Emails Show Gilligan's Frustration at No. 10

[kainah]

Private email exchanges between Andrew Gilligan and Foreign Office officials released to the Hutton inquiry show the BBC reporter believed the allegation that he was trying to undermine the government was "typical of Downing Street's crude approach".
In a detailed email to John Williams, the Foreign Office press secretary, Gilligan sets out his position on the war in Iraq and the disputed 45-minute claim and claims that " Campbell and his legions of Downing Street minions always end up going for the crude headline thrust".

The email, sent in the week after his report on Radio 4's Today programme sparked the row between Number 10 and the BBC, reaffirms Gilligan's "reluctant" support for the war in Iraq

Sent in the early hours of June 6, the day Alastair Campbell was to reignite the simmering row by using his daily press briefing to highlight what he believed to be a series of inaccuracies in Gilligan's original report, the reporter attempts to justify his position.

"The fact remains that substantial portions of the community, on both sides of the Atlantic, are unhappy about the way their work was used. I may have put the story on the front pages - but I didn't keep it there," he argues.

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http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1019861,00.html