BBC - Press Office - Letter from Andrew Gilligan to Phil Woolas Page 1 of 2
PRESS RELEASES
Press Release
28 .06 .03 BBC NEWS
Letter from Andrew Gilligan, Today programme Defence
and Diplomatic Correspondent, to Phil Woolas, Deputy
Leader of the House of Commons
Dear Mr Woolas
On Thursday you made the extremely serious allegation that I
had "misled" Parliament in my evidence to the Foreign Affairs
Committee .
You have clearly not read my evidence, or else have disregarded
it.
In the words of your letter to me :
"You claimed [to the committee] that the only allegation you
had made against the Government was that it gave 'undue
prominence' to the point about 45 minutes .
"I am afraid it would appear that you misled the FAC.
"The allegations you actually made were far more varied and far
more grave . . . . what you said to the FAC is not consistent with
what you said to the BBC, the Mail on Sunday and others.
"It is now clear that you and the BBC are in full retreat from the
original allegations because you know them to be untrue ."
Your claims against me are wholly false and are based on the
blatant misrepresentation and selective quotation of my
evidence .
Nowhere in my evidence do I say that "undue prominence" was
my source's only charge .
As the transcript, available on the Internet, makes clear, I also
repeated to the Committee the charges of my source that the
dossier had been sexed up ; that the 45-minute claim was
uncorroborated and considered unreliable ; that it was included
in the dossier, in the words of the source, "against our wishes" ;
that the intelligence services were unhappy with the general
tone and tenor of the dossier because, in the words of my
source, it "did not reflect the considered view they were putting
forward" ; and that the dossier had been transformed just before
it was published at the behest of Downing Street.
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BBC - Press Office - Letter from Andrew Gilligan to Phil Woolas Page 2 of 2
I specifically repeated my source's charge about Alastair
Campbell's involvement in that transformation .
As the BBC has made clear on Thursday, in great detail on
Friday, and again today, we stand by our story. Do you still
stand by your claim that you read my evidence?
In the light of the incontrovertible evidence of what I said to the
Committee, I regard the allegation in your letter, which was
released to the Press Association long before it reached me, as
defamatory, casting grave doubt on my professional integrity
and honesty .
Unlike the claims made by Alastair Campbell against me in the
Committee on Wednesday, your claim is not protected by
parliamentary privilege .
I now require a full apology and retraction of your claims, which
were widely reported on Friday morning, are entirely
unsupported by evidence and were clearly intended to blacken
my character .
In the absence of this I will have no option but to put the matter
in the hands of my lawyers .
I should make clear that I write this letter with the full
knowledge and support of the BBC .
Yours sincerely,
Andrew Gilligan
Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent
The Today Programme
Notes to Editors
Letter from Step hen Whittle, Controller, Editorial Policy, BBC to
Ben Bradshaw MP (03 07 03)
Letter from Richard Sambrook D~rector BBC News, toBen
Bradshaw MP (DS os 03)
Letter from Richard Sambrook, Director, BBC News to Ala_stair
Cam pbell (27 os 03)
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