BRITAIN: BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan yesterday acknowledged crucial mistakes during the original live broadcasts which sparked the Corporation's row with the Blair government over allegations that Downing Street "sexed-up" its Iraqi weapons dossier.
Under cross-examination at the Hutton inquiry, Mr Gilligan - Defence Correspondent of the BBC's Today programme - maintained the essence of his controversial story, based on his conversations with government scientist and weapons expert Dr David Kelly.
However, Mr Gilligan admitted:
he was wrong to describe Dr Kelly as a member of the intelligence services
he was wrong to say that the government had inserted the controversial claim about Iraq's capacity to deploy weapons of mass destruction, probably knowing it to be wrong
that, whatever his intention, he should not have used those words because they did in fact accuse the government of dishonesty
that the charge was expressed as something his source (Dr Kelly) had said, when in fact it was an inference of his own
that Dr Kelly never described himself as a member of the intelligence services
that Mr Richard Sambrook, the BBC's Director of News, was wrong subsequently to describe Mr Gilligan's source as "a senior and credible source in the intelligence services"
that to his knowledge that assertion was not subsequently corrected, and
that he had been wrong to send an e-mail to some members of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee implying that Dr Kelly had been the source for a story by BBC Newsnight's Susan Watts when he "did not even know for sure that David Kelly was Susan Watts's source."
Mr Gilligan explained he had been under enormous pressure at the time: "I was simply not thinking straight, so I really do want to apologise for that."
Under cross-examination from his own counsel, Mr Gilligan agreed Dr Kelly had not said "in terms" that the government knew the 45 minutes' intelligence to be wrong or unreliable: "No. But he did say that the statement that WMD were ready for use in 45 minutes was unreliable, that it was wrong and that it was included 'against our wishes'; and it was a logical conclusion to draw from this that those wishes had been made known, as we now indeed know to have been the case."
Asked by counsel for the government, Mr Jonathan Sumption QC, if he accepted that - whether or not it was his intention - his original words had accused the government of dishonesty, Mr Gilligan replied: "I think that is probably right, yes. But I really did try and repeatedly make it clear on subsequent occasions that I was not accusing the government of lying or fabrication. I said the intelligence was real." After his initial unscripted broadcast at 6.07 a.m. on May 29th, Mr Gilligan broadcast again at 7.32, to the effect that the "dubious" intelligence did come from the intelligence agencies but they were unhappy with it and didn't think it should be in the dossier because they thought it was not corroborated and actually thought it was wrong. Mr Gilligan continued: "You know, it could have been an honest mistake but what I have been told is that the government knew that claim (45 minutes) was questionable, even before the war, even before they wrote it in their dossier." Mr Sumption asked if Mr Gilligan did not regard this as an allegation of bad faith. Having repeated that this was "an accurate reflection" of what Dr Kelly had told him, Mr Gilligan replied: " 'What I have been told is that the government knew that claim was questionable' is again my interpretation of what he had told me. But "questionable" is a word I would be happier about defending than "wrong".