Alastair Campbell - extraordinary failure of communications

On May 22, 2003 David Kelly met with Andrew Gilligan, a BBC journalist who had spent some time writing about the war in Baghdad. Kelly was anxious to learn what had happened in Iraq, while Gilligan, who had discussed a very early draft of the dossier with Kelly, wished to ask him about it in light of the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction. They agreed to talk on an unattributable basis, which allowed the BBC to report what was said, but not to identify the source. Kelly told Gilligan of his concerns over the 45-minute claim and ascribed its inclusion in the dossier to Alastair Campbell, the director of communications for Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Subsequently, Robin Cook (Foreign Secretary) wrote to the Guardian revealing that he had been briefed in Feb 2003 by John Scralett (Head of Joint Intelligence Committee) that Iraq only had battlefield weapons, no WMD.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/jul/12/iraq.iraq

On March 5 2003 Robin Cook put this point to the Prime Minister. Tony Blair's response was that the battlefield weapons had been disassembled. However, a year later he claimed that he never understood that the intelligence agencies did not believe that long range weapons of mass destruction.Robin Cook describes this as "The most extraordinary failure of communications in the history of British intelligence.

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