Do I win a prize?
Very interesting transcript, isn’t it:
Sorry, but I just don’t see anything that comes close to substantiating Gilligan here.
And on preview, of course the BBC were inundated with calls from the governments press office after such a critical report. How the hell does that prove the very specific accusations made that this claim was included in the report solely on the request of Campbell?
And London_Calling - if I wasn’t on the other side of the country I’d offer to meet you there…!
I’m not sure about that anymore. The further this enquiry goes on, the more dubious seems his reporting.
I loved the bit where he produced palm pilot notes of his meeting. First, this is not exactly as good a piece of evidence as Watt’s tape of her interview, which contradicts these notes. Secondly, much as I love grafitti, I think I’d have real trouble taking meaningful notes at conversational speed. I certainly wouldn’t use that rather than a tape recorder (or even pen and paper) if i wanted to accurately record a conversation I was going to make very strong claims from. It just strikes me (please note I acknowledge this is pure personal opinion) as very dubious.
Gary, that’s not the point I was making. I’m not defending the BBC (hence " no one comes out of this smelling of roses". What I meant was that Gilligan reported an exaggerated report of events and slipped Campbell’s name into it when this could not be independently corroborated. The BBC then tried to make Susan’s story validate this, but it did not. This doesn’t mean that either is lying.
Read yojimbo’s post as he gives the same argument as me - as I also said.
Final note, please have a look here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3148803.stm
Where the BBC’s Nick Higham claims that:
What the fuck? Shit, perhaps this guy should replace Campbell as the next spin doctor for labour. I’ve not seen a single source outside of the BBC who view this as anything but a bad day for the beeb. For example,
The guardian : “Newsnight reporter Susan Watts today denounced the BBC’s “attempts to mould” her stories in what she believed was a “misguided strategy” to “corroborate” Andrew Gilligan’s controversial report on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme”
The Times "She declared that Dr Kelly had not told her that the 45-minute claim was inserted by Alastair Campbell or anyone else in the Government. "
Shit, it’d take the Telegraph or Mail to stretch this one to anything but a very bad day for the BBC.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that Gilligan is lying. He’s an experienced journalist and he was working on a difficult and potentially explosive story. I think (again, personally) that he let the animosity between Campbell and himself get in the way of his reporting language and in doing so made claims which cannot be substantiated. This alone though, does not mean that he lied, or even that Campbell lied. It means it is a claim that cannot be corroborated.
The BBC was then clumsy in its attempts to back up their reporter. Downing St (and yes, I mean Campbell) thought they would use the opportunity to lambast the BBC and it’s all backfired.
That’s my take at the moment anyway - maybe it will change when we start to hear from the Govt and MOD directly.
Gary - Susan’s transcript does back up a lot of what Kelly says. What Kelly doesn’t do is specifically name Campbell - he talks about the Downing St Press Office. We know what that means and we’ve done this one to death!
Sorry, but there’s a simple fact here - one of the 3 parties is lying.
On the 1st June, Gilligan wrote in the Mail on Sunday that Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s director of communications, was responsible for inserting the claim that Iraq could deploy weapons in 45 minutes into the dossier.
This is a fairly clear statement.
If Campbell did indeed authorise inserting that claim, he’s lying.
If he didn’t then either Gilligan’s mistaken, and Kelly lied to him, or Gilligan’s lied, and blamed it on Kelly.
But, unless you can show me something I’ve missed, there’s no way this claim can be made without at least one of the parties lying.
Ah well therein lies the problem! I was talking about what Gilligan had said on the Today programme, not what was in the papers.
Gary this should clear it all up.
Or not 
I don’t know about Gary but now I’m completely confused!
The fact remains that there was no evidence to show a threat to the UK, US or anyone else from WMD from Iraq.
The fuckers said there was evidence. There wasn’t. The men that knew said there wasn’t but the spin masters and politicians had to get the war on track as the US and UK were already putting troops on the ground. The vote in parliament had to be won. After the largest revolt in Blair’s gov. history and the largest public demo in the history of Britain they got their vote through largely due to scare tactics and bullshit.
Maybe a reporter got carried away and exaggerated or lied and the BBC helped built pressure (with a lot of help from politicians, papers and tv) on a poor fucker who killed himself but lets put things into a bit of perspective here.
You’ve got to admit, Gilligan does come across as a bit of a slimey creep.
Maybe that’s why him and Campbell get on badly. It’s a competitive thing.
Willy-waving, I think it’s called.
A sleaze contest between a reporter and a career politician. Talk about a heavyweight battle.
In this one, seems like the politician is going to come out the loser.
Well, wank me off and call me Norman Lamont . . .
*“It emerged that Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon over-ruled his most senior civil servant over whether Dr Kelly should appear before MPs investigating how the case for war in Iraq was presented.
And the inquiry also heard that Tony Blair believed Dr Kelly should be asked for more details of his meeting with BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan. “*
. . hmm, reading between the lines of a careful BBC;
this whole business does now connect to Blair himself – not the ‘45’ min claim, etc but Dr Kelly’s second appearance before the Select Committee.
Firstly, worth remembering it was Hoon’s own Press Office who put Dr Kelly’s name in the public domain in the first place (Kelly being an employee of Hoon’s, so that wasn’t particularly nice).
Then Hoon knocks back the advice of his own PPS and insists Kelly goes back to give evidence again. Hoon fed him to the wolves, as it were,* twice over*: Why would he do that ?
Well, sure Dr Kelly wasn’t a watertight employee (he seems to have liked talking to the press, or various at the BBC, at least) but it also transpires that Blair told Hoon to send Kelly back to the Committee, one has to assume for Campbell’s benefit(because they thought it would help get Campbell off the Gilligan hook). No wonder Blair looked so pale in Japan.
Now that is worth knowing. A, so far, narrow conduit that reaches to the top . . . hmmmmm, lets see what the morning papers say . . .
I don’t agree. It seems that Dr. Kelly gave an unauthorized, secret interview to the BBC. Certainly the BBC had an obligation to protect their source – to keep his name confidential.
But, the government didn’t owe a duty to Dr. Kelly to keep confidential his violation of government procedures.
just a duty to sacrifice the weakest link to save their own face.
That’s all well and good december, but there has never been a procedure such as you suggest. For example, a number of initiatives are leaked to the press by Govt sources to test the water.
Moreover, we do, in this country, tend to support whistleblowers and, IIRC, the Govt has recently tightened legislation to protect whistleblowers especially in cases where public safety is involved. [after hatfield/paddington? i may not have got this quite right but i can’t check for cites at the mo].
The only possible violation is the Official Secrets Act and I don’t think Kelly was passing on secret information - that’s what the Govt purported to be doing. At worst, Kelly was being unprofessional but some might actually think that he did it because he was appalled at the actions of his superiors and the Govt. From London_Calling’s message above - it looks like he was quite right!