The Head of Programme Complaints

BBC Broadcasting House

London W1A 1AA.

12 March 2003

Dear Sir/Madam

On Sunday 9 March at 21:40 BBC 4 broadcast a profile of Saddam Hussein by John Simpson.

Speaking about the UNSCOM weapons inspectors, John Simpson said:

“They spent eight frustrating years combing Iraq, but their efforts were thwarted at every turn by Saddam’s grip over his own people. Eventually the inspectors were thrown out. It had been an unequal struggle. As they left, they suspected that Saddam had kept much of his deadly arsenal intact.”

Richard Butler was the Executive Chairman of UNSCOM in December 1998 when UNSCOM inspectors left Iraq for the last time. In his book Saddam Defiant published in 2000, he describes the sequence of events which led to their leaving:

“I received a telephone call from US Ambassador [to the UN] Peter Burleigh inviting me for a private conversation at the US mission. ... Burleigh informed me that on instructions from Washington it would be 'prudent to take measures to ensure the safety and security of UNSCOM staff presently in Iraq.' … I told him that I would act on his advice and remove my staff from Iraq.”

(p 224)

As Richard Butler makes clear, the inspectors were withdrawn by him at the request of President Clinton. This is in flat contradiction to John Simpson’s statement that “the inspectors were thrown out” by the Iraqi regime. The safety and security of UNSCOM staff in Iraq was about to be threatened by a US/UK bombing campaign that began the next day, 16 December 1998. Even though this campaign was the trigger for the inspectors leaving Iraq, it was not mentioned by John Simpson.

It is beyond belief that a very senior BBC correspondent is ignorant of the fact that UNSCOM inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in December 1998 at the request of President Clinton prior to a US/UK bombing campaign. Unfortunately, that is not the limit of his ignorance: he is also ignorant of the degree to which UNSCOM disarmed Iraq of its proscribed weapons.

Before President Clinton ended this inspection process, UNSCOM had been remarkably successful. The conclusion of the Amorim commission set up by the Security Council in early 1999 to assess the degree to which Iraq had been disarmed as demanded by resolution 687 was as follows:

“The elements presented above indicate that, in spite of well-known difficult circumstances, UNSCOM and IAEA have been effective in uncovering and destroying many elements of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes in accordance with the mandate provided by the Security Council. It is the panel's understanding that IAEA has been able to devise a technically coherent picture of Iraq's nuclear weapons programme. UNSCOM has achieved considerable progress in establishing material balances of Iraq's proscribed weapons. Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated.” (S/1999/356, Paragraph 25)

It is impossible to square that with John Simpson’s assertion that as the inspectors left “they suspected that Saddam had kept much of his deadly arsenal intact”.

If the BBC is to restore its reputation for accurate journalism, it is vital that these errors of fact be corrected as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

David Morrison