Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Alastair Campbell, the communications director for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is at the center of a major controversy sparked by BBC reports that he and other British government officials "sexed up" their Iraq weapons dossier to justify the government's war plans. Campbell fought back by accusing the BBC of lying and demanding an apology. Blair himself called the allegations "as serious an attack on my integrity as there could possibly be." The BBC, however, stands by its story. Two British parliamentary select committees have been conducting hearings into the affair, with a report from the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee due out July 7.