Getting it right in Iraq
(some tweaking for aesthetic purposes. Coz, you know, I’m anal-retentive)
A great cloud hangs over public broadcasting in Britain since Lord Hutton’s trial and sentencing of the BBC. Yet for the journalist at the centre of the fuss, Andrew Gilligan, it’s been a great week, as more evidence emerged that his story was essentially correct. It went to air in May last year some weeks after the fall of Baghdad.
John Humphrys: “The government is facing more questions this morning over its claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Our defence correspondent is Andrew Gilligan. This in particular, Andy, is Tony Blair saying, they’d be ready to go within forty five minutes.”
Andrew Gilligan (AG): “That’s right, that was the central claim in his dossier which he published in September, the main erm, case if you like against er, against Iraq and the main statement of the British government’s belief of what it thought Iraq was up to and what we’ve been told by one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up that dossier was that, actually the government probably erm, knew that that forty five minute figure was wrong, even before it decided to put it in.”
-BBC Radio Today, 29 May 2003
Those last twenty words accusing the government of knowing the intelligence was dodgy were Gilligan’s own conclusion and he made a serious mistake putting them into mouth of his source, David Kelly. Gilligan’s errors were attacked by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, admitted eventually by the BBC and condemned in Lord Hutton’s report into David Kelly’s suicide. But this was the core of Gilligan’s story and it’s looking better and better.
AG: “…our source says that the dossier, as it was finally published, made the Intelligence Services unhappy, erm, because, to quote erm the source he said, there was basically, that there was, there was, there was unhappiness because it didn’t reflect, the considered view they were putting forward…”
-BBC Radio Today, 29 May 2003
Here Gilligan and the BBC were right on the money. Last week, the Defence Department’s former chief intelligence analyst of Saddam’s weaponry, wrote in London’s Independent newspaper, that his experts working on the dossier were ‘very disgruntled’ and ‘right to be concerned’ as the deadline for its publication loomed.
“In my view the expert intelligence analysts of the D[efence] I[ntelligence] S[taff] were overruled in the preparation of the dossier in September 2002 resulting in a presentation that was misleading about Iraq?s capabilities.”
- The Independent, 4 February 2004
The media was certainly misled – and you can hardly blame them. Witnesses told Lord Hutton how Downing Street had carefully massaged the dossier with the response of the media in mind. Tony Blair’s chief of staff emailed Alastair Campbell, the communications director at Number 10, with the big question:
“Alastair, What will be the headline in the Standard on day of publication?”
- Jonathon Powell email to Alastair Campbell, 19 September 2002
And here’s the answer:
45 Minutes from attack
Dossier reveals Saddam is ready to launch chemical war strikes.
- The Evening Standard, 24 September 2002, page 1
As a report of the dossier’s highly spun rhetoric, it was not unreasonable – and media around the world presented much the same message of far flung devastation.
The SMH ran these headlines across page one:
Saddam ready and able to strike
British PM claims Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.
- The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 September 2002, page 1
Back in London, Rupert Murdoch’s Sun gave the story everything it had.
Brits 45 mins from Doom
Cyprus within missile range
“British servicemen and tourists in Cyprus could be annihilated by germ warfare missiles launched by Iraq, it was revealed yesterday. They could thud into the Mediterranean island within 45 minutes of tyrant Saddam Hussein ordering an attack.”
- The Sun, 25 September 2002
These stories were right on target politically for Tony Blair – but they were wrong – and Britain’s minister for defence, Geoffrey Hoon told the Hutton inquiry he knew they were wrong at the time.
BBC: “?you knew, did you, that the munitions referred to were only battlefield munitions ? shells, battlefield mortars, tactical weapons of that kind?”
Geoffrey Hoon (GH): “Yes.”
- Hutton Inquiry, transcript, 22 September 2003
The 45 minute claim only ever related to weapons Saddam could fire on a battlefield. Hoon knew and so did the government’s most senior intelligence officials that there was no way they could be used to rain down destruction on Jerusalem and Cyprus. So why didn’t Hoon correct those reports? Wasn’t the Minister horrified to see the dossier misinterpreted in this way, asked counsel for the BBC.
Geoffrey Hoon (GH): “Well, I was not horrified. I recognised that journalists occasionally write things that are more dramatic than the material upon which it is based.”
BBC: “Can we forget journalists for the moment and concentrate on the members of the public who are reading it? Will they not be entitled to be given the true picture of the intelligence, not a vastly inflated one?”
GH: “I think that is a question you would have to put to the journalists and the editors responsible.”
BBC: “But you had the means to correct it, not them. They could not correct it until they were told, could they?”
GH: “Well, as I say, my experience of trying to persuade newspapers to correct false impressions is one that is not full of success.”
- Hutton Inquiry, transcript, September 2003
The British Minister told Lord Hutton he had no duty to correct those incorrect stories and Lord Hutton had not a word of criticism for these papers and their mistakes.
It’s strange. Gilligan’s errors provoked carnage at the BBC. The reporter was sacked, the chairman left and the director general Greg Dyke was forced to resign by Tony Blair who maintained:
“All we ever wanted was an incorrect story corrected.”
- Prime Minister Tony Blair press conference, AM, ABC Radio, 31 July 2003
But nothing was done by the Government to correct those incorrect stories that exaggerated the danger of Saddam’s weapons. Then again, those papers were doing just what the sexing up of the dossier was intended to make them do – write horror stories to boost the cause of war.
It was spin and it worked.
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