Tony Blair’s Defense

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH, Conservative Party Leader:

Nobody believes a word now that the prime minister is saying.

TERENCE SMITH:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is on the defensive. His integrity, honesty, even his incumbency, are under assault over his stance on the Iraq War, and the case he made for Britain's participation.

The Blair government is also engaged in an extraordinary and vitriolic game of brinkmanship with another great institution: The British Broadcasting Corporation. Blair and members of his cabinet and staff, as well as reporters and executives from the BBC, have been testifying for weeks in an investigation of the suicide last month of Dr. David Kelly, a British weapons expert.

Kelly was identified as the source of a May 29th BBC Radio report and a subsequent newspaper article, both by defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan, that alleged Blair's government had "sexed up," or exaggerated, prewar intelligence claims about Iraq's weapons.

Blair's government has leveled counter-charges at the BBC, accusing it of lying in furtherance of an anti-war and anti-Blair agenda.

It is alleged that members of Blair's staff, specifically his communications chief, Alastair Campbell, revealed Kelly as the source in hopes that he would discredit the BBC report.

A visibly shaken Kelly testified before a House of Commons committee in mid-July.

SPOKESMAN, Hutton Inquiry:

In your own opinion, do you believe that you were the main source for Mr. Gilligan's article on the 1st of June?

DR. DAVID KELLY:

My belief is that I'm not the main source.

SPOKESMAN, Hutton Inquiry:

Ever felt like a fall guy? I mean, you've been set up, haven't you?

DR. DAVID KELLY:

It's not a question I can answer.

SPOKESMAN, Hutton Inquiry:

But do you feel that?

DR. DAVID KELLY:

No. I accept the process that's going on.

TERENCE SMITH:

Two days later, Dr. David Kelly walked down a lane near his home, to the edge of a stand of trees, and slashed his left wrist. The focal point of the controversy is a speech Blair gave last September before the House of Commons, in which he cited key details of a British intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons capabilities.

PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR:

He has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes.

BBC DEFENSE CORRESPONDENT ANDREW GILLIGAN:

What we've been told by one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up that dossier was that the government probably knew that that 45-minute figure was wrong even before it decided to put it in.

TERENCE SMITH:

It is that claim that David Kelly allegedly told the BBC was included at the urging of Alastair Campbell against the wishes of British intelligence. Campbell says the BBC charge is bunk.

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL, Director of Communications: The story that I "sexed up" the dossier is untrue. The story that I "put pressure on the intelligence agencies" is untrue.

TERENCE SMITH:

Both Blair and President Bush have said they relied on other findings within that dossier to bolster their cases for war.

PRESIDENT BUSH:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein…

PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR:

.. has been trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

TERENCE SMITH:

To date, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq despite months of intensive searching. And the hand-in-glove nature of the intelligence cases presented by both leaders has led to extensive questioning of their rationales for war.

But while the weapons dispute has subsided for now in the U.S. in the face of mounting American casualties and other problems in Iraq, the intelligence assessment remains the very center of the British controversy.

The inquiry into Kelly's death, which has revealed sensitive e-mails, notes from strategy meetings, even idle cocktail party gossip, has some of Blair's harshest critics reaching for that most American of scandal analogies.

JEREMY CORBYN, Labour MP:

It seems to me to be a parallel to the Watergate investigation in the states 30 years ago, when the president was finally cornered because he'd actually been involved in the whole thing from the very beginning.

TERENCE SMITH:

This morning, Blair arrived amid jeering protesters to testify before the inquiry being led by Lord Hutton, a former chief justice of Northern Ireland. The proceedings are closed to cameras, but documents and testimony are being released in near-real time.

Blair told the panel that neither he nor any of his staff ordered an exaggeration of the Iraq intelligence, and that if the charged had been true, he would have resigned.

TERENCE SMITH:

Joining me now is Warren Hoge, London bureau chief for The New York Times. Warren, it sounds as though you heard a flat out denial from the prime minister today.

WARREN HOGE:

We heard a flat-out denial of the central charge in this BBC report, which has aroused the fury of Downing Street and Blair's people — that charge being that Alastair Campbell, his director of communications and security, personally had inserted into the September dossier of intelligence information the claim that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons which could be deployed within 45 minutes of an order being given.

The other specific of that, Terry, is that the BBC also claimed that Alastair Campbell knew that claim to be false, and had had it inserted over the objections of intelligence agencies.

It was those three elements that Blair explained he was categorically denying had happened.

TERENCE SMITH:

And he insisted this was not true. Did he provide any evidence or supporting information?

WARREN HOGE:

He didn't really have to because the other participants have already denied those three facts, previous witnesses, mainly a man called John Scarlet, who is one of the top espionage people in Britain who had testified two days ago, that he had been the one who compiled the dossier, so he personally knew that that claim about the 45 minutes had come from intelligence agencies, not from Alastair Campbell.

He knew that Alastair Campbell had not put it in there. And also… he testified the intelligence agencies believed in that claim. So there you had all three elements already knocked down, so that when the prime minister spoke today, he didn't really have to go back over that and rehearse that again.

He knew that that categoric denial was already in place and it was just him saying it as prime minister, and as you know, he added the dramatic detail that had it been true, he would have felt that he had to resign office.

TERENCE SMITH:

Exactly. So where does this leave him politically in terms… assess the damage to Tony Blair, the politician.

WARREN HOGE:

He is going through the worst moment of his six years of being prime minister. It's the worst crisis he's faced.

He's been an exceptionally popular prime minister, probably the most popular prime minister in British history, having sustained popularity for six full years. So it's undermined his authority. It has struck him at a very vulnerable point because he is a politician who makes a personal appeal, he literally has used these words sometimes, which are "trust me, I'm a straight kind of guy, you may not agree with what I'm saying, but believe me that I believe it and I believe it to be the best thing for Britain."

He has lost that bond that he had for a long time. That's that said, his premiership and probably even his chances of being reelected if he decides to run for office again in 2004, which I think he will, those chances have not been dimmed.

TERENCE SMITH:

And where does this leave the BBC, as an institution in terms of their reputation for accuracy and for fairness?

WARREN HOGE:

The people of Britain will always believe the BBC before they'll believe the government, any government, so the BBC will win that argument. But, that said, the BBC has taken some hits. People expect — have high expectations of the BBC.

This particular report that the prime minister denied today probably will not stand up, and the Hutton inquiry, in its final report next month, will probably note the fact that they were unable to corroborate this extremely serious charge that the prime minister says affected his own sense of his own integrity. He really felt that he was personally being called a liar in effect by the BBC.

The BBC I think will emerge from all of this diminished, but it will still emerge as an institution that people trust more than they trust politicians.

TERENCE SMITH:

All right. We'll have to watch out it turns out. Warren Hoge of The New York Times, thanks so much.