The British government was last night embroiled in a full-scale war with the BBC after the corporation accused Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications chief, Alastair Campbell, of intimidatory tactics and of pursuing a "personal vendetta" against its defense correspondent.
To the fury of the prime minister's office in Downing Street, London, which is demanding an apology over a BBC report that the government "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq's banned weapons, the corporation went on the offensive as it launched a point-by-point rejection of Campbell's criticisms.
In its strongest ever attack on Blair's government, which was cleared by director general Greg Dyke, the BBC insisted that it was standing by the contentious story by its defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan.
Richard Sambrook, the BBC's director of news, wrote to the prime minister's director of communications: "I do not accept the validity of your attacks on our journalism, and on Andrew Gilligan in particular. We have to believe that you are conducting a personal vendetta against a particular journalist whose reports on a number of occasions have caused you discomfort."
His sharply worded letter, stretching to eight pages, was immediately rejected by Downing Street as "weasel words and sophistry." Campbell made clear that he would not let the matter drop as he said: "BBC standards are now debased beyond belief. It means the BBC can broadcast anything and take responsibility for nothing."
The war of words erupted after Campbell demanded a response from the BBC to 12 questions about Gilligan's report on May 29 that Downing Street had "sexed up" last September's dossier on Iraq's banned weapons to improve the case for war.
Campbell insists it is a lie to claim that Downing Street swept aside concerns in the intelligence community to insert a claim that Iraq could launch a banned weapons attack within 45 minutes of an order.
Sambrook dismissed Downing Street's objections last night, as he made clear that the BBC was simply reporting on anxieties expressed by a member of the intelligence community whose views were reflected in other reports across the media. "The source was credible and what he chose to tell Andrew Gilligan was highly plausible given what we knew by then about the preparation of the February `dodgy dossier.'"
Signalling that the BBC is now braced for a bloody public fight with Downing Street, Sambrook turned on Campbell for suggesting the corporation had pursued an anti-war agenda.
"It is our firm view that No 10 [Downing Street] tried to intimidate the BBC in its reporting of events leading up to the war and during the course of the war itself," he wrote. "As we told you in correspondence before the war started, our responsibility was to present an impartial picture and you were not best placed to judge what was impartial."
Campbell is determined to discredit the BBC and Gilligan in the hope that the House of Commons foreign affairs select committee, which is investigating the use of intelligence, will temper its criticisms of the government.
The government appeared to be winning round some members of the committee last night when they accepted an assurance by Jack Straw, UK foreign secretary, that the 45-minute claim was inserted by intelligence officials as soon as it came to light on Sept. 9 -- weeks before the publication of the dossier.
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