Wednesday, January 28, 2004

The Hutton report severely chastized the BBC and exonerated Tony Blair. In The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor aren't satisfied:

...Lord Hutton leaves himself open to accusations of having cherrypicked the evidence that supports the government case and sidelined that which supports the BBC. Awkward bits of evidence that do not fit his final conclusion are left lying around unanswered.

He ignores the issue of the reliability of the intelligence in the government's dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction published on September 24, 2002.

Instead, he focuses on the specific issue of the claim by the BBC Today reporter Andrew Gilligan in May last year that the government had tampered with intelligence to strengthen the case for war.

The evidence of the BBC science correspondent Susan Watts, whose taped conversation with Dr Kelly corroborates much of Gilligan's report, is ignored....

Evidence emerged during the inquiry from John Scarlett, the head of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), who drew up the dossier, that the 45 minutes related not to long-range weapons as had been widely assumed at the time but to battlefield weapons.

This is significant, because it supports the BBC case that the threat from Saddam was not as grave as the government dossier suggested.

But Lord Hutton said in his report that the distinction between battlefield weapons and long-range ones deployable within 45 minutes "does not fall within my terms of reference"....

...Nor does he address the extracts from the diary of Alastair Campbell, the then Downing Street director of communications, hinting at a personal vendetta against Gilligan taken to the final conclusion.

At one point in his diary Mr Campbell said it would "fuck Gilligan" if Dr Kelly turned out to be the source of his story....

Also in his diary, Mr Campbell refers to a conversation with the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, in which he spoke about "a plea bargain", suggesting that the defence secretary would offer a deal to Dr Kelly.

Lord Hutton again brushes this aside, saying: "One of those areas of uncertainty is whether in his discussion with Mr Campbell, Mr Hoon used the term 'plea bargain' in relation to Dr Kelly and, if he did, what did he mean by that term."

It was revealed last night that the family of Dr Kelly expressly referred to Mr Campbell's diary entries in its final submission to the inquiry. The family argued that the government wanted Dr Kelly's name to come out as a way of assisting its battle with the BBC.

The family said: "Alastair Campbell's diary reveals that it was his desire and the desire of others, including the secretary of state for defence, that the fact and identity of the source should be made public." ...

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