BBC: New "Emergency Sessions" on Blair-BBC conflict

MI6 chief briefed BBC over Iraq arms fears

Kamal Ahmed, political editor -Sunday July 6, 2003

The Observer

Photo: Greg Dyke (BBC-director)

The head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, secretly briefed senior BBC executives on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction before the Today programme claimed Number 10 had 'sexed up' part of the evidence.

In a remarkable revelation that goes to the heart of the increasingly bitter row between the Government and the BBC, broadcasting sources have told The Observer that Dearlove suggested that Syria and Iran posed a greater threat to world security than Iraq.

Although the MI6 chief was not the source of BBC allegations that 10 Downing Street deliberately exaggerated the claim that Saddam's weapons could be ready in 45 minutes, the meetings have strengthened resolve within the corporation to refuse Government demands that it should apologise.

Greg Dyke, the Director General of the BBC, will give a robust defence of the story and say that many of the allegations have been proved true.

This move will put him in direct conflict with Tony Blair, who dramatically upped the stakes last night by demanding a full retraction of the allegations about weapons of mass destruction, saying the charge against him was the gravest he had ever faced as Prime Minister.

In an exclusive interview with The Observer, Blair said the story was 'about as serious an attack on my integrity as there could possibly be'.

Tonight the BBC governors meet in emergency session to discuss the corporation's response to the row. The briefings by Dearlove will make up part of the evidence presented by Dyke and Richard Sambrook, BBC Director of News, to the governors.

The two men, who have both been told of the contacts between Dearlove and BBC executives, will say these provided the 'background context' to the story first run by the Today programme's defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan.

On May 12, 1999, British officials issued a "D-notice" gagging order to prevent the press from reporting the contents of a list that they said former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson had posted on the Internet. Tomlinson's Swiss Internet service provider, worldcom.ch, cooperated with the British, as did geocities.com in the U.S., and both sites were closed. Every major newspaper in the world hyped the story. Now Internet surfers were getting interested, and thousands of people were looking for The List.

Enough people already had it so that it was impossible to stuff the cyber genie back into the bottle. Lyndon LaRouche's site posted it for a time, and a site in Denmark is still up as this is written.

Richard Billing Dearlove--the incoming Head of MI6 in September 1999--was in Paris two weeks before the Aug. 31, 1997 Princess Diana crash.

Source: Bits.Bris.ac.uk

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