Susan Watts

Susan Watts is the science editor of the BBC's Newsnight programme, joining the programme in January 1995.

Early Career

She has a Bachelor of Science in physics from Imperial College London, and spent 10 years in print journalism specialising in scientific topics. She worked for "Computer Weekly", "New Scientist" and "The Independent", before moving into television.

Hutton Tribunal

Watts came into the limelight in Summer 2003 during the Hutton Inquiry, a judicial inquiry into the death of Biological Weapons expert Dr David Kelly. Kelly had committed suicide after his exposure as the source for a controversial report by fellow BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan, in which it was claimed that the British government had deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction in order to justify a war.

On June 2nd 2003, Susan Watts broadcast a report in which she quoted a "senior official involved with the process of pulling together the original September2002 Blair weapons dossier" extensively. Her source was Dr Kelly. The thrust of the report was similar to Gilligan's, but the key allegations were described in more measured terms.

Like Gilligan, Watts had spoken to Kelly on an unattributable basis, but unlike Gilligan, she had kept detailed verbatim notes of her conversations, and in one case a tape recording. Watts' notes and recording showed that Kelly had made remarks very similar to those attributed to him by Gilligan; her shorthand notes read:

"A mistake to put it in, Alastair Campbell seeing something in there, single source but not corroborated, sounded good."

However she withheld this evidence for a considerable period, refusing to show it to BBC Management. Later objected to the BBC's interpretation of this evidence (as corroborating Gilligan,though it clearly did). She had felt under "considerable internal pressure" to back her employers, despite her own misgivings and as a result she was represented by independent counsel at the Hutton Inquiry. There she told Lord Hutton that she regarded Kelly's remarks about the involvement of Alastair Campbell in the strengthening of claims in the dossier as no more than a "glib statement" and a "gossipy aside" for which Kelly had no evidence. Gilligan had clearly made more of similar remarks which lead Watts to ask Kelly in an email:

:"Did I miss a trick?"

Iraq War

Susan Watts was the first journalist to report that experts had doubts about the supposed mobile weapons laboratories found in Iraq on her June 2, 2003 broadcast on the influential BBC2 Newsnight. Her report included an anonymous expert's (Dr David Kellycite web |date=August 13, 2003| url = http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/transcripts/hearing-trans06.htm | title = Hutton Inquiry Hearing Transcripts - Susan Watts| format = HTML | publisher = The Hutton Inquiry| accessdate = 2008-01-16 | last= Hutton] ) opinion on the Mobile Weapons labs. Dr Kelly is now only 40% certain the trailers, which had been seen as a 'smoking gun', are mobile weapons labs.

Part of a transcript of her recorded conversation with Kelly was read to him at a hearing of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. This transcript had been emailed to some MPs by Andrew Gilligan. Tom Mangold, a BBC reporter and friend of Kelly's, believed that this exchange at the Foreign Affairs Committee lead to Kelly feeling that he was trapped - and ultimately to his suicide.

References