LONDON, 14 August 2003 — The BBC was in the dock yesterday after surprise testimony revealed rifts within Britain’s public broadcaster over an Iraq weapons expert whose suicide has sparked a crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair. The unexpected and outspoken testimony from a BBC reporter will put pressure on the world-respected news organization and could strengthens Blair’s hand amid questions over whether the government made an honest case for war in Iraq.

Reporter Susan Watts told an inquiry into David Kelly’s death that the scientist did not tell her in a telephone conversation that Blair’s closest adviser Alastair Campbell transformed a dossier on Iraq’s banned weapons to help make the case for a war most Britons opposed.

She also accused BBC bosses of pressuring her to make her report tally with that of her colleague, defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan, in damaging remarks for the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Kelly slashed his wrist last month after being named as the source for Gilligan’s report that a government dossier on Iraq’s lethal weapons was “sexed up” by Campbell, Blair’s communications chief — playing up a dubious claim that Baghdad could unleash banned weapons at 45 minutes’ notice.

The apparent clash of BBC journalists’ stories could take some heat off Blair whose public trust ratings have plunged, as nearly five months after US and British forces invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, no weapons of mass destruction have been found. A poll this week showed 41 percent of the public blamed the government for Iraq expert Kelly’s death and 68 percent think the government was dishonest over the Iraq war.

“(Kelly) didn’t say the dossier was transformed in the last week and he certainly didn’t say that the 45-minute claim was inserted either by Alastair Campbell or by anyone else in government,” Watts told senior judge Lord Hutton’s inquiry.

Gilligan, whose May 29 report undermined Blair’s government, told the inquiry on Tuesday that in a separate conversation Kelly did point the finger at Campbell for pushing the key 45-minute claim.

Watts insisted there were “significant differences” between Gilligan’s reports and hers and said she had brought her own lawyer to the inquiry because of pressure imposed by BBC bosses to make her report corroborate Gilligan’s.

She said she felt that was “misguided and false.”

Questions over BBC practice follow a scandal at the New York Times when reporter Jayson Blair was found to have fabricated stories, forcing the resignation of editor Howell Raines.

Eerily, the inquiry heard the dead man’s voice via a taped recording of his conversations with Watts.

On the tape, Kelly said President George W. Bush and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw fudged the crucial difference about Iraq’s weapons programs and the existence of actual missiles.

“That was spin,” he said.

BBC Head of News Richard Sambrook, who will follow Watts to give testimony, can expect a fierce grilling even though extracts of her tape appeared to partially back up Gilligan.

The BBC has staunchly defended Gilligan’s report — despite demands for a retraction from Blair — but evidence has already revealed disquiet among senior managers.

Gilligan’s editor, Kevin Marsh, wrote an internal memo saying the report was “a good piece of investigative journalism, marred by flawed reporting”, the inquiry heard.

“Our biggest millstone has been his loose use of language and lack of judgment in some of his phraseology,” he said.