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Letter
from Andrew Gilligan, Today programme Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent,
to Phil Woolas, Deputy Leader of the House of Commons
Dear
Mr Woolas
On
Thursday you made the extremely serious allegation that I had "misled"
Parliament in my evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee.
You
have clearly not read my evidence, or else have disregarded it.
In
the words of your letter to me:
"You
claimed [to the committee] that the only allegation you had made
against the Government was that it gave 'undue prominence' to the
point about 45 minutes.
"I
am afraid it would appear that you misled the FAC.
"The
allegations you actually made were far more varied and far more
grave….what you said to the FAC is not consistent with what you
said to the BBC, the Mail on Sunday and others.
"It
is now clear that you and the BBC are in full retreat from the original
allegations because you know them to be untrue."
Your
claims against me are wholly false and are based on the blatant
misrepresentation and selective quotation of my evidence.
Nowhere
in my evidence do I say that "undue prominence" was my
source's only charge.
As
the transcript, available on the Internet, makes clear, I also repeated
to the Committee the charges of my source that the dossier had been
sexed up; that the 45-minute claim was uncorroborated and considered
unreliable; that it was included in the dossier, in the words of
the source, "against our wishes"; that the intelligence
services were unhappy with the general tone and tenor of the dossier
because, in the words of my source, it "did not reflect the
considered view they were putting forward"; and that the dossier
had been transformed just before it was published at the behest
of Downing Street.
I specifically
repeated my source's charge about Alastair Campbell's involvement
in that transformation.
As
the BBC has made clear on Thursday, in great detail on Friday, and
again today, we stand by our story. Do
you still stand by your claim that you read my evidence?
In
the light of the incontrovertible evidence of what I said to the
Committee, I regard the allegation in your letter, which was released
to the Press Association long before it reached me, as defamatory,
casting grave doubt on my professional integrity and honesty.
Unlike
the claims made by Alastair Campbell against me in the Committee
on Wednesday, your claim is not protected by parliamentary privilege.
I now
require a full apology and retraction of your claims, which were
widely reported on Friday morning, are entirely unsupported by evidence
and were clearly intended to blacken my character.
In
the absence of this I will have no option but to put the matter
in the hands of my lawyers.
I should
make clear that I write this letter with the full knowledge and
support of the BBC.
Yours
sincerely,
Andrew
Gilligan
Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent
The Today Programme
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 Richard Sambrook, Director, BBC News to Alastair Campbell
(27.06.03)
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