Gilligan 'has the dirt' on the BBC, Kelly, WMD, etc
halcombe
Gilligan threat to expose BBC bosses if forced out
By Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor
04 January 2004
BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan has warned his managers that he will
reveal their role in the "outing" of David Kelly if he is forced to
resign as a result of the Hutton report.
The journalist fears he is to be scapegoated by the corporation if, as
expected, Lord Hutton is highly critical of the BBC when his report
into the circumstances surrounding the death of the weapons scientist
is published next week.
Mr Gilligan faces particular censure for leaking to MPs the
information that Dr Kelly had spoken to Susan Watts, another BBC
reporter who reported officials' doubts over a Downing Street dossier
on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The leak helped identify the weapons scientist as the source of his
own report. In it, he said that the intelligence services were unhappy
about the dossier which they feared exaggerated the threat posed by
Saddam Hussein.
Dr Kelly committed suicide two days after he was challenged by the
Foreign Affairs Committee over his contacts with Mr Gilligan and other
BBC journalists.
Greg Dyke, the director general of the BBC, denounced Mr Gilligan's
email to MPs on the committee as "unacceptable" when he was called to
give evidence to the inquiry.
The journalist, however, has told friends that managers at the
corporation had asked him to contact David Chidgey, the Liberal
Democrat MP for Eastleigh, and Richard Ottaway, the Conservative MP
for Croydon South.
"It's something that was never really explored by Hutton, the extent
to which managers knew, and indeed were encouraging, what was going
on," said one last night.
Mr Gilligan has already had discussions with a number of publishers
about a tell-all book, should he be sacked or demoted in the wake of
the Hutton inquiry.
He already faces censure from within the BBC when it screens a
documentary on the affair. The Panorama programme, "Fight to the
Death", divides its fire between both the Government and the BBC,
according to those who have seen it.
"It is pretty robust about two institutions that are supposed to set
great store by the truth," said one source of the 80-minute programme
to be shown before the Hutton report is published, probably a week
tomorrow.
Another possible casualty is Stephen Mitchell, the BBC's head of radio
news, who infuriated his superiors by failing to pass up the
corporation hierarchy an internal email detailing doubts about Mr
Gilligan's reporting.
The revelation that Kevin Marsh, editor of BBC Radio 4's Today
programme and Mr Gilligan's immediate boss, had warned his superior of
"flawed reporting" and "loose use of language" in the original
broadcast on 29 May dealt the BBC one of its heaviest blows during the
inquiry hearings.
Senior executives insist that they would have been less
confrontational with the Government if Mr Mitchell had passed on the
concerns.
"We only learnt about the Marsh email a week before the inquiry
opened," said one key figure last night.
Will Wyatt, the BBC's chief executive (broadcasting) until 1999, today
criticises managers' failure to "conduct a sufficiently forensic
investigation into the detail of Gilligan's accusations".
Writing in The Independent on Sunday today, he says the affair
revealed the corporation's "old arrogance, as well as a worrying
carelessness with detail and a less than adequate managerial grip".
In particular he says that the BBC's governors were "badly served" by
managers who failed to pass on doubts about Mr Gilligan's report.
Mr Gilligan, who wants to stay at the corporation, will meet senior
executives including Richard Sambrook, the BBC's director of news,
this week to discuss how it should respond to the report.
It has already been decided that the journalist will not give media
interviews in the immediate aftermath of the Hutton report. Still to
be agreed, however, is the extent to which the BBC will admit errors
in its reporting. Mr Gilligan wants executives to stick to the formula
that his story was "substantially" correct and in the public interest.
Mr Gilligan has admitted he was wrong to say that the Government
probably knew some of the claims were false when he first reported his
story. He has also apologised for wrongly describing Dr Kelly as an
intelligence source in another report. He insists, however, that the
Hutton inquiry has proved that his story was accurate in its
allegation that Downing Street "sexed up" the dossier and that its
claims, particularly that Saddam could launch chemical and biological
weapons within 45 minutes, prompted complaints by senior members of
the intelligence services.
The BBC hopes that it has drawn the sting of most of Lord Hutton's
likely complaints with a series of measures, such as the ban on BBC
journalists writing on current affairs. Mr Dyke is also expected to
announce a new set of guidelines.
Some senior executives fear this will not be enough to prevent BBC
governors losing their oversight of the corporation to Ofcom, the new
media watchdog. "Hutton is going to be about more than just a
short-term news management," said one source.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has assembled a team of
senior civil servants to advise him on how to respond to the Hutton
report. The team, which is being co-ordinated by the Cabinet Office,
is made up of officials with experience of other judicial inquiries.
Lord Hutton says that "all persons represented at the inquiry" will be
given the report around 24 hours before it is published, but this does
not include opposition parties. Mr Blair must decide this week when
Michael Howard, the Tory leader, should see it. John Major's decision
in 1996 to give Labour the Scott report into arms to Iraq only two
hours before publication backfired after a brilliant Commons
performance by the then shadow Trade Secretary, Robin Cook.
Stephen Mitchell: The BBC's head of radio news failed to pass on
concerns over the use of "flawed reporting" and "loose language" in
Gilligan's report.
Greg Dyke: The director general of the BBC criticised Gilligan's email
outing Dr Kelly, but accused Alastair Campbell of settling old scores.
Richard Sambrook: As director of news, spearheaded the corporation's
defence at the inquiry. He knew the identity of Gilligan's source.
Susan Watts: The Newsnight reporter also reported civil service doubts
over the WMD dossier. Her source was Dr Kelly. Attacked BBC bosses at
inquiry.
Kevin Marsh: Editor of Today programme who publicly backed Gilligan
but emailed to his superiors his concerns over Gilligan's "flawed
reporting".
4 January 2004 19:19