If Kelly was a liar, why was he a source?

The Daily Telegraph ^ | 13/08/2003 | Janet Daley

[ijcr]

Yesterday in the Royal Courts of Justice, Andrew Gilligan effectively called David Kelly a liar. Days after a government spokesman had smeared Dr Kelly as a fantasist with delusions of grandeur, Gilligan alleged explicitly that the civil servant's evidence to Parliament had been systematically and knowingly false.

What are we to make of this? In this war of attrition between the two most powerful forces in British public life - the elected government and the BBC - both sides seem in effect to be undermining the reputation of a dead man who, by all previous accounts, was known for his integrity and professional conscience.

Anyone who doubted how much might be at stake here will have to think again. Behaviour like this could arise only from a matter of institutional life and death.

The morning's testimony by Gilligan was generally believed to be hugely, probably fatally, damning of Alastair Campbell. But if it injured Mr Campbell's credibility, it did far more than that to the memory of Dr Kelly.

If Mr Campbell's veracity remains contentious and his claims ambiguous in the Gilligan account, the word of Dr Kelly is utterly, comprehensively impugned. Gilligan can only be in the right if what Dr Kelly said to the foreign affairs select committee was utterly wrong.

Gilligan says that virtually all of his major allegations (including the most notorious: that the "45-minute" claim went into the questionable dossier at Mr Campbell's instigation) came directly from his discussions with Dr Kelly. And further, that the subject of the "45-minute" claim, and the Campbell name, were introduced into the conversation by Dr Kelly, and not by Gilligan himself.

So much for Dr Kelly's statement to the parliamentary committee that he had not made these allegations, that he did not recognise his own account in the Gilligan story and thus did not believe that he could be its "single source".

Gilligan's only serious reservations about his own part in this drama seemed to involve the imperfect means of expression he now believes that he used in his first unscripted Today broadcast, and in failing to take enough account of Dr Kelly's worries about being revealed as his source.

(What the latter might imply, of course, is that Dr Kelly had reason to withhold the full truth from the foreign affairs committee, so perhaps it is a relatively easy form of guilt for Gilligan to shoulder.)

Gilligan had not meant to imply, he told Lord Hutton, that the Government had "lied" about the threat from weapons of mass destruction, or that Mr Campbell had personally inserted a statement into a supposed "intelligence" dossier that he knew to be untrue. (Even though that was what virtually everyone extrapolated from his story.)

We heard yesterday of the internal BBC memos that expressed misgivings and anxiety about Gilligan's "loose language" and "flawed reporting". (This is, I must say, consistent with talk that I have heard at the BBC.)

But if Gilligan had regrets about his first "unrepresentative" and more sensational live report, and the BBC itself was so concerned about what might be suggested by it, why has no one rowed back from the unequivocally bullish BBC line until now?

Even the quite supine BBC governors, it seems, regarded the lack of notes to back up the Gilligan story as a "weakness" in the corporation's case. As I recall, you would never have guessed that from the solidly united front they presented to the world.

So, thus far, it is the word of one man against another. And one of those men is dead. Even if we take Gilligan's account of their transactions at absolute face value, isn't there a problem with the logic of his defence?

If Dr Kelly lied to the FAC because, as Gilligan puts it, he may have felt that he had to "keep faith" with the Ministry of Defence (and had not intended to discredit the Government), why should we put so much faith in his accuracy as a source for the Gilligan story? Either he is an impeccable, unfailingly reliable witness or he isn't.

Almost everything that Gilligan said about him yesterday implied that, at least under some circumstances, he was not. So in order to defend his own decision to broadcast his story, Gilligan must, in effect, undermine the veracity of his own single source.

Problems of that knotty kind can usually be avoided by doing what journalists call "standing up" a story: getting more than one source to corroborate it. Gilligan claims to have had other, unnamed sources for his belief that the dossier had been "sexed up" against the wishes of the intelligence services, and that that background information made Dr Kelly's remarks seem credible.

But doesn't his entire report, which may or not be true in spirit and in detail, consist essentially of hearsay possibly conveyed by a man whom we now know to have been professionally discontent?

None of this mitigates the damage to the Government, or to Alastair Campbell, or to Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary. It goes almost without saying that they are left looking shabby at best and deceitful at worst.

Were they right to pursue the war against Saddam Hussein? I think so. Did they do the right thing for the wrong reasons - or, at least, with the wrong official rationale? Quite possibly. But that is not directly material to the matter of the day.

It is absolutely imperative that democratic governments do not deliberately mislead their electorates, especially over matters of war and peace, and that they do not behave like bullying gangsters when they are found out.

If that is what has happened, then there will be no coming back from this for Tony Blair.

[ijcr]

Smack on the bottom for the Beeb. This is almost as interesting as Kobe.

[an amused spectator]

Mainstream Media Shenanigans bump.

[lizma]

Hard to believe anyone named Gilligan.

Just keep picturing him in a silly white hat.

[skr]

It sounds as though Mr. Gilligan had at least as much to gain from Dr. Kelly's shuffling off this mortal coil as had some others previously implicated.

[Shermy]

Kelly exaggerated what he knew.
BBC exaggerated what he said.

[ChadGore]

The anotomy of a lie:

Kelly exaggerated what he knew.
BBC exaggerated what he said.

[foreshadowed at waco]

Haven't heard from you as of late? What is your take on this? I was hoping that the BBC reporter would have to walk the plank since I believe that he was the one who 'sexed up' the story.

[cyncooper]

None of this mitigates the damage to the Government, or to Alastair Campbell, or to Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary. It goes almost without saying that they are left looking shabby at best and deceitful at worst.

WHAT?!?

Kelly undermines the government's case by speaking to reporters saying basically "They've got the evidence but they're making too much of it", when apparently that was HIS take.

Then Gilligan "sexes up" THAT allegation and yet the original aim: To accuse the government of being the liars of the piece is STILL the point the media refuses to budge from.

Good grief!

[BigWaveBetty]

I've always found it interesting that Gilligan never had a recording of Kelly, only contemporaneous notes. How very conveeeeenient .

For a story of this importance one would think the reporter would want to get every syllable on tape .

[Cyber Liberty]

That whole story, and who does the reporter see as the one being in all the trouble? Hundreds and hundreds of words about Gilligan and the Skipper, yet look at the last line.

[cyncooper]

Kelly exaggerated what he knew. BBC exaggerated what he said.

Precisely.

Notice in this thread below I post lengthy excerpts when Kelly was asked about his communication with reporter Susan Watts, who also used Kelly as a source. I point out that he says he only *met* her once, but he never divulges as she recently did, that he was in fact a source via the *telephone* through 2003.

I surmised early on that Kelly's motive for suicide would stem from having been deceptive at his hearing, and he was.

Campbell claim was 'gossipy aside'; dismissed Kelly's claims against Campbell

[cyncooper]

It wasn't just Gilligan. Kelly said the same thing to at least one other reporter, Susan Watts.

It sounds like Gilligan did jazz up Kelly's story, Watts did not used the "sexed up" allegation---but Kelly told it to her, too.

Kelly was not the victim of these reporters. He should not have been saying what he was to them in the first place. Surely he had to have an idea of the caliber of the likes of Gilligan before he decided to share his thoughts with him.

[cyncooper]

Hundreds and hundreds of words about Gilligan and the Skipper, yet look at the last line.

The media was ready for the downfall of the goverment based on this "sexed up" story and like a dog with a bone they will NOT give it up, no matter the facts that emerge.

What a sickening lot they are.

[BigWaveBetty]

Surely he had to have an idea of the caliber of the likes of Gilligan before he decided to share his thoughts with him.

I think Kelly had conflictig emotions, he was an expect at weapons inspection and wasn't getting the recogonition he thought he deserved. Then when he got the attention, he went about it the wrong way and things went terribly wrong.

I don't trust the beeb so who knows what those reporters puffed him up with to get him to tell his truth or make the truth sound sinister. Or perhaps he just wanted to get even for the slight he felt he received from the gov.

From The Telegraph
Hutton Inquiry reveals dossier doubts

The inquiry heard from several Whitehall officials that Dr Kelly had been granted the highest security clearance - subject to "need to know" - and had worked with the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, the CIA and the Foreign Office.

He had been a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq throughout the 1990s and was known as a "walking archive" and "the UK expert on WMD" The citation for the Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George awarded to him in 1996 described his work as of "international significance".

But another impression was given of a man nearing retirement who believed that his status had not been sufficiently recognised.

Despite his pre-eminence in his field, Dr Kelly was given no pay rise for three years up to 2000 and wrote to his superiors complaining of having fallen into "a black hole".

Documents released to the inquiry make clear that it was part of Dr Kelly's job to talk to the media. But his superiors accused him of going too far in apparently criticising the Government over the dossier. Link

[BigWaveBetty]

Note to self: Never post when very tired, horrid spelling mistakes! Sorry about that spelling cyncooper.

Now we have this story from Watts:

Miss Watts said that over the course of two years up to that conversation she was researching issues concerned with weapons of mass destruction.

She said: "During that two years my relationship with Dr Kelly also changed. We had moved from fairly technical conversations to more gossipy content in those conversations and by that time I was very much able to discern the difference between what I would categorise as gossipy remarks and those based on his expertise and considered opinion."

Miss Watts told the inquiry there were "significant differences" between what Dr Kelly told her and what he was reported to have told Andrew Gilligan.

She said: "He didn't say to me that the dossier was transformed in the last week and he certainly didn't say that the 45-minute claim was inserted either by Alastair Campbell or by anyone else in Government.

"In fact, he denied specifically that Alastair Campbell was involved in the conversation on May 30 ... he was very clear to me that the claim was in the original intelligence."

Subsequently, she did not include the claims in her reports, she told the inquiry.

Miss Watts was asked to look at her shorthand notes from her conversation with Dr Kelly on May 7, in which she wrote: "Mistake to put in. A. Campbell seeing something in there."

She was asked how she would characterise the comments made by Dr Kelly. She replied: "Gossipy, off-the-cuff, almost gratuitous remark." Complete Story

[cyncooper]

Oh---I make typing mistakes galore! LOL (Keyboard starting to stick, too, which does not help matters)

As I say, Gilligan "sexed up" the "sexing up" story, but Kelly is culpable, too.

My link at #11 also refers to Watts saying he had made the gossipy reference, but the fact remains that he made it. Whether the details got hyped by Gilligan, to my mind Kelly knew the type of character Gilligan was and would have been familiar with his reporting and any bias there may have been there and where his sympathies might lie.

I know I don't sound sympathetic to Dr. Kelly, and frankly I'm not. We are at war here, and it appears to me Kelly was speaking with reporters and saying things he ought not have. He also told the committee during testimony that he only met Ms. Watts the one time in person and he never told them about their *telephone* conversations. It is thanks to Kelly handing Gilligan in particular the seeds for this story, that to this day they are trying to use against Tony Blair who has been our stalwart friend on the side of righteousness.

I hold the media culpable, too, of course. I despise them. Look how even this article manages to at the end come back to the "Blair has much to answer for". For what, I ask. How to extract the knife from his back?

Thanks for the links to more articles.

[BigWaveBetty]

I'm with you, Kelly certainly had no business "gossiping" with beeb reporters. However, those beeb reporters are so slimy who knows what they "sexed up" from something that Kelly said.

I was just trying to point out Kelly was very unstable and since he didn't get what he thought he deserved from the government, that he might have given the beebers more than he should have to make himself more important. Either payback or to make someone pay attention to him.

All in this sordid story are guilty. Kelly is in the same league as Joseph Wilson of Niger fame.