Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Iraq/BBC.
Iraq/BBC
Asked what action Downing Street would be taking in the light of the fact that the BBC’s Director of News, Richard Sambrook, had failed to meet Alastair Campbell’s deadline to respond to the questions he had posed yesterday, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that the fact that these simple, straight-forward questions had not been answered did not mean that they had gone away. Clearly they hadn’t. In addition, it was not as though the BBC had not had a considerable length of time to look at these issues. The story had first been broadcast on 29 May. Given the fact that the content of this story had been subject to global reporting and scrutiny, and given the fact that Mr Sambrook had been engaged in fairly lengthy correspondence with Mr Campbell, one would think that it would be a relatively straight-forward process to provide answers to the questions we had put - especially since some only required simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses. They would have to be answered at some point in any event. Questioned as to whether the BBC had asked Andrew Gilligan the name of his source and if he had been advised that he should have had extra sourcing to back up the first claim, the PMOS said that he knew nothing about any of the procedures the BBC might have put in place to investigate the matter. These were questions best directed to the BBC. All he was going on was the certainty with which these claims appeared to have been knocked back by Mr Sambrook, which would seem to indicate they had looked at them - in which case they should surely be able to answer the questions. Asked if any of the BBC’s letters had stated that they had quizzed Mr Gilligan, the PMOS said that he had no intention of briefing on the correspondence that had been sent. He was simply making a fair assumption that the BBC had delved into the matter in considerable detail given the volume of correspondence between Mr Sambrook and Mr Campbell, and that it was therefore not unreasonable to expect them to answer the questions we had put fairly quickly.
Put to him that Mr Campbell’s deadline yesterday had implied that follow-up action would be taken if it was not met, the PMOS repeated that the questions were not going to go away. As Mr Campbell’s letter to Mr Sambrook showed, the reason for the deadline was the fact that the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FAC) had, not unreasonably, asked for additional material by today. Mr Campbell would be sending a letter today to the FAC responding to the questions raised by the Committee through the Clerk.
In answer to further questions, the PMOS took the opportunity to make a general observation about the whole affair. He pointed out that were we to say that we stood by our story and then refused to answer questions about it, we would come under huge criticism - especially if it was over four weeks since the story had first been broadcast. When this false story had first broken - at 6am on 29 May - we had been contacted within minutes by news organisations from around the world and had subsequently issued a denial within an hour - a denial that had been endorsed by the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). Since then, we had had to answer question after question after question about this false story. Of course it was perfectly legitimate for the Government to be subject to scrutiny. That was entirely right and proper. But in this instance, given we had categorically denied the story with the authority of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Chairman of the JIC and the heads of the intelligence agencies, it was not unreasonable to expect the BBC, over four weeks later, to answer some pretty straightforward questions about it themselves - particularly since we could presume, given the correspondence between Mr Campbell and Mr Sambrook, that there had obviously been a fair amount of internal examination of the issue by the BBC. Questioned further, the PMOS pointed out that it was perfectly possible for an organisation to stand by its staff - which by and large was an honourable thing to do for all senior management - as well as admit to mistakes and apologise for them. The two were not mutually exclusive. When Mr Campbell had appeared before the FAC on Wednesday, he had apologised for a mistake that had been made in relation to the second briefing paper and had said that he took responsibility for what had happened. Obviously we were perfectly happy to be subject to scrutiny. But the reason why we were taking this matter so seriously was because the BBC’s allegation had called into question the integrity of the Prime Minister, the intelligence services and the Government as a whole. Interestingly, the BBC’s Political Editor, Andrew Marr, had told the Ten O’clock News last night that, "This comes down, in the nitty gritty, to the question of whether it is right to report somebody saying something even if you yourself are not absolutely sure whether what he is saying is true". By any definition of journalism, if somebody told a journalist something, that journalist was duty-bound to check out its veracity by putting in calls to all the relevant people before going straight onto air and broadcasting it as fact. Put to him by the BBC that Mr Marr’s comment had been made in reference to the assumption that someone in the intelligence services had talked, the PMOS said that he had not been criticising Mr Marr. He had simply been making the point that it was one thing to say that standing by a story meant that what had been said had been reported faithfully. There was a completely separate point as to whether what had been said was accurate and true, which was what this whole issue boiled down to. That was the nitty gritty of this particular story - and it was not true. It was false. By the one definition, it was perfectly possible to ’stand by’ any story whether it was true or not. But that was hardly the point.
Asked if Downing Street had any other recourse to resort to in the light of the BBC’s failure to comply with Mr Campbell’s deadline, the PMOS said that we would continue to raise these issues. In the end, people would have to reach a judgement as to whether the BBC were answering the questions we had put - and if not, what that said given they were so straightforward and simple. He noted that some people were suggesting that the Government was using this matter as some sort of diversionary tactic. That had to be the biggest load of codswallop since the story itself began. We had had to answer hundreds of questions in different fora over the last twenty-eight days or so. The suggestion that we were now asking some questions in return as some sort of diversionary tactic was, frankly, completely ridiculous. It seemed to be perfectly legitimate that those had broadcast this false story should be subject to scrutiny about it. Asked whether we might turn to the Press Complaints Commission for assistance, the PMOS noted that the BBC had said that they were not going to answer these questions to our timetable. We presumed that did not meant that they were not going to answer them at all - but would do so in their own time. Everyone was waiting. Ignoring them would not make them go away. We hoped that would be sooner rather than later. Asked if we had requested an apology and a withdrawal, the PMOS said that given this story was 100% wrong, it was surely not unreasonable to expect such a thing. Asked if we were considering sanctions against the BBC, such as the withdrawal of the licence fee, the PMOS said that he hadn’t heard such a thing being discussed. He repeated that while the BBC had said that they would not respond to the questions we had put by the deadline Mr Campbell had set out, they hadn’t said they weren’t going to respond. We would have to wait and see what would happen. Asked to rule out the possibility of any sanctions being imposed against the BBC, the PMOS repeated that no one was talking about any such thing. This was about the BBC being big enough to admit that it had made a mistake. People did not think the worst of organisations that put their hands up when they got something wrong. In this instance, the BBC had made a mistake. That was the truth of it - no matter how much prevarication they wished to insert into this particular story. Asked if we would set a new deadline for the BBC to respond, the PMOS said that it was not unreasonable to expect these questions to be answered sooner rather than later given the fact that some of them required simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. This was not rocket science. It was now more than four weeks since the story had first been broadcast. It should be perfectly possible to answer the questions. Asked if he could rule out the possibility that Downing Street would make a complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Commission, the PMOS said that we were currently still in correspondence with Mr Sambrook.
Put to him that it was hypocritical for Downing Street to criticise the BBC for running a story based on one source when the 45-minute claim had also been based on a single source, the PMOS said that to make that comparison was to completely misunderstand the point of the whole issue. As we had underlined from the outset, the intelligence judgements in the September dossier had been taken by the JIC because they were the experts in this field. The JIC included the heads - and most senior representatives - of all the intelligence agencies. As Mr Campbell had told the FAC on Wednesday, if something was good enough for them, it was also good enough for us. They were the experts. The point about the BBC story was that it had not been run past anyone in Downing Street or those authorised to speak for the intelligence services in advance, as far as he was aware. Was it really being suggested that it was legitimate for the media to report an unverified - and ultimately untrue - story based on a single source - and then stand by it without further explanation when it had been denied within an hour with the authority of the JIC and subsequently by the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and others.
Asked about Mr Campbell’s letter to the FAC today, whether he would attach any documents as evidence and whether it would be published, the PMOS said that the letter would answer the questions that had been put to him. Asked if that meant that no additional documents would be attached, the PMOS said that as he understood it, a long letter was being sent to the Committee following consultation with the JIC, as you would expect. What the FAC did with it after that was entirely a matter for them. Questioned as to whether Mr Campbell had agreed to the FAC’s request to provide the first draft of the September dossier, the PMOS repeated that Mr Campbell was responding to the Committee’s questions by letter today. Asked if the JIC had allowed the first draft to be submitted as evidence, the PMOS said that what was being sent today was being sent with the full knowledge and approval of the JIC.
Questioned about the 45-minute claim in the light of the Foreign Secretary’s evidence to the FAC this morning, the PMOS said that the 45-minute point had been included in the first draft which had been presented by the Chairman of the JIC after he had taken responsibility for the operation. Mr Campbell had been asked to supply the Committee with evidence for that - and had done so in his letter, which would of course be cleared by the JIC Chair. Asked how many different drafts Mr Campbell would have seen during the production of the dossier, the PMOS said that given drafting changes were one of the issues raised by the Committee, this would no doubt be covered in his letter to the FAC. The allegation that we had ‘inserted’, ‘exaggerated’, ’sexed up’, included information which we had known to be wrong - and which we had known the intelligence services had known to be wrong - was totally false. That was the central point once everything else had been stripped away. As Mr Campbell was making clear in his letter today, the 45-minute point had been in the first draft which had been presented to us by the JIC. No one in Downing Street had inserted or exaggerated it. The judgements that had been made had been taken by the JIC. Asked when Mr Campbell had first seen the initial draft, the PMOS said that as was well known, the JIC had taken over the leadership of the production of the dossier from the FCO after it had been decided that intelligence should form the basis of it. The JIC Chairman had taken responsibility for drawing up the contents. Put to him that Mr Straw had said this morning that the 45-minute claim had not been included in the March version of the dossier, the PMOS repeated that the first draft presented by the JIC had included the 45-minute point. It had not been inserted, exaggerated or put in at Downing Street’s request. That was what mattered.
Asked if Mr Straw’s assertion this morning that he ‘hoped’ WMD would be found was an indication that the Government was rowing away from its initial confidence that it would be found, the PMOS said that Mr Straw’s comments were entirely consistent with what we had been saying from the outset. We remained confident that the evidence existed and that it would be brought forward in due course. The International Survey Group had only started its work in the last two to three weeks. In answer to further questions, the PMOS pointed that when people asked us on what basis we had gone to war, they were ignoring the fact that it was actually Saddam Hussein who had been in violation of countless UN Resolutions in respect of his WMD programmes. Contrary to what some people wanted to believe and how it was presented, we had not suddenly chanced upon these issues last September. The issue of Iraq and its WMD programme had been of concern to the international community for a long time - going as far back as the gassing of the Kurds at Halabja following the Gulf War in the early 1990s.
Asked if Downing Street agreed with the assessment of General John Abizaid, General Tommy Franks’ successor, who had told a US Senate Committee this week that he found it ‘genuinely perplexing’ that no WMD had been found in Iraq, the PMOS said that our first priority had always been the post-conflict reconstruction of a country that had been brought to its knees by a brutal dictator. The work of the International Survey Group was continuing. In the meantime, we remained confident that evidence of the existence of WMD would be found and brought forward at the appropriate time.
Asked for a reaction to suggestions that the Prime Minister had deliberately snubbed a senior BBC correspondent during yesterday’s press conference with President Putin, the PMOS said that the story was 100% untrue. It went without saying that Bridget Kendall was a very distinguished BBC correspondent, but the Prime Minister had wanted to call on a member of the foreign press to ask a question in the light of the fact that his meeting with President Putin had amounted to an international summit.
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