Gilligan stands by Iraq dossier report

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3143123.stm

A claim that a dossier on Iraq's weapons was "sexed up" on the orders of Downing Street was not denied by two senior government contacts, BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan has told the inquiry into David Kelly's death.

He said both contacts would be in a position to know if the dossier had been transformed.

The development came on the second day of Lord Hutton's investigation into the government weapons expert's death.

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The BBC correspondent said after meeting Dr Kelly he had called "two senior contacts in government" to check his story.

Gilligan claims reopen controversy

Andrew Gilligan has dropped series of bombshells at the Hutton inquiry - including a claim that drags Alastair Campbell back to the centre of the affair.
In direct contradiction to evidence given yesterday, Gilligan made the dramatic claim that Ministry of Defence scientist David Kelly had said Alastair Campbell asked if anything else could go in to the September dossier because the real information in the original dossier was unusable and dull.

Dr Kelly also told Gilligan that most of the claims in the dossier were double-sourced, but that the '45 minute' claim was based on a single source

More: http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1017083,00.html

You post the Grauniad, I'll post the Independent! :-)

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=432964

Weapons expert David Kelly told BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan that Downing Street communications chief Alastair Campbell asked for additional information for the Government's Iraqi weapons dossier, the Hutton inquiry heard today.

Mr Gilligan, defence correspondent on BBC Radio 4's Today programme and the journalist at the centre of claims that the Government "sexed up" its September dossier to strengthen the case for war, made the claim in evidence to Lord Hutton's inquiry into the scientist's apparent suicide.

Mr Gilligan was asked to read notes, stored on his personal organiser, of his meeting with Dr Kelly on 22 May this year.

The notes, which were in annotated form, said of the dossier: "Transformed a week before publication to make it sexier, a classic was the 45 minutes, most things in the dossier were double-sourced but that was single-sourced."

EOM

(takes off skipper hat and flogs the "little buddy" with it)

beat me to it!