous one is Rus­sia, it’s a league ahead of Iraq.” He also said that Iraq had “too much at stake” to take part in any action against the West.

He also told my col­league Susan Watts, sci­ence editor of News­night (who described him as “a senior offi­cial intim­ately involved with the pro­cess of put­ting together the dossier”):

“In the run-up to the dossier, the Gov­ern­ment was obsessed with find­ing intel­li­gence to jus­tify an imme­di­ate Iraqi threat. While we were agreed on the poten­tial Iraq threat in the future, there was less agreement.

“That was the real con­cern — not so much what they had now, but what they would have in the future. But that unfor­tu­nately was not expressed strongly in the dossier, because that takes the case away for war to a cer­tain extent .…’”

“[The 45 minutes point] was a state­ment that was made and it got out of all pro­por­tion. They were des­per­ate for inform­a­tion, They were push­ing hard for inform­a­tion that could be released. That was one that popped up and it was seized on, and it’s unfor­tu­nate that it was. That is why there is the argu­ment between the intel­li­gence ser­vices and No 10, because they picked up on it and once they’d picked up on it you can’t pull it back from them. So many people were say­ing ‘well, we’re not sure about that’ … because the word-smithing is actu­ally quite important.”

Does he still agree with this?

Is Kelly our source?

We are not rul­ing any­one in or out as the source. I had many con­ver­sa­tions with people inside and out­side the intel­li­gence com­munity about the issue of Iraqi WMD and the dossier. We sus­pect the MoD of play­ing games to try to elim­in­ate names.

How­ever — if, as the MoD has said, Kelly’s involve­ment in the dossier was only tan­gen­tial, he can­not be our source. Two of my source’s claims which have proved to be true — that the 45-minute point derived from a single inform­ant, and that it came in late — have been shown to be true. Such facts could only have been known to someone closely involved in com­pil­ing the dossier until a late stage.

Andrew

As Gil­ligan told the Hut­ton Inquiry:

Q. … Is there any­thing you want to say about that e-mail to this Inquiry?

A. Yes. It was quite wrong to send it and I can only apo­lo­gise. I did not even know for sure that David Kelly was Susan Watts’ source. I was under an enorm­ous amount of pres­sure at the time and I simply was not think­ing straight, so I really do want to apo­lo­gise for that

And the con­ver­sa­tion that star­ted it all off? Lord Hut­ton was of this opin­ion on the mat­ter of Andrew Gilligan’s cred­ib­il­ity:

Hav­ing heard and con­sidered Mr Gilligan’s evid­ence about how there came to be two ver­sions of his dis­cus­sion with Dr Kelly on his per­sonal organ­iser, and how he lost his manu­script note which he made the next day, and how his memory of his dis­cus­sion with Dr Kelly is not now entirely clear, I have con­sid­er­able doubt as to how reli­able Mr Gilligan’s evid­ence is as regards what Dr Kelly said to him…

Gil­ligan gave up his source, and mis­rep­res­en­ted him. He didn’t kill Kelly, he just betrayed him. And instead of aton­ing for that betrayal, he hides it beneath a con­tinual gush of self-justifying cant.

That’s just my opin­ion, of course.

Tagged as: BBC, journalism history