Andrew Gilligan

Andrew Gilligan (b. 22 November 1968) was until 30 January 2004 a journalist for the BBC. He covered defence and diplomacy issues for BBC radio's The Today Programme.

Early career

In Baghdad

The previous day Gilligan had told World Service listeners that he was at the airport, but the Americans weren't. Gilligan implied that the Americans were lying. Shortly after, another BBC correspondent reported out that Gilligan had not actually been at the airport. Gilligan was widely criticised in the American media for these statements, but this was not widely reported in Britain. It does not seem to have damaged his reputation at the BBC.

The "sexing up" allegations

According to Gilligan's original reports, the "classic case" was the dossier's claim that Iraq was able to deploy chemical and biological weapons at 45 minutes notice. Following the war it became clear that this was not the case. Experts who read the dossier prior to publication had expressed serious doubts about it but these had not been heeded. However in one early report Gilligan clumsily rephrased the central allegation in his own words, saying that he had been told by "one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the September dossier that the Government probably knew that the 45 minute figure was wrong even before it decided to put it in". He later acknowledged that this was an overstatement, and the allegation was phrased more carefully in later broadcasts.

Gilligan's source was one of Britain's foremost biological weapons experts Dr David Kelly. Kelly committed suicide not long after his role as source for the story became public. An inquiry (the Hutton Inquiry) subsequently set up to investigate the circumstances leading up to Kelly's death found that Gilligan's claims were unfounded. The Inquiry did not establish whether Kelly volunteered the claim to Gilligan or whether Gilligan prompted and led Kelly to make the claim largely because Gilligan kept two sets of notes relating to meetings with Kelly that did not tally with each other.

However, Gilligan's account of the conversation was substantially corroborated by independent interviews given to other BBC journalists, Susan Watts and Gavin Hewitt. Watts in particular had kept detailed verbatim notes of her discussions, and had retained a tape recording of one of them, these showed that Kelly had made similar remarks to those reported by Gilligan, e.g., identifying Campbell. As both Gilligan and Watts had spoken to Dr. Kelly on an unattributable basis, he could expect his anonymity to be protected.

As the Government began to demand that the BBC name the source for Gilligan's report, Gilligan and the BBC refused to do so. However, after rumours began to circulate amongst his colleagues, Kelly himself eventually revealed to his employers that he had spoken to Gilligan, though he denied making the more critical comments. Alistair Campbell wanted Kelly "outed" to refute Gilligan and the BBC in public. He wrote in his diary: "It was double-edged but GH (Geoff Hoon) and I agreed it would f*** Gilligan if that was his source."

Kelly was called before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, and was expected to admit to being Gilligan's source, but to deny specific remarks reported by Gilligan. Gilligan (by this time under grave pressure from Downing Street) made a serious mistake, privately bringing Susan Watts' unattributed Newsnight interview to the attention of sympathetic members of the FAC, suggesting (correctly as it turned out) that Kelly had been her source too. Though it supported Gilligan's case, it unnerved Kelly - who was forced to deny making the comments which were quoted verbatim in the committee. This denial, and the existence of Watts' tape of the conversation placed Kelly in jeopardy. Critically for Gilligan's reputation, in identifying Kelly as Susan Watts' source, he had gone against a cardinal rule of investigative journalism: protect the source.

Despite this serious error and the overstatement that the government "probably knew" that the WMD intelligence was flawed before publishing the dossier, Gilligan had uncovered an important news story, originating from a credible source and with grave implications. Many aspects of this story have subsequently been verified.

During the Hutton Inquiry Gilligan made little public comment on the affair, leaving that to more senior BBC personnel, including Director-General Greg Dyke and then chairman Gavyn Davies both of whom stood by Gilligan's story. All three resigned from the BBC following the publication of the Hutton Inquiry report. Gilligan was belligerent in his departure, saying "This report casts a chill over all journalism, not just the BBC's. It seeks to hold reporters, with all the difficulties they face, to a standard that it does not appear to demand of, for instance, Government dossiers."

External references

• Biography on the BBC website

Referenced By