Gilligan was among those who kept the story alive. On June 1, he published a piece in the Mail on Sunday newspaper which reiterated what he had said in his Today program report. But the newspaper article took the story one step further: it named Alastair Campbell as the official responsible for persuading intelligence officials to include the 45-minute claim against their own better judgment. Under BBC written guidelines, any article a reporter submitted to another publication—which they did frequently—had to be reviewed by a BBC editor. Reporters were expected to adhere to BBC standards—they could not write anything for a newspaper that they would not be willing to say on the air for the BBC. Marsh was away at a family wedding when Gilligan wrote his Mail story, so told Gilligan to find another BBC editor to review it. But Gilligan never did. On the other hand, Marsh says that had he seen the article in advance, “I wouldn’t have changed anything.”

Other reports. Meanwhile, other publications, as well as other BBC reporters, published stories which bolstered Gilligan’s assertion. BBC reporter Susan Watts on Monday, June 2 broadcast a story on the Newsnight program citing “a senior official intimately involved with the process of pulling together the original September 2002 Blair weapons’ dossier.” Watts, who had taped her interview, quoted her source as saying: “They were desperate for information, they were pushing hard for information that could be released,” especially regarding the “45-minute claim.” Watts added that “the government’s insistence the Iraqi threat was imminent was a Downing Street interpretation of intelligence conclusions.”

Numerous other newspapers also carried reports which substantiated the charge that the government had demanded more evidence to bolster the dossier. The Sunday Telegraph said: “It [the 45-minute claim] was an extrapolation” from the actual intelligence. ^[30] Citing “well-placed sources,” the Guardian reported that intelligence agencies “were deeply reluctant to allow Downing Street to use their intelligence assessments because they feared it would be manipulated for political ends.” ^[31] It named Campbell as instigator. The Times wrote that “there was debate amongst intelligence analysts whether the [45-minute source’s] claims should have been passed to No. 10, as senior figures doubted whether it was true, but were under pressure to deliver ‘compelling evidence.’” ^[32] Finally, the Washington Post wrote that “one official acknowledged that there had been what he described as ‘pressured and superheated debates at the time’ between Downing Street and intelligence officials over the contents of the dossier.” ^[33]

As the debate sharpened, Gilligan left on a long-planned two-week vacation to the remote Orkney Islands off Scotland. There he had no cellphone reception, no access to national newspapers, and only one telephone line into his hotel. He spent most of his vacation on that phone. Meanwhile, Sambrook finally returned to the office from his Moscow trip on Monday, June 2; by then, a small paper trail on the May 29 story had already accumulated. That trail would only grow.