Gilligan explains computer note discrepancies

Reporter Andrew Gilligan was back in the hot seat today to explain a series of discrepancies in his computer notes as the full glare of the Hutton Inquiry turned on him for a third time.

The Today programme defence correspondent was called back to the British High Court to explain his hi-tech shorthand account of his crucial interview with tragic scientist Dr David Kelly.

The at times differing notes on his Sharp personal organiser centred on his conversation with Dr Kelly in London’s Charing Cross Hotel on May 22 this year.

The chat would lead to Mr Gilligan’s Today broadcast on May 29 in which he alleged the Government had “sexed up” its Iraq dossier and sparked a furious row between it and the BBC.

The journalist was preceded in to the witness box by two computer experts who had been asked to examine the electronic notes.

Computer expert William Wilding took the stand and said the two crucial files appeared to be dated May 21, 2003.

Mr Wilding had been instructed by Mr Gilligan’s lawyers to examine the organiser and the two files in question were saved in it as “Kelly.text” and “Kellycont.text”.

“Ostensibly that could look quite suspicious,” Mr Wilding said, “but when I examined the computer’s personal organiser currently used by Andrew Gilligan, I saw a considerable slippage of a day. It was out of kilter by a day.”

It appeared Mr Gilligan’s organiser clock could have been at least 16 hours slow, putting a meeting before 4pm on the 22nd as before midnight on the 21st.

Mr Wilding went on to explain there were three other anomalies:

:: There was no “obvious chronology” in the storage of memos with those dated May 21 and 22 sandwiched between June 26 and June 30.

But he said the Sharp organiser is known for having no logical sequencing in its memory.

:: There were many versions of “Kelly.text” and “Kelly cont.text”.

Mr Wilding said files could have be created by someone coming out of the original and accidentally saving it again.

Mr Wilding said the fifth anomaly “worried me quite a lot”.

It appeared that one version of “Kelly.text” was different to the one submitted to the inquiry during the first phase.

In particular, Alastair Campbell’s name only appeared in a later version and not the earlier one.

The two versions were presented to the inquiry as JP11 and JP15.

JP11 contained notes such as “45 min was single-source” “the dossier was transformed in the wek (week) before it was published, to make it sexier”.

JP15, the version that was submitted to the inquiry, had lost the word “dossier” and contained “Campbell” and a number of other slight differences in the wording.

Mr Wilding said he could not explain why Mr Campbell’s name suddenly appeared but Mr Gilligan said he could.

It was a new file created at the end of the meeting.

He said: “The second, JP15, is the file I created at the end of the meeting when I was checking the quotes with Dr Kelly.

“I agreed several of the key quotes which I would use with him.

“This is me running the quotes past him and checking those quotes.”

He said JP11 was the first save of those notes and JP15 was the final save.

He added: “I cannot remember how far into the conversation Campbell came up, this (addition) suggests that Campbell came up towards the end, but I cannot be absolutely sure about that.

“The words that appeared there were spoken by Dr Kelly.”