Claims: about ministry of defense

3 claims
Narrow claims Pick any combination. Press Enter to apply typed text.
Clear filters
Speaker
Target
Topic
Certainty
Claim text
Date range
14 Mar 2022
The Ministry of Defense ordered the Iraq war dossier to be 'sexed up' and made more exciting.

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.

14 Mar 2022
The Ministry of Defense decided David Kelly's actions were naive but did not warrant disciplinary action.

Ultimately, Hatfield took Kelly's word and decided that his actions in terms of talking to journalists was very naive, but not rising to the level of requiring disciplinary action. So he essentially got off with a warning in regards to these meetings that were about his letter that he sent to the Ministry of Defense about these suspicions.