Gavin, 19 August 03
The Hutton Inquiry questions Alistair Campbell today. One thing has puzzled me about previous evidence given by Mr Campbell to a parliamentary committee. When the government published a dossier claiming that Iraq posed a serious and real danger, they used a Word file format. This enabled The Friday Thing to open the file and find that the last people that had edited the dossier were not unknown spooks, but working in the government spin offices.
One of the names was Mr John Pratt – this is how Mr Campbell explains Pratt’s name being in the document history:
Can I explain what John Pratt’s role in this ridiculous story was? John Pratt – and I think when people hear this they will be stunned that this is how stories get into newspapers – this story appeared in The Guardian as I explained in my note and it said these four people worked on this report. I can explain to you what the people in my office did, and I think somebody has got hold of the record of this thing and it appears apparently in today’s Independent newspaper. It was e-mailed from the CIC to one of my staff in No 10 because I wanted to take the latest draft on the plane to America. The person to whom it was sent sits next to John Pratt. She said, “John, have you got a spare disc that I can copy this on to?” John Pratt gave her a disc. It was copied on to the disc. The disc was then handed to my personal assistant. My personal assistant took it on the plane. I made some changes in manuscript, she typed them in. On bringing it back to No 10, she gave it to the website editor. On those prosaic realities is built the most absurd mountain of conspiracy and nonsense.
This is where I am puzzled, it might come as a surprise to Mr Campbell – but handing someone a disc will not impregnate any files copied onto it with you as an author…... to suggest that is technically possible is well, nonsense.
It’s not rocket science, as Hangingday point out, these technical details are not cryptically hidden – but it would be worth Campbell finding out how they work before spinning stories about them.
