At 6.07am the following was broadcast:
Jon Humphrys (JH): 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. What this person says, is that a week before the publication date of the dossier, it was actually rather erm, a bland production. It didn't, the, the draft prepared for Mr Blair by the Intelligence Agencies actually didn't say very much more than was public knowledge already and erm, Downing Street, our source says ordered a week before publication, ordered it to be sexed up, to be made more exciting and ordered more facts to be er, to be discovered.
JH: When you say 'more facts to be discovered', does that suggest that they may not have been facts?
AG: Well, erm, 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, that's a quote from our source and essentially, erm, the forty five minute point er, was, was probably the most important thing that was added. Erm, and the reason it hadn't been in the original draft was that it was, it was only erm, it only came from one source and most of the other claims were from two, and the intelligence agencies say they don't really believe it was necessarily true because they thought the person making the claim had actually made a mistake, it got, had got mixed up.
JH: Does any of this matter now, all this, all these months later? The war's been fought and won.
AG: Well the forty five minutes isn't just a detail, it did go to the heart of the government's case that Saddam was an imminent threat and it was repeated four times in the dossier, including by the Prime Minister himself, in the foreword; so I think it probably does matter. Clearly, you know, if erm, if it, if it was, if it was wrong, things do, things are, got wrong in good faith but if they knew it was wrong before they actually made the claim, that's perhaps a bit more serious.
JH: Andrew, many thanks; more about that later.
At 7.32am the following was broadcast:
JH: Twenty eight minutes to eight. Tony Blair had quite a job persuading the country and indeed his own MPs to support the invasion of Iraq; his main argument was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that threatened us all. None of those weapons has been found. Now our defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, has found evidence that the government's dossier on Iraq that was produced last September, was cobbled together at the last minute with some unconfirmed material that had not been approved by the Security Services. Now you told us about this earlier on the programme Andy, and we've had a statement from 10 Downing Street that says it's not true, and let me just quote what they said to you. 'Not one word of the dossier was not entirely the work of the intelligence agencies'. Sorry to submit you to this sort of English but there we are. I think we know what they mean. Are you suggesting, let's be very clear about this, that it was not the work of the intelligence agencies.
AG: No, the information which I'm told was dubious did come from the agencies, but they were unhappy about it, because they didn't think it should have been in there. They thought it was, it was not corroborated sufficiently, and they actually thought it was wrong, they thought the informant concerned erm, had got it wrong, they thought he'd misunderstood what was happening.
I mean let's, let's go through this. This is the dossier that was published in September last year, erm, probably the most substantial statement of the government's case against Iraq. You'll remember that the Commons was recalled to debate it, Tony Blair made the opening speech. It is not the same as the famous dodgy dossier, the one that was copied off the internet, that came later. This is quite a serious document. It dominated the news that day and you open up the dossier and the first thing you see is a preface written by Tony Blair that includes the following words, 'Saddam's military planning allows for some weapons of mass destruction to be ready within forty five minutes of an order to deploy them'. Now that claim has come back to haunt Mr Blair because if the weapons had been that readily to hand, they probably would have been found by now. But you know, it could have been an honest mistake, but what I have been told is that the government knew that claim was questionable, even before the war, even before they wrote it in their dossier.
I have spoken to a British official who was involved in the preparation of the dossier, and he told me that until the week before it was published, the draft dossier produced by the Intelligence Services, added little to what was already publicly known. He said: 'It was transformed in the week before it was published, to make it sexier. The classic example was the statement that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use within forty five minutes. That information was not in the original draft. It was included in the dossier against our wishes, because it wasn't reliable. Most things in the dossier were double source, but, that was single source, and we believed that the source was wrong.
Now this official told us that the transformation of the dossier took place at the behest of Downing Street, and he added: 'Most people in intelligence weren't happy with the dossier, because it didn't reflect the considered view they were putting forward'. Now I want to stress that this official and others I've spoken to, do still believe that Iraq did have some sort of weapons of mass destruction programme. 'I believe it is about 30% likely there was a chemical weapons programme in the six months before the war and considerably more likely, that there was a biological weapons programme. We think Hans Blix down-played a couple of potentially interesting pieces of evidence, but the weapons programmes were small: sanctions did limit the programmes'.
The official also added quite an interesting note about what has happened as a result since the war, of the capture of some Iraqi WMD scientists: 'We don't have a great deal more information yet than we had before. We have not got very much out of the detainees yet.'
Now the forty five minutes really is, is not just a detail, it did go to the heart of the government's case that Saddam was an imminent threat, and it was repeated a further three times in the body of the dossier, and I understand that the parliamentary intelligence and security committee is going to conduct an enquiry in to the claims made by the British Government about Iraq, and it is obviously exactly this kind of issue that will be at the heart of their investigation.
JH: Andrew Gilligan, many thanks.
Later in the Today programme Mr Adam Ingram MP, the Armed Forces Minister, was interviewed by Mr John Humphreys and in the course of the interview Mr Humphreys put to him the following allegation:
Can I tell you what the allegation was because I think you may have been a little misled on that. The allegation was not that it was concocted by Number 10, the allegation was that a report was produced. It went to Number 10. It was then sent back to be sexed up a little, I'm using not my own words, but the words of our source, as you know. Now, given that, is it possible that …..
AI: Well it's not true that, that allegation.
JH: That isn't true.
AI: No, it's not true. And you know Number 10 has denied that.
33. Also on 29 May on BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast programme at 7.50am Mr Gilligan broadcast a report relating to the September dossier in which he said:
Presenter (P): Good Morning.
A senior official involved in preparing the Government's dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has said the document was rewritten just before it was published to apparently "make it more exciting". The official said the intelligence services were unhappy with the changes. Let's talk to Andrew Gilligan our defence correspondent.
Hello Andrew.
Andrew Gilligan: Hello
P: This was the dossier published what, last September by the Government?
Andrew: That's right. This is not the famous "dodgy dossier" that was copied off the internet, that came later. This was a much more substantial effort. Parliament was recalled to discuss it. Tony Blair made the opening speech in Parliament, em and, and it dominated the news that day. It was, it's the most substantial statement of the Government's case against Iraq.
P: And what, according to the intelligence services were the problems with it?
Andrew: Well, the draft they originally produced they tell me was actually not terribly exciting, it didn't add very much to what we already knew publicly. What any, kind of anyone who'd followed the story would know publicly, and it didn't satisfy Downing Street and they said eh, look, you know, is there anything more this - can, can we make this a bit more exciting please.
Em, and er, they mentioned a few things which they weren't very happy with and at Downing Street's insistence those were written into the document and one of the main things that em, that they weren't very happy with was this claim that Iraq could deploy its biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes.
Now we now (sic), we can be pretty sure now that that claim was actually wrong. Because if they could deploy within that short a time we'd have found the weapons by now, you know if they were that handy then they would have been more or less lying around er, and easily, easy for the troops to find in six weeks. Em, now, you know, what I thought to be honest was that that eh, that claim was wrong in good faith. Em, but er, what my intelligence service source says is that em essentially they were always suspicious about this claim, they did not want it to appear in the document, they did not put it in their original draft because em most of the assertions in the dossier were double sourced, this was only one source, and they didn't believe the source, they thought he had got mixed up. They thought he had got mixed up between the time it took to assemble a conventional er missile assembly and em aa and the idea that em Saddam had a er weapons of mass destruction missile assembly.
P: So, I mean the implications that the, that Downing Street asked for it to be hyped up to help convince the doubters.
Andrew: Yeah, and, and they're not very happy. I mean the actual quote from my source was "most people in intelligence weren't happy with the dossier because it didn't reflect the considered view they were putting forward" and it was a matter of language and nuance as much as em er as actual detail. But the 45 minutes was very important because it went to the heart of the Government's case that Saddam was an imminent threat.
P: Absolutely. But, fundamentally, the intelligence services did believe, did have intelligence that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction.
Andrew: Yeah, they, they do believe that Iraq had a programme and what my source said was that he believed it was about 30% likely that there was a chemical weapons programme even in the six months before the war, and more likely considerably more likely, that there was a biological weapons programme. But he said the programmes they thought were small and not necessarily an imminent threat and sanctions did limit the programmes and, and eh, you know that, that the the issue is about tone and, er and nuance, ….[Presenter: hmmm] … … it really is as much as anything else and, and really had they said all that in, in the way they wanted to it wouldn't have been nearly as compelling a case.
P: And, and in a word, the intelligence services, do they still believe weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq at some point?
Andrew: They believe there were some. Em, their (sic) not sure what to believe now to be honest, because what they are saying is, em, you know, they were int …, they have been interrogating all these em, all these people that they have captured and, and they are not telling them very much.
P: Thank you very much Andrew.
Y mwyaf 'dw i'n meddwl am y peth, y lleiaf alla i weld beth yn union sydd o'i le ar yr uchod. Nid Gilligan ei hun sydd yn gwneud y cyhuddiad - mae'n dweud bob tro mai ei ffynhonell sydd yn ei wneud. Sy'n gywir.
'Does dim yn ffeithiol anghywir yn yr adroddiad. Ond mae dal yn deg dweud bod Gilligan wedi bod ychydig yn greadigol, am wn i. Ond celwydd? Allaf i ddim gweld un.