The government was marshalling its forces to refute the reports on the BBC and in newspapers. On Wednesday, June 4, Labour Party Chair John Reid told the Today program that Gilligan’s story should be attributed to “rogue elements in the security services.” ^[34] The prime minister also announced his willingness to testify to the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) about his role in the matter. That committee, however, was dominated by the ruling party, met in private, and its reports were redacted before release. So later that morning, in his first weekly Q&A with the press since the dossier story had broken, Blair categorically denied the charges. He invoked the additional authority of John Scarlett, chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee which had published the dossier. Blair stated:

I have confirmed with the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee there was no attempt at any time by any official or minister or member of Number 10 Downing Street staff to override the intelligence judgments of the Joint Intelligence Committee. ^[35]

Reid’s protest and Blair’s statement elevated the Gilligan affair to the top of the BBC hierarchy. It was “very unusual” for the director general to handle a complaint, says Mitchell. But Director-General Dyke took a strong personal interest in the unfolding drama. Since an exchange of letters in the spring about BBC coverage of the Iraq war, Dyke had come to feel that Campbell “was looking for revenge... Campbell, while a brilliant operator, has a classic, obsessive personality and he had decided that the BBC was the enemy.” ^[36] Dyke wanted to ensure that if Campbell sought retribution, the BBC would be standing on firm ground.

Dyke in charge. So during their regular Wednesday meeting, Dyke asked the controller of editorial policy, Stephen Whittle, to take a look at Gilligan’s story, as well as the reporting behind it, to ascertain that both met BBC editorial and process standards. Dyke was inclined to defend the BBC on this, but first he wanted to be sure of the facts. “I asked Stephen Whittle to take a look at Gilligan’s original story and make sure we were happy with it, and the process by which it went to air,” Dyke wrote later. ^[37]

That Dyke asked Whittle was, says Radio News Director Mitchell, “not common. It was unusual.” More typical was for a complaint to go to the Programme Complaints Unit (PCU), which interviewed the program’s producers and reporters, and reported back. If the PCU found the BBC in the wrong, the error would be corrected and an apology offered. ^[38] If the complainant was still unsatisfied, the matter could be appealed to the board of governors. Some 60 percent of complaints were resolved at the program or departmental level; only a minority went to a formal complaint.

In turning to Whittle, Dyke bypassed Ann Sloman, the BBC’s chief political advisor whose job was in part to manage relations with the government. Sloman reported to Whittle. Former Director General John Birt had created the position, says then-Radio 4 Controller Helen Boaden , because “he knew that every so often the BBC gets into conflict with governments of whatever hue. So you want a system that, as it were, protects the journalism and the institution while those allegations are examined.” ^[39] But Dyke, says Sambrook, “didn’t like [Sloman] or get on with her, so basically he marginalized her.” Adds Mitchell: “It was quite clear that she’d been sidelined from the start.”

Listen to Boaden on Birt’s crisis management system:
Length: 16 sec

Then-International Division Director Byford agrees that the political advisor could have played a role. After all, the dispute was between Campbell and the BBC News Division, not the director-general. He says:

The premise would be that they [News] will handle it. There wasn’t a system which says every time an MP or a government minister or the head of communications at Downing Street has an issue with the BBC, then that is handled by the chief advisor, politics... [But] it’s true that what they could and should have been is intricately involved in how we were handling it.

Listen to Byford on the BBC’s complaints process:
Length: 30 sec

But it was Dyke’s style to cut through red tape to get things done. Dyke, notes Mitchell, “has no appetite for bureaucracy and process... So it was out with the normal processes and the normal structures very quickly.” Not everyone at the BBC found that effective. “That approach is high risk. It leads to incoherence. It leads to emotionalism,” notes Mitchell. Harking back to the era of Director-General Birt, Mitchell adds:

Birt would have absolutely distanced himself from the whole news machine. He would have taken an overview. He would have been much more distant, much more calculating. He would have used Whittle more to inform him, rather than going on his instincts... Whereas Greg took over.

Listen to Mitchell on Dyke’s style:
Length: 30 sec

Controller Whittle himself probably felt that his job was to defuse Dyke. There was a history of directors-general coming after the Today show because politicians had complained about its coverage. “I think Stephen Whittle felt, oh, this is another one of those, we just need to calm Greg down,” says Sambrook. In response to Dyke, Whittle asked Radio News Director Mitchell for a detailed explanation of how a story got onto the air. He also asked whether BBC procedures had been followed in the Gilligan story.

At 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 5, Mitchell reported back with a lengthy email detailing the process in general of bringing a story to the Today program; and the steps in particular followed for the Gilligan report. He recounted that before the broadcast, Today Editor Marsh had discussed with Gilligan the reliability of the source, as well as the context of the source’s allegation. Mitchell himself also knew about the story in advance of broadcast, but only in general terms. That was common. The director of news or his deputy was personally involved only in preparing a difficult policy or legal story; this was not deemed necessary for the “sexed-up dossier” story.

Whittle report. Early that evening, Whittle gave Gilligan a clean bill of health. A 6:23 p.m. email to Dyke, Sambrook, Deputy News Director Mark Damazer, and Mitchell restated what Marsh had told him. Whittle concluded: “As you can see, a strong and well-sourced story.” Sambrook, for one, was reassured by Whittle’s email: “My reaction was, somebody outside of News has had a look at this, a serious person who’s decided it’s okay. Fine, that gives me some comfort.”

Whittle did not—and had he done so it would have been highly irregular—ask Gilligan for his original interview notes. “You’d have to have a reason to say to Andrew [Gilligan], ’I want to see your original notes,’ because you would never ask that of another correspondent,” explains Marsh.

The BBC runs on kind of gentleman’s rules, that you don’t ask to see someone’s notes... Because you trust that if you work for the BBC, you’ve got to the stage where you don’t tell fibs about what somebody said to you... We probably culturally take far more on trust than the editor of a newspaper would do. But then again, we probably get far less wrong than the average newspaper.

Listen to Marsh on the BBC’s culture:
Length: 33 sec

A more thorough investigation seemed uncalled for, although Sambrook discussed that possibility with Dyke. Sambrook had listened to a tape of the 6:07 two-way, and judged it to be “obviously not very good. It’s a very hesitant, live interview.” But Gilligan was standing by his story. “It’s always a bit uncomfortable when you’ve got a single, anonymous source,” comments Sambrook. “But the reporter was very much sticking to it.”

The BBC also took encouragement from reports in other news outlets about disquiet in the intelligence community. Moreover, the government had not said the story was wrong. So far, it had objected only to BBC failure to follow its own procedures, specifically to notify the government before broadcast to allow it an immediate reply. “This felt as if they were trying to find something to complain about because they were uncomfortable,” Sambrook adds.

The BBC was also getting signals through informal channels that the story was right. A Labour MP contacted Dyke and BBC Chairman Davies with that message; while at a dinner with one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a very senior military officer told them they were correct and not to back down in the face of bullying. “That stiffened our spine a bit,” says Sambrook. Finally, the BBC was well accustomed to getting strongly-worded letters from Campbell. Since January alone, Sambrook had received some 17 letters of complaint from the prime minister’s communications chief, only one of which proved on investigation to have merit. He adds:

Just because you got a letter from the prime minister’s spokesman hadn’t meant for some years that you automatically assumed oh, we got something terribly wrong here, we must do something about it. What you assumed was, they’re a bit pissed off with this, but we need to stick to our guns.