Campbell

Giving evidence on 19 August 2003, Campbell was asked about an email sent at 11.21 on 9 September 2002 which referred to "a Cab Off meeting at 2pm today w John Williams on the dossier". Asked if he knew whether or not the meeting had gone ahead, he replied, "I do not." (Section 18, line 7) It is inconceivable that Campbell did not know that the first meeting of the dossier drafting group had gone ahead, particularly as he had chaired a planning meeting that morning and set out in a minute of the meeting how the various elements of the dossier would be drawn together during the afternoon.

Campbell repeatedly told the Inquiry that Pruce was commenting from outside the process of drafting the dossier. He described the Pruce email that referred to "John's Draft of 9 September" as "part of the office chatter" (19 August am; Section 25, line 3). Asked about another contemporaneous email from Pruce, which described the Scarlett draft as "this latest draft", he famously described Pruce himself as "making contributions effectively above his pay grade" (Section 36, lines 6-7) and described this and other emails as coming from people who were "not terribly closely involved in the process" (Section 36, lines 9-12).

This spin proved very effective and was lapped up by the media. But Campbell again resorted to the outright lie when required to. He was asked by Inquiry James Dingemans QC:

"We have not been given a copy of a dossier on 9th September. Do you recall whether or not at 9th September there was a dossier?"

He replied:

"No, there was not." (19 August am; Section 25, lines 19-21)

Not only is this a clear lie, but the context of the question undermines any claim that the failure to provide the document was an oversight or that it was open to the Inquiry or others to request it. For Dingemans to note that the Inquiry had not been given a 9 September draft and then ask whether there was such a document was tantamount to a request for it. While the conclusion to be drawn from Campbell’s definitive response was that there was no point in asking directly, the question would nevertheless have served as a reminder to those in government who knew that the draft still existed.

Scarlett

John Scarlett, was the nominal author of the dossier. He correctly identified the "John" to whom the 9 September draft was attributed in Pruce’s email. But he went to great lengths to portray Williams’ contribution as unwanted and unhelpful, although he never denied that the Williams draft was taken forward as the basis for his own draft the following day. Unfortunately for Campbell, Scarlett’s confirmed that the Williams draft was circulated to No. 10.

"I am virtually certain this is a reference to John Williams' draft because he did do some additional drafting, not just of the foreword but of the -- or redrafting of the text which had been circulated on 4th September and which was on the table at the meeting of 5th September. So he was really on his own initiative working on that and had circulated it to No. 10 inter alia probably, judging by this, on the 9th." (Section 51)

Scarlett’s attempts to play down Williams’ involvement became increasingly comical but were nevertheless successful. It was pointed out that when circulating his own draft that he had written of "considerable help from John Williams" and he was asked if Williams had been assisting him. But he denied this seemingly obvious suggestion:

"Well, not really… I was concerned that that redrafting which was happening independently from me might cause confusion as to who was actually controlling this." (26 August 2003 am; Sections 58-59)

At this point, the BBC legal team noticed the draft and asked the Inquiry to request it from Hutton. The Hutton Inquiry had to ask the Cabinet Office twice for the draft. When the Cabinet Office finally handed the document over, it told the Inquiry that the draft was "rapidly overtaken" by the decision to have Scarlett draft the dossier and was "not taken forward".

But during Scarlett's second appearance, which was very late in the Inquiry, he revealed that "cleared representatives" of the Foreign Office and No. 10 press offices had attended the drafting group meetings, although he did not say that this included Williams.

"they, however, did not form part of the discussions which took place out of those two meetings." (23 September am; Section 83, lines 21-23)

This coincided with the very late disclosure of the document that revealed that Pruce, Williams and others were involved in drafting the dossier, so recent a disclosure that the BBC’s legal team appears not to have realised its full implications.

Williams

Williams himself gave evidence to the Inquiry before both Scarlett and Campbell and, as a result, was only asked about his role in the outing of Dr David Kelly. He did however admit to being at the meetings of 5 and 9 September and the second drafting meeting, but not to having attended the drafting meeting on the afternoon of 9 September or to having produced the first full draft of the dossier. It is difficult to believe that this had slipped his mind. Ironically, he was asked:

"why was not the Government's response to Mr Gilligan's piece simply to reveal the respective drafts of the dossier? ... It would have been the easiest thing in the world, would it not?"

He replied:

"I am sorry, I cannot answer that". (14 August 2003 pm; Section 190, lines11-18)

Next: The missing drafts