Alastair Campbell could be forgiven for having a touch of déjà vu when he wakes up tomorrow morning. As No. 10’s director of communications and strategy between the key years of 2001-2003 he was close to the heart – some claim too close – of the decision-making process in the run-up to the Iraq War, and the subsequent years and repeated inquiries haven’t let him forget that.
Alastair Campbell could be forgiven for having a touch of déjà vu when he wakes up tomorrow morning. As No.10’s director of communications and strategy between the key years of 2001-2003 he was close to the heart – some claim too close – of the decision-making process in the run-up to the Iraq War, and the subsequent years and repeated inquiries haven’t let him forget that.
He’s already given evidence to the Commons foreign affairs select committee inquiry into “The Decision to go to War” and the Intelligence & Security Committee’s investigation into ‘Intelligence and Assessments’ on Iraqi WMD to name just two.
Central to Campbell’s relevance to Chilcot are two key documents that No.10 published in the months prior to the invasion that sought to justify action against Saddam Hussein.
The “September Dossier” of 2002 – full title – Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government – included a personal foreword by Tony Blair which stated that “I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt… that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and that he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme.”
Furthermore the document included the memorable statement that the Iraqi army could deploy WMD “within 45 minutes of a decision to do so” – a claim that would return in May the following year with disastrous consequences.
Subsequent inquiries would question Campbell’s controversial role in helping the joint intelligence committee phrase the dossier and indeed the very intelligence upon which it was it was based (there’s a helpful Guardian timeline).
Then in February 2003 Downing Street ran into more trouble when Channel 4 News reported allegations that the bulk of a second dossier – Iraq – Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation, but better known before long to many as the “dodgy dossier” – had been plagiarised from a number of articles, including one written by a graduate student.
Embarrassingly the dossier appeared simply to have been “cut and pasted” in parts, complete with grammatical errors and tweaks allegedly aimed at making the situation sound more sinister than in the original. Campbell was chairman of the Iraq Communications Group which had commissioned it.
But what was to become by far the most controversial episode in Alastair Campbell’s involvement in the Iraq war – and indeed his entire political career – began on BBC Radio 4 at 06:07 on 29th May 2003 when BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan said: “What we’ve been told by one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the [September] dossier was that actually the government probably knew that that 45-minute figure was wrong even before it decided to put it in.”
Just days later Gilligan accused Alastair Campbell of having been involved in “sexing up” the dossier – and a war broke out between the BBC and No.10 which ended up with Gilligan’s source, the MoD scientist Dr David Kelly, apparently taking his own life.
Here’s a link to Channel 4’s excellent dramatisation, The Government Inspector and the corporation’s top men losing their jobs when Lord Hutton concluded that the “sexing up” allegation was groundless.
The BBC/No.10 war gave rise to this remarkable Channel 4 News interview between Campbell and Jon Snow in June 2003.
You can read Campbell’s evidence to the subsequent Hutton Inquiry into Kelly’s death here and here and see Hutton’s conclusions here.
Tying up today’s evidence, Chilcot promised a prompt start tomorrow as there is a very significant amount of ground to cover.
What’s unclear is how far the panel will want to revisit areas that previous inquiries have already spent tens of thousands of pounds investigating.
We’ll have a few of our own suggestions and some of your own – as sent to twitter.com/iraqinquiryblog – up here by close of play.