This story begins with David Kelly, a well-respected expert in biological weapons, speaking to a couple of journalists under the assumption of anonymity. These were Andrew Gilligan of the BBC and Susan Watts, who reported for Newsnight. One of the striking details that was included in both of their reports was that Downing Street had intentionally misled the public by injecting... Right. This was a salacious detail, a very headline-grabbing detail. That was in both Watts and Gilligan's reporting from an unnamed source. It was something that previously to this, even Tony Blair had announced in the rationale for going to war.

So Gilligan's reporting specifically alleged that this claim was put in as an attempt by the government to mislead. In his initial appearance reporting on this on the May 29, 2003 episode of Today, Gilligan said, quote, what this person says is that a week before the publication date of the dossier, it was actually... The draft prepared for Mr. Blair by the intelligence agencies didn't actually say very much more than was public knowledge already. Downing Street, our source says, ordered a week before publication, ordered it to be sexed up, to be made more exciting, and ordered more facts to be discovered. Gilligan stressed that this detail, the 45-minute point, was very central to Tony Blair's appeal to go to war since it stressed the immediacy of the potential threat.