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Letter
from Richard Sambrook, Director, BBC News to Alastair Campbell
Dear
Alastair
Thank
you for your letter of 26 June. I chose not to reply yesterday as
I wanted time to examine fully the questions you asked and to write
a considered reply. That was not possible in the timescale you gave
me.
Before I answer
the questions in detail I wish to explain the wider context in which
we came to broadcast the story in question. I will summarise this
under three headings:
•
Your general claim that the BBC's reporting of the war and the events
both before and after was biased.
•
The impact of your February dossier being discredited.
•
The general concern expressed by members of the security services
that intelligence reports were being exaggerated.
1.
Allegations of biased reporting
In
your evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee you made it
clear that you believed the BBC had an anti-war agenda.
It
is our firm view that Number Ten tried to intimidate the BBC in
its reporting of events leading up to the war and during the course
of the war itself.
As
we told you in correspondence before the war started, our responsibility
was to present an impartial picture and you were not best placed
to judge what was impartial.
This
was particularly the case given the widescale opposition to the
war in the UK at that time, including significant opposition inside
the Parliamentary Labour Party.
For
example, you will remember when the key division on the war took
place in the House of Commons in March you wrote to me to suggest
that we had given too much prominence to the vote which recorded
the largest backbench parliamentary revolt in modern history.
During
the war you again accused us of unfairness – in particular
criticising our reporting from Baghdad.
You
know that we strongly dispute that charge and the BBC's Board of
Governors, after detailed discussion both during and after the war,
have expressed their complete satisfaction with the impartiality
of BBC News coverage.
In
your evidence to the Select Committee you extended your attack on
our journalism suggesting that we have been animated by a rationale
"that the Prime Minister led the country to war on a false
basis".
It
seems you have missed the many reports we have filed from Iraq about
mass graves, torture and political repression – evidence which
has been used to justify the war.
2.
The February Dossier
It
is impossible to discuss our reporting of the September 2002 dossier
without seeing it in the context of what we knew by then of the
February 2003 dossier - the dossier which even the Foreign Secretary
described as "a complete Horlicks" earlier this week.
What
was by then clear was that your department had plagiarised an article
from the internet, based on an old University thesis, changed crucial
parts of it and then used it unattributed to strengthen the case
for Britain going to war.
That
was the provenance of the February dossier – which might still
stand were it not for the intervention of a Cambridge academic.
The discrediting
of the February dossier inevitably influenced questions asked about
any similar dossiers. In these circumstances any decent journalist
would inevitably question whether similar tactics had been used
when writing the earlier dossier.
In addition,
in early March, the Director General of the IAEA, Dr Mohammed El
Baradei, described the documents on which an important claim in
the September dossier was based (the Niger uranium claim) as "not
authentic" - and indeed cast doubt on other aspects of the
September dossier's claims about a nuclear weapons programmes.
We
thus made a judgement that the information provided by the source
fitted into a pattern of concerns - and that it was perfectly proper
to report the allegations made by Andrew Gilligan's source.
Your
correspondence and evidence to the FAC ignores this background –
which is central to any understanding of the BBC's journalism.
3.
Unease in the Security Services
As
we have told you before, a number of BBC journalists who have close
contact with both the military and the security services had reported
that their contacts were concerned that intelligence reports were
being exaggerated to strengthen the case against Saddam Hussein.
In
particular they were saying that whilst low scale Weapons of Mass
Destruction existed they did not pose the level of threat the government
was suggesting.
Many
journalists in other news organisations were receiving similar briefings.
For example:
Peter
Beaumont and Gaby Hinsliff wrote (Observer 24 February 2003) of
disagreement between the intelligence services and Downing Street
- "the essence of the disagreement is said to have been that
intelligence material should be presented 'straight' rather than
spiced up to make a political argument."
Their
article also talks about "fairly serious rows" between
at least one member of the JIC and Alastair Campbell.
Raymond
Whittaker (Independent on Sunday 27 April) wrote of "a high
level UK source" saying that "intelligence agencies on
both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave
political leaders were distorted".
He
went on to write: "You cannot just cherry- pick evidence that
suits your case and ignore the rest. It is a cardinal rule of intelligence,"
said one aggrieved officer. "Yet that is what the PM is doing."
Another
said: "What we have is a few strands of highly circumstantial
evidence, and to justify an attack on Iraq it is being presented
as a cast-iron case. That really is not good enough."
Richard
Norton-Taylor, Guardian 30 May: "British 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 Blair, 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 written by someone
inside No 10 and not by British Intelligence...agents were wary
that frightened defectors who wanted asylum would say what the British
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 'compelling 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."
Peter
Beaumont, Gaby Hinsliff, Observer 1 June: "What we are seeing
is something very new, and very strange. MI6 is sticking its head
over the parapet as much as it ever will...MI6 feels totally discredited
and used." ("source")
"MI6
feels that it has been pushed rather unwillingly 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."
Furthermore
on 22 March, the UN Chief Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix, criticised
the manipulation of intelligence to make the case for war - accusing
the coalition of using "shaky" evidence.
Robin
Cook - soon after his resignation - echoed that, questioning the
Government's evidence (such as that in the September dossier) that
Iraq presented an imminent threat: "it was difficult to believe
that Saddam had the capacity to hit us."
It was in this
context that we judged that reporting the claim made by Andrew Gilligan's
source was in the public interest.
Having
dealt with the context, let me turn now to the report on the Today
programme. This week you have misrepresented our journalism.
•
You have said we accused the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary
and other ministers of lying. We have not.
•
You have said the BBC deliberately accused the Prime Minister of
misleading the House of Commons and of leading the country into
war on a false basis. We have not.
•
You have accused the BBC of damaging the integrity of the political
process. We believe we have done the opposite.
The
nub of what the BBC reported was:
•
unease among some of the intelligence community about the use of
intelligence in government dossiers
•
the assertion of one senior and credible source – who has
proved reliable in the past - that the "45 minute claim"
was wrong and was inserted late into the dossier.
In response
to this we have provided the Government with frequent and ample
opportunities to state their position and rebut the allegations
and this you have done. This is a perfectly fair and proper journalistic
process which we stand by.
Now
to your questions and I make no apology for repeating some of the
points I have just made.
- Does
the BBC still stand by the allegation it made on 29 May that Number
10 added in the 45 minute claim to the dossier ?
The
allegation was not made by the BBC but by our source – a senior
official involved in the compilation of the dossier - and the BBC
stands by the reporting of it.
Andrew Gilligan
made it clear that according to his source the 45 minute claim was
real, but unreliable, intelligence information.
We do not report
everything that every source tells us. In this instance we believe
that the source is credible and that it was legitimate to place
his concerns in the public domain given what we knew of the February
dossier and the other points I have listed above. We stand by this
decision.
- Does
it still stand by the allegation made on the same day that we did
so against the wishes of the intelligence agencies?
Again
we reported accurately what we had been told by the source that
the 45 minute claim was included in the dossier "against our
wishes."
- Does
it still stand by the allegation made on that day that both we and
the intelligence agencies knew the 45 minute claim to be wrong and
inserted it despite knowing that.
Andrew
Gilligan accurately reported the source telling him that the government
"probably knew that the 45 minute figure was wrong" and
that the claim was "questionable."
The
basis for this assertion by Andrew Gilligan's source was that the
information about the 45 minute claim had been derived from only
one intelligence source - whereas most of the other claims in the
dossier had at least two. Gilligan's source also believed this single
Iraqi source had probably got the information wrong.
-
Does it still stand by the allegation, again on the same day, that
we ordered the September dossier to be 'sexed up' in the period
leading up to its publication – and that Gilligan found what
Humphreys (sic) called "evidence" that it was "cobbled
together at the last minute with some unconfirmed material that
had not been approved by the security services?"
We
stand by our reporting of the source as saying that the dossier
was "sexed up" and that had happened at a late stage in
its preparation – and that the "sexing up" relied
on uncorroborated material not approved of by all in the intelligence
agencies.
I note
today that Mr Peter Ricketts, Director General of the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office has told the Foreign Affairs Committee that
the "45 minute" claim was not in the first draft of the
dossier.
-
Does it still stand by the statement made on 6 June that the JIC
is not part of the intelligence community, but a Number 10 committee
which exists to arbitrate between government and the intelligence
services?
We never said
that the JIC was not part of the intelligence community. What we
actually said was the JIC is not the same thing as the intelligence
services.
- Does
it still stand by the claim on 3 June that the chairman of the JIC
only kind of "bureaucratically signed off his report?"
It
would have been better if Andrew Gilligan had attributed this answer
to his source and that was a slip on the day. However he had frequently
reminded the audience that claims were derived from the source.
What
Andrew Gilligan did in this section of the report was to acknowledge
that the JIC chairman had indeed 'signed off' on the dossier –
but that did not of itself mean that all members of the intelligence
services were happy with its contents.
Further
we know from other sources that some senior members of the intelligence
community were reluctant to use intelligence material in this way.
-
How many sources was the original "45 minute" allegation
being added in based on? Was it one source or more than one source?
You will be aware of the BBC Guidelines on this.
I have
repeatedly made it clear that the particular allegations made in
Andrew Gilligan's report of the 29 May came from one source and
I have outlined why we felt it appropriate to broadcast the information.
The
audience was told time and again on the 29 May that the criticism
of the dossier's compilation was being made by one source.
The
source was credible and what he chose to tell Andrew Gilligan was
highly plausible given what we knew by then about the preparation
of the February "dodgy dossier".
Other
journalists, including some within the BBC, had been told of concerns
held in the intelligence community about the way intelligence was
used in the run-up to war in Iraq – and they had been told
this by sources other than the one who spoke to Andrew Gilligan.
In
the light of this it would have been wrong for the BBC to decide
not to put into the public domain the information provided to Andrew
Gilligan by his source - and we did so with transparent attribution
to a single source.
As for your
point about the BBC Guidelines let me quote:
"Programmes
should be reluctant to rely on only one source."
That
is true. The BBC would have preferred it if the source had been
on the record. But you well know that in this field sources very
rarely – if ever - choose to speak on the record. I do not
accept your inference that means we cannot publish information on
intelligence matters if only derived from one source – particularly
in light of what we knew about the February dossier.
There is a clear
editorial procedure involving referral up to senior managers which
was followed in this case.
We
also note that Adam Ingram told us on May 29 that your "45
minute" claim is based on a single uncorroborated intelligence
source.
- Is
that source on the JIC and do you agree that any source not on the
JIC did not have the full picture?
I do not intend
to say anything more about our source. You well know that it is
a matter of principle for us not to reveal our sources. I will do
nothing to help you in this regard.
- Was
the source, as Gilligan has said, "a senior official involved
in drawing up the dossier," or is he, as you said today, a
source "in the intelligence services?" I'm sure you at
least understand the significance of the difference to which I am
alluding.
I refer you
to my previous answer.
- Is
it now normal BBC practice not to seek to corroborate single source
stories?
Of course we
would prefer corroboration. The fact remains that we made a judgement
about whether in the particular circumstances it was appropriate
to place the allegations made by our source into the public domain.
I have already outlined the context which justified this decision.
- Finally
do you believe that Gilligan's statement to the FAC that all he
had ever alleged was that we gave "undue prominence" to
the 45 minute point, or do you share my views that it is utterly
inconsistent with what he and others or the BBC have said and what
Gilligan has said, writing as a BBC journalist in the Mail on Sunday,
The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator?
It
is incorrect to say all Andrew Gilligan ever said to the FAC was
the single charge made by the source. His evidence was more wide
ranging and it corresponds with what was broadcast. I quote from
his evidence to the FAC:
Q450
Sir John Stanley: "You are making, Mr Gilligan, a very, very
serious allegation against the integrity of the JIC. The entire
---"
Mr
Gilligan: "I am not making any allegations. I would repeat,
as I have said throughout, I am not making any allegations. My source
made the allegations. We were reporting the charge of my source,
who is a figure sufficiently senior and credible to be worth reporting.
"
I reported the source as saying there was unhappiness within the
intelligence services, disquiet within the intelligence services."
Q455
Sir John Stanley: "In terms of your evidence to this Committee,
the only piece of evidence which you are specifying was allegedly
made at the last minute subject to a political requirement to "sex
it up", to use your phrase, is the 45 minute claim?"
Mr
Gilligan: "That was the only specific piece of evidence that
my source discussed, yes."
Sir
John Stanley: "Thank you."
Q456
Mr Olner: "So the rest of the evidence that was in the dossier
was reliable? By implication, if your source said he was not happy
about the 45 minute thing then he was happy with the rest of it."
Mr
Gilligan: "The fact that my source was not specifically unhappy
with other elements of the dossier does not necessarily mean that
other elements of the dossier were reliable. Of course it might
mean that, but I do not think anything can be drawn from it the
other way."
Q552
Mr Chidgey: "So the only degree of certainty that your source
has or had was that he did not believe the 45 minutes?"
Mr
Gilligan: "No, as I say, my source was reasonably sure, as
are all the other intelligence people I have spoken to, that Iraq
had a WMD programme of some description, but it was smaller and
less of an imminent threat than that claimed by the Government.
That was the view of my source and the view of several other people's
sources in the rest of the media and indeed other sources I have
spoken to, intelligence and non-intelligence.
"The
words of my source was that it was transformed in the week before
it was published to make it sexier. Given all that you have said
and given the other things I have described, I think that is a credible
allegation."
As
for newspaper articles – Andrew has not written on this subject
for The Sunday Telegraph. The only significant difference in any
piece he has written is when he wrote in the Mail on Sunday that
the source had indicated your own involvement in the story.
- Finally,
have you seen today's Spectator, in which Mr Gilligan, writing not
in a personal capacity but as a BBC correspondent writes an article
concluding that the Prime Minister is a 'push over' in his relations
with President Putin. Is
that the BBC view? If it is a personal view, could you tell me what
rule governs what BBC correspondents may or may not write in a freelance
capacity to boost their BBC earnings? What are the procedures and
were they followed in relation to this article? I am interested
too, in respect of the many BBC journalists who boost their incomes
by writing for national newspapers, what procedures govern their
conducts and this writings? (sic) You will be aware that MPs have
also expressed concern on this.
This
piece was submitted in advance to an appropriate editorial manager
as is our procedure. Our guidelines on conflicts of interest cover
what our journalists are allowed to write. These guidelines are
in the public domain. As for this specific article the BBC does
not impose a single view on its correspondents.
Alastair,
I have set out my views at considerable length . You will see that
I do not accept the validity of your attacks on our journalism and
on Andrew Gilligan in particular.
We
have to believe that you are conducting a personal vendetta against
a particular journalist whose reports on a number of occasions have
caused you discomfort.
Given
the context described in the first part of my letter and given the
credibility of our source are you really suggesting that an independent
broadcaster should have suppressed this story because it only had
one source?
In
my previous letter to you (16 June) I drew your attention to our
complaints procedure and invited you to make a formal complaint
if you so wished.
You
chose to ignore this. That avenue remains open. I should also say
that if the information provided by our source is proved to be incorrect
we would make the fact very clearly known to our audiences and we
would express regret. As we stand today, that is simply not the
case.
Yours sincerely,
Richard
Sambrook
Director, BBC News
Notes
to Editors
Letter
from Stephen Whittle, Controller, Editorial Policy, BBC to Ben Bradshaw
MP (03.07.03)
Letter
from Richard Sambrook, Director BBC News, to Ben Bradshaw MP
(29.06.03)
Letter
from Andrew Gilligan, Today programme Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent,
to Phil Woolas, Deputy Leader of the House of Commons
(28.06.03)
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