Hearing Transcripts

1 sit again at 2 o'clock.
2 (1.05 pm)
3 (The short adjournment)
4 (2.00 pm)
5 LORD HUTTON: Yes, Mr Dingemans.
6 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Davies, we were talking about
7 Mr Campbell's evidence on 25th June --
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. -- and your view about whether or not this was an
10 escalation in the dispute between the Government and the
11 BBC.
12 A. Yes. I mean, I felt this was an extraordinary moment.
13 I felt it was an almost unprecedented attack on the BBC
14 to be mounted by the head of communications at
15 10 Downing Street. Mr Campbell accused the BBC of lying
16 directly. He accused Mr Gilligan of lying directly. He
17 alleged that the BBC had accused the Prime Minister of
18 lying, something which I never believed the BBC had
19 done. And he accused the BBC of having followed an
20 anti-war agenda before, during and after the Iraqi
21 conflict.
22 I must say, I took this as an attack on the
23 impartiality of the BBC and the integrity of the BBC,
24 done with great vigour.
25 Q. Could I take you to BBC/17/2? This is a report in the

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1 newspaper, The Times, the next day, 26th June:
2 "Campbell accuses BBC of lying."
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Did you see this coverage or this type of coverage at
5 the time?
6 A. I certainly saw this type of coverage at the time.
7 I was more focused on actually having watched
8 Alastair Campbell give evidence on television, so I knew
9 exactly what he had said.
10 Q. Were there any avenues, so far as you were concerned,
11 that might have been used to resolve the dispute?
12 A. Well, another troubling aspect of this, to me, was that
13 the Director General had told me that in a previous
14 letter to Mr Campbell, I think on 16th June or
15 thereabouts, the Director of News had suggested to
16 Mr Campbell that if he felt he had a complaint about
17 inaccuracy of a particular broadcast or unfairness, he
18 should approach the BBC Programme Complaints Unit, which
19 I think would have given him due process for resolving
20 his complaint in a non-conflictual and non-public
21 manner.
22 He also had the option, which I do not think he was
23 told in that letter specifically, of complaining to the
24 Broadcasting Standards Commission about unfairness.
25 That is a body that is entirely independent of the BBC

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1 and has the power, if it finds on the side of the
2 complainant, to ask the BBC to broadcast a correction.
3 LORD HUTTON: Mr Davies, at this point in time had you
4 actually seen a transcript of what Mr Gilligan had said
5 on the Today Programme at 6.07 am on 29th May?
6 A. (Pause). This is by 25th June, my Lord?
7 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
8 A. It would have been around then. I am not sure that it
9 was prior to that or after that, but it would have been
10 around then.
11 LORD HUTTON: But you had seen the transcript by that time?
12 A. I cannot promise I had seen it before Mr Campbell's
13 evidence.
14 LORD HUTTON: No. Before Mr Campbell's?
15 A. I cannot promise I had seen the transcript before
16 Mr Campbell gave evidence.
17 LORD HUTTON: Yes, to the FAC?
18 A. Yes, to the FAC.
19 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
20 A. I certainly saw it immediately thereafter. My attention
21 on this matter rose dramatically after the FAC evidence
22 by Mr Campbell.
23 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
24 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Campbell wrote two letters on 26th June,
25 one to Mr Sambrook, that we have seen. Can I take you

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1 to BBC/5/92? This is a letter from Mr Campbell to
2 Mr Dyke. What is his position?
3 A. Mr Dyke is the Director General of the BBC. He is in
4 charge of the BBC's operations day-to-day and is the
5 editor-in-chief of the BBC.
6 Q. We can see he is sorry he said what he did but was
7 afraid private correspondence and discussion had been
8 pointless:
9 "I am regularly assured by Richard Sambrook that
10 when the BBC makes mistakes, you admit it. I'm afraid
11 that is not the case and I have nine years of
12 experience..."
13 Then he says that the story is 100 per cent wrong,
14 how he is a huge admirer of the BBC, at the bottom:
15 "But I really believe that if this story is not
16 corrected, and an apology not given, it renders
17 pointless any attempt at meaningful discussion about how
18 to resolve the difficulties between us."
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Did you see this letter?
21 A. Yes, I did. This letter was copied to me, I believe, by
22 Mr Campbell.
23 Q. We also know that Mr Campbell wrote to Mr Sambrook; and
24 that is CAB/1/352, a letter of 26th June.
25 A. Yes.

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1 Q. He asked for a response to some specific questions; and
2 the specific questions are picked up in the response.
3 If I may, I will go straight to the response, which was
4 on 27th June at CAB/1/355.
5 Were you a party to this letter of response?
6 A. No, I was not a party to that. I was aware --
7 Richard Sambrook showed me the letter from
8 Alastair Campbell; and he also showed me a draft of the
9 reply that he was going to send. I was eager, as
10 Chairman, by this stage, to make sure that the
11 management, the Director General and the Director of
12 News, were acting appropriately in replying seriously to
13 the allegations that Mr Campbell -- to the queries that
14 Mr Campbell was raising. So, I think to say I was
15 a party to it is an exaggeration, but I was very aware
16 of it being drafted, yes.
17 Q. Can I take you to CAB/1/360, through the letter, page 7
18 of the letter? And the questions that Mr Campbell had
19 asked were:
20 "Does the BBC still stand by the allegation it made
21 on 29th May that No. 10 added in the 45 minute claim to
22 the dossier?"
23 It said:
24 "The allegation was not made by the BBC but by our
25 source -- a senior official involved in the compilation

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1 of the dossier -- and the BBC stands by the reporting of
2 it."
3 There is a distinction between the BBC and the
4 source. Was that how you saw it at the time?
5 A. I read this letter, Mr Dingemans, I did not write it.
6 I believe that what this letter was doing was giving, on
7 behalf of BBC management, our best and most truthful
8 explanation to Mr Campbell of what we had reported.
9 I am perfectly aware that we -- I was aware at the time
10 that we had written this; and it was absolutely what
11 I believed to be the case. We had, right through this
12 period, a problem persuading Mr Campbell that the BBC
13 was reporting a story in which it was reporting the
14 views of a senior and credible and reliable source, but
15 was not itself making the allegations that that source
16 was putting into the public domain via the BBC.
17 LORD HUTTON: Mr Davies, may I just ask you, if we could go
18 to look at what Mr Gilligan said on 29th May, BBC/1/4.
19 You see the passage there:
20 "... what we've been told by one of the senior
21 officials in charge of drawing up that dossier was that,
22 actually the Government probably erm, knew that that
23 forty five minute figure was wrong, even before it
24 decided to put it in."
25 I appreciate that in the later reports on Today

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1 Mr Gilligan did not put it in those terms, and his
2 comments were of a less serious nature; but do you
3 regard that as being a very serious charge that the
4 Government probably knew that the 45 minutes figure was
5 wrong? Apart from whether it was a report of what
6 a source said or whether it was an allegation by the
7 BBC, do you regard that as a very serious charge?
8 A. My Lord, I could not say other than that that is
9 a serious charge, yes.
10 LORD HUTTON: Yes. If you have a serious charge against
11 a person, let us take a totally different situation.
12 Suppose that an allegation that some very prominent
13 public figure is taking bribes to induce him to follow
14 a certain course of action, and you have two types of
15 reporting. There is a report on the BBC that one of
16 their reporters, having investigated matters, considers
17 that the very prominent person is taking bribes but then
18 let us suppose the report was not in those terms but it
19 was a report in these terms: the broadcast said:
20 a reliable source has informed the BBC that that public
21 figure is taking bribes; do you consider that as regards
22 the gravity of the charge there is a distinction between
23 those two charges?
24 A. My Lord, I think that in that particular case --
25 LORD HUTTON: I appreciate it is an illustration and it is

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1 not against the background of other reports.
2 A. My feeling, my Lord, is in a situation like that you
3 would ask the senior public figure whether it was true.
4 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
5 A. And you would hope to get a truthful response or at
6 least an elucidation of the story. Almost certainly you
7 would be able to, through other investigative reporting,
8 add a considerable amount of information before you
9 would broadcast that. I think the particular problem
10 with the area we are talking about here is that in
11 politics you do not always get an absolutely truthful
12 denial of a --
13 LORD HUTTON: I appreciate that, yes.
14 A. -- report. And sometimes it is very difficult to get
15 direct corroboration, especially in the world that we
16 are talking about here, of a particular story. But
17 I certainly was aware that was a serious charge,
18 my Lord, yes.
19 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Yes. Thank you.
20 A. But I did take it to be being made by the source and not
21 by Mr Gilligan.
22 LORD HUTTON: Yes. But I fully understand your explanation
23 about the problems in particular reporting and getting
24 confirmations or denials, I entirely appreciate that.
25 Just on the point of distinction, if one looks at it

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1 from the point of view of the person who is the subject
2 of the report, let us say the report is unjustified --
3 let us take it away from the matter we are considering,
4 to some totally different imaginary case -- do you think
5 there is a degree of difference between the justified
6 grievance that a person who is the subject of an
7 unjustified criticism might have, depending on whether
8 the report says the BBC considered that or the report is
9 that "the BBC has learnt from a reliable source
10 that...", does it affect the sense of injustice that the
11 object of the criticism might have?
12 A. My Lord, I believe that there is an enormous difference
13 between those two statements, because I believe that if
14 the BBC News reports that the BBC believes something,
15 the requirement for certainty is much greater on behalf
16 of the broadcaster. If the BBC reports that a credible
17 and reliable source believes something, then it is
18 clearly thought to be something that should be put into
19 the public domain, a valid remark to put into the public
20 domain, but it is clearly hinged on one person's view.
21 And I think that that was what this was.
22 LORD HUTTON: Yes. I see. Thank you.
23 MR DINGEMANS: If I can continue with CAB/1/360. The next
24 point was:
25 "Does it still stand by the allegation made on the

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1 same day that we did so against the wishes of the
2 intelligence agencies?"
3 "Answer: Again we reported accurately what we had
4 been told by the source that the 45 minute claim was
5 included in the dossier 'against our wishes'.
6 "Does it still stand by the allegation made on that
7 day that both we and the intelligence agencies knew the
8 45 minute claim to be wrong and inserted it despite
9 knowing that?
10 "Answer: Andrew Gilligan accurately reported the
11 source telling him that the Government 'probably knew
12 that the 45 minute figure was wrong' and that the claim
13 was 'questionable'. The basis for this assertion by
14 Andrew Gilligan's source was that the information about
15 the 45 minute claim had been derived from only one
16 intelligence source -- whereas most of the other claims
17 in the dossier had at least two. Gilligan's source also
18 believed this single Iraqi source had probably got the
19 information wrong."
20 We have had a chance to see Mr Gilligan's notes. At
21 this stage had you seen Mr Gilligan's notes?
22 A. No, I had not. In fact, I did not see Mr Gilligan's
23 notes until I believe Dr Kelly died, actually.
24 Q. And did any of the Governors see Mr Gilligan's notes
25 before?

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1 A. No, no. Again, the Board of Governors is a supervisory
2 board. It is not a board of, you know, direct editorial
3 day-to-day management.
4 Q. No, but I think you explained that this issue had become
5 a very large issue.
6 A. It had, but I thought that the Director General of the
7 BBC and the Director of News were more than capable, and
8 I believe they are more than capable of answering this
9 letter from Mr Campbell without me cross checking every
10 paragraph.
11 Q. No, not at the letter stage, later on. But if one comes
12 to CAB/1/361 you can see then the other aspects of it.
13 I will not necessarily take you through it all. Each
14 claim is answered, as it were, by reference to the
15 source and the reporting of the source.
16 A. My belief at the time -- and this is important; my
17 belief at the time was that this letter represented the
18 BBC's best reply to Mr Campbell about his questions, in
19 reply to his questions. But I did not feel it was my
20 job or role at all to satisfy myself about each
21 individual line of the letter. It was not my letter.
22 Q. At about this time, you, yourself, have contacts with
23 the other Governors by e-mail; is that right?
24 A. Yes. I started to feel that the Board of Governors as
25 a whole needed to focus on this matter, so I sent them

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1 a couple of e-mails, I think, in the week after
2 Mr Campbell's appearance at the FAC.
3 Q. Which I think is 4th July. If I take you to BBC/14/95,
4 this is when you have also decided to call a Governors'
5 meeting; is that right?
6 A. Yes, that was the day I decided to do it, I think.
7 Q. Right. And you had had some, I think, communications
8 beforehand, is that right, with the Governors?
9 A. Yes. Although I do not think meaningful before this day
10 or the day before, as I recall; but, yes, there
11 certainly had been some.
12 Q. Right. Well, I can take --
13 A. I certainly sent them some e-mails prior to this,
14 Mr Dingemans, you are right.
15 Q. I am not sure I need to take you through all those
16 e-mails. They will be there as a matter of record. But
17 BBC/14/83, you can see here what I think is the first
18 e-mail that you sent on 27th June; is that right?
19 A. That is correct, yes.
20 Q. "... quick update ...
21 "... Campbell has made two separate accusations
22 against the BBC ...
23 "1. ... overall coverage of the war was biased ...
24 "2. The BBC ... has accused No. 10 of 'sexing up'
25 the first dossier..."

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1 A. Yes.
2 Q. You say:
3 "These two accusations are currently being handled
4 by Greg [Dyke], Richard Sambrook ..."
5 And you have been in contact with them.
6 A. Yes, that is correct.
7 Q. And that you thought the accusations needed to be viewed
8 separately, from the Governors' point of view.
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. The first allegation you answer by reference to your
11 previous consideration; and you say on the second:
12 "... the Governors have not formed a specific
13 opinion ... it is up to management to reply..."
14 You have told Mr Dyke and Mr Sambrook to take great
15 care. Is that right?
16 A. That is exactly right, yes.
17 Q. I think we see similar e-mails. Did it become apparent
18 that the matter was not going to go away?
19 A. Well, I was hoping it might go away, but in this period
20 the Government continued in its press briefings daily,
21 at No. 10, to bring the matter up with a fairly high
22 degree of volume. So, in this week I came to the view
23 that the matter was not going to spontaneously die and
24 the Governors -- this had reached a level and at a pitch
25 where the board of the BBC needed to make a statement,

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1 I felt.
2 Q. Before that you had had, if one looks at BBC/14/84, some
3 responses to your e-mail. We can see Fabian Monds. Who
4 is that?
5 A. Fabian is the Northern Ireland National Governor of the
6 BBC.
7 Q. He talks about your approach and the coverage being
8 excellent, some uncertainty over the claim by
9 Mr Gilligan's source, but supporting your stance in that
10 respect.
11 A. That is correct, yes.
12 Q. I think we can see, as another example, at BBC/14/86
13 Baroness Hogg replied:
14 "Your summary seems to be well judged..."
15 A. I believe a lot of the Governors, at that stage,
16 Mr Dingemans, had the same view that I did about the
17 wide ranging and unusual nature of Mr Campbell's attacks
18 on the BBC.
19 Q. You then decide to call a meeting of the Governors. Was
20 that a planned meeting or was it an extraordinary
21 meeting, in that sense?
22 A. The next planned meeting was actually set, I think, for
23 17th July. I realised, though, that myself and other
24 board members and the Director General were going to
25 have to give public evidence to the Select Committee on

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1 Culture some time prior to that and do a press
2 conference as well; and it certainly would not have been
3 feasible to go as far as that and give a press
4 conference without knowing what my fellow Governors
5 thought about these matters. But I also felt that the
6 attack on the BBC was so all encompassing by this stage
7 and so continuous that it really was for the Board of
8 Governors to stand up and say that parts of this attack
9 were inappropriate.
10 Q. Were there any concerns about having the meeting on
11 6th July?
12 A. Yes, I had two concerns. One concern was that it was
13 still not certain, although I believed it was highly
14 likely, that Mr Campbell would not lodge an official
15 complaint with the Programme Complaints Unit, thereby
16 going through due progress. If Mr Campbell had done
17 that, then an appeal might have come to the Governors.
18 I took the view that that was not decisive because
19 Mr Campbell could go to the Broadcasting Standards
20 Commission instead of the Governors if he had so wanted.
21 The other thing which was on my mind was the report
22 of the FAC on the reasons for going to war in Iraq,
23 which was due on 7th July, and the Governors meeting was
24 eventually called on 6th July. To be honest, I felt
25 that these two events were orthogonal to each other, and

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1 that the FAC report should not determine the timing of
2 the Board of Governors' meeting.
3 Q. Going back to BBC/14/95, this is your e-mail calling the
4 Governors to the meeting. You say:
5 "This is an unusually important moment in our
6 careers as Governors...", and you are pleased that
7 everyone is available:
8 "I do not think that we should seek to take a view
9 during this meeting on whether the Gilligan story was
10 accurate. This is not a question on which we need to
11 take responsibility. Instead, I think we should
12 concentrate on the following three questions:
13 "1. Mr Campbell has made allegations of systematic
14 bias ... Should we reiterate our already published
15 view ...
16 "2. [He] has also alleged that the Today Programme
17 breached the BBC's producers' guidelines. I believe
18 that we should investigate ...
19 "3. We should also consider whether to initiate
20 investigations into any other matters of concern ...",
21 for example journalists writing for newspapers.
22 Why did the Governors decide or you decide, in this
23 e-mail which the Governors accepted, not to look at the
24 actual complaint the Government had, which was: this
25 story is untrue, it has been made or reported by the BBC

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1 as made to them and that has caused us immense damage?
2 A. Well, for two reasons. One was that I believed that the
3 Director General and the Director of News had already
4 replied on the question of whether the source's words
5 were reported accurately. So that aspect of accuracy
6 I felt had been covered by the letter of 27th June sent
7 by Richard Sambrook. But, more importantly, I felt that
8 it was actually impossible -- I mean it was quite
9 literally impossible for the Board of Governors to
10 determine whether the allegations made by Mr Gilligan's
11 source were intrinsically true. And I thought the
12 important thing was to determine whether -- from the
13 point of view of the supervisory board, was to determine
14 whether the BBC had followed the correct processes in
15 clearing the story, thinking about the source and
16 reporting the story, thereby making it valid to put it
17 into the public domain. But without access to all of
18 the intelligence dossiers, different drafts of them,
19 and, you know, questioning the people who had put the
20 dossiers together, it was quite literally impossible for
21 the Board of Governors to determine whether the story
22 was -- the allegations made by Mr Gilligan's source were
23 intrinsically true.
24 Q. So if Mr Campbell had actually complained through the
25 BBC route, and said: this story -- you might have been

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1 right to report it but it has done me a great deal of
2 damage, it is untrue; what would have been the likely
3 response if he had gone through that route: well, we
4 cannot decide, because we cannot look at the dossiers?
5 A. There is an established practice in these cases,
6 Mr Dingemans. I think one of the things that the
7 Programme Complaints Unit would have done in those
8 circumstances is examined directly Mr Gilligan's
9 evidence for, you know, reporting the words that he
10 reported; examine Mr Gilligan and the editor of Today's
11 reason for believing that this was a credible and
12 reliable source; they would have examined other
13 surrounding evidence that may have been, you know,
14 important in determining whether the story would have
15 been run; and they probably would have done all of those
16 things but still been unable, I suspect, to get to the
17 intrinsic accuracy of the allegation.
18 So, I mean, I think it just was a very difficult
19 allegation to check from the outside. What that meant
20 to me was that you had to be absolutely clear that you
21 were reporting the words of a source and you had to be
22 absolutely clear that you had reported the Government's
23 denials.
24 Q. In relation to Mr Gilligan, I have shown you that
25 passage of his evidence on 19th June where Mr Campbell

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1 characterises it as backtracking, but he certainly
2 clarifies what his source had said to him. And in that
3 clarification he makes it clear that he is not alleging
4 any knowing wrongness on the part of the Government, yet
5 I have taken you to the reply of 27th June where the BBC
6 have stood firm, saying Mr Gilligan is reporting what
7 the source said to him.
8 A. I did not pick up that difference at the time; and
9 Mr Gilligan was involved in the drafting of the
10 27th June letter, and I do not know why it was not
11 picked up by him.
12 Q. We have certainly seen the notes. Can I take you to
13 BBC/14/96? This is I think picking up the point you
14 were making in relation to the accuracy. This is from
15 Dame Pauline Neville-Jones:
16 "... I do think we need to be clear by what we mean
17 about the 'accuracy' of 'the Gilligan story'. [He]
18 reported a source as having claimed that the document
19 was sexed up. We do not need to judge the accuracy of
20 the source's claim and we appear to have assurances from
21 the Head of News that the source, though uncorroborated,
22 was considered to be both reliable and in a position to
23 know..."
24 Then it goes on to deal with other issues. I think
25 another example of a response is at 101.

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1 LORD HUTTON: Just before we leave that, are you in
2 agreement, Mr Davies, with the statement by
3 Pauline Neville-Jones that:
4 "We do not need to judge the accuracy of the
5 source's claim."
6 A. My Lord, I simply do not think it would have been
7 possible to do that, and going through all of the
8 Governors' deliberations in this week that we are now
9 discussing, it would have been wonderful to have been
10 able to conduct an investigation which showed with
11 certainty whether or not this was true, but it never
12 occurred to me that that could conceivably be done from
13 where we were sitting in the Board of Governors.
14 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
15 MR DINGEMANS: And I think if we go to BBC/14/101 we can see
16 your response to Dame Pauline's e-mail. At the bottom
17 of the page:
18 "Thank you. I understand ... your points."
19 She had thought it better to get someone independent
20 to look at coverage before --
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. And you had responded to that; and I know it was then
23 discussed later at the Governors' meeting.
24 A. Yes, ongoing here, Mr Dingemans, was an issue which
25 I actually believed at the time to be crucial, and that

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1 was the allegations by No. 10 Downing Street's head of
2 communications that the BBC had deliberately followed an
3 anti-war agenda in its coverage, in its political
4 coverage and its war coverage. Dame Pauline here is
5 suggesting that we should perhaps have some independent
6 analysis of this. I say: well, you know, we have
7 already passed, I think, two or three board opinions on
8 this -- two board opinions on it. And the evidence
9 which has come out since the war suggests that the BBC
10 is on stronger ground than we thought at the time.
11 I think Pauline then broadly accepted that; and the
12 other Governors certainly took my point of view on that.
13 Q. We will come to the notes of that.
14 A. Okay.
15 Q. Before the Governors' meeting I think everyone received
16 a letter from Mr Campbell. Can I take you to CAB/1/23?
17 I think this is an example of that letter. Mr Gleeson,
18 is he a Governor?
19 A. Yes, it is Dermot Gleeson, he is a Governor.
20 Q. You see in advance of your meeting he sends some
21 material.
22 A. Yes.
23 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, we are now at BBC --
24 MR DINGEMANS: CAB/1/23, my Lord. Sorry.
25 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much. Yes.

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1 MR DINGEMANS: He says that the material he sends sets out
2 how the Government has tried to deal with the matter,
3 including the correspondence, and the swift denial made
4 with the backing of the Chairman of the Joint
5 Intelligence Committee and on-air exchanges.
6 At CAB/1/24 he concludes:
7 "At issue here is one specific set of allegations,
8 profoundly damaging to the Prime Minister, the
9 Government and our Intelligence Agencies, which we know
10 to be false and which we have sought, first privately
11 and then publicly, to have corrected. It is about one
12 story, the procedures that were or were not followed,
13 pre and post broadcast, and the difficulties we have had
14 in seeking redress ..."
15 Part of that is obviously about procedures, which we
16 know you looked at. But part of it is also about the
17 truth or absence of truth in relation to this matter.
18 Did the fact that the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence
19 Committee had apparently joined in the denial of the
20 story affect your view on the story?
21 A. Yes, it did, in the sense that I thought it added to the
22 power of the denial, yes; and it was one of the reasons,
23 Mr Dingemans, why I was eager to -- only one of the
24 reasons why I was eager, in the statement which followed
25 the Governors' meeting, to assure the public we were not

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1 questioning the integrity of the Prime Minister.
2 Q. Do you think, given the potential seriousness of the
3 story, that perhaps it might have been wise to have
4 checked the story with the Government beforehand so
5 that, for example, one could have determined before
6 rather than after the broadcast what the Chairman of the
7 Joint Intelligence Committee's views were?
8 A. Well, the Governors put on record in their statement
9 that they did feel that the Today Programme should, on
10 this occasion, have gone to the Government with clearer
11 pre-notification of the story. It would then have been
12 for the editor of Today to have determined whether any
13 response from the Government that they had received
14 would have changed the report. I believe Mr Sambrook
15 said to you that he did not think it would have greatly
16 changed the report, but we nevertheless took the view,
17 as Governors, that with this particular report it would
18 have been preferable to have gone to No. 10 or the
19 Government before making the report.
20 Q. Was there anything reported of the Prime Minister's
21 remarks before the Governors' meeting on 6th July?
22 A. I think I probably mentioned The Observer article.
23 Q. What was that about?
24 A. There was an article on the morning of 6th July, an
25 interview with the Prime Minister where, for the first

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1 time that I had been readily aware, he said that he
2 personally thought that his personal integrity was under
3 attack by the BBC; and I think I mentioned that to the
4 Governors and said that I really felt we should put on
5 record that there was a difference between reporting the
6 words of a source and attacking the integrity of the
7 Prime Minister on behalf of the BBC, which is something
8 that would, quite honestly, never occur to me to do.
9 Q. The letter that Mr Campbell got, did that have any
10 annexures?
11 A. Did it have anything?
12 Q. Anything annexed to it.
13 A. Yes, I think it had approximately 75 pages of supporting
14 evidence, which was largely the communications that
15 Mr Campbell had previously had and others had had with
16 the BBC News Division.
17 Q. Did it also list any allegations reported on the Today
18 Programme, Radio 5 Live and The Mail on Sunday?
19 A. Yes, it listed about nine allegations. My assumption
20 was that Mr Campbell was saying that all of these were
21 wrong or misleading; but I also believed that those were
22 broadly the allegations which had been answered in the
23 27th June letter.
24 Q. We now come to the meeting itself. We have seen the
25 minutes earlier, but you very kindly supplied, at

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1 BBC/14/25, a translation of shorthand notes that were
2 taken as well and, I mean, by way of short illustration,
3 if one looks at page 28 at the bottom you are dealing
4 there with the issue of consultation and warnings.
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. I think you have already said how you deal with that
7 subsequently in the statement. It was said by SW -- who
8 is SW? (Pause). Is that Mr Whittle?
9 A. Yes, it is, yes, it is Stephen, yes.
10 Q. He was saying that the story was being reported as
11 a sort of "chatter in the air", and not the sort of
12 scoop it was; and he said:
13 "If you look at the running order of the programme,
14 it was not a lead item. They were therefore not as
15 careful with notes ..."
16 That relates to notes of reporting notice, rather
17 than notes that were made by Mr Gilligan.
18 A. The Governors were told at the meeting that the notes
19 kept the previous night, which would have been 28th May,
20 about communications with the MoD were somewhat unclear;
21 and we therefore felt that better note taking would have
22 been advantageous. But we also felt, as I say, that
23 pre-notification would have been advantageous in this
24 case as well. Mr Gilligan does of course say that he
25 notified the MoD in a telephone conversation but the

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1 notes were not adequate, in our view, to actually
2 substantiate that firmly.
3 Q. There was discussion, we can see, about what matters
4 might be put in the statement; and can I take you to
5 BBC/14/31, where there is discussion about the 45 minute
6 point. And there is discussion about the JIC denials.
7 This, I think, illustrates exactly what was going on
8 there, a reasonably free-ranging discussion. Is that
9 a fair summary of what was happening at the Governors'
10 meeting?
11 A. Well, may I just say one thing here? These shorthand
12 notes are not a full record of the discussion by a very
13 long way, and nor are they cleared as official minutes
14 by the people who are attributed to the -- to the
15 comments that people are attributed here to. So I just
16 need to make that clear. But I think this captures,
17 reasonably well, this part of the discussion.
18 Q. For example, if we go back to BBC/6/102 we can see the
19 official minutes that were produced no doubt with the
20 assistance of those notes.
21 A. Yes, those are the official minutes, yes.
22 Q. I think those have already been made available. At this
23 stage, did the Governors consider anything about the
24 language used by Mr Gilligan in his broadcast?
25 A. There was one Governor who raised the question of

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1 whether Mr Gilligan's reporting had been characterised
2 by some loose language. The Director of News and the
3 Director General both said that they had confidence in
4 Mr Gilligan as a reporter, that he was an accurate
5 reporter who had a previous track record of breaking
6 reports of importance and doing it accurately. They
7 said to us that Mr Gilligan's style was a style in which
8 he reported in primary colours or bold colours rather
9 than shades of grey. I think Governors were aware by
10 this stage that the Today Programme of 29th May had some
11 differences between the various Gilligan reports in that
12 programme. So that is what I believe the Governor who
13 raised this question was talking about.
14 Q. Were you aware of an e-mail that we have seen sent by
15 Mr Marsh to Mr Mitchell on 27th June, talking about
16 Mr Gilligan's language?
17 A. No, I was not.
18 Q. Can I take you to BBC/5/118, where it was said:
19 "... I have to talk to AG [that is Mr Gilligan]
20 early next week. I hope that by then my worst fears ...
21 aren't realised. Assuming not, the guts of what I would
22 say are:
23 "This story was a good piece of investigative
24 journalism, marred by flawed reporting - our biggest
25 millstone has been his loose use of language and lack of

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1 judgment in some of his phraseology."
2 Also the writing for other outlets and an
3 explanation as to why that might have happened.
4 Did you think you ought to have known of these
5 comments at the Governors' meetings?
6 A. No, I did not honestly. These comments were between the
7 editor of Today and, I think, the Director of Radio
8 News. They are considerably below the Board of
9 Governors level. What we needed to know at Board of
10 Governors was what the considered judgment of the News
11 Division and the Director General was of Mr Gilligan as
12 a reporter; and these comments do not reflect their
13 considered judgment -- I think Mr Sambrook said that in
14 evidence to this Inquiry; and certainly they do not
15 reflect what the Director of News said about Mr Gilligan
16 as a reporter to the Governors.
17 Q. I think just by way of balance I should take you to
18 BBC/8/1 where there is an e-mail that was sent slightly
19 more contemporaneously than that, where Mr Gilligan is
20 being congratulated on a great story. And I suppose you
21 will not have seen that e-mail either?
22 A. No, I would not have had any reason to see these
23 e-mails.
24 LORD HUTTON: Did the Governors know that the first part of
25 Mr Gilligan's report on 29th May was unscripted?

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1 A. I believe they did, my Lord, yes.
2 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
3 A. Yes, they did. At least, I certainly knew hat that
4 stage, yes.
5 LORD HUTTON: Does that make any difference to the question
6 of editorial control?
7 A. Well, I think it raises an issue. It does raise an
8 issue, in my mind, about whether reports of this nature
9 should be unscripted.
10 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
11 A. And I think that is something that we will ask the News
12 Division to consider.
13 LORD HUTTON: Yes. I see. Yes. Thank you.
14 MR DINGEMANS: But in terms of Mr Campbell wanting to put
15 the record straight, he says -- and we have heard from
16 various other people, Mr Scarlett et cetera, that they
17 knew that part of the allegation that the Government had
18 put in this claim against the wishes of the Intelligence
19 Services was false -- "We wanted that corrected",
20 because they considered that to be very damaging; and,
21 I mean, would the broadcasting complaints unit have been
22 a better forum? You said there were limitations on the
23 BBC's own analysis because they will not have seen the
24 dossiers. Would going to the broadcasting complaints
25 unit have helped to put the record straight?

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1 A. Well, I believe if the Broadcasting Standards Commission
2 had decided that there was unfairness to Mr Campbell
3 they could have found in Mr Campbell's favour. I do not
4 think he could have complained to them on grounds of
5 accuracy.
6 Q. So how does one, if you are right or wrong, seriously
7 aggrieved by a story that you consider to be wrong, know
8 to be wrong, you write to the Governors, they are not
9 going to look at the accuracy, you go to the
10 Broadcasting Standards Commission, they are not going to
11 look at the accuracy; how do you correct the record?
12 A. The BSC can look at unfairness to an individual. I do
13 not work at the BSC but I believe they could have taken
14 the view that Mr Campbell was treated unfairly, as could
15 the Board of Governors. And the decision on that would
16 have come down to issues such as were the words of the
17 source reported correctly, was the source credible and
18 reliable, was there other evidence supporting the claim
19 and matters of that sort. But it certainly could
20 have -- and to be honest frequently does, the process
21 does come down with a judgment in favour of the
22 complainant, and the BBC then either corrects the
23 unfairness or apologies to the complainant.
24 Very recently, for example, the Board of Governors
25 found in favour of the families of some British soldiers

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1 whose bodies had been shown on a programme called
2 Correspondent, in a very high profile case. The Board
3 of Governors found in favour of the complainant. So it
4 happens on a frequent basis. I think about 17 per cent
5 of all complaints, and many complaints are not -- some
6 complaints are a little bit, you know, capricious, but
7 17 per cent of all complaints are upheld by the
8 programme complaints. Upheld.
9 Q. 70 or 17?
10 A. 17 per cent.
11 Q. One seven?
12 A. Yes.
13 LORD HUTTON: Mr Davies, I am sorry to ask you to interrupt
14 your evidence but we have to hear evidence from
15 a witness in New York. As you will appreciate more
16 clearly than I do, apparently you have to book the time.
17 Unfortunately, we have booked the time for 3 o'clock.
18 It takes a little time to set it up. I will have to
19 rise now. If you will be good enough to come back this
20 afternoon. I am sorry to interrupt your evidence.
21 Thank you very much.
22 (2.50 pm)
23 (Short Break)
24 (3.00 pm)
25 LORD HUTTON: Mr Davies, I understand the video link is not

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1 working in New York. So that at least gives us the
2 advantage we can proceed with your evidence.
3 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Davies, we were still at the Governors'
4 meeting.
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. I understand, from looking at the notes and the minutes,
7 that there was some discussion about Ms Watts and her
8 broadcast on Newsnight.
9 A. In the previous week or 10 days prior to the meeting it
10 had become apparent to a lot of us, including myself,
11 that Ms Watts' broadcast was rather similar to
12 Mr Gilligan's in many respects; and the Board of
13 Governors was circulated transcripts of both the
14 broadcasts by Ms Watts on 2nd and 4th June. So
15 Governors were able to compare and contrast the two
16 broadcasts if they wished to and I definitely did
17 myself.
18 Q. We have had Ms Watts' own views, quite carefully
19 expressed, about whether or not Mr Gilligan's report and
20 hers were similar. Have you heard of her views and seen
21 the correspondence that has been written --
22 A. Yes, I have, yes.
23 Q. -- on her behalf?
24 A. Yes, I have.
25 Q. Did you have anything to say in that respect?

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1 A. I think the interpretation that individual BBC
2 journalists put on their reports is entirely for them;
3 and it is a great strength of the organisation that
4 journalists and editors can come to their own views.
5 I think she is entirely entitled to come to her views.
6 I do not share them in every particular; I think there
7 are greater similarities between the broadcasts than
8 perhaps Ms Watts does. She is, as I say, entirely
9 entitled to state her view.
10 Q. At this stage, do you know who Mr Gilligan's source is?
11 A. No.
12 Q. Do you know who Ms Watts' source is?
13 A. No.
14 Q. And is that the usual situation?
15 A. That is entirely normal. Certainly at the Board of
16 Governors level it would have been extremely irregular
17 to have known the names of sources on a Government or
18 political story.
19 Q. Did you go into the editorial process that had led up to
20 the broadcast?
21 A. Yes, we did.
22 Q. Were you satisfied with that process?
23 A. Yes. At the time, of course, one of the main complaints
24 being made by Mr Campbell and the Government was that
25 the BBC was wrong to rely on a single uncorroborated

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1 source to make this report; and so a lot of our time was
2 spent on determining whether the editor of Today had
3 been properly reassured or reassured himself properly
4 about the nature of the source, and whether proper
5 editorial processes had occurred prior to broadcast.
6 That was something the Director of News and Director
7 General were very happy with.
8 Q. Did you look at the notes that had been made before
9 broadcast by the editor and night editor?
10 A. No. Again, this was something that would have been the
11 role of management and not the role of the Board of
12 Governors.
13 Q. I appreciate that. The management come to you, the
14 Governors are looking at it. If, at the end of the day,
15 you are not going to look at any of the underlying
16 material, does it not become difficult to exercise any
17 judgment about the management's own review?
18 A. Well, certainly in my case I live with the management,
19 I work four days a week at the BBC and I can form,
20 I would argue, the best possible judgment myself about
21 their honesty, reliability and diligence. I certainly
22 formed the view they were more than capable of coming to
23 these judgments themselves and then reporting them to
24 the Board and being questioned on them. That is very
25 different from the Board actually trying to duplicate

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1 the activities of management.
2 Q. At the end of the meeting you issue a statement,
3 BBC/6/111. This was approved by the Board of Governors,
4 was it?
5 A. This was approved by all of the individual Governors
6 unanimously, I think.
7 Q. And you say that you had met in the evening, you had
8 questioned Greg Dyke and Mr Sambrook and you reiterate
9 that the overall coverage has been impartial and you
10 reject that complaint and ask Mr Campbell to withdraw
11 it. You consider that the Today Programme properly
12 followed BBC producers' guidelines in handling the
13 report. You say why it was appropriate to use a single
14 source.
15 You do say this:
16 "Stories based on senior intelligence sources are
17 a case in point."
18 Which might, to a casual reader, suggest that the
19 story is based on a senior intelligence source. Was
20 that your understanding?
21 A. No. It was my understanding that the source was
22 credible and reliable, and there was nothing said at the
23 meeting that suggested that the source was a senior
24 intelligence source. This was drafted in very late in
25 the drafting process and I did not recognise that there

144
1 could be room to misunderstand this particular form of
2 words. Of course, I did not know who the source was at
3 the time. If anybody did misunderstand it, I regret
4 that.
5 Q. Then you go on to the BBC journalist for Newsnight, that
6 is obviously the Ms Watts report, and single
7 allegations, but not singled out for criticism by the
8 Government.
9 At this stage, did all the Governors have
10 a transcript of all that had been said on the Today
11 Programme?
12 A. Yes. Yes.
13 Q. And did they not consider: well, look, at 6.07 he said
14 something that is fundamentally different from what he
15 is saying later on in the day?
16 A. I think there was a recognition that there were
17 differences in wording between the 6.07 and the 7.32
18 broadcast. I will speak for myself and not on behalf of
19 individual Governors, but my own view was that in
20 a continuing rolling live news forum what happened was
21 Mr Gilligan put on record at 7.32 something slightly
22 different from what he had said in the live two-way at
23 6.07. But that does happen very often in radio news.
24 It is a continuous medium where there is almost
25 iteration between, you know, reporters and questioners,

145
1 interviewers. I think that is what was happening that
2 day. So, yes, I was aware of the difference between the
3 6.07 and the 7.32; but I felt the 7.32 had put straight
4 any of the confusions that may have arisen as a result
5 of the 6.07.
6 Q. Was not one way of dealing with the correspondence from
7 Mr Campbell, which I think everyone had decided they had
8 had enough of, to say: we have put right the situation,
9 and, you know, to the extent it was ever said unscripted
10 at 6.07 we are sorry, we did not mean to say that?
11 A. I felt two things. (1), I would not say that the degree
12 of focus that we are now putting on this was in my head
13 at the time. I think that would be a vast exaggeration.
14 But I felt, insofar as I had thought about it, that the
15 7.32 had essentially done that.
16 Q. Continuing over the page, at the top you note that there
17 had been a general pattern of concern about the
18 dossiers.
19 LORD HUTTON: Mr Dingemans, I am so sorry, it is entirely my
20 fault. We are now at BBC -- what should I look at in my
21 file?
22 MR DINGEMANS: BBC/6/11, my Lord, and then 112.
23 LORD HUTTON: Yes, thank you.
24 MR DINGEMANS: You say the reports have fitted into
25 a general pattern of concern with security contacts.

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1 The Board were satisfied it was in the public interest
2 to broadcast and it would have been wrong to suppress
3 either story. You do consider they should have kept
4 a clearer account of dealings with the Ministry of
5 Defence and also ask No. 10 for a response.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. But you note there were firm denials that were
8 broadcast. You are saying you are going to look at the
9 rules under which BBC reporters are permitted to write
10 for newspapers.
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Then you put on record that the BBC had not accused the
13 Prime Minister of lying.
14 A. Yes. The penultimate paragraph here is a very, very
15 strong statement and extremely unusual statement for the
16 Board of Governors to make. I certainly have never seen
17 a statement being made by the Board of Governors
18 anywhere near this. And the reason that I and the
19 Governors were eager to put it in was we were aware of
20 the issue that his Lordship raised earlier about
21 reporting the views of a source even though credible and
22 reliable; and I was very much hoping that the
23 Prime Minister and the Government would see this as the
24 BBC saying: we believe we were right to broadcast, we
25 believe the source's views were accurately reported, but

147
1 we are not independently validating those views and we
2 are aware that the Prime Minister has put on record
3 a denial, which we are not questioning -- we are not
4 questioning that denial.
5 Q. Can I take you --
6 LORD HUTTON: But if you are not questioning the denial,
7 might that not lead one on then to take the view that
8 one would to some extent withdraw the report that the
9 source had made? I fully appreciate the point you are
10 making about you are reporting a source, but I still
11 have difficulty with this concept: that something is
12 broadcast, it is heard by thousands and thousands of
13 people, as I think the Prime Minister said in his
14 evidence this morning, he was concerned that this was an
15 accusation being made against the Government, and
16 whether the average listener draws a distinction between
17 a report that the Government has done something and
18 a source reporting that the Government has done
19 something; and if you were satisfied that the
20 Prime Minister was not lying, might it not have called
21 for perhaps even a qualified withdrawal of the first
22 part of the report?
23 A. Well, my Lord, I did not think that the BBC had any
24 evidence to suggest that the source would have wished to
25 withdraw his views. Now, sometimes in life you get the

148
1 same event being watched by two different people with
2 two different interpretations of the same event.
3 LORD HUTTON: Quite. Yes.
4 A. And I was open minded as to whether that had happened in
5 this case. Frequently in political coverage you will
6 get two versions of the same event without wishing to
7 question the integrity of either version.
8 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see. Yes. Yes. Thank you.
9 A. And it is part of the process of news to put both of
10 those into the public domain and allow people to weigh
11 them against each other and come to their own views.
12 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
13 MR DINGEMANS: BBC/14/105 is an e-mail that I think you sent
14 after the meeting. It is dated 7th July. You attach
15 a clean copy of the statement which was issued the night
16 before and there was some rush in relation to getting
17 the statement out before the deadline that I think you
18 refer to. You say this:
19 "Chairing the meeting, I was very impressed by the
20 seriousness and toughness displayed by the Governors.
21 My view is that we demonstrated that the Board of
22 Governors is not a body which can be easily bullied,
23 either by politicians or the management. I am sure that
24 we will benefit from demonstrating this in long run,
25 even if we get some of the familiar flak in the

149
1 immediate future."
2 You considered there were two traps:
3 "... caving in to No. 10, or caving in to the
4 executive. I strongly believe that we did neither."
5 Was that part of the mindset of the Board of
6 Governors at the meeting, that No. 10 had made these
7 dreadful accusations through Mr Campbell on 25th June,
8 although we had narrowed the complaint a bit and
9 withdrawn some of the broader allegations in the
10 5th July, that was a private letter to Governors and you
11 were not going to cave in to what you considered to be
12 unjustified pressure?
13 A. I think you can see from that e-mail that the mood at
14 the time was one in which we felt that the BBC had come
15 under a somewhat remorseless attack encompassing its
16 independence and its impartiality and its integrity.
17 That really was the main thing that I wished the Board
18 to stand up and be counted on.
19 Q. In the morning of 7th July we know the Foreign Affairs
20 Committee report is going to be published. Before that,
21 did you have a discussion with anyone?
22 A. Yes. Mr Blair had said the previous day, got a message
23 to me saying he thought it would be a good idea for us
24 to have a direct conversation. I had, in the previous
25 several weeks, not wished to pick up the phone to the

150
1 Prime Minister directly because I had felt that this was
2 a public conflict, there was public interest in it and
3 we should not seek to settle it in a clandestine manner.
4 But with the Governors now having reached a decision,
5 Mr Blair suggested that he should speak to me and
6 I thought it was entirely appropriate to explain to him
7 directly what the Board of Governors had decided.
8 Q. When did you have that conversation?
9 A. It was quite early in the morning. It may have been
10 between 7 and 7.30 in the morning.
11 Q. That was on the telephone, was it?
12 A. Yes, it was on the telephone.
13 Q. What was said?
14 A. Mr Blair said that he continued to feel that the
15 Gilligan story was wrong; he continued to think that the
16 BBC should retract the story; he thought perhaps a good
17 idea would be for us to say that it was valid to have
18 broadcast the story but we should now retract it.
19 I understood what he said; my view was that I wished
20 to explain to him that there were elements in the
21 Government's statement which I hoped could be used as an
22 olive branch which could cool the temperature of the war
23 of words between the BBC and the Government; and in
24 particular I explained to the Prime Minister that
25 conspicuously the Governors had not said that

151
1 Mr Gilligan's source's allegations were intrinsically
2 true; and we had conspicuously said that we did not
3 question the integrity of the Prime Minister himself.
4 He said that that was all very well and he was
5 grateful for that, but he still thought that the story
6 should be retracted.
7 I said: Prime Minister, I just do not know that we
8 have the grounds on which to do that, because we have
9 been reporting somebody, we believe, accurately.
10 I think we both left the conversation feeling
11 that -- well, I certainly did -- we should put calming
12 pressure on our respective organisations to try to move
13 the decibel count significantly lower; and I took steps
14 to do that in the next 24 hours.
15 Q. You did not feel able to correct the original story,
16 notwithstanding what had been reported to have been said
17 by the Chairman of the JIC; is that right?
18 A. At the Governors meeting -- I do not think Mr Blair
19 raised that in the conversation that I can recall -- we
20 certainly discussed whether or not there had been
21 sufficient BBC reporting of the denial by the Chairman
22 of the JIC. We asked management to come back to us with
23 a study on that subject, which is going to happen.
24 Q. It has not yet happened?
25 A. I think it is under preparation but we have not had

152
1 another board meeting that could have taken this
2 subject.
3 Q. The FAC report is then published; and the BBC published
4 a statement on it, part of which noted that there had
5 been a political split, party political split on
6 Alastair Campbell's role in the preparation of the
7 dossier, and Mr Campbell himself had put out
8 a statement. You obviously recall the statements that
9 were issued?
10 A. I do.
11 Q. And what was your hope after those statements had been
12 made?
13 A. Well, I thought that Mr Campbell's statement was a good
14 deal more measured than the public tone he had been
15 adopting in the previous fortnight, and I was very
16 encouraged by that. I, perhaps, felt that maybe
17 Mr Blair had mentioned to Mr Campbell that it would be
18 a good idea -- I have no evidence for that but I thought
19 coming out of our telephone conversation that was
20 perhaps what had happened; and I thought that the BBC
21 should reciprocate with a notable toning down of
22 rhetoric, and I suggested to the Director General,
23 actually via the Director of News, that the Director
24 General should say something conciliatory in a speech he
25 was making the next day.

153
1 Q. What did he say that was conciliatory?
2 A. Well, basically we felt that Mr Campbell the previous
3 day had, from his point of view perfectly legitimately,
4 said that the FAC had cleared his name -- I would have
5 said the same thing in his circumstances. We had said
6 the FAC had justified our news reporting. But
7 importantly Mr Campbell said that he was not making any
8 generalised allegations against the BBC's journalism;
9 and we took that as a big step forward because I think
10 it was the first time he had said that in public. So
11 the Director General, the next day in Birmingham, said
12 thank you to Mr Campbell for saying that. He said:
13 look, we are probably going to have to agree to disagree
14 about whether the BBC should have carried the report it
15 carried, but it is time to move on now.
16 Q. Looking at it from the sidelines, Mr Campbell says:
17 look, I am sorry, I made too many allegations against
18 the BBC, I withdraw it. The BBC say: we are glad you
19 have withdrawn it, we agree to disagree, let us go on.
20 It does not seem to the observer that the BBC is
21 offering very much by way of an olive branch.
22 A. I took it to be really quite a considerable improvement
23 in terms of the decibel level of the rhetoric. After
24 all, my conversation with Mr Blair -- I do not think we
25 had agreed on the fundamental point and that was not

154
1 perhaps going to disappear, but I was hoping we could
2 discuss it and handle it in a way that was not going to
3 be quite so noisy.
4 Q. Mr Blair has given evidence this morning about the
5 conversation he had with you, and he said that in the
6 course of that he had mentioned that an official had
7 come forward. Do you recall that?
8 A. I do. I think at the very end of the conversation
9 Mr Blair said that he had become aware recently that
10 someone had come forward to the MoD saying that he was
11 Mr Gilligan's source; and I think I said two things to
12 him. I said: bear in mind, Prime Minister, that
13 Mr Gilligan has said that he spoke to three or four
14 people in preparing his reports, although only had one
15 principal source for part of them. I said: I do not
16 know who the source is, Prime Minister, but bear in mind
17 he talked to three or four. And I said: also bear in
18 mind that Ms Watts' reports were somewhat similar to
19 Mr Gilligan's, and therefore were taken by me as
20 corroboration that Mr Gilligan had reported his source
21 broadly accurately. I do not think the Prime Minister
22 had been at all aware of Ms Watts' reports.
23 Q. What was your hope and expectation now in relation to
24 media coverage, especially after the speech that you
25 report in Birmingham?

155
1 A. I was very hopeful, and I had said this in an e-mail to
2 Governors, I think that day, that the matter could now
3 disappear off the front pages. I did not think that it
4 was ended, I thought the -- you know, the fundamental
5 difference was still there, but that relations could be
6 much more amicable; and I felt my conversation with the
7 Prime Minister was very amicable.
8 Q. That is 7th July. We have heard from Mr Sambrook and
9 Mr Hoon that they have a meeting on 8th July. Were you
10 made aware of that?
11 A. Yes. The Director of News phoned me to say that he had
12 been called in urgently to a meeting, I think around
13 lunchtime on 8th July. Then he called me back later to
14 say: look, I am a bit puzzled about this, because I was
15 called in urgently -- from I think it was his son's
16 sports day or something like that -- and then the
17 meeting seems to have been inconsequential. It was
18 about routine matters that were not particularly time
19 sensitive, in Mr Sambrook's view. We were just puzzled.
20 We did not know what was going on.
21 Q. You get a letter on 8th July.
22 Can I take you to MoD/1/66 from Mr Hoon. He has
23 told us about the circumstances in which he comes to
24 write to you:
25 "Dear Gavyn,

156
1 "I am writing to draw your attention to an MoD
2 statement which we shall be issuing later today ...
3 "You will see that we have not named the
4 official ... We would, however, be prepared to disclose
5 his name to you in confidence ... in the interests of
6 resolving what has become a management problem for both
7 our organisations."
8 He has explained why he thought you had a management
9 problem as well as the MoD.
10 What was your reaction to that?
11 A. At the time I was puzzled by what he meant by
12 "management problem".
13 Q. I think he has now explained it to suggest that
14 Mr Gilligan had not accurately reported what was
15 happening.
16 A. Okay. Well, that occurred to me, but I did not really
17 fully understand what he meant by "management problem".
18 I thought the letter was puzzling and I did not really
19 know what the tactics or strategy lying behind the
20 letter was.
21 In any event, I could not have disclosed the name
22 myself because I did not know the name.
23 Q. I think you respond at MoD/1/68:
24 "Dear Geoff,
25 "Thank you for your letter ...

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1 "... the offer in your letter seems to be an attempt
2 to force the BBC News Division to reveal the name of the
3 source..."
4 Was there any correspondence after that?
5 A. Yes. First of all, on this one, Mr Dingemans, my
6 suspicions that something was up were raised when
7 I found out that the letter from Mr Hoon to myself had
8 been released to the press, and I felt that if there
9 was -- if this was a genuine approach to handle
10 management difficulties between the two organisations it
11 probably would not have been released to the press; and
12 that made me more suspicious about that maybe something
13 was going on that I had not fathomed.
14 Q. Was there any reason or any speculation that you thought
15 of at the time about what might have happened in
16 relation to the official who had come forward?
17 A. No. I thought that maybe what was going on was that an
18 official had come forward who they felt might discredit
19 the Gilligan reports. But that was an absolute shot in
20 the dark by me; I had no idea what was going on really.
21 Q. Was there any reason that you felt that the source
22 should not be confirmed?
23 A. Well, at this particular stage he had not named the
24 source to me. He did that the following day.
25 Q. Can I take you to his letter of the following day?

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1 A. Yes.
2 Q. MoD/1/71.
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. He now gives you the name Dr Kelly. So what is wrong,
5 now, with saying: yes, it is Dr Kelly?
6 A. Well, I think what was wrong was first of all I did not,
7 of course, know yet whether Dr Kelly was the source. In
8 fact, I believe this is the first time I had -- it is
9 definitely the first time I had seen the name of
10 Dr Kelly. So I was unable to confirm or deny it. But
11 I did not believe that BBC management should be
12 prevailed upon by me to confirm or deny whether this
13 gentleman was the source. By the time we got this
14 letter, I think I am right in saying that Mr Hoon had
15 also released some details of what Dr Kelly had said to
16 Mr Gilligan --
17 Q. Yes.
18 A. -- and there were some very, very significant
19 differences between that account and Mr Gilligan's
20 account.
21 Q. Had you seen Mr Gilligan's account?
22 A. Well, I had heard --
23 Q. In writing.
24 A. I had heard it on the radio. What occurred to me here
25 was: look, I do not know whether Dr Kelly is actually

159
1 Mr Gilligan's source, but if he is he has probably said
2 some very different things to Mr Gilligan to what he has
3 said to his employer; and my feeling, again management
4 were the only people in possession of the name, but my
5 feeling was that if we had come forward and said: yes
6 actually that is the source, if it indeed were, we would
7 have been betraying the confidence, number 1, because
8 the source had never suggested that we should divulge
9 his name, and number 2 we would have effectively been
10 telling his employer that he had told Mr Gilligan more
11 than he was now owning up to his employer. And
12 I thought that was a very bad way to treat the
13 confidence of a source.
14 Q. So what steps did you take to deal with the letter?
15 A. What I did was I was the only person that saw the name
16 "David Kelly" or the position. I tippexed that out and
17 I showed the redacted letter to the Director General;
18 and I think within a very short time we heard that the
19 name of David Kelly was circulating among journalists
20 and, you know, I did not know how that had happened.
21 Q. We have heard from some of the journalists. Can I take
22 you to your reply at MoD/1/72, where effectively you say
23 that you are not going to correspond any further.
24 A. Yes, that is correct. By this time I had had two
25 letters from Mr Hoon, one of which I had taken to be

160
1 puzzling and the other of which had contradicted the
2 first by giving me a name he said he would only give me
3 in confidence. So, at this stage, I really did not know
4 what was going on, to be honest.
5 Q. Dr Kelly comes to give evidence to the Foreign Affairs
6 Committee on 15th July. We have heard about that. We
7 have also seen, now, an e-mail that Mr Gilligan has sent
8 to Mr Chidgey. That is FAC/6/2. We have seen other
9 similar e-mails that he sent -- I think to Mr Maples and
10 Mr Ottaway -- where you can see he is writing to
11 a researcher saying he had been doing some research on
12 David Kelly and he was suggesting some questions for
13 Dr Kelly. If you go down to the bottom of the page you
14 can see:
15 "He told my colleague Susan Watts, science editor of
16 Newsnight..." And deals with that.
17 If you read that as a lay person you might think
18 that he is suggesting that Dr Kelly was Susan Watts'
19 source. Did you know of this e-mail?
20 A. I had absolutely no idea whatsoever, no.
21 Q. And what is your view on journalists sending this type
22 of e-mail to members of the Foreign Affairs Committee?
23 A. I believe that both Mr Gilligan -- I believe that
24 Mr Gilligan is putting in another witness statement on
25 this matter.

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1 Q. Yes.
2 A. I think this is something the Director General may wish
3 to look at and come to the Board of Governors on. But
4 I will give you the view if you wish me to.
5 Q. Well, we have heard, if you go over the page at
6 FAC/6/3,~that Dr Kelly reported to his friend
7 Wing Commander Clark that he was, I think, thrown a bit
8 by the question about Susan Watts. We can see here
9 a quote from Susan Watts' broadcast being set out. In
10 the light of that, perhaps I can press you for what your
11 view is on the matter?
12 A. I certainly believe that it is wrong for any journalist
13 to divulge the source of another journalist's work.
14 I do not know how Mr Gilligan could have done that
15 because he did not know Susan Watts' source. So that
16 puzzles me. I do not know how he could have. Maybe
17 there was a misunderstanding there, I do not know.
18 I would say that Mr Gilligan, at this stage, was under
19 enormous pressure and perhaps felt that the FAC was
20 trying to discredit him as a journalist and perhaps felt
21 that he needed to take steps to counter that; but of
22 course, I enormously regret anything that happened at
23 this stage which may have increased the pressures on
24 Dr Kelly.
25 Q. We have heard after Dr Kelly's death that there was

162
1 a further statement issued by the BBC confirming that
2 Dr Kelly was the source; and Ms Watts has told us that
3 she perceived there was pressure to tie in Mr Gilligan's
4 source, who we now know to be Dr Kelly, with her source,
5 who we now know to be Dr Kelly. Was this a fair
6 comment?
7 A. Excuse me, was what a fair comment?
8 Q. Ms Watts' comment to the effect that there was pressure
9 to tie in the two sources.
10 A. I mean, there certainly was not that I ever noted or
11 I was ever party to. I do not believe Ms Watts came
12 under pressure to do that.
13 The BBC -- and I am sure this is true of the
14 Director of News -- was under pressure to ensure that
15 the stories, the reports, were valid and were well
16 sourced; and under those circumstances I think it was
17 entirely legitimate for the Director of News to press
18 the editor of Newsnight and the journalist concerned on
19 their sources and on whether those sources were credible
20 and reliable. Indeed, if that had not happened on the
21 Today Programme, the Governors could never have been
22 assured of that at their 6th July meeting.
23 So I think it was entirely justified for the
24 Director of News to ask the questions. But I do not
25 believe that there was, to my knowledge, undue pressure

163
1 on Ms Watts.
2 LORD HUTTON: Do you mean by that, Mr Davies, that
3 Mr Sambrook was right asking whether Newsnight were sure
4 of the standing and reliability of the source as opposed
5 to asking for the actual name of the source?
6 A. Under normal circumstances I think the standing and
7 reliability would have been what was needed. I am not
8 aware whether Mr Sambrook did ask for the name. I do
9 not know that.
10 LORD HUTTON: But I think it is my fault, perhaps not
11 entirely understanding your answer. I just want to be
12 clear in my own mind. When you said that the Director
13 of News was right or justified in pressing Newsnight
14 about certain matters, just repeat again, please, what
15 were those matters?
16 A. There were clear similarities between the two news
17 reports.
18 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
19 A. One of those two news reports was under enormous
20 scrutiny on the grounds of perhaps misreporting.
21 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
22 A. I think it was reasonable for Mr Sambrook to ask
23 Newsnight questions about the source in order to try to
24 elucidate whether it would have helped him make
25 a judgment on the reliability of his Today Programme

164
1 reports. I do not think it was reasonable and he did
2 not pressurise or bully anybody on Newsnight, and
3 I think there is a very clear e-mail in our pack
4 somewhere that shows Richard Sambrook saying: do not
5 worry about it, if you do not wish to do this, do not do
6 it.
7 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see. But you thought in the particular
8 circumstances that prevailed Mr Sambrook was entitled to
9 actually ask for the name of the source?
10 A. Well, your Lordship, I did not know he was doing it, but
11 I can tell you one thing: Mr Sambrook himself was under
12 considerable pressure from myself and the Director
13 General to ensure that these reports were reliably
14 sourced.
15 LORD HUTTON: Yes. I see. Yes. Thank you.
16 MR DINGEMANS: I was really asking in the context of the
17 statements made after Dr Kelly's death. Can I take you
18 to BBC/17/58, which is an early draft, in fact it is the
19 second draft of the Governors' statement. If you go
20 down, you can see the expression of sympathy and:
21 "Dr Kelly was the principal source for both
22 Andrew Gilligan's report on the Today Programme and for
23 Susan Watts' Newsnight reports."
24 Then you set out or were proposing to set out the
25 account of Andrew Gilligan's conversation, the account

165
1 of Ms Watts' conversation, with all the details
2 et cetera, and make a series of comments in relation to
3 that, which at least indicates that Ms Watts' story, at
4 that stage, is being used at least to assist with the
5 presentation of Mr Gilligan's story.
6 A. Is this -- this is a draft of -- a document that never
7 got released?
8 Q. Yes, not released.
9 A. Not released.
10 Q. What was released, I can show, is BBC/17/91.
11 A. I know what was released. I did not see these drafts at
12 all. I think, however, it is fair to say, certainly in
13 my mind, I can only speak for myself, that I did regard
14 Ms Watts' conversations as reported on Newsnight as
15 broadly corroborative evidence for Mr Gilligan's
16 reports. As I have said before, I did not regard them
17 as identical.
18 Q. Then, I think if one goes to BBC/17/96, we can see an
19 e-mail that is distributed on 21st July and some
20 responses to it, but the main text begins at 97.
21 The e-mail last week, which I have taken you to, was
22 the e-mail following the Governors' meeting, I think.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. "... my natural pessimism was telling me that the WMD
25 story was far from over, despite the general support

166
1 which the Governors and the BBC were getting from many
2 sources at the time. However, even at my most
3 pessimistic, I certainly never anticipated the tragic
4 turn of events ..."
5 This was an e-mail you sent round after Dr Kelly's
6 death, is that right?
7 A. That is right, yes.
8 Q. I think it continues to 98, 99 and to 100.
9 A. Yes. This gave what at that stage was my reading of
10 some of the issues that had been raised following the
11 BBC confirming that Dr Kelly was the source for
12 Mr Gilligan's stories.
13 Q. Is there anything else that you know of the
14 circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly's death that you can
15 assist his Lordship with?
16 A. No.
17 Q. And is there anything else that you wanted to add?
18 A. I think on behalf of the whole BBC I would like to put
19 on record that we enormously regret the death of
20 Dr Kelly. The BBC has the deepest sympathy for
21 Dr Kelly's family; and all of us in the BBC are
22 profoundly sorry about the tragic events of the last
23 two months and we will do our utmost to learn important
24 lessons for the future.
25 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Davies.

167
1 MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, with Mr Mangold disappearing, that
2 is the end of the evidence for this week.
3 LORD HUTTON: I will rise now and sit again on Monday at
4 10.30. Thank you.
5 (3.40 pm)
6 (Hearing adjourned until 10.30 am on
7 Monday 1st September 2003)
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

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1 INDEX
2 PAGE
3 MR ANTHONY CHARLES LYNTON BLAIR .................. 1
4 (called)
5
6 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 1
7
8 MR GAVYN DAVIES (called) ......................... 102
9
10 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 102
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

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