Charles Reiss
Journalist who broke the ‘45 Minutes from Attack’ dossier story which sparked war against Saddam
CHARLES REISS, who has died aged 82, was one of the most respected Lobby correspondents at Westminster, notably as political editor of the Evening Standard from 1985 to 2004; he broke story after story from inside the governments of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair.
Most seismic was Reiss’s front page story on September 24 2002 which, under the headline “45 Minutes from Attack”, quoted from a Downing Street dossier: “Saddam Hussein’s armoury of chemical weapons is on standby for use within 45 minutes. The Iraqi leader has 20 missiles which could reach British military bases in Cyprus.”
The Standard’s story rocked the Labour government and cast an enduring shadow over Tony Blair’s legacy as prime minister. It triggered an immediate vote for military action and a subsequent storm over the “dodgy dossier” after no weapons of mass destruction were found.
It also contributed to the departure of Alastair Campbell as Downing Street head of communications and, arguably, the death of the government scientist Dr David Kelly, whose alleged suicide was the subject of a difficult inquiry for the government under Lord Hutton.
Reiss was at the centre of many great events. His office windows were rattled by the bomb that killed Airey Neave outside the Commons car park in 1979 (Reiss’s wife, also a journalist, had been due to drive out soon after); he was in the hotel next door when the IRA bombed the Grand in Brighton during the 1984 Conservative conference; and was with Blair in New York in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that destroyed the Twin Towers.
With Max Hastings, Paul Dacre and Veronica Wadley as his editors, Reiss made the then paid-for Standard’s political coverage a pace-setter for the news agenda for radio, TV and the next day’s papers. An 8am first edition required him to rise at 5am, reading the morning papers in a taxi to Westminster.
Blessed with geniality, firmness, unflappability and a quick mind, he was able to extract from dense official documents the nuggets buried in the text. He had a keen eye for fresh angles or unguarded comments to rekindle stories the politicians concerned hoped had run out of steam. He rarely finished a meal in the Press Gallery canteen without being interrupted by a tannoy: “Paging Charles Reiss”.
Reiss accompanied prime ministers to meetings with world leaders and EU and G7 summits, making an impression on waiters on every continent with his gastronomic preferences.
A lifelong Labour supporter, Reiss was totally non-partisan in his reporting. Asked what drove Lobby journalists, he replied: “Fear. The greatest political editors I have known were driven by anxiety and fear.”
Like so many of his craft, Reiss was not interested in publicity for himself. When, days after the launch of the National Lottery in 1994, his gardener won £50,000 on a scratchcard, he implored Lobby colleagues not to tip off their papers’ gossip columns.
Charles Alexander Reiss was born on March 23 1942, the son of Dr Joseph Reiss and his wife Jenny. After Bryanston School, he joined the Hampstead & Highgate Express, but soon took a break to make two remarkable journeys on foot. As the Vietnam War got under way, he travelled the Ho Chi Minh Trail between North and
South Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia in a group of peace protesters. Then he set out alone from Cairo to follow the Nile to its source in Uganda.
Rejoining the Ham & High in 1964, he left after two years for the London office of the Glasgow Citizen and Scottish Daily Express. In 1968 he moved to Transport House as a Labour Party press officer, at the heart of the 1970 election campaign that resulted in shock defeat for Harold Wilson’s government.
The next year, he reached Westminster, as Lobby correspondent initially for the East Anglian Daily Times, then from 1973 the Birmingham Post. In 1975 he moved to the broadsheet London Evening News as political correspondent and leader writer.
When the Evening News folded in 1980, Reiss joining the Standard as chief leader writer, working alongside its political editor Robert Carvel. When Carvel died in 1985, Reiss took over.
He chaired the Parliamentary Lobby Journalists in 1995-96, and in 2003 was a member of the Government Communications Review Group.
In retirement, Reiss lived initially at Honey Street in Wiltshire. He became a trustee of the Kennett and Avon Canal Trust, also editing its magazine. Not a boat owner, he said: “I just like to see them go by.” He was also clerk to the parish council, and wrote the villagers’ Christmas panto.
He married, in 1978, Sue Newson-smith, who survives him with their three daughters.