BRITAIN: Internal divisions at the BBC surfaced yesterday over the quality and handling of its highly controversial news report alleging the UK government beefed up intelligence material to strengthen the case for war in Iraq.
In evidence to the independent judicial inquiry examining the apparent suicide of Dr David Kelly, the government's Iraq weapons adviser, a BBC television reporter said she was put under pressure by managers to ensure her report of the allegation squared with the original radio report that enraged the administration of the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair.
As the inquiry takes evidence from reporters and managers at the BBC, the public broadcaster's vehement defence of the radio report by BBC defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, in its dispute with Mr Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's director of communications, faces intense scrutiny.
Dr Kelly was the source of the BBC reports and he apparently cut his wrist shortly near his home after he was publicly grilled by a panel of members of parliament.
His death has thrown the Blair administration into crisis and forced it to allow a judge to look into how politicians and government officials let Mr Kelly's name become public.
The spotlight on the BBC also provided some comfort for Mr Campbell when the inquiry heard a taped conversation between Susan Watts, the TV reporter, and Dr Kelly.
In it Dr Kelly denied one of the key claims in Mr Gilligan's report; that Mr Campbell had inserted into an intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons capability the belief that Saddam Hussein could deploy banned weapons at 45 minutes' notice.
"[Dr Kelly\] didn't say the dossier was transformed in the last week and he certainly didn't say that the 45-minute claim was inserted either by Alastair Campbell or by anyone else in government," Ms Watts told Lord Hutton's inquiry.
Ms Watts believed there were "significant differences" between Mr Gilligan's reports and her own and said she had brought her lawyer to the inquiry because of pressure by the BBC to make her report corroborate her radio colleague's.
On Tuesday the inquiry was shown the contents of an e-mail by Mr Gilligan's editor critical of the reporter's journalism.
The reputation of Dr Kelly has become something of a cause celebre, with ham-fisted efforts last week by Mr Blair's press office to suggest privately to journalists that he was a fantasist condemned by the media and commentators.
But for the BBC and the government, however, defending their positions may involve some delicate undermining of Dr Kelly. Yesterday Mr Richard Sambrook, the broadcaster's head of news, told the inquiry that in his evidence to the panel of MPs, Dr Kelly had been "deliberately evasive and sometimes vague, failing to recollect whether he had said something or not". - (Financial Times)