Hearing Transcripts

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1 allegations that had been made that morning by
2 Mr Gilligan in his broadcasts? Can I just put to you
3 the first of the three of them.
4 LORD HUTTON: Mr Knox, it is 1 o'clock. I think this might
5 be a convenient time to rise to have our break.
6 (1.00 pm)
7 (The short adjournment)
8 (2.00 pm)
9 LORD HUTTON: This morning the Inquiry heard the tape played
10 of the recorded conversation which took place between
11 Ms Susan Watts and Dr Kelly on 30th May. In order that
12 the press and television and radio and, through them,
13 the public should know precisely what was said in the
14 course of that conversation, copies of the full
15 transcript of that conversation were immediately given
16 by the Inquiry to the media.
17 Out of respect for Dr Kelly's family, I decided that
18 the tape in the possession of the Inquiry which was
19 played this morning should not be released to the media
20 for the media to broadcast it in their television and
21 radio programmes because it is my view that it would be
22 insensitive for Dr Kelly's voice on the tape to be
23 broadcast on television or on radio, although the same
24 objection could not be raised to someone else reading
25 out Dr Kelly's words from the transcript.

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1 Mr Knox.
2 MR KNOX: Mr Hewitt, when you spoke to Dr Kelly on 29th May,
3 did you ask him to comment on any of the three specific
4 allegations which had been reported by Mr Gilligan that
5 morning? I shall list the first of them. The first is
6 this: that Downing Street had ordered the dossier to be
7 sexed up a week before publication. Did you ask
8 Dr Kelly to comment on that allegation at all?
9 A. No, I never asked him in those words. I did ask him at
10 the outset what his view was about the dossier, but
11 I never phrased it in the language which had been used
12 on the Today Programme.
13 Q. You did mention that in the last week, according to
14 Dr Kelly, material was being put in and taken out. Did
15 he give you any indication as to who was behind that
16 process of putting in and taking out material?
17 A. In my view it was a two-way process. He did not give me
18 the impression that this was merely material being taken
19 in and out on, say, behalf of Downing Street. He gave
20 me the impression that life in that final week was very
21 frenetic, with material coming in, material being taken
22 out. But he did not apply to that a sense that this was
23 against the Government in some way. He felt that this
24 was -- he was just telling me this was a very busy
25 period in which substantially the dossier was changed.

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1 Q. But it was not specifically at the behest of
2 10 Downing Street?
3 A. No, although that actual part of the conversation
4 happened after he had already said to me "No. 10 spin
5 came into play".
6 Q. Did you put to Dr Kelly the suggestion that in the
7 process of transformation in the last week, the
8 45 minute claim was added for the first time?
9 A. No, I did not.
10 Q. And finally did you put to Dr Kelly what Mr Gilligan had
11 said, namely that the Government probably knew that this
12 information, i.e. the 45 minute claim, was wrong?
13 A. No, I did not put that. I said to him: what is your
14 view about the 45 minute claim and whether it was
15 inserted into the dossier against the wishes of the
16 Intelligence Services, as I referred to earlier. And he
17 came back with words to the effect of: well, I would not
18 go along with that, I would not go as far as that. And,
19 as I indicated earlier, we then moved the subject of the
20 conversation because I felt I was not going to be able
21 to get significant backing from him to report on that
22 during the news that night, which I did not.
23 Q. Was there any specific reason why you did not put the
24 specific allegations made by Mr Gilligan?
25 A. No, there was no particular reason. In agreeing to

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1 follow up on this, I actually wanted to, if you like,
2 establish for myself a baseline in relation to this
3 story; and the emphasis in my questioning was to
4 discover whether an official such as Dr Kelly, who
5 clearly had some standing, whether he felt unease about
6 the language used in that dossier. So in a sense we
7 were following our own agenda rather than trying to
8 establish or not establish what had been reported on the
9 Today Programme that morning.
10 Q. Did it cross your mind that you might be talking to the
11 same source as the story for Mr Gilligan's piece?
12 A. Never.
13 Q. How long did your conversation last with Mr Kelly?
14 A. Around 10 minutes.
15 Q. We know that later Dr Kelly attended a Foreign Affairs
16 Committee on 15th July. Can we call up FAC/4/7? It
17 appears from that, and we shall go to the reference in
18 a moment, it appears from that that he was asked whether
19 he had had any contact with you around this time and he
20 said "no". You can pick that up, I think, from rather
21 near the end of page 7. You can see the question 44:
22 "Ms Stuart: You have neither met nor talked to her
23 [that is Ms Watts] since?
24 "Dr Kelly: I have spoken to her on the telephone
25 but I have not met her face-to-face.

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1 "Ms Stuart: When have you talked to her on the
2 telephone?
3 "Dr Kelly: I would have spoken to her about four or
4 five times.
5 "Ms Stuart: During May at all?
6 "Dr Kelly: During May? I cannot precisely
7 remember. I was abroad for a fair part of the time in
8 May, but it is possible, yes.
9 "Ms Stuart: Have you had any conversations or
10 meetings with Gavin Hewitt?
11 "Dr Kelly: Not that I am aware of, no, I am pretty
12 sure I have not."
13 Did you see Dr Kelly's interview with the FAC at all
14 as it was being broadcast live?
15 A. No, I did not when it was broadcast live. It was only
16 in fact subsequently, some time afterwards, that
17 somebody said: do you know your name was mentioned at
18 the FAC? I asked him what context and clearly was
19 surprised. And on that Dr Kelly was incorrect.
20 Q. Are you able to give any explanation as to why he might
21 have got that wrong?
22 A. No, I cannot begin to think why he did. Maybe it is
23 possible he had a lot of conversations within that
24 period but I do not have a ready explanation, no.
25 Q. Did you ever speak to Dr Kelly again after 29th May?

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1 A. No, that was the one and only conversation during this
2 period that I had with him.
3 Q. Did you speak to anyone else on 29th May for the
4 purposes of your report that evening?
5 A. I did. After I had finished the conversation with
6 Dr Kelly, I went to see Dame Pauline Neville-Jones at
7 her house to record an interview. I felt this was quite
8 important because she was a former head of the JIC, the
9 Joint Intelligence Committee. I wanted to see if we
10 could try and corroborate in some ways what Dr Kelly had
11 said. And I had already made up in my mind that I would
12 only discuss on the news that night the more broad
13 question, the more broad assertions he had made about
14 language in the dossier. I did not feel I had made any
15 real progress in the area of the 45 minute claim.
16 If you look at what I broadcast that night, you will
17 see I very much limited to this question that he
18 believed that the language had been put over in a very
19 black and white way. I obviously use his quote to me
20 that No. 10 spin did come into play, so --
21 Q. What did Dame Pauline tell you?
22 A. Well, this was both on camera and off camera, and on
23 camera I did at one point say to her: at the time that
24 the September dossier was published, did you hear
25 anything from your contacts in the intelligence

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1 community, any expressions of concern or unease? And
2 I pushed her on this and I asked a supplementary on it.
3 And she came back to me and said: yes, I did hear some
4 mutterings, some murmurings.
5 Q. Was there anything off camera that was said which was
6 not repeated on camera of relevance?
7 A. Pretty much what she said to me off camera was recorded
8 in the interview. The interview lasted for about,
9 I suppose, six or seven minutes, maybe a touch longer.
10 Pretty much, no, what she said off camera she said on
11 camera.
12 Q. Can I ask you to look at BBC/7/111? This is
13 a transcript, as I understand it, of your report on the
14 BBC 10 o'clock News that night, is that right?
15 A. That is right, yes.
16 Q. Would you mind reading into the record the whole of the
17 report, that is to say the whole of the words spoken?
18 A. You want me to read the whole report.
19 Q. Yes.
20 A. Where would you like me to begin?
21 Q. Fiona Bruce.
22 A. "Here, MPs are calling for an inquiry after accusations
23 that the government's dossier on Iraq's weapons was
24 distorted by Downing Street. Security sources have told
25 the BBC they believe parts of the report overstated the

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1 threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Downing Street though
2 has dismissed the claims. Our Special Correspondent
3 Gavin Hewitt investigates."
4 This is now when the report begins:
5 "This is really a story about trust. It begins here
6 at MI6, the headquarters of the Intelligence Service.
7 Some of those who work here are said to be uneasy about
8 what the government did with information they passed on
9 about Iraq. There were claims today when Downing Street
10 received the dossier it wanted it toughened up. When it
11 was eventually published it did contain some dramatic
12 warnings".
13 We then had a clip from Tony Blair talking to the
14 Commons:
15 "That he has existing and active military plans for
16 the use of chemical and biological weapons which could
17 be activated within 45 minutes."
18 Back to commentary from me:
19 "The Government acknowledged today that the
20 45-minute threat was based on a single source. It
21 wasn't corroborated. This has rattled some MPs who are
22 calling for an investigation."
23 A clip from the Liberal Democrat MP
24 Menzies Campbell:
25 "If you take intelligence and massage it for

95
1 political purposes, essentially you turn it into
2 propaganda. If the allegations are true, there will be
3 considerable anxiety in all branches of the security
4 services."
5 Back again to me:
6 "The government said today that every word within
7 the dossier was the work of the security services.
8 There had been no pressure from Number Ten."
9 A brief clip from the Government Minister
10 Adam Ingram:
11 "All the information was based upon well-informed
12 information."
13 Back to me:
14 "Others with experience in the intelligence
15 community say there were some murmurings about the final
16 wording of the dossier."
17 A clip from Dame Pauline Neville-Jones:
18 "The professionals are cautious. They'll only put
19 things in if they are confident [-- that they are
20 confident] about. I think when they got into the
21 political part of the machine, into the government
22 information services, they said to themselves it won't
23 convince anybody. We need to beef up the language in a
24 way it carries conviction."
25 Finally, I talk to camera:

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1 "I've spoken to one of those consulted on the
2 dossier. Six months work was apparently involved. In
3 the final week before publication some material was
4 taken out and some put. His judgment, some spin from
5 Number Ten did come into play. Even so the intelligence
6 community remains convinced weapons of mass destruction
7 will be found in Iraq. Only then will all the doubts go
8 away."
9 Q. Mr Hewitt, thank you very much for that. There are one
10 or two questions I wanted to ask you about this. The
11 first is this: in the introduction by Fiona Bruce she
12 says in the second sentence:
13 "Security sources have told the BBC ... " this.
14 Are you able to explain why she uses the phrase
15 "security sources"? Was that at your instigation or for
16 some other reason?
17 A. It was not at my instigation. I think she was probably
18 referring to the fact that both earlier in the day, in
19 the sense of what was related in the Today Programme and
20 the fact that I was going to report another source, what
21 was at the time presumed to be a second source, that
22 there were really reservations about the dossier.
23 Q. Then, just moving to your paragraph immediately
24 afterwards, that is to say "this is really a story about
25 trust", this is presumably based on what Mr Gilligan had

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1 said, you are not really basing this on what Dr Kelly
2 had said?
3 A. I think if you look carefully at this, this is referring
4 more to the fact that there are now out there these
5 claims that there were people within the Intelligence
6 Services who were said to be uneasy about what the
7 Government did with information. At this stage I am
8 referring to what has been reported earlier in the day,
9 the fact that this story is running. It is only at the
10 end of the item that if you like I give my own
11 information.
12 Q. The extract from the Prime Minister's speech is, as
13 I understand it, a quote from a speech he gave to
14 Parliament on 24th September 2002?
15 A. I presume that is right. I cannot remember the date.
16 It certainly was from his Parliamentary speech, yes.
17 Q. Going over the page, the final paragraph where you are
18 speaking, that is presumably your summary of what
19 Dr Kelly had told you?
20 A. Exactly, yes.
21 Q. Can I just ask you to go to page BBC/7/113? You will
22 see on this page three e-mails and the e-mail at the
23 bottom of the page is the earliest in time, dated
24 27th June, 8.34, written to Richard Sambrook. You say,
25 in the first paragraph:

98
1 "Richard,
2 "Thought it might be helpful to mention my
3 conversations re 'sexed up' dossiers. On the day that
4 Andrew G broke the story on the Today programme
5 Mark Popescu asked me whether we could add anything for
6 the 10.00 news. Without talking to Andrew I spoke to a
7 very respected individual who had been consulted on and
8 involved in the preparation of the September dossier.
9 He said that dossier had been based almost entirely on
10 UK sources."
11 Pausing there, Mr Hewitt, is it right to say that it
12 is based almost entirely on UK sources or based
13 exclusively on UK sources?
14 A. I clearly wrote "entirely" there. I would have to look
15 back at my notes but my recollection of what Dr Kelly
16 said was very much more "entirely". I know I did ask
17 him. I said was this -- there was a reason for me
18 asking it because I know there were questions raised
19 about some of the intelligence which had been coming
20 from the Pentagon. So I wanted to clarify whether the
21 UK dossier essentially was coming from shared sources,
22 and I got the impression from Dr Kelly that he believed
23 that this September dossier was based almost exclusively
24 on UK sources.
25 Q. Almost exclusively or exclusively?

99
1 A. Almost exclusively, in the sense that he -- I mean, he
2 believed that it all came from UK sources. There might
3 have been a slight qualification but not a large one.
4 Q. Then you continue:
5 "He said it had been prepared over a six month
6 period but that in the final week it has become frenetic
7 with material being taken out and material being added.
8 In his view 'No. 10 spin did come into play'."
9 Then you continue.
10 Effectively this is how you would now recall the
11 position?
12 A. Yes, absolutely.
13 Q. Can you explain, very briefly, what the purpose of this
14 e-mail was?
15 A. Yes, absolutely. This was around the time when it was
16 clear that a major row was developing between the BBC
17 and the Government over the reporting of this issue.
18 I knew that Richard Sambrook was in the process of
19 drafting a very considerable reply to Alastair Campbell
20 and to the Government and I thought, in those
21 circumstances, that it was right for him to know that
22 the 10 o'clock News report that I had done might be
23 helpful to him as part of the evidence that he was going
24 to give to Alastair Campbell in that letter. So I got
25 in touch with him and said: look, you may be interested

100
1 to recall that or to know that. And this is
2 essentially, I think, what this e-mail refers to.
3 Q. You then see, in a reply e-mail a little bit further up
4 the page from Mr Sambrook to you, thanking you for the
5 information, he asks you for:
6 "... broad sense of the seniority of your source."
7 A. That is right, yes.
8 Q. Then at the top you reply.
9 A. "Richard, yes please use anything from that first
10 conversation in your reply to Campbell. The man was my
11 main source for the Ten piece and the person who told me
12 'No. 10 spin did come into play'. Privately I am, of
13 course, happy to tell you precisely who he was."
14 Pausing there for a moment, did you ever tell
15 Mr Sambrook precisely who the source was privately?
16 A. I did but later on.
17 Q. When you say later on, how much later on?
18 A. On the day that Dr Kelly was found to be dead.
19 Q. You then continue:
20 "He was consulted on the dossier and had intimate
21 knowledge of how it came together. He is senior and is
22 recognised as one of the principal experts in the field
23 of biological/chemical weapons. He has a role in
24 government at a senior level but not at MI6."
25 Did Mr Sambrook press you any further on this

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1 description once you had told him that?
2 A. No.
3 Q. Did you ever speak to Mr Gilligan about this story?
4 A. No, I never spoke to him about his source. I think
5 I had, possibly -- I had one conversation with
6 Andrew Gilligan when I met him at a media Guardian
7 conference but I did not ask him who his source was and
8 he never told me who his source was.
9 Q. What about Ms Watts; did you ever speak to her about
10 this?
11 A. No, I have never had a conversation with her.
12 Q. Did you receive any complaints about your piece from the
13 Government?
14 A. No, none at all.
15 Q. Or did you hear about any complaints from the
16 Government?
17 A. No, none at all.
18 Q. Is there anything you wish to add about the
19 circumstances of Dr Kelly's death?
20 A. No, I am afraid I know nothing about that at all.
21 MR KNOX: Thank you very much indeed.
22 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much indeed Mr Hewitt.
23 A. Thank you.
24 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Sambrook, please, my Lord.
25

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1 MR RICHARD SAMBROOK (called)
2 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
3 Q. Can you tell his Lordship your full name?
4 A. Yes. Richard Sambrook.
5 Q. Was is your occupation?
6 A. I am the director of news at the BBC.
7 Q. How long have you been with the BBC?
8 A. 23 years.
9 Q. How long have you been in your present position?
10 A. Since March 2001.
11 Q. Can you give us a broad outline of your responsibilities
12 as director of news?
13 A. Yes. I am responsible for all BBC's news programmes on
14 television, radio and on the Internet, both in terms of
15 their content but also in terms of management of them,
16 finances, personnel, strategy and so on.
17 Q. Do you have any assistants, a deputy or anything like
18 that?
19 A. Yes. I have a deputy, Mark Damazer, who deputises for
20 me across the full range of my responsibilities, and
21 then I have a number of heads of department who focus on
22 different areas of programme making.
23 Q. And what are those departments?
24 A. Radio news; television news; on-line, which is the
25 Internet; news gathering, which is the reporters and

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1 correspondents and foreign bureau; political programmes
2 and current affairs.
3 Q. Do you have meetings with these persons?
4 A. Yes, I meet with all of those heads of department for
5 regular routine meetings but there is a daily editorial
6 meeting at 8.50 in which the BBC's output for the
7 previous 24 hours and the next 24 hours is discussed.
8 Q. What do you have to say about the importance of sources
9 for your reporting?
10 A. Well, obviously sources are vital to our reporting. We
11 need to know that they are credible, that they know what
12 they are talking about and we have to have confidence in
13 them.
14 Q. And specifically anonymous sources?
15 A. Well, anonymous sources are necessary in some forms of
16 journalism. Some people will not give us information
17 which we believe to be of public interest, unless they
18 are assured of some confidentiality. They would not
19 bring that information forward otherwise.
20 Editorially, it is important that we give them
21 assurances that will protect their confidentiality. If
22 we did not do so then information that is potentially of
23 public interest would not come to light.
24 Q. Do you have any guidelines that deal with such sources?
25 A. Yes, BBC has a book of producer guidelines and it does

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1 cover this issue.
2 Q. Can we look at BBC/7/99? Is this the beginning of your
3 relevant guideline?
4 A. Yes, it is.
5 Q. Can you tell us about the distinctions between
6 attributable, non-attributable and off the record? We
7 have heard a number of different interpretations.
8 A. Yes. "Attributable" I think means that you can quote
9 somebody and name them. I think generally
10 "non-attributable" and "off the record" are often used
11 interchangeably, although I think strictly there would
12 be some difference between them. "Off the record" would
13 be purely for context of background and
14 "non-attributable" meant you might quote them but not
15 name a person. But they do tend to be used
16 interchangeably.
17 Q. Attributable, you can name and identify?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Non-attributable, you can use the information but
20 without identifying the person?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. And off the record, unless it is being used
23 interchangeably, just background?
24 A. Yes, but I do think off the record and unattributable
25 are often used synonymously.

105
1 Q. The media is a massive business. Are there any
2 guidelines that help journalists about this?
3 A. There are no formal guidelines that apply across the
4 media. I think it is custom and practice.
5 Q. Although there is a difference between non-attributable
6 and off the record, they sometimes get muddled up?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. You had a history of complaints, I think, from
9 Alastair Campbell about the BBC reporting --
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. -- that you have referred to. Can I take you to some of
12 those? You will understand, I hope, if I do not go
13 through every single one. BBC/4/131. What do we see
14 here?
15 A. This was a letter written as you see on 19th March about
16 the BBC's coverage of the Commons vote before the war.
17 Q. And it makes a number of points and continues for some
18 four pages. What stage had relationships reached
19 between Downing Street, Alastair Campbell on one side,
20 and the BBC, yourself, on the other?
21 A. Well there was clearly some tension between us which
22 reflected frankly the sort of relations we have with all
23 governments in time of war where the BBC's reporting,
24 which attempts to be fully independent and reflect
25 a wide spectrum of views, sometimes produces tensions

106
1 with government. In this case, public opinion at the
2 time was very deeply divided and our programmes had
3 sought to reflect the full range of public opinion.
4 I think Downing Street were uncomfortable with the way
5 we were presenting some of those views.
6 Q. Can I take you to BBC/4/145, which I think is another
7 document that you have referred to. What is this?
8 A. Well, that is another letter to me from
9 Alastair Campbell. I cannot quite read the text.
10 Q. "In some reports, I have noticed Iraqi Television is
11 being used virtually as an objective source, much as the
12 foreign media might use material from the BBC. Iraqi
13 Television is part and parcel of the Saddam regime. It
14 is under his total control. Therefore, surely, anything
15 said or shown should be treated with real scepticism.
16 "Could I ask what guidance is given to reporters and
17 editors about the use of material supplied by Iraqi
18 Television?"
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. You were receiving regular letters, were you, from
21 Mr Campbell?
22 A. Yes, we were.
23 Q. If we go to BBC/4/146 we can see a letter the next day.
24 Here the complaint related to Mr Gilligan.
25 A. Yes.

107
1 Q. And the damage that had been done to the Republican
2 Guard.
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Did you accept that any of the complaints raised were
5 well-founded?
6 A. Not at this stage. In fact, I felt one had to look
7 quite carefully into the complaints because quite often
8 they were selective in their use of the scripts which
9 they were complaining about. I think in this particular
10 case the phrase he was complaining about was preceded by
11 a phrase which said something like "we can't tell"; in
12 other words, the full quote of Andrew Gilligan's script
13 would have satisfied the point that Mr Campbell was
14 seeking to make. So my view of it -- we of course take
15 any letter from Downing Street very seriously -- was
16 that we had to look very carefully at exactly what was
17 being complained about and compare it to what we were
18 broadcasting.
19 Q. Can I take you to one letter where you do at least
20 appear to have accepted some fault, that is
21 4th April 2003, BBC/4/158. Can you tell us what this
22 letter is?
23 A. Yes, Alastair Campbell had complained again about
24 a report from Andrew Gilligan who had concluded a live
25 report on News 24 from Baghdad with the phrase something

108
1 about "more rubbish from cent comm", meaning central
2 command. He had initially complained to me suggesting
3 this had been on Radio 4 and we had search all of
4 Radio 4's output and had been unable to find it. He
5 then clarified it was actually on News 24.
6 I agreed with him that the phrase "rubbish from cent
7 comm" was unacceptable for a BBC correspondent to use
8 and acknowledged that.
9 Q. You say at the bottom of the letter the:
10 "... particular phrase was unacceptable, which I
11 regret, and will take up with Andrew Gilligan."
12 Did you take it up with Andrew Gilligan?
13 A. Yes, I believe I did.
14 Q. When did you take it up with him?
15 A. I do not remember the precise date but I do remember
16 having a conversation that said occasionally he needed
17 to be more careful, even under the circumstances in
18 which he was reporting from Baghdad, which were of
19 considerable duress, at his use of language.
20 Q. I am right in saying this, am I: that you considered
21 some of the complaints made by Alastair Campbell as
22 simply unfair? Can I look at BBC/4/28.
23 How would you describe this document?
24 A. I think this one goes back to the war in Afghanistan and
25 it was a list from Downing Street of what they believed

109
1 to be things that we should not have said or were wrong.
2 You will see it is headlined "Catalogue of Lies". But
3 it for example suggests we should not be talking about
4 Taliban civilian casualties or we should not be putting
5 a death toll on civilian casualties and said we should
6 not be reporting that and there was not evidence. And
7 I think that was unreasonable.
8 Q. Was this the general background against which
9 Alastair Campbell's complaint came to be made to you?
10 A. Yes. The only communication I ever had with
11 Alastair Campbell were these kinds of faxes and letters.
12 Q. You have never met him apart from --
13 A. I have met him I think on two occasions. Once was in
14 a general briefing. Once was at the lunch during July,
15 which I think we may come to. But again, we did not
16 have a conversation there.
17 Q. The week of the broadcast of Andrew Gilligan's piece on
18 28th May, were you in this country or not?
19 A. No. Could I make a correction? There were three
20 occasions in which I met Alastair Campbell. Again,
21 during the Afghanistan war he called me into Downing
22 Street to discuss the use of the Osama bin Laden videos
23 with the heads of ITN News and Sky News as well. So
24 there were three occasions on which I met him.
25 No, at the end of May I was on holiday or moving

110
1 house for that week of the original Today Programme
2 broadcast. Following that, I then went to Moscow for
3 three days where the BBC was opening a new bureau, so
4 I did not return to the office until Thursday, the 5th.
5 Q. When you returned were you made aware of the broadcast?
6 A. Only because I saw some of the correspondence from
7 Downing Street where Ann Shevas, who works in the
8 Downing Street press office, had written to my deputy
9 Mark Damazer.
10 Q. Can I take you to CAB/1/154? Is this the letter to
11 which you are referring?
12 A. Yes, it is.
13 Q. You can see from that letter the gist of the complaint.
14 How would you summarise it?
15 A. Well I think it made a broad denial of the allegations
16 but then particularly went on to complain about the
17 basis on which we had been given the advance notice of
18 the story and the use made of the interview with
19 Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces Minister.
20 Q. The reply is at CAB/1/156. This was not drafted by you
21 or by Mr Damazer?
22 A. No. This was drafted by Steve Mitchell who was the head
23 of radio news who reports to me.
24 Q. You were away and I think Mr Damazer was busy that day?
25 A. I was out of the office that day, yes.

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1 Q. The gist of his reply is a denial that anything has gone
2 wrong; is that right?
3 A. Yes, he outlines what we understood to be our contacts
4 with Downing Street or with the Government in advance of
5 the programme and our running of the Government denials
6 in the wake of the Gilligan report.
7 Q. And at this stage, had you seen any notes or comments
8 made by Mr Gilligan himself?
9 A. Not by Mr Gilligan, no.
10 Q. Can I take you to a document dated 5th June 2003 at
11 BBC/5/58? What is this document?
12 A. This is an e-mail from Stephen Whittle who is the BBC's
13 controller of editorial policy.
14 Q. For those of us who do not work in the BBC, can you tell
15 us why that is different from what you do?
16 A. Yes. Editorial policy; Stephen Whittle if you like owns
17 and oversees the producer guidelines and editorial
18 policy across the whole of the BBC, not just news, all
19 programmes, and he works independently of any programme
20 making.
21 Q. What was the reason for this report?
22 A. Well, as I understand it, the director general had asked
23 Mr Whittle to run through how Andrew Gilligan's report
24 had come to air and what checks had been made on it.
25 Q. Why had the director general become involved?

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1 A. I do not know. I think it was because at a regular
2 meeting that the director general has with Mr Whittle
3 they had raised the story and Greg had asked him to look
4 into it.
5 Q. And at the bottom of the page, there is a discussion
6 about how the live two-way at 6.10 was discussed,
7 written overnight and the details of that. And then how
8 events move on during a three hour programme and just
9 over the page how the denial came to be made.
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. And there is a passage at the end of that, the
12 prepenultimate paragraph:
13 "So the report resulted from two separate but
14 related information sources."
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Can you help at all on that?
17 A. Only if you can refer back to the previous page.
18 Q. Yes, 58.
19 A. Clearly one of them was Andrew Gilligan's source who we
20 now know to be Dr Kelly.
21 Q. Is it the first paragraph of the e-mail or just after
22 the first paragraph:
23 "About a month ago the programme was picking up
24 signals ..."?
25 A. Yes. I was going to say I think the other element which

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1 I would not characterise as a single source was that for
2 some time a number of journalists in the BBC and
3 elsewhere had some unattributable briefings from members
4 of the security services expressing some unease at the
5 way intelligence had been presented in public.
6 Q. When it says "two separate but related information
7 sources", what it means is one individual and then these
8 general concerns?
9 A. Yes, I would personally describe that as a context or
10 a background of concerns rather than calling it another
11 source.
12 Q. We are not here to argue about people's use of language
13 in that respect. So it was relating to the general
14 background?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. And then the specific source. There was no other source
17 as far as you are aware for the Today Programme?
18 A. No.
19 Q. And at this stage, now that a bit more investigation has
20 been carried out, has anyone asked to see Mr Gilligan's
21 notes of his conversation with the source?
22 A. His programme editor has, yes. I mean the process of
23 editorial supervision for an item would be through the
24 programme's output editor up to the programme editor, in
25 this case Kevin Marsh, and in this case I would normally

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1 expect him to have had a conversation about this item
2 before it was broadcast, including some understanding of
3 how well sourced it was and the reliability and
4 credibility of the source and what other corroboration
5 there might be.
6 Q. The dispute did not go away; and the day after that memo
7 had been produced, can we turn to a letter dated
8 6th June 2003, BBC/5/60; and here I hope you will see
9 a letterhead, "Dear Richard", that is to you. It is
10 again from Alastair Campbell.
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. He is writing to complain about what he calls
13 Andrew Gilligan's irresponsible reporting of what he
14 claims to be information from intelligence sources.
15 Mr Campbell said that Mr Gilligan continued to
16 display an extraordinary ignorance about intelligence
17 issues. He refers to the reasons for that comment.
18 He continues, on page 61, about complaints on
19 weapons of mass destruction reporting and talks about
20 the way in which JIC assessments are put together. Then
21 on page 62 he referred you to your BBC guidelines.
22 I have read a little bit more of this correspondence
23 than perhaps I wanted to. There appear to be frequent
24 references to the BBC producer guidelines in your
25 correspondence with Mr Campbell, perhaps both ways, is

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1 that a fair analysis?
2 A. Yes, it is. I mean the producer guidelines encapsulate
3 the editorial standards to which the BBC is held to
4 account and they are publicly available.
5 Q. And he identified breaches, so he said, of the producer
6 guidelines; and he continued on to page 63
7 characterising Mr Gilligan's attempts to justify the
8 story by referring to what had been said by Clare Short
9 and Robin Cook and suggesting that Adam Ingram had
10 corroborated the 45 minutes claim. He said this at the
11 bottom:
12 "You will, I imagine, seek to defend your reporting,
13 as you always do. In this case, you would be defending
14 the indefensible. On the word of a single,
15 uncorroborated source, you have allowed one reporter to
16 drive the BBC's coverage. We are left wondering why you
17 have guidelines at all, given that they are so
18 persistently breached without any comeback whatsoever."
19 What are the remedies that I might have if
20 I considered that the BBC's reporting had breached
21 guidelines?
22 A. Well if you did not receive a satisfactory response by
23 writing directly to the programme concerned, there is
24 a programme complaints unit in the BBC which reports to
25 the director general who can investigate complaints,

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1 again independently of any production area. That can
2 make a decision about whether that complaint is
3 justified or not. Those findings are published and if
4 you are unhappy with the findings of that unit in
5 reporting to the director general, there is a right of
6 appeal to the board of governors.
7 Q. Was this complaint taken seriously?
8 A. We take all of the complaints from Downing Street
9 seriously, yes.
10 Q. Can I take you to BBC/5/66 which is an e-mail dated
11 9th June 2003. Can you identify for us who the parties
12 are? Kevin Marsh; I think we were told yesterday who he
13 was.
14 A. Kevin Marsh is the editor of the Today Programme.
15 Stephen Mitchell is his line manager, the head of radio
16 news.
17 Q. Perhaps you can read for us the first five paragraphs.
18 A. "I started to look at this point by point ... but it's
19 all drivel and, frankly, it'd be easy to get as confused
20 as Campbell is. The man is flapping in the wind.
21 "I'm looking back now at what we said on
22 24th September, when the dossier was published - as
23 ever, the recording has gone missing ... probably lost
24 in the multitude up in Mark's office.
25 "The key facts are these.

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1 "We stand by the original (29th May) story and the
2 processes that got it to air. Andrew's source is known
3 to us: It is a source that has been utterly reliable in
4 the past.
5 "Apart from the one key fact - the '45-minute'
6 claim - the rest of what the source told us on this
7 occasion (about unease within the security services) was
8 consistent with what we were hearing from a number of
9 sources within the security services."
10 Q. Then he goes on, I hope I summarise it accurately, to
11 say he made an editorial judgment to produce the story
12 and deals with the immediate response from
13 Downing Street.
14 Now, in that aspect, by this stage has anyone gone
15 back to compare what Andrew Gilligan has actually said
16 on air with the notes that he made from his
17 conversations with Dr Kelly?
18 A. Only Kevin Marsh would have done, I think, at that
19 stage. I think at that stage it was only Kevin who
20 would have known and would have discussed with Andrew
21 what was in the note.
22 Q. We then come to the BBC response which is BBC/5/71.
23 What is this?
24 A. That is my response to Alastair Campbell.
25 Q. Your letter of 11th June 2003 to Alastair Campbell?

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1 A. Yes.
2 Q. And you effectively, for the reasons you set out in
3 that, rebut his complaint?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And I hope I will be forgiven if I do not go through
6 your reasoning, but you also talk, on page 72, about
7 a right of reply?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. And at the bottom of the letter, you write, in the final
10 paragraph, can you just read that?
11 A. "On which point it is worth going back to stage 1. We
12 have not suggested that the 45-minute point was invented
13 by anyone in Downing Street against the wishes of anyone
14 in the intelligence community. We have suggested that
15 there are pertinent and serious questions to be asked
16 about the presentation of the intelligence material -
17 a rather different point and one which I am not
18 convinced your letter recognises."
19 Q. Had you, at this stage, seen a transcript of
20 Andrew Gilligan's remarks on 29th May?
21 A. Yes, I had.
22 Q. And you had seen that at least earlier on in the
23 broadcast, at 6.07 -- and he has explained the
24 circumstances in which he came to make that -- that he
25 had said that the material had been produced and

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1 inserted at a time when the Government knew that it was
2 wrong. It was not a claim, as he pointed out later,
3 repeated.
4 A. That line was in there but I would not have said
5 I particularly focused on it at this stage.
6 Q. You had not, as it were, identified that as a matter of
7 concern?
8 A. No, and nor had Downing Street in their complaints. To
9 be fair, their complaints at this stage were a general
10 rebuttal, in the widest sense. They had complained
11 about pre-notification, about the producer guidelines
12 and about the description of the JIC, but they had not
13 identified that phrase as a particular problem at this
14 stage.
15 Q. It did not take long to get a reply, at BBC/5/73. Here
16 Mr Campbell writes identifying issues that he says you
17 have not responded to, in paragraph 1:
18 "Firstly, you have not answered my questions about
19 Andrew Gilligan's obvious ignorance about intelligence
20 issue. So I repeat - do you accept that what
21 Andrew Gilligan said last week about the composition and
22 role of the JIC was inaccurate? What, if anything do
23 you intend to do about it?
24 "Secondly, on the '45-minute' claim, you acknowledge
25 it was indeed from a single source, for which I am

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1 grateful. I therefore believed it does conflict with
2 your guideline ..."
3 He refers to the Intelligence and Security Committee
4 report at the bottom of the page, and he again deals
5 with other coverage.
6 This provoked more internal e-mails. Can I take you
7 to BBC/5/90. This, in fact, is your comment on the
8 Today Programme.
9 A. Well, this is after Alastair Campbell's appearance at
10 the Foreign Affairs Committee some time later.
11 Q. Can I then go to your response, BBC/5/76? Sorry about
12 that. This is your response in which you deal with his
13 complaints or try and answer his complaints?
14 A. Yes. I mean, our view was that his first letter on the
15 6th was -- although Mr Campbell's inimitable style, at
16 that stage we did not believe we needed to engage
17 point-by-point with his complaint but rather assert the
18 reasons on which he had broadcasted. When he came back
19 so quickly to re-emphasise the points he wanted
20 addressed, we attempted to deal with them in more
21 detail.
22 Q. Can I ask you to look at BBC/5/70? What is this? At
23 the top there is an e-mail from Stephen Mitchell to
24 Mark Damazer. Stephen Mitchell you have told us is head
25 of radio news.

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1 A. Yes.
2 Q. Mark Damazer your deputy. What does it say there?
3 A. "For your information I asked Kevin to look back quickly
4 at what AG ..." I cannot quite read it.
5 Q. "Said".
6 A. "... when the September dossier was published. This is
7 his reply."
8 Q. The reply was then from Kevin Marsh to Stephen Mitchell?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Perhaps you can just read us the first two paragraphs of
11 Kevin Marsh's comments?
12 A. "I've just listened back to Gilligan on 24th September -
13 and reread Campbell's point. I am more convinced than
14 I was before that he is on the run. Or gone bonkers.
15 Or both.
16 "When Campbell says that Gilligan said there was
17 'little that was new' in the dossier, he is half right:
18 that was Gilligan's (and everyone else's) judgment on
19 the document as a whole. However, AG picked out
20 a number of things that were new - though as he said
21 several times, his judgments were based on a 30-minute
22 reading of the dossier."
23 Q. And I have shown, I hope, a reasonably fair summary of
24 some of these letters passing between both parties on
25 which points are made by both sides, and some of the

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1 internal documents. Is this a reasonable
2 characterisation: the BBC management at this stage had
3 got to the situation where they were just fed up with
4 the complaints that were being made against them?
5 A. I do not think that is quite fair, no. I would like to
6 say that although Kevin has a colourful turn of phrase
7 in internal e-mails to his colleagues, I do not think
8 some of that tone characterises our approach or view of
9 these complaints from Downing Street. We always take
10 complaints from Downing Street extremely seriously. It
11 was true we had a very high volume of them during the
12 war, as indeed we generally tend to have at moments of
13 tension, such as war or elections and so on. We do take
14 them seriously but we did believe that we, from
15 experience, had to look very closely at what was being
16 complained about and in what terms because it is not
17 always straightforward or clear cut.
18 Q. After your letter of 16th June 2003, matters appear, at
19 least on the correspondence, to go quiet until
20 25th June 2003 which is when Alastair Campbell gives
21 evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee?
22 A. That is right. I had no response to the reply to my
23 letter of his on the 12th.
24 Q. You have written on 16th June. Then I know it is not
25 very long but there is at least nine days without any

123
1 further correspondence between you.
2 A. Yes, it seemed to me to have been a lull.
3 Q. FAC/2/279, if we may. What do we have here? Do you
4 recognise this?
5 A. Yes, this is a transcript of Mr Campbell's evidence to
6 the Foreign Affairs Committee.
7 Q. And in the course of his evidence here he turns to deal
8 with the September dossier and his role in it. Then at
9 the bottom of page 279 he says this:
10 "The allegation against me is that we helped the
11 Prime Minister persuade Parliament and the country to go
12 into conflict on the basis of a lie. I think that is
13 a pretty serious allegation. It has been denied by the
14 Prime Minister, it has been denied by the Chairman of
15 the Joint Intelligence Committee, it has been denied by
16 the Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator and it has
17 been denied by the heads of the intelligence agencies
18 involved, and yet the BBC continue to stand by that
19 story.
20 "Richard Ottaway: You believe that time will prove
21 you right on that one?
22 "Mr Campbell: I know that we are right in relation
23 to that 45-minute point. It is completely and totally
24 untrue, and I do not use this word --
25 "Richard Ottaway: I am talking about the substance.

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1 "Mr Campbell: It is actually a lie."
2 Then they go back on to dealing with the substance.
3 At question 994, further down the page, Mr Ottaway makes
4 the perceptive comment that one of you is wrong and
5 Mr Campbell says:
6 "Mr Campbell: I know who is right and who is wrong.
7 The BBC are wrong. We have apologised in relation to
8 Dr al-Marishi [that is in relation to what I think has
9 been called the February dodgy dossier] and I think it
10 is about time the BBC apologised to us in relation to
11 the 45-minute point."
12 Mr Ottaway says he will leave that to the BBC if you
13 do not mind. That was evidence. You responded to that
14 evidence, did you?
15 A. Yes. I heard about it, I did not actually watch or hear
16 Mr Campbell's evidence. I was telephoned late
17 afternoon, I was out of London and was told that he had
18 broadly attacked the BBC in his evidence, and I asked
19 for parts of his evidence to be faxed to me. We were at
20 a management meeting in Surrey and read the comments he
21 had made about the BBC.
22 Q. Can we turn to CAB/1/337. This is, so you know, part of
23 a transcript of the Today Programme on 26th June 2003.
24 So the next day. About the third paragraph:
25 "So the word disproportionate [this is Mr Naughtie

125
1 talking to you] which he used in describing the way that
2 we dealt with critics and on this programme and others,
3 you are suggesting that there was no disproportionate
4 treatment of criticism as being better news than the
5 other side of the story?"
6 You say:
7 "No I don't believe there was at all. I mean the
8 way BBC's, conducts its journalism is to ask questions,
9 raise issues and debate them openly with a wide range of
10 views and that, that's how we've approached the war in
11 the way that we approach everything else."
12 And then:
13 "And the argument that as a consequence of as he
14 would put it having been proved wrong, the, the, the
15 tendency is to point out failures or difficulties in
16 Iraq now by way of justifying a previous view."
17 You say:
18 "No, well all we have done since then is to raise
19 questions which have been brought to our attention by
20 people we know to be senior and credible sources in the
21 Intelligence Service and it's an issue of public
22 interest."
23 You were referring I think there, in particular, to
24 Mr Gilligan's story?
25 A. I was. I made an error there in ascribing him to the

126
1 Intelligence Services. I did not, at that stage, know
2 who Mr Gilligan's source was and indeed I had not
3 discussed it with Andrew Gilligan. By this stage, the
4 way that the debate about his original report had taken
5 off was that Intelligence sources were being routinely
6 used not only by the BBC, but by many other people as
7 well. It had got into the bloodstream, and I think
8 I subconsciously made an assumption there which I should
9 not have done.
10 Q. Just picked it up, and at the bottom of the page:
11 "Richard Sambrook: I'm entirely satisfied [and this
12 is specifically in relation to Mr Gilligan, source] that
13 it is a senior, credible and reliable source and frankly
14 Jim I don't think the BBC needs to be taught lessons in
15 the use of sources by a communications department which
16 plagiarised a 12 year old thesis and distributed it ..."
17 That was a slightly different description but did
18 not use the word "intelligence" just to balance, as it
19 were, your coverage?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. It was becoming clear, was it not, that this was
22 a dispute that was spiralling out of control?
23 A. I would say that this was a very sudden escalation. We
24 had an exchange of letters which were clearly -- they
25 were very unhappy with our broadcasting but there had

127
1 then been a nine or 10 day pause and as far as we were
2 concerned we had answered their replies and it fitted
3 the pattern of many other complaints about other stories
4 where there would be a quick flurry or exchange of
5 letters, then it would go away. So although we did
6 anticipate that Mr Campbell might use the opportunity,
7 in giving his evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee,
8 to make some comment about the BBC coverage, we
9 certainly had not anticipated anything on this scale.
10 Q. You had not anticipated misuse of that platform, if it
11 was a platform, and you had taken the opportunity to
12 respond on a platform?
13 A. That is right. The Today Programme had bid, I think
14 both for Alastair Campbell and myself to appear the next
15 day. Having discussed Alastair Campbell's evidence to
16 the Foreign Affairs Committee with the director general,
17 we agreed that I should go on and defend the BBC's
18 values. The key distinction in Mr Campbell's comments
19 at the Foreign Affairs Committee was that he broadened
20 this out from a criticism about our coverage of one
21 particular story to a generalised attack on all the
22 BBC's editorial values.
23 Q. You have journalists that attend the lobby briefings, do
24 you not?
25 A. We do.

128
1 Q. On the 26th June, at CAB/1/182, we have here part of the
2 press briefing at 11 am Thursday 26th June 2003, and are
3 these minutes -- I mean not having been at one of these
4 briefings myself -- that are produced afterwards as
5 a summary of the questions asked and the responses
6 given?
7 A. Yes, the Downing Street website puts up a summary of the
8 lobby briefing and what the Prime Minister's official
9 spokesmen would have said.
10 Q. What was said at one stage of the briefing:
11 "In answer to further questions about the BBC, the
12 Prime Minister's Official Spokesmen said that there were
13 a number of questions still outstanding. They were
14 quite simple:
15 "Did the BBC still stand by the allegation it made
16 on 29th May that No. 10 had added in the 45-minute
17 claim?
18 "Did it still stand by the allegation made on the
19 same day that we had done so against the wishes of the
20 intelligence agencies?
21 "Did it still stand by the allegation made on that
22 day that both we and the intelligence agencies had known
23 that the 45-minute claim was wrong?
24 "Did it still stand by the allegation, again on the
25 same day, that we had ordered the September dossier to

129
1 be 'sexed up' in the period leading up to its
2 publication - that it had been 'cobbled together at the
3 last minute with some unconfirmed material that had not
4 been approved by the security services'?
5 "Did it still stand by the statement made on
6 6th June that the JIC was no part of the intelligence
7 community but was a No. 10 Committee whose job was to
8 arbitrate between the Government and intelligence
9 agencies?
10 "Did it stand by the claim on 3rd June that the
11 chairman of the JIC only 'kind of bureaucratically
12 signed off his report'?"
13 Then they go on to other questions. Now, whatever
14 the genesis of the dispute, and I hope I have taken you
15 fairly to the material which -- very briefly -- had led
16 to the dispute, it was now coming down to some pretty
17 specific questions?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. At this stage, did you ask to see Mr Gilligan's notes?
20 A. Not at this stage, no. These questions came -- some of
21 these issues were raised by Mr Campbell in his evidence.
22 This was given in the lobby briefing and only formed the
23 basis of Alastair Campbell's letter to me which arrived
24 late that afternoon on Thursday.
25 Q. Can I take you, so you have that in front of you, to

130
1 BBC/5/94. Is this the letter to which you are
2 referring?
3 A. Yes, it is. Yes.
4 Q. Can you tell us what this letter does? It runs for some
5 three pages.
6 A. Yes. I mean it sets out at the top there, it quotes
7 Sir John Humphrys' introduction from the Today Programme
8 which seems to encapsulate in Downing Street's view the
9 essence of the allegation which our source was making.
10 Q. Pausing there, was that a fair encapsulation of the
11 allegations that were being made?
12 A. Yes, I think that is a reasonably fair encapsulation.
13 Q. And then, over the page to BBC/5/95, the questions are
14 these, and they seem to bear a remarkable similarity to
15 the lobby briefing, but those questions are set out
16 again.
17 A. Yes. This is of course the first time they those
18 questions have been asked in that way. They were not
19 entered in the early letters in that form.
20 Q. And the response is not quite the same day but fairly
21 shortly afterwards, BBC/5/119.
22 A. Yes, in his letter Mr Campbell had asked me to reply by
23 the end of that day and I received his letter at
24 4 o'clock, so we did not believe we could give it proper
25 consideration in that time and we answered the next day.

131
1 Q. So you answered the next day, a perfectly reasonable
2 reason. You talk about the allegations of biased
3 reporting at page 119, page 120 you talk about the
4 February dossier, then you talk about, page 121, unease
5 in the security services, and you at 122 refer to
6 a number of other newspaper reports --
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. -- which it is fair to say had not quite attracted the
9 same attention as the Today report, had they?
10 A. They had not. What we were seeking to do there was to
11 explain our reasons for broadcasting -- we had taken the
12 very unusual step of broadcasting allegations on the
13 basis of a single anonymous source and an important part
14 of our reason for doing so was the context that that
15 provides in terms of the February dossier which had been
16 discredited, and the general briefings that were being
17 received by a wide number of journalists, not just those
18 working for the BBC. As you say, a number of those
19 other reports predated Andrew Gilligan's or certainly
20 predated his mention of Alastair Campbell in The Mail on
21 Sunday and certainly had not attracted anything like the
22 same attention.
23 Q. Can you turn to page 124 where you turn to the specific
24 questions that had been asked:
25 "Now to your questions and I make no apology for

132
1 repeating some of the points I have just made", which
2 I hope I have at least put in context.
3 "Does the BBC still stand by the allegation it made
4 on 29th May that No. 10 added in the 45 minute claim to
5 the dossier?"
6 "The allegation was not made by the BBC but by our
7 source -- a senior official involved in the compilation
8 of the dossier."
9 At this stage, had you seen the notes that
10 Mr Gilligan had made of his meeting on 22nd May?
11 A. This letter was drafted on 27th May in my office --
12 Q. 27th June.
13 A. 27th June, I beg your pardon. Parts of it were drafted
14 by my deputy Mark Damazer and he made reference -- he
15 had referred and talked to Andrew Gilligan, who was also
16 in the office working alongside us, for points of
17 clarification. He also sought points of clarification
18 from Steve Mitchell and Kevin Marsh. So elements of it
19 were drafted, I then looked at them, rewrote some of
20 them and at various stages the director general reviewed
21 the letter.
22 LORD HUTTON: Mr Sambrook may I just ask you about that
23 sentence:
24 "The allegation was not made by the BBC but by our
25 source -- a senior official involved in the compilation

133
1 of the dossier -- and the BBC stands by the reporting of
2 it."
3 Is that making the point that if a source makes
4 a serious criticism to the BBC about some third party,
5 the BBC considers that it is appropriate to report that
6 criticism because it has been made irrespective of its
7 view of the validity of the criticism?
8 A. It would depend on a number of criteria and whether the
9 allegation has passed a certain threshold. In this case
10 that would include the seniority and credibility of the
11 source, their track record and the extent to which the
12 issues they were talking about, how important they were,
13 how much an issue of public interest it was.
14 Again we took the decision to publish those
15 allegations without being able to prove them ourselves,
16 but because we believed in the credibility of the source
17 and because we believed they were important allegations
18 and subject to two caveats. One was that we were
19 completely clear and transparent at all times that these
20 allegations came from one single anonymous source and
21 did not try to pretend they were better established than
22 that, and secondly that we gave the Government ample and
23 frequent opportunity to put their point of view and to
24 rebut and deny the claims, which I believe we did.
25 LORD HUTTON: But if the BBC are going to report a criticism

134
1 of that nature from a source, is consideration given to
2 the question whether the body criticised should be given
3 an opportunity to show to the BBC, if it can, that the
4 criticism is unjustified before any report is broadcast?
5 A. Well, that would depend on the circumstances, I think.
6 I mean, the answer to that, briefly, will be sometimes
7 yes and sometimes no, but the crucial thing for us is
8 that we do give whoever the other side of the argument
9 is ample opportunity to state their case and put their
10 position.
11 I think quite often that might entail giving them
12 access to what we were going to say or briefing them on
13 what we were going to say in advance, but on a programme
14 like the Today Programme which produces a lot of
15 political journalism and probably several times a week
16 makes stories which may be based on a single source or
17 not, very seldom of this gravity I accept, they have
18 a relationship with Government ministries which is well
19 oiled, if I can put it that way; and I think on the
20 programme they feel there is a convention and a well
21 oiled routine they go through both with Downing Street
22 and the ministries, and I think they felt in this case
23 they had gone through the kinds of processes they would
24 be expected to do.
25 LORD HUTTON: So you are suggesting as regards political

135
1 criticism that there is an understanding, perhaps put it
2 that way, that if there is going to be criticism of the
3 Government, the Today Programme considers it is
4 justifiable to broadcast that criticism provided in the
5 same programme they give a Government minister the
6 chance to respond?
7 A. Yes.
8 LORD HUTTON: Thank you.
9 MR DINGEMANS: The next specific allegation that you have
10 been asked to deal with in the letter is:
11 "Does it still stand by the allegation made on the
12 same day that we did so against the wishes of the
13 intelligence agencies?"
14 "Again we reported accurately what we had been told
15 by the source that the 45 minute claim was included in
16 the dossier 'against our wishes'."
17 Then this:
18 "Does it still stand by the allegation made on that
19 day that both we and the intelligence agencies knew the
20 45 minute claim to be wrong and inserted it despite
21 knowing that?"
22 "Andrew Gilligan accurately reported the source
23 telling him that the Government 'probably knew that the
24 45 minute figure was wrong' and that the claim was
25 'questionable'. The basis for this assertion by

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1 Andrew Gilligan's source was that the information about
2 the 45 minute claim had been derived from only one
3 intelligence source -- whereas most of the other claims
4 in the dossier had at least two. Gilligan's source also
5 believed this single Iraqi source had probably got the
6 information wrong."
7 You I think have established that you did not look
8 at the notes beforehand, and you will recall -- I think
9 you were here yesterday when Mr Gilligan was giving his
10 evidence?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. And I think, and I hope I put it accurately, he
13 described his earlier reporting where this allegation
14 had been made as less than perfect but not wrong.
15 A. Indeed.
16 Q. I think those were his words. But there is nothing, is
17 there, when you look at his notes of the meeting with
18 Dr Kelly, to suggest that the source, Dr Kelly, had ever
19 suggested that?
20 A. No, I accept that; and clearly we should not have
21 suggested it was a direct quote. But we did believe,
22 and we discussed this obviously at some length with
23 Andrew, that it was an accurate reflection of
24 interpretation of parts of his conversation with
25 Dr Kelly. Andrew yesterday said that he believed that

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1 phrase was not wrong but less than perfect. I think in
2 saying that it was not wrong, he still believes, and
3 indeed we still stand by that interpretation of part of
4 his conversation.
5 Q. If you are going to make a particularly serious
6 allegation based on your interpretation or
7 understanding, perfectly reasonable perhaps, of what
8 a source has said but where you might be able to draw
9 two inferences from it, is that not the sort of
10 situation where you might highlight it and go back to
11 the source to check it?
12 A. Well, it depends on how confident you are of the
13 interpretation that you are placing upon your
14 conversation. If there is doubt in your mind then of
15 course you would go back and check it. If there is not
16 doubt in your mind then I would not expect to do so.
17 Q. So if you were in fact expressing yourself in a less
18 than perfect way, but not wrong, would you, when that
19 specific claim had been called into question, think that
20 the claim ought to be checked with the source?
21 A. Well I am not sure that that particular phrase, which we
22 now are putting under the spotlight -- as I said, until
23 this letter arrived on the 26th it had not been
24 identified in that way.
25 Q. No. I have shown I hope fairly the genesis leading up

138
1 to that and the identification of those questions in the
2 Prime Minister's official spokesman's briefing on that
3 morning, and the letter. But I think you told us you
4 had worked on the reply most of that day in the office;
5 is that right?
6 A. Yes, mid morning to mid afternoon.
7 Q. And you had taken extra time to ensure that the reply
8 was accurate?
9 A. Yes, well as much as we could. We were clearly under
10 time pressure to release it.
11 LORD HUTTON: May I just ask you, Mr Sambrook: if the Today
12 Programme is broadcasting some very important matter
13 based on a conversation with a source and the reporter
14 prepares his report, on occasions will he go back to the
15 source and say, in effect: now, this is a serious
16 matter, I am going to report something which is critical
17 to a particular body, I just want to check with you that
18 you are happy with me stating the matter in these terms;
19 is that sometimes done?
20 A. It is sometimes done but I would not say it is the norm.
21 LORD HUTTON: What would influence the reporter to do that?
22 A. If they were, as they were preparing their report, in
23 some way uncertain about the basis of what they had been
24 told.
25 LORD HUTTON: And if they are basing a report on inferences

139
1 which they draw from what they have been told, rather
2 than giving in effect a direct quotation, would that
3 influence them?
4 A. Well it is a question of their judgment, clearly.
5 LORD HUTTON: And would that be a matter of editorial
6 supervision to any extent? Would it be part of the duty
7 or the function of an editor?
8 A. Yes, it would. I would expect that conversation to have
9 taken place, as I believe it did in this instance, with
10 the programme editor about who the source was, what they
11 had actually said and the basis for the way we reported
12 it.
13 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Very well, thank you.
14 Now, Mr Dingemans, I think we will give the
15 stenographers a break now, so we will rise for five
16 minutes.
17 (3.10 pm)
18 (Short Break)
19 (3.15 pm)
20 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Sambrook, was there anything that
21 influenced you to reply, as you did, to Mr Campbell's
22 letter? What was the summary of your reasons for taking
23 this stance?
24 A. Well, we clearly needed to address his concerns in
25 a substantial way. We believe that involved explaining

140
1 the basis on which we had taken the decision to
2 broadcast this item, based on a single anonymous source,
3 and a lot of that was setting out the context and then
4 attempting to answer the questions he raised as best we
5 could.
6 Q. Right. And were there any specific factors that
7 persuaded you that the original story was correct?
8 A. Well, we believed it had been through a proper editorial
9 process on the Today Programme. We had obviously talked
10 to Andrew Gilligan and to his editor Kevin Marsh at some
11 length, and on a number of occasions; and we had
12 confidence that the source was in a position to make the
13 allegations he had made and that he was a credible and
14 reliable person who we should therefore reflect their
15 views.
16 LORD HUTTON: Could you just elaborate for me, I know you
17 have already explained to some extent, but can you just
18 summarise what you regard as a proper editorial
19 procedure with particular application to this report by
20 Mr Gilligan?
21 A. Well, Andrew Gilligan would have let the programme know
22 that he had a story that he wished to broadcast and
23 would have discussed it, probably in the first place,
24 with an editor of the day who is, if you like, a deputy
25 to the overall programme editor. If it was a serious

141
1 story, as this clearly was, he would have been referred
2 up to the editor of the programme who would have
3 discussed -- indeed did on this occasion -- who the
4 source was, the nature of the allegations, how credible
5 and reliable this source had proved, the extent to which
6 the allegations they were making were of public
7 interest, the extent to which efforts to corroborate
8 what they had said had been taken and any other
9 corroborative circumstances surrounding it, and, on that
10 basis, would have taken a decision on whether or not it
11 was right to place this source's allegations into the
12 public domain.
13 As I said, on this occasion the programme editor
14 I think did indicate only very generally to his line
15 manager that there was a report of this nature but he
16 took the decision, as I think is perfectly proper for
17 him to have done so, that we should broadcast this,
18 subject to the two caveats which I mentioned before,
19 which is that we should be completely transparent that
20 this came from a single anonymous source; and that we
21 should allow the Government ample opportunity to put its
22 case and to rebut or deny it.
23 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you.
24 MR DINGEMANS: At this stage you were receiving, I think you
25 tell us, some e-mails from other persons supporting the

142
1 story; is that right?
2 A. Yes, from the end of June and through July I received
3 I think seven or eight unsolicited e-mails from either
4 current or former BBC journalists.
5 Q. We have seen the one that Mr Hewitt sent.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Can we look at BBC/5/160? Now there is not much of the
8 e-mail that survived after it has been redacted but what
9 does the top e-mail tell us?
10 A. Well, this was Stephen Whittle, who we have referred to
11 before, saying that he had spoken to in this case
12 I think a fairly senior official, who was telling us to,
13 as he says there, stick to our guns; he had been hearing
14 similar things.
15 Q. I am not going to take you to them all, I hope you
16 understand that.
17 A. Of course.
18 Q. But another one that I think is a reasonable reflection
19 is BBC/5/178. It is extremely difficult to read because
20 so much, quite understandably, has been cut out. Could
21 you tell me the gist of this e-mail? First of all, who
22 is it from and to?
23 A. It is from Nick Gowing, who is one of our presenters,
24 sent to me. Again, it reflects a conversation that he
25 had in January with a senior member of the intelligence

143
1 community who had shown some discomfort in discussing
2 whether or not the public could be convinced about the
3 intelligence in favour of the 45 minute claim.
4 Q. Right. And there was one other e-mail which you know
5 I took Mr Gilligan to yesterday, BBC/5/118, which was at
6 about this time, the same time as the letter is being
7 produced, where -- and I am not going to read it again
8 entirely but where there was a suggestion that there had
9 been loose use of language and lack of judgment in some
10 of the phraseology in the original piece.
11 A. Yes, I would like to say two things about this.
12 Firstly, the date of that is 27th June in the afternoon.
13 This was when we were under maximum pressure to produce
14 our reply to Alastair Campbell's letter and we were
15 under external pressure because a reply was expected.
16 Indeed, Kevin and Steve Mitchell were under pressure
17 from me to review everything they had done and review
18 the nature of the story and the basis on which it had
19 been reported with a view to giving a full and proper
20 reply to Downing Street.
21 I think that this reflects Kevin's views on looking
22 back over it and his concerns about a lack of
23 consistency in some of the phrasing and the way that we
24 had encapsulated the story. But I have to say I do not
25 think -- it certainly does not, from my point of view,

144
1 give the considered judgment of the BBC News about
2 Andrew Gilligan as a reporter.
3 Q. No, and no-one is looking at anything other than the
4 specific use that Andrew Gilligan made of Dr Kelly's
5 information on this particular occasion. But on this
6 particular occasion the judgment appears to have been
7 formed by his programme editor in the circumstances that
8 you have identified, that there was a loose use of
9 language.
10 A. He was clearly identifying that it would have been
11 better if we had been more consistent across the great
12 range of reports and so on, in the language that we had
13 used to describe Dr Kelly's allegations.
14 Q. One of the allegations Mr Gilligan was keen to point out
15 that he had not repeated but which Mr Campbell had
16 identified in his letter was the Government knew that
17 this was false, and if the situation had come where he
18 had not really intended it or whatever reason, and
19 Mr Campbell had identified it as being false, was then
20 not the time to accept that that particular part of the
21 story could not be supported?
22 A. But that was not the case. We still believe and,
23 indeed, I believe Andrew Gilligan still believes that
24 although there may be problems with that phrase -- "not
25 perfect" I think he said yesterday -- in broad terms he

145
1 still believes that that reflects the basis of part of
2 his conversation with Dr Kelly.
3 LORD HUTTON: That is looking now at the report at 6.07 am,
4 that:
5 "We have been told by one of the senior officials in
6 charge of drawing up that dossier that actually the
7 Government probably knew that the 45 minutes figure was
8 wrong."
9 Are you suggesting that that is the view of the BBC
10 or that they were just reporting on Mr Gilligan -- or
11 Mr Gilligan is just reporting what he believed to be the
12 view of his source?
13 A. I think Mr Gilligan was reporting what he believed to be
14 the view of his source based on his conversation with
15 Dr Kelly, in other words that intelligence service
16 concerns about the 45 minutes claim had been flagged up
17 to whoever may have been partly involved in compiling
18 the dossier and making it ready for presentation and
19 publication, and that whoever did so presented as
20 certain that which they knew might not be right, or in
21 other words turned a blind eye to some of the caveats
22 and nuances that some of those involved would have
23 preferred to have seen included. I think that is what
24 that phrase is probably intended to capture.
25 LORD HUTTON: Yes.

146
1 MR DINGEMANS: Your reply to Alastair Campbell provoked an
2 immediate response; is that right?
3 A. It did, yes.
4 Q. Can I take you, just to illustrate that, to CAB/1/367
5 which was a statement he issued on 27th June?
6 A. Yes, I think this was a statement that Alastair Campbell
7 released through the Press Association.
8 Q. What he says is that your reply confirmed the central
9 charge there was no evidence and that the allegations
10 were outrageous, and so was your reply. And he
11 described the story as a lie as you can see halfway down
12 the page.
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. So if it had not become obvious before that things were
15 getting out of control, it was certainly obvious now; is
16 that right?
17 A. It is. But I would like to make the point, we placed
18 a great deal of emphasis on the one phrase we had just
19 discussed. At this stage, that was not identified as
20 being the heart of this complaint. The complaint was
21 still on a very broad base; and I would say it was a
22 maximalist approach to making a complaint. They were
23 saying a whole allegation, including the single sourcing
24 of the 45 minutes and the sexing up and so on was
25 without foundation; and we clearly did not believe that

147
1 was the case.
2 Q. That was the night in fact that Mr Campbell gave an
3 interview to Channel 4 News. I will deal with
4 Mr Campbell on that interview rather than you, if that
5 is all right.
6 But the correspondence we have now seen and the
7 communications between Mr Campbell and you, as
8 a characterisation, it made some lawyers' correspondence
9 look quite reasonable. Was there anything done to try
10 to reduce the heat of some of these allegations?
11 A. There was at a later stage, yes. I think it was in
12 early July, I had a phone call from the chairman,
13 Gavyn Davies, who said that he had had some indication
14 from Downing Street that they wished to reduce the
15 temperature and it would help if the BBC could make
16 a conciliatory gesture.
17 As it happened, the director general was due to make
18 a speech the next morning in Birmingham at the radio
19 festival and I discussed this with Greg Dyke, and he
20 agreed to put into his speech a conciliatory passage
21 which said -- I think, at that stage, Alastair Campbell
22 had rode back from his generalised attack on the BBC and
23 said it was more about our coverage of this one story.
24 Sir Greg Dyke welcomed the fact that he had withdrawn
25 his more generalised attacks on the BBC's standards and

148
1 suggested we might agree to disagree and draw a line and
2 move on.
3 Q. That is not much of a climb-down on either side, is it?
4 A. Well, I think it would seem so in the circumstances at
5 the time.
6 Q. 28th June, if I can go on to then, that is when
7 Ben Bradshaw MP appeared on the Today Programme. He was
8 making complaints about the absence of notice that had
9 been given about the story.
10 Can I take you to CAB/1/378? This is an
11 illustration, this is the extract from the 28th June
12 broadcast on the Today Programme. Mr Bradshaw at the
13 bottom says:
14 "[things have become] unusual and I think it
15 reflects the depth of anger felt not just by Alastair
16 but the Prime Minister and the top of Government and
17 including the top of the intelligence services. And
18 what you avoided to do in your interview with Bernard
19 Ingham is examine the central and original allegation
20 that you made on this programme which is that the
21 Government inserted information in to the dossier
22 against the wishes of the intelligence services knowing
23 it to be false."
24 In the course of that he also dealt with the
25 question of notice. Can I take you to his letter which

149
1 followed that, to you, at CAB/1/389? What we have here
2 or will have here is a letter of 28th June from
3 Ben Bradshaw to you:
4 "Dear Richard.
5 "During my interview on the Today programme this
6 morning your presenter, John Humphrys, asserted the BBC
7 had checked out the allegation made by Andrew Gilligan
8 on the Today Programme on May 29th beforehand with the
9 Ministry of Defence.
10 "I have spoken to the MoD at some length, including
11 with the official the BBC claims was given the
12 opportunity to respond to this allegation. The MoD
13 remains certain the only contact between the Today
14 Programme and the MoD press office related to an
15 interview on the use of cluster bombs."
16 And you responded at CAB/1/390, setting out the
17 information as you understood it to be?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. And which related to a contact at 5 o'clock, at 6.30,
20 and we heard from Mr Gilligan about his contact. Then
21 a further contact, and between 8 and 8.30 and 9.45.
22 Then Mr Bradshaw replied at CAB/1/391, and he asked
23 this -- he says halfway down:
24 "No advance warning was given about the nature of
25 the story... ", and gives the circumstances in which

150
1 Adam Ingram -- who was the defence minister, is that
2 right?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. -- came to be briefed. He asked this at the bottom:
5 "As we are entering the second month of this
6 controversy, could you also tell me whether you believe
7 it true that No. 10 entered the 45 minute intelligence
8 against the wishes of the intelligence services and in
9 the knowledge that this was probably wrong -- the
10 allegation broadcast on the Today programme on
11 May 29th."
12 And at 392 you say, in line with Mr Campbell's
13 latest letter to you:
14 "... we now wait for the report of the Foreign
15 Affairs Select Committee."
16 That was a line that had been suggested to you by Mr
17 Campbell in a letter I have not taken you to but I will
18 take him to?
19 A. Yes, that is right.
20 Q. So the Foreign Affairs Select Committee was then
21 assuming an importance both for you and for the
22 Government; is that right?
23 A. Clearly, at that time, it was the most detailed
24 exploration of some of these issues.
25 Q. We heard this morning Ms Watts saying it is about this

151
1 time, when everything is going off to the Foreign
2 Affairs Committee, that she is approached about the
3 identity of her source. Is there anything you wanted to
4 say in relation to that?
5 A. Yes, it seems to me at that time what I was trying to
6 do, having seen Ms Watts' reports on Newsnight I was
7 struck by the similarity to the allegations made in
8 Andrew Gilligan's report and it seemed to me highly
9 likely they had come from the same person and, if so, it
10 seemed to me the only responsible thing to do was to try
11 to find out, if that was the case, what more might have
12 been said in order either to corroborate or simply to
13 establish what this source believed, given that
14 Andrew Gilligan's report was coming under such vehement
15 criticism.
16 Ms Watts seemed to suggest that we were trying to --
17 I think she used the word "mould" this to a preconceived
18 view. That was not the case at all; but I believe that
19 having a strong -- having formed the view that it was
20 highly probable that it was one and the same person, it
21 would have been irresponsible of me not to try to find
22 out whether that was the case and what else they may
23 have said.
24 Q. So it is right that you asked Ms Watts to identify to
25 you, as part of the management of the BBC, the identity

152
1 of her source?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. And she said she was not willing to do so?
4 A. That is right.
5 Q. And then there was some solicitors' correspondence that
6 I at least identified briefly this morning.
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. It also had become slightly more serious. Can we look
9 at BBC/5/202 which is an e-mail to which, I think, you
10 have made reference. This is an e-mail from you to
11 George Entwhistle. We heard from Ms Watts that
12 Mr Entwhistle is the editor of Newsnight. That is
13 right, is it?
14 A. That is right, yes.
15 Q. Can you just explain what this e-mail is about?
16 A. Well, I believed it was important, from my position as
17 the head of BBC News, to try to establish all of the
18 contacts that Dr Kelly might have had in the BBC; and
19 clearly Susan Watts -- I was struck by the similarities,
20 as I said, and far more by the similarities than any
21 differences in her reports to Andrew Gilligan. And,
22 therefore, if it was the same source I wanted to know
23 what else he might have said in order to try to
24 understand more about his views and whether we had
25 properly reflected them.

153
1 So when Susan refused to identify who the source
2 was -- which is a position that I respect -- I then
3 asked George Entwhistle, as her editor, whether he knew
4 who the source was and whether he would be prepared to
5 tell me. He said he did know the source but he felt
6 conflicted between loyalty to his reporter and loyalty
7 to his employer and was agonising about it.
8 So this was an e-mail sent the next day really to
9 say: look, do not get too rattled about it. I will
10 withdraw the request from you because I can see you feel
11 very conflicted and in a difficult position.
12 Q. We then come to 6th July, which is the Sunday. The FAC
13 have printed their report on 3rd July and it is going to
14 be distributed on Monday 7th July?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. And you have a meeting of the board of governors on
17 6th July?
18 A. That is right.
19 Q. I have taken Mr Gilligan to parts of the minutes of the
20 board of governors. Is there any specific passage you
21 want to refer to in that respect?
22 A. Well, you did refer Mr Gilligan yesterday to two
23 passages. One was where a governor had made some
24 comparison or suggested there might be some comparison
25 between the Today Programme and the methods of the

154
1 tabloid and Sunday press, I think.
2 Q. Yes. Do you want to say anything about that?
3 A. It was simply to say that at that meeting that was the
4 view of one governor. It was a fairly robust
5 discussion; and I think that their view could more
6 fairly be presented as asking a question about whether
7 we should examine about whether the methods of the Today
8 Programme resembled those of the tabloid press or the
9 Sunday press, as opposed to those that the BBC would
10 aspire to meet, to the extent that this particular
11 governor perceived there should be a difference. This
12 was not the general view of the board of governors.
13 Q. And at that meeting there was, and I have identified the
14 passage, a suggestion that there had not been a careful
15 use of language in some of the original reporting.
16 A. Yes, there was -- we discussed obviously the reporting
17 of it and the point I have made already that we were not
18 consistent in a description of the allegation across all
19 of the BBC's outlets over several weeks and clearly that
20 we would have been in we believed an easier position if
21 we had had greater consistency in our use of language.
22 Q. We have had lots of correspondence between you and
23 Mr Campbell. The correspondence now takes a slightly
24 different angle; and this is on the same weekend.
25 BBC/6/145.

155
1 This is a letter to Gavyn Davies. Can you just
2 briefly tell us about Gavyn Davies?
3 A. Yes, Gavyn Davies is the chairman of the board of
4 governors at the BBC.
5 Q. This is from Geoff Hoon?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. He said:
8 "I am writing to draw to your attention an MoD
9 statement which we shall be issuing later today about
10 Andrew Gilligan's 'single source'. This is enclosed.
11 "You will see that we have not named the official
12 within the MoD who has come forward. We would, however,
13 be prepared to disclose his name to you in confidence,
14 on the basis that you would then immediately confirm or
15 deny that this is indeed Mr Gilligan's source."
16 That was responded to at BBC/6/149:
17 "I have to say that the offer in your letter seems
18 to be an attempt to force the BBC News Division to
19 reveal the name or names of the sources ... [we will not
20 do that]."
21 Gavyn Davies says he did not even know the name of
22 the source.
23 A. That is correct.
24 Q. That was accurate obviously at the time that that was
25 written?

156
1 A. That was.
2 Q. And then at BBC/6/166 Mr Hoon, on 9th July, tries again
3 with a letter:
4 "Dear Mr Davies.
5 "Thank you for your letter of 8th July replying to
6 mine of the same day.
7 "This is not about divulging of sources.
8 "So that you can establish whether the name of the
9 person who has come forward is the same as the name
10 given to by BBC Management by Andrew Gilligan, I am now
11 prepared to tell you that his name is David Kelly,
12 adviser to the Proliferation and Arms Control
13 Secretariat in the MoD."
14 The response, BBC/6/184, which was:
15 "I have discussed the matter [this is Gavyn Davies
16 to Mr Hoon] with Greg Dyke as Editor-in-Chief. Although
17 I did not originally show him the name contained in your
18 letter, I am sure he will have now seen the name in most
19 of the morning's newspapers.
20 "The BBC will not be making any more comments about,
21 or responding to any claims concerning, the identity of
22 Andrew Gilligan's source..."
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. In circumstances where Dr Kelly was now named to the
25 public at large, and I have asked Mr Gilligan about

157
1 this, why did the BBC continue to maintain that stance?
2 A. Well, because the BBC owes its anonymous sources a duty
3 of confidentiality. We did not know the basis on which
4 Dr Kelly had come forward. We did not know to what
5 extent he had admitted meeting Andrew Gilligan or how
6 often. We did not know what he had admitted discussing
7 with Andrew Gilligan or the extent to which he was
8 accepting that he had had the full conversations with
9 Andrew Gilligan. So on that basis we felt it was right,
10 absolutely right, to continue our duty of
11 confidentiality to him.
12 This was in the context of where there had been some
13 attempts over a period of days to try to narrow down who
14 the BBC source might be, both in my view by Government
15 and by the press.
16 Q. Can I take you to BBC/6/148? This is an e-mail from
17 Tim Luckhurst to you of 8th July. Who is Tim Luckhurst?
18 A. I think he is now a freelance journalist but he is
19 a former BBC programme editor.
20 Q. I think we pick that up probably from the last line of
21 the e-mail. He says this in the second paragraph:
22 "I am intrigued by the MoD man's confession. I have
23 no doubt that he has come under immense pressure ...
24 Indeed, he may not be the real source..."
25 At this stage did you know whether or not Dr Kelly

158
1 was the source?
2 A. Yes, I did.
3 Q. And who had told you that?
4 A. I had asked Andrew Gilligan on Friday 27th, the morning
5 when we started drafting the major reply to
6 Alastair Campbell.
7 Q. So you knew from 27th June; and although you had asked
8 him for the name of his source, you had not asked for
9 the notes of his meeting; is that fair?
10 A. I think we had the notes of his meeting early the
11 following week; but we certainly -- I mean Andrew was
12 working close alongside both myself and Mark Damazer in
13 our responses to the Government and had access to his
14 notes in doing so.
15 Q. You then had a meeting with Mr Hoon on 8th July at 1.30;
16 and you have made, I think, some notes of that meeting
17 or some notes have been made by personnel within the
18 BBC?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. BBC/6/140. Can you just tell me what we are looking at?
21 A. Yes, this is a note that I made after the meeting with
22 Geoff Hoon when I got back from the meeting, which was
23 probably within two hours of the meeting finishing.
24 Q. So these are your notes?
25 A. Yes.

159
1 Q. As they say to police officers, made contemporaneously
2 while matters were fresh in your mind?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. That records what was going on that day?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. At page 141 you record Mr Hoon saying he had "a deep
7 sense of grievance over that..." I imagine that is the
8 BBC?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. "... saying we had given MoD notice of Gilligan WMD
11 story. Shows me their phone log. Log is from 20.00
12 [to] midnight."
13 I cannot read the next lines. Can you help me on
14 that? Something like, is that "document log"?
15 A. "Doesn't log the AG [Andrew Gilligan]", then it says,
16 "Kate O'C", I think her name is now Kate Wilson.
17 I think Kate O'Connor may have been her maiden name, but
18 that is the Ministry of Defence press officer. It does
19 not log a mobile telephone call that Andrew had with
20 Kate Wilson. The log notes provided by the MoD or shown
21 to me by Geoff Hoon talk in general terms about WMD on
22 one side, Sir Donald Rumsfeld comments connected to the
23 story.
24 Q. Then was it Miss O'Connor at the time?
25 A. I am not sure when she got married, no.

160
1 Q. "Kate O'C says she spoke to AG for about 10 mins on
2 cluster bombs and he then mentioned WMD but said it
3 wasn't a matter for Ministry of Defence."
4 Part of that account accords with what Mr Gilligan
5 says, but not the whole of it.
6 A. That was her account of the conversation. As you know,
7 Mr Gilligan says he did outline -- at least he did
8 outline at least some of the allegations that were going
9 to be made.
10 Q. And the next paragraph says what?
11 A. "I said we don't necessarily dispute that he may have
12 talked about [cluster bombs] but it was odd for Andrew
13 Gilligan [I think I meant] only to talk about cluster
14 bombs [when] that wasn't his story."
15 Q. "She says no but he's very interested in the subject."
16 I asked him about that yesterday.
17 A. Yes. The point was it was very odd for him to have
18 a 10 minute conversation about something that was not
19 his story, without mentioning the one reason for his
20 call which would have been his story.
21 Q. Towards the bottom of the page, the penultimate
22 paragraph, there was a misunderstanding. You say --
23 A. Yes, I said: Look, if there has been a
24 misunderstanding -- I think I had already written at
25 this point saying that the two accounts simply could not

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1 be reconciled. Our programme team, indeed Andrew's view
2 of those conversations could not be reconciled with
3 those of the Ministry of Defence press office, but I did
4 not want to allege anybody was acting in bad faith.
5 I said if there had been some misunderstanding that in
6 due course turned out to be our fault, we would
7 apologise for it; but at the moment we could not
8 reconcile those accounts and we were not prepared, on
9 that basis, to suggest that we had done something wrong.
10 Q. In fact the entry reads this:
11 "There was a misunderstanding for which I've written
12 and apologised. Happy if that is put in public domain
13 alongside... "
14 What is the next statement?
15 A. The governors' statement. The point about this was the
16 governors had said that one of the reasons why we could
17 not reconcile these accounts was that the programme had
18 not taken adequate notes of the bidding process. But
19 I think the account of that particular paragraph is
20 better encapsulated in my letter to Geoff Hoon which is
21 what that is a reference to.
22 Q. Right. Over the page, you asked: "Are you looking for
23 an on air correction?" Mr Hoon says "yes".
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. What is your response?

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1 A. I said it is very unusual for the Today Programme to do
2 that. I would not say yes or no but I would consider
3 the fact that he is asking for one.
4 LORD HUTTON: Why is it very unusual for there to be an on
5 air correction?
6 A. Hopefully it is because we do not make that many
7 mistakes; but, I mean, when we do make mistakes of a
8 serious nature we would correct them, but for something
9 like~--
10 LORD HUTTON: But would you correct them on air?
11 A. I believe we have done so, yes. But, I mean, for
12 something which is simply saying: there is some
13 confusion over when phone calls were made and the Today
14 Programme absolutely believes that they had given proper
15 notice and there was a proper process followed and the
16 other side simply does not believe it, there is
17 a straight problem in reconciling them; and I did not
18 accept that there was a basis for an obvious correction
19 to be made.
20 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
21 MR DINGEMANS: At 144 Mr Hoon then told you his view of
22 Andrew Gilligan, at the top of the page.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Which that he was essentially a tabloid journalist:
25 "Gave example of AG story this morning - Hoon

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1 comment out of context and misused.
2 "Said something to the effect Gilligan shouldn't be
3 on Today."
4 What was your response to that?
5 A. I said that Andrew is a particular sort of journalist.
6 He uncovers stories that cause the Government
7 discomfort, quite often controversial stories but, in my
8 view, good ones. I explained that -- we were having
9 a discussion, at that point, about whether that was the
10 only sort of defence coverage for the Today Programme to
11 have, and I acknowledged it might not be.
12 I did also say, as was evidenced by the fact that we
13 sent Andrew to Baghdad, that we are thinking about the
14 best use for Andrew; so that it is not that he should be
15 taken off the Today Programme but that he might be used
16 in other ways as well; and said that he was taken on
17 originally I think three years ago, because for many
18 years the BBC defence correspondent had simply reflected
19 the Ministry of Defence's point of view which may be
20 legitimate in one sense, but actually in terms of
21 journalism we needed a correspondent who would ask
22 questions and hold to account as well. That is the
23 basis on which I understood, although I was not directly
24 involved, that he had been engaged.
25 Q. Can I take you to MoD/1/52, which is the internal

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1 Ministry of Defence note of the same meeting, and just
2 ask you a couple of comments? Paragraph 2:
3 "Mr Hoon briefly rehearsed why we were sure that
4 Andrew Gilligan had not forewarned us of the WMD
5 allegations broadcast on 29th May. Sambrook said that he
6 had spoken to a number of people involved in the
7 preparation of the programme and they believed that an
8 indication of the nature of the story had been given.
9 Mr Hoon showed Sambrook the Duty Press Officer's log for
10 the evening in question and Kate described her
11 conversation with Gilligan earlier that afternoon.
12 Sambrook expressed surprise that Gilligan had described
13 cluster bombs: he was not responsible for that issue.
14 He accepted that the fault was on the BBC's side an
15 apologised."
16 Is that a fair summary of what happened?
17 A. I do not remember saying I accepted fault, no, but I do
18 remember saying that if there had been
19 a misunderstanding I was happy to place a generalised
20 apology. I think if you look at my letter to Geoff Hoon
21 in which I do that, that encapsulates what I said.
22 Q. I do not propose to go to all the correspondence.
23 I will put that to Mr Hoon. Do you want to specifically
24 see that letter?
25 A. I think the letter to Geoff Hoon explains the basis on

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1 which I was apologising which I do not think is
2 accurately reflected there.
3 Q. At paragraph 3:
4 "Mr Hoon raised his story that he had been twice
5 denied an opportunity to answer the story. Mr Sambrook
6 said there was a general issue about over-defensiveness
7 on the Today Programme."
8 What was that general issue?
9 A. This was because the Today Programme was in a very
10 difficult position in covering this story of which it is
11 at the heart; and we are struggling to work out and to
12 find the proper way in which the Today Programme can
13 report a story at which is it at the heart and without
14 the programme appearing to be overly defensive about the
15 BBC. And this particular point, I think, was that
16 Mr Hoon was complaining that he had been invited on the
17 programme to talk about Iraq but said he would only come
18 on if he could talk about the argument with the BBC; and
19 the programme had said: In that case, we do not want
20 you to come on.
21 My point was whilst I understood in some cases that
22 the programme was not wanting to reinflame the row, they
23 were struggling to work out how they could properly
24 reflect some of the Government's concerns without also
25 the programme being seen to have to put the BBC's point

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1 of view and the Today Programme being presented as an
2 advocate for the BBC, which it should not be. It should
3 be presenting itself as an independent journalistic
4 programme.
5 Q. You are recorded there as saying that you were happy to
6 accept Kate's version of her conversation with Gilligan
7 and was prepared to consider issuing a statement on air?
8 A. I said that Kate Wilson appeared to me to be speaking
9 honestly, and I accepted that she was speaking in good
10 faith, but there was still an account here which could
11 not be reconciled because I also accepted Andrew was
12 speaking in good faith. I also accepted that Mr Hoon
13 felt aggrieved at the way he had been treated and, you
14 know, I have already addressed the point about whether
15 or not I would consider doing something on air. I have
16 already said I did not think that was straightforward
17 but if he had made that bid, I would think about it.
18 Q. On 3rd July --
19 A. I think the other point worth making there is we had
20 asked Stephen Whittle to look into the whole issue of
21 whether a warning or a pre-notification of this story
22 had been given. I had done that precisely because
23 Mr Whittle worked outside of the news division and could
24 provide an independent perspective on it. Mr Hoon knew
25 I had done that, and Mr Whittle had not yet produced his

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1 report.
2 Q. On 3rd July you had met with journalists, is that right?
3 A. Yes, I think so.
4 Q. And who were those journalists?
5 A. I had a lunch at The Times newspaper with the editor
6 Robert Thompson and about five or six correspondents.
7 Q. On 5th July an article appeared in The Times by
8 Mr Baldwin. Can I take you to that, which is CAB/1/19?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Just to concentrate if I may on the first paragraph:
11 "The source for bitterly contested allegations that
12 Downing Street 'sexed up' its dossier on Saddam
13 Hussein's weapons of mass destruction is a military
14 expert who is now based in Iraq, BBC insiders are
15 claiming."
16 Did you give the other members of the press who were
17 present at that meeting any details of Dr Kelly?
18 A. No, I did not give them details of Dr Kelly.
19 Tom Baldwin asked whether I knew who the source was and
20 I said: yes, I did. He asked me a number of questions
21 about the source, and I simply used the phrase that
22 Andrew Gilligan had used to describe him "a senior
23 official involved in compiling the dossier"; and I would
24 not go any further than that. Mr Baldwin pressed me
25 quite hard on whether we had gone back to the source;

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1 and when I said not he pressed me on why not, and
2 I simply said they were unavailable due to the nature of
3 their work, which was the phrase that I had heard
4 Andrew Gilligan use in similar circumstances.
5 Mr Baldwin then said: you mean they are out of the
6 country? I said: something like that, intending to be
7 equivocal.
8 Q. So you were not responsible for Mr Baldwin's
9 description?
10 A. I do not see how Mr Baldwin could have said "a military
11 expert based in Iraq" based on my conversation there,
12 no.
13 Q. Do you know which other BBC insiders might have spoken
14 with Mr Baldwin?
15 A. I do not.
16 Q. On 7th July the BBC issued its own press statement, at
17 CAB/1/415, about the Foreign Affairs Committee report.
18 The gist of this -- and I hope this is an accurate
19 description -- is that you were claiming support from
20 the findings of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. It has to be said that Mr Campbell put out a press
23 statement the same day which had a similar conclusion.
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. And it was clear that the person who had been identified

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1 within the Ministry of Defence was going to come under
2 considerable scrutiny, is that right?
3 A. Yes, I am trying to remember the date of the Foreign
4 Affairs Committee because I think this was before the
5 Ministry of Defence --
6 Q. The Ministry of Defence statement comes out on 8th July.
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. But it is against this background.
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. And then there is the lobby briefing on 9th July --
11 I will not take you to that if I can avoid doing that --
12 at which some details are given about the person who has
13 come forward, or descriptions.
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. And we have seen the correspondence in which Mr Hoon
16 refers, finally, to Dr Kelly's name. At that stage,
17 once Dr Kelly was in the public domain, and it also
18 became clear that Dr Kelly was going to give evidence in
19 public to the Foreign Affairs Committee, was any final
20 effort made to confirm, as it were, the underlying
21 nature of all the allegations that had been made against
22 the Government?
23 A. Well, as I think Andrew Gilligan gave evidence
24 yesterday, he had made I think he said two attempts to
25 contact Dr Kelly and had been unsuccessful.

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1 Q. Were you aware of those attempts to contact Dr Kelly?
2 A. I had asked whether he had made an attempt and he said:
3 yes, but unsuccessfully.
4 Q. And there was no other contact as far as you are aware
5 between anyone at the BBC and Dr Kelly before his death?
6 A. Not that I am aware of, no. I think I would go back to
7 the key point that I made earlier. We were concerned
8 not to try to draw attention to our relationship with
9 Dr Kelly because we were unclear, on the basis on which
10 he had come forward, of the conversations with
11 Andrew Gilligan and indeed with Susan Watts he had
12 admitted to. We believed we still owed him a duty of
13 confidentiality and we believed that to avert an attempt
14 to get in touch with him might well confirm that he was
15 the source where he may not yet have confirmed that
16 himself.
17 Q. You saw him give evidence to the Foreign Affairs
18 Committee on television; is that right?
19 A. It is, yes.
20 Q. And he made it clear that he had had some conversations
21 with Andrew Gilligan but he denied other parts of the
22 conversations.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. At that stage, had any duty of confidence owed to
25 Dr Kelly gone?

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1 A. Absolutely not, no. My view of Dr Kelly's evidence to
2 the Foreign Affairs Committee was that he was obviously
3 very uncomfortable but that he was also being -- my
4 impression was deliberately evasive, sometimes vague,
5 failing to recall whether or not he had said something
6 and whether or not it was the sort of language he had
7 used. My impression was it was a degree of evasiveness
8 designed not to implicate himself as the full source for
9 the BBC reports, and on that basis I believe we still
10 owed him a duty of confidentiality.
11 Q. And once he was giving his evidence in front of the
12 Foreign Affairs Committee, you have heard, I think,
13 Ms Watts' analysis of the circumstances in which she
14 believes she would have been released from her
15 obligation of confidence, and that was when Dr Kelly had
16 given a version of events as it were inconsistent with
17 hers about what was said at the meeting. Is that the
18 same view that you took?
19 A. No. I would not take that view at all. As I said,
20 I think Dr Kelly -- in my view he was attempting to
21 protect himself and not to indicate that he had been the
22 source for either Andrew Gilligan's or Susan Watts'
23 report in the fullest sense. On that basis we still
24 owed him a duty of confidentiality and I think it would
25 have been quite wrong to have identified him in those

172
1 circumstances.
2 Q. I promised to take you to your open letter. It is
3 CAB/1/409. This is a letter of 7th July from you to
4 Mr Hoon. You record what happens in your second
5 paragraph, middle sentence:
6 "They believe that between them those calls covered
7 sufficiently both the allegations made ..."
8 Your own account is discussed in the third
9 paragraph, and:
10 "... the BBC governors have taken the view 'that the
11 Today Programme should have kept a clearer account ...'"
12 You say in the penultimate paragraph:
13 "We can only apologise for any misunderstanding that
14 may have occurred in the bidding process and have taken
15 steps to tighten our procedures for the future."
16 A. Yes. The situation was that there was a clear conflict
17 of stories about whether or not proper notice had been
18 given in the many conversations -- there were several
19 conversations between the Today Programme and the
20 Ministry of Defence the night before, ones that we were
21 unable to reconcile.
22 It is true that the BBC governors had taken the view
23 that the programme should have kept a clearer account of
24 those conversations than it had, which places us in
25 a more difficult position than we would otherwise have

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1 been, but we were still minded to believe our team acted
2 in good faith and was speaking in good faith when they
3 said they had believed they had outlined the nature of
4 the allegations that were to be put.
5 However, having said that, in seeking to be
6 conciliatory with at least one part of Government we
7 said we would apologise if a misunderstanding had
8 occurred, although we could not yet identify precisely
9 where the fault on our part lay other than we had not
10 taken proper record or proper notes, and seeking to say
11 at the bottom that we have always enjoyed excellent
12 relations with the Press Office and we hoped we
13 continued to do so. It was intended to be
14 a conciliatory letter in the context of these accounts
15 of what had taken place that evening which could not be
16 reconciled, and that we still stood by our team's
17 assertion that they had given proper notice.
18 Q. I think we have heard from Ms Watts about the process
19 that led up to the drafting of the BBC's statement that
20 was issued on 20th July after Dr Kelly's death.
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. No doubt we will be in a position to be provided -- we
23 have seen the final draft. Is Ms Watts right that there
24 were earlier drafts of the statement?
25 A. I think there may have been earlier drafts. If there

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1 are, we will provide them. I do not think they were
2 substantially different but we are happy to provide them
3 if we can.
4 Q. Can I ask you this: did you at any time see
5 Andrew Gilligan's notes of his meeting with Dr Kelly?
6 A. Yes, I did. I saw them the first week in July.
7 Q. Having seen those notes, did you compare those notes
8 with what he had broadcast in the morning of 29th May?
9 A. Yes, I did.
10 Q. And did you in those notes derive any support for -- and
11 let us concentrate on the one allegation that the
12 Government appear to have concentrated on at the end --
13 the allegation that the Government knew that the report
14 was probably wrong when they put it in?
15 A. No, that is clearly not in Andrew's notes though many
16 other aspects of his conversation with Dr Kelly are.
17 But our understanding was that that phrase was an
18 interpretation which stemmed from parts of the
19 conversation which were not recorded in his notes.
20 Q. Did Andrew Gilligan say anything to you that gave you
21 comfort that that phrase was supportable?
22 A. Yes, he said it was an interpretation of the
23 conversation that he had had.
24 Q. An interpretation of the conversation making a charge
25 tantamount to dishonestly knowingly misleading people

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1 which he had not checked with the source. Did you not
2 at that stage consider it sensible to check with the
3 source?
4 A. As I explained before, Andrew had tried to check with
5 the source and had been unable to get in contact with
6 them and we felt we had to be careful about our
7 approaches to Dr Kelly in case he was identified.
8 LORD HUTTON: Mr Sambrook, may I ask you, what was the
9 interpretation that you understood could be placed on
10 Dr Kelly's words? You have seen the note that
11 Mr Gilligan prepared of the conversation on 22nd May.
12 MR DINGEMANS: BBC/1/54.
13 LORD HUTTON: Did you consider what parts of it could give
14 rise to that interpretation?
15 A. No. As I have said, I accept it is not captured in his
16 notes.
17 LORD HUTTON: Yes, but you are suggesting Mr Gilligan said
18 that that inference could be drawn from or that
19 interpretation could be placed on the remarks. Bearing
20 in mind that part of the note says "real information",
21 referring to the 45 minutes claim, are you able to point
22 to any part of the note which would give rise to that
23 interpretation, that Dr Kelly thought that the
24 Government probably knew that the 45 minute figure was
25 wrong?

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1 A. My understanding of the inference was I suppose around
2 that passage, in that he believed that some of the
3 nature of the unreliability, some of the nuances or
4 caveats that would have pointed to the unreliability