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Anorak News | I Swear To Tell The Truth

I Swear To Tell The Truth

by | 23rd, September 2003

‘THE swear box at Number 10 might not be bulging at the seams, providing enough cash to plug gaps in Gordon Brown’s spending policies, but it does contain at least one coin.

‘It’s everything about him – his bald head, his puppy dog eyes…’

The Independent has seen the entry of July 4 2003 in Alistair Campbell’s diary and noted a use of the word ‘fuck’.

The word, a hangover from Campbell’s time spent as writer for the erotic publication Forum, appears in a statement about the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan.

To give context to the profanity, the line suggests identifying Kelly as the Beeb’s source would ‘fuck’ Gilligan, who had broken the story about the Government’s misleading dossier.

For ‘sexed up’ we now read ‘fucked up’, a comment that might be pertinent to Gilligan’s career but one that seems especially relevant when discussing the Government’s credibility, given that the 45-minute warning was less than straightforward.

But the case of Dr Kelly is not all about one man – and that’s Campbell, not the dead scientist – but involves many figures.

And the Telegraph spots a man who is most likely thinking the word that Campbell writes so freely. He’s Geoff Hoon, and his political ambitions are getting a good seeing to.

Yesterday, the Defence Secretary was required to offer some more defence at his second appearance at the Hutton Inquiry.

In his encore, Hoon admitted to ‘approving the strategy to confirm Dr Kelly’s name’ to reporters without first speaking with Kelly.

The paper also hears him explain his reasons for not seeking our the same journalists and correcting their reports that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq could prime and launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.

‘I have spent many years trying to persuade newspapers and journalists to correct their stories,’ says Hoon. ‘It is an extraordinary time-consuming and frustrating process.’

Much simpler just to let Campbell write the stories in the first place…’



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