A thoughtful and sympathetic interview on Channel 4 News with Tom Mangold, friend of David Kelly and former respected BBC journalist said he thought the "sexed-up" phrase had indeed probably been fed to Kelly, and he had agreed, but would not have used such vulgar language himself. On the accusation that Campbell had doctored the first dossier to include the 45 minute warning, he thought that charge probably would not stand up.
The focus of pressure has switched from the UK government to whether the BBC and Kelly were in disagreement.
The BBC is being challenged, significantly, by the Conservative member of Parliament for Dr Kelly.
It now has to explain why it implied its source was in the intelligence services. But further it now claims that its report was substantiated by a source within No 10 Downing Street (who now becomes a new anonymous source, but hopefully not a candidate for suicide.)
Below are the BBC statements.
Below them a thoughtful article on the BBC website by Peter Preston, former editor of the Guardian and a grand champion of investigative reporting, which largely defends the BBC's position, but not entirely.
Chris Burford
London
PS
Correction: the judge in charge of this inquity is called Hutton.
I am away for a couple of weeks.
________
BBC statements: Full text
Director of BBC News Richard Sambrook made the following statement confirming that Dr David Kelly was the source for the BBC's controversial report over the Iraq weapons dossier.
The BBC deeply regrets the death of Dr David Kelly. We had the greatest respect for his achievements in Iraq and elsewhere over many years and wish once again to express our condolences to his family.
Weapons expert David Kelly |
Having now informed Dr Kelly's family, we can confirm that Dr Kelly was the principal source for both Andrew Gilligan's report and for Susan Watts' reports on Newsnight on 2 and 4 June.
The BBC believes we accurately interpreted and reported the factual information obtained by us during interviews with Dr Kelly.
Over the past few weeks we have been at pains to protect Dr Kelly from being identified as the source of these reports.
We clearly owed him a duty of confidentiality. Following his death we now believe, in order to end the continuing speculation, it is important to release this information as swiftly as possible.
We did not release it until this morning, at the request of Dr Kelly's family.
The BBC will fully co-operate with the government's inquiry. We will make a full and frank submission to Lord Hutton and will provide full details of all the contacts between Dr Kelly and the two BBC journalists including contemporaneous notes and other materials made by both journalists, independently.
We continue to believe we were right to place Dr Kelly's views in the public domain.
However, the BBC is profoundly sorry that his involvement as our source has had such a tragic end.
A further statement was later issued on behalf of BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan.
I want to make it clear that I did not misquote or misrepresent Dr David Kelly.
Entirely separately from my meeting with him, Dr Kelly expressed very similar concerns about Downing Street interpretation of intelligence in the dossier and the unreliability of the 45-minute point to Newsnight.
These reports have never been questioned by Downing Street.
Although Dr Kelly had close connections with the intelligence community none of our reports ever described him as a member of the intelligence services, but as a senior official closely involved in the preparation of the dossier.
No heroes or villains in Kelly tragedy
By Peter Preston
| Former editor of the Guardian |
If the senior British adviser to the Iraq Survey Group - the UK's lead man on weapons of mass destruction - sat across a lunch table from you and seemed to blame Downing Street in general and Alastair Campbell in particular for straining every last fact and adjective in the assessment of threat that led to war, then would you, a BBC journalist, report it?
And if your source talked to you under conditions of anonymity, would you do everything in your power to protect him - including maintaining silence even after he'd identified himself to his bosses and talked, not entirely frankly, to the foreign affairs select committee?
Of course. No question of that either. Sources come in many shapes, forms and conditions of confidentiality. Once they place their faith in you, your faith and your room for manoeuvre belongs to them; and after their death, their family.
Too much, I think, has already been written these past few days expressing too much certainty about this miserable affair.
That's not a mistake to carry on compounding. A judge and an official inquiry offer better routes to truth than speculation.
But we can already, perhaps, see more complexities than were allowed for in the first few hours after Dr Kelly's apparent suicide.
Storm
Was he a leaker of conviction suddenly surprised by the salience given to his views?
What kind of pressures precipitated his death? Was it reasonable, in the circumstances, not to expect pressure - indeed, even welcome it?
Too much, I think, has already been written these past few days expressing too much certainty about this miserable affair
On the big issues, then, I believe the BBC can await the Hutton inquiry with reasonable confidence. It was right to publish, right not to apologise, right to withstand storm by Campbell, and right to say nothing further to jeopardise its source.
But there will be criticism, nevertheless: and some of it will be justified.
Dr Kelly was not, as claimed, a senior and credible "intelligence" official. He was a boffin working for the Ministry of Defence. He had, indeed, been involved in the drafting of the September dossier - but only as the writer of a few paragraphs of history.
Good source
Was he directly privy to the 45-minute missile claim or to its late insertion into the report? It appears not, at least at this stage.
Was that made quite clear on air? And, since such questions are there for the asking, did Andrew Gilligan's Mail on Sunday article, leaving the parcel of "sexing-up" at the single door marked "Campbell", have the virtue of simple, spare reportage?
Or, for that matter, protect the source as punctiliously as it should have?
We haven't seen Gilligan's second testimony before the select committee yet.
We can't begin proper textual analysis. But there may, as so often in journalistic and political life, be the muddle of humanity here.
An experienced and angry source who didn't quite realise what he was getting himself into. A reporter with an eye for hot story giving what he was told full weight (rather more vividly than Ms Watts).
'Human mess'
We have a human mess, not a malign or contrived mess. We have a quagmire of good intentions. No villains or heroes. We also, in all probability, have reason to lower the decibel count.
The BBC and its governors were staunch under fire. They, and the Corporation's editors, got the major issues right.
But there's at least one nasty issue floating in behind. Is the BBC, the giant of reporting rectitude and balance we all pay for, right itself to hunger for more scoops and high profile controversies (the Gilligan role)?
And if it is, then how on earth does it keep the subsequent reporting of that controversy in balance - when the intrinsic issue is the health and survival of the corporation itself?
That's ultimately mission impossible; and perhaps not a mission to undertake too lightly or often, especially without non-dodgy documentation.
