Blair's communications chief calls it quits

LONDON -- Alastair Campbell, the combative, acid-tongued aide who shaped Prime Minister Tony Blair's image and became a key figure in the crisis over the government's Iraq policy, announced his resignation Friday.

The Downing Street communications chief, who has been at the center of a furious dispute over whether Blair's office manipulated intelligence about Iraqi weapons in the run-up to war, said he was stepping down within the next few weeks for personal reasons.

The decision leaves Blair to face the biggest crisis of his career -- the corrosive dispute about Iraq and the suicide of a government scientist caught up in the storm -- without one of his most trusted advisers. It also is likely to be seen as an admission that somebody in government must accept blame for the dispute.

Blair praised Campbell as "an immensely able, fearless, loyal servant of the cause he believes in who was dedicated not only to that cause but to his country."

But in a nod to critics of Campbell's power, which went far beyond that of a press spokesman, Blair's office said his successor, former Labor Party communications director David Hill, would oversee a restructured communications office.

Campbell, a former political journalist who began working for Blair in 1994, was widely considered the most powerful person in the government after his boss, and often was called "the real deputy prime minister." He became notorious for his relentless -- and, many said, excessive -- determination to manage the government's image.

While most press officials try to manage the media, Campbell was dreaded and derided for his treatment of reporters and top government officials, assailing anyone who dared question him or Blair.

Campbell said in an interview Friday that his decision to quit for family reasons was made long before the Iraq controversy erupted.

"I have been thinking and talking about leaving for some time," he said. "I wanted to go a year ago and the prime minister asked me to stay on because the Iraq issue was developing in a particularly alarming way and we agreed back in April that I would definitely go this summer."

Campbell said his partner Fiona Millar, a media adviser to Blair's wife, Cherie, will resign at the same time to return to journalism.

Controversy over Campbell's role and speculation about his future peaked after a May 29 report by the British Broadcasting Corp. on the government's Iraq policy.

The report alleged that Blair's office inserted a claim into a September dossier -- against the wishes of intelligence officials -- that Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

In a later newspaper column, BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan named Campbell as the official behind inserting that claim.

Campbell called the BBC report a lie, and intelligence chiefs backed up his version of events. He launched a public vendetta against the BBC, insisting it retract the report.

Campbell appeared last week before Lord Hutton's judicial inquiry into the death of government weapons adviser David Kelly, who committed suicide after being identified as the source of the BBC report.

On Friday, that inquiry released new documents showing that Britain's MI5 intelligence service tried to identify the source of the BBC story. Investigators narrowed down the likely suspect as an "expert on current and recent past Iraq weapons systems," the forms indicate. That description closely fit Kelly.

Campbell, a Cambridge University graduate who once contributed stories to an erotic magazine, was political editor of the Daily Mirror before being named spokesman to Blair -- then leader of the opposition -- in 1994.

After Labor came to power in 1997, Campbell forged a formidable Downing Street press machine to sell the government's agenda to the public. Many journalists disliked what they perceived as Campbell's bullying, and accused the government of being obsessed with spin rather than substance.

Campbell once retorted, "The media are obsessed with spin-doctors, and with portraying them as a bad thing, yet seem addicted to our medicine."

In 2000, he stepped back from his role as official spokesman to become Blair's director of communications.

Campbell said Friday he would engage in writing, broadcasting and public speaking. Publishers are keen to see Campbell's diary of his years in Downing Street, brief excerpts of which were read out at the Hutton inquiry.

Reaction to Campbell's resignation was predictable.

Theresa May, chairman of the opposition Conservative Party, said Campbell was "sacrificed" because the Kelly affair made his position untenable.

But former Labor leader Neil Kinnock described Campbell as a "loyal, brave and audacious man" and said "spin was invented by the press, not the government."

Campbell maintained, "I have no power and never have had independent of the elected prime minister that I serve.

"People like me don't have legacies -- prime ministers and ministers have legacies."