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Kelly inquiry: New dossier claims
LONDON, England (CNN) -- A second BBC reporter has testified that the late UK weapons expert David Kelly told them the government had included uncorroborated intelligence in its dossier setting out the case for war against Iraq. Susan Watts said Tuesday at the inquiry into Kelly's apparent suicide that the scientist told her it was "a mistake" to put in a claim that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction ready to be deployed at 45 minutes' notice. Intelligence in the dossier had been doubly corroborated but this piece of evidence had only been singly corroborated -- probably the most important thing to come out of Tuesday's hearing, CNN's Diana Muriel said. Watts told the senior judge leading the inquiry, Lord Hutton: "My shorthand notes show that Dr. Kelly said to me that it was 'a mistake to put in, Alastair Campbell seeing something in there, single source, but not corroborated, sounded good'." Alastair Campbell is Prime Minister Tony Blair's Director of Communications and has been accused of playing a role in making the dossier more hard-hitting. However, Watts said she had not made use of Kelly's remark -- made to her on May 7 -- as she had regarded it as "a gossipy aside comment" and she was unconvinced the scientist had sufficient access to make the remark usable in her report for BBC TV's Newsnight. Earlier the BBC reporter at the center of the row, Andrew Gilligan, read notes from his meeting with Kelly on May 22 this year. Kelly apparently took his own life in July after being named as the probable source of Gilligan's original story for BBC quoting an intelligence source as saying the government dossier was exaggerated. The notes said: "Transformed a week before publication to make it sexier, a classic was the 45 minutes, most things in the dossier were double-sourced but that was single-sourced." The note then referred to Campbell, saying: "Campbell, real information but unreliable included against our wishes... he asked if anything else could go in." Gilligan told the inquiry that Kelly believed Iraq had few if any weapons of mass destruction.
"(Saddam Hussein's weapons) program was small. He couldn't have killed very many people even if everything had gone right for him," Gilligan, reading notes from his interview with Kelly, said. The inquiry heard that BBC bosses criticized Gilligan's onair report. The BBC Board of Governors also raised concerns, noting "careful language had not been applied" by Gilligan. James Dingemans, counsel to the inquiry, read out an e-mail sent by BBC Radio 4 Today program editor Kevin Marsh to the BBC's head of radio news Stephen Mitchell. It said: "This story was a good piece of investigative journalism marred by flawed reporting. The biggest millstone has been the loose use of language and lack of judgment in some of the phraseology." Senior UK government officials have strongly denied the dossier was "transformed" in the days leading up to publication or that Tony Blair's office intervened to order the inclusion of the 45-minute claim. -- CNN Correspondent Diana Muriel and Producer Eden Pontz contributed to this report
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