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Preliminary note: In advance of the appearance of Alastair Campbell,
the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, before the Foreign Affairs
Committee of the House of Commons on 25 June 2003, BBC Radio 4's Today
programme asked three individuals to draw up the list of questions
that they would like to ask Mr Campbell. A transcript of the broadcast
version is here; a full
list of the questions drawn up by Glen Rangwala, one of the participants,
is below.
Mechanisms
- The Foreign Secretary, in his letter to the chairman of the Foreign
Affairs Committee, has referred to your role "as chair of the cross-departmental
Iraqi communications group". Did this communications group have a separate
institutional identity from the Central Office of Information, which
you head, and the Government Information and Communication Service,
which you direct? Does it have its own personnel and resources?
- Who took the decision to create the Iraqi communications group, and
when? Did it have a specific remit?
The September dossier
- Is it true that the intelligence agencies produced a six-page dossier
in March 2002, which stated that there was no new evidence of a threat
from Iraq since 1998? Is it also true that you were involved in asking
for that dossier not to be issued, and for it to be radically revised?
And that this revised version became the dossier put out in September
2002?
- Jack Straw has acknowledged in a memorandum to the Foreign Affairs
Committee that ministers and special advisers "offered comments" to
the Joint Intelligence Committee during the production of the dossier.
Were you one of the special advisers who offered comments? What comments
did you offer?
- In remarks at the Foreign Press Association on June 11th, you said
that it was "absolutely right" for the Prime Minister's office to have
been involved "at every stage" in the production of the dossier. Since
you are not a technical expert on Iraq's weapons, nor a member of the
intelligence services, what possible input could you have into the making
of an assessment on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?
- How many meetings did you hold with John Scarlett, chairman of the
Joint Intelligence Committee, prior the issuance of the September 2002
dossier? Were minutes kept of those meetings? And is there any reason
not to release those minutes?
- Three weeks before the dossier was published, Whitehall sources were
quoted as telling the defence editor of The Times that it would not
be revelatory. A few days later, another Whitehall source told the security
editor of the Guardian that the dossier would "no longer play a role"
because there was "very little new to put in it." How do you account
for the difference between those comments and the dossier that emerged
only a few weeks later?
- Did you recommend that Part III of the September dossier, entitled
"Iraq's weapons of mass destruction", was actually not on those alleged
weapons at all, but on a wholly different topic - human rights in Iraq?
The February dossier
- Who took the decision to produce the plagiarised dossier, "Iraq: Its
Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation", and when?
Do you accept that it was put together in a slapdash way, with even
the typographical errors in the original academic articles retained?
Why was a dossier produced that contained no information about Iraq's
weapons, but was largely about the history of Iraq's intelligence services?
Was it produced to shore up the claim that Colin Powell was about to
make to the UN Security Council that weapons inspectors were not able
to fulfil their function within Iraq?
- The original version of the document that was put out by the Government
contained the names of four individuals within its revision log. These
four individuals were P. Hamill, J. Pratt, A. Blackshaw, and M. Khan.
These are the people who had made alterations to the text of the dossier
prior to its publication. Do you know who any of these four individuals
are? How many of them work for you?
Prelude to war
- Were you aware that it was MI6's assessment that Iraq was unlikely
to use chemical and biological weapons in the event of a UK/US invasion?
Clare Short revealed to the Foreign Affairs Committee that MI6 had prepared
a paper which said that, in Short's words, "there is a risk, and it
was thought to be not very high", that chemical and biological agents
would be used by Iraq. If this is the case, why wasn't this information
conveyed to the public, as it would surely have served to allay the
fears of families of British service personnel?
- Did you have any role either directly or indirectly in communicating
with the UN weapons inspectors of UNMOVIC in relation to the production
of their reports? It has become well-known that US officials, led by
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, repeatedly demanded of Hans
Blix that his reports be more strongly worded about Iraq's non-compliance.
Were you engaged in similar activities?
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