Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live At Daybreak
Euro Edition: Morning Papers
Aired February 05, 2004 - 05:47 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Tony Blair, the search for weapons of mass destruction, let's see if those topics are still topping the headlines in Europe. I bet they are.
Let's head live there now and check in with Tony Campion.
Good morning again -- Tony.
TONY CAMPION, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning again to you, Carol. Yes, you are so right. I'm just going to hold up "The Guardian" for you, "Guardian" broad sheet newspaper, Blair caught in Iraqi arms row. OK, not the most inventive of headline. It could have been -- you know could have said that on the front of the paper any time in the last several months.
But the point today is that yesterday in Parliament, in a debate on the Hutton inquiry, which of course you've heard about in recent times, set up to investigate the circumstances surrounding the suicide, we can now say, of an arms expert over exactly these issues. He said yesterday during a debate on the Hutton inquiry that at the time he took Britain into war, Tony Blair didn't know that Saddam Hussein couldn't launch strategic weapons, basically, you know, outside of the battlefield, banned weapons that could threaten interests of Britain and the United States abroad.
Now you know he is saying that because there has been a lot of criticism about the fact that you know it's only battlefield weapons that came under that 45-minute claim, you know, that was presented in the dossier to justify going to war here in Britain. But you know is it really better that Tony Blair didn't know that the 45-minute warning applied only to battlefield munitions and not to strategic ones? It's not clear that it is.
I mean there are questions that perhaps his Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon will face in Parliament today about why that information hadn't been passed on to the prime minister. You know if the defense secretary knew about the truth of the 45-nic (ph) claim, and there are lots of cabinet ministers who say that they did know. For instance, Robin Cook, who resigned over the whole war issue. The question is why that information wasn't passed to the top. You know the problems just keep coming for Mr. Blair.
I'm just going to hold up the paper again. I don't know if you can make this out on the camera. You see this picture here is a picture of the gates outside Downing Street. They separate Downing Street from Whitehall where people are allowed to walk along Whitehall. And the white that you see on the gates there, that has nothing to do with the pigeons that fly up and down Whitehall, that is whitewash.
People have thrown whitewash at the gates outside the prime minister's house, effectively, because they claim that the Hutton inquiry was a whitewash and that that particular inquiry was rubbish, that it exonerated the government entirely. And people are now turning around and saying that they just do not believe that that was justified.
COSTELLO: Interesting.
CAMPION: So Mr. Blair launches a second inquiry. You know this is going to go on. It really is going on.
COSTELLO: Well I was just going to ask you, the CIA director here, George Tenet, is going to do a big speech about weapons of mass destruction and intelligence. Will members of Parliament in Britain be listening?
CAMPION: Of course, of course, very, very closely. I mean you know it's almost -- you know these things are happening in parallel, aren't there? Mr. Blair launched his inquiry into the reasons for going to war shortly after George Bush -- George W. Bush launched his. And you have to say that there is a connection. Tony Blair had previously said that he wasn't going to launch such an inquiry.
And you know you talk about George Tenet is going to be testifying. We've had comments actually from another weapons inspector just today, Brian Jones, another weapons expert has said the government ignored -- overruled, to get the words exactly right, intelligence analysts to present a misleading prewar dossier on Iraq's banned weapons. You know the evidence keeps mounting.
And obviously, you know what the head of the CIA says about this is going to be a crucial intelligence, a crucial importance. Although it would appear, from what we understand, that his slant is going to be rather more defensive of the official light (ph). Of course we have to wait and see before we find out exactly what George Tenet will say.
COSTELLO: Definitely so.
Tony Campion live from London. We appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired February 5, 2004 - 05:47 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Tony Blair, the search for weapons of mass destruction, let's see if those topics are still topping the headlines in Europe. I bet they are.
Let's head live there now and check in with Tony Campion.
Good morning again -- Tony.
TONY CAMPION, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning again to you, Carol. Yes, you are so right. I'm just going to hold up "The Guardian" for you, "Guardian" broad sheet newspaper, Blair caught in Iraqi arms row. OK, not the most inventive of headline. It could have been -- you know could have said that on the front of the paper any time in the last several months.
But the point today is that yesterday in Parliament, in a debate on the Hutton inquiry, which of course you've heard about in recent times, set up to investigate the circumstances surrounding the suicide, we can now say, of an arms expert over exactly these issues. He said yesterday during a debate on the Hutton inquiry that at the time he took Britain into war, Tony Blair didn't know that Saddam Hussein couldn't launch strategic weapons, basically, you know, outside of the battlefield, banned weapons that could threaten interests of Britain and the United States abroad.
Now you know he is saying that because there has been a lot of criticism about the fact that you know it's only battlefield weapons that came under that 45-minute claim, you know, that was presented in the dossier to justify going to war here in Britain. But you know is it really better that Tony Blair didn't know that the 45-minute warning applied only to battlefield munitions and not to strategic ones? It's not clear that it is.
I mean there are questions that perhaps his Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon will face in Parliament today about why that information hadn't been passed on to the prime minister. You know if the defense secretary knew about the truth of the 45-nic (ph) claim, and there are lots of cabinet ministers who say that they did know. For instance, Robin Cook, who resigned over the whole war issue. The question is why that information wasn't passed to the top. You know the problems just keep coming for Mr. Blair.
I'm just going to hold up the paper again. I don't know if you can make this out on the camera. You see this picture here is a picture of the gates outside Downing Street. They separate Downing Street from Whitehall where people are allowed to walk along Whitehall. And the white that you see on the gates there, that has nothing to do with the pigeons that fly up and down Whitehall, that is whitewash.
People have thrown whitewash at the gates outside the prime minister's house, effectively, because they claim that the Hutton inquiry was a whitewash and that that particular inquiry was rubbish, that it exonerated the government entirely. And people are now turning around and saying that they just do not believe that that was justified.
COSTELLO: Interesting.
CAMPION: So Mr. Blair launches a second inquiry. You know this is going to go on. It really is going on.
COSTELLO: Well I was just going to ask you, the CIA director here, George Tenet, is going to do a big speech about weapons of mass destruction and intelligence. Will members of Parliament in Britain be listening?
CAMPION: Of course, of course, very, very closely. I mean you know it's almost -- you know these things are happening in parallel, aren't there? Mr. Blair launched his inquiry into the reasons for going to war shortly after George Bush -- George W. Bush launched his. And you have to say that there is a connection. Tony Blair had previously said that he wasn't going to launch such an inquiry.
And you know you talk about George Tenet is going to be testifying. We've had comments actually from another weapons inspector just today, Brian Jones, another weapons expert has said the government ignored -- overruled, to get the words exactly right, intelligence analysts to present a misleading prewar dossier on Iraq's banned weapons. You know the evidence keeps mounting.
And obviously, you know what the head of the CIA says about this is going to be a crucial intelligence, a crucial importance. Although it would appear, from what we understand, that his slant is going to be rather more defensive of the official light (ph). Of course we have to wait and see before we find out exactly what George Tenet will say.
COSTELLO: Definitely so.
Tony Campion live from London. We appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
