The Hutton Report
Lord Hutton criticised the BBC but he cleared the UK government of embellishing its Iraq weapons dossier. The claim in BBC reports that the government "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq's weapons was "unfounded", he said. Lord Hutton's report was released on 28th January 2004.
Lord Hutton highlighted "defective" BBC editorial processes over defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan's broadcasts of the claims on the Today programme. He added that the BBC governors should have properly investigated Downing Street's complaints as they defended the corporation's independence.
Lord Hutton also said he was satisfied Dr Kelly had killed himself after being named as the suspected source of the BBC's controversial weapons dossier story.
ITN reported that BBC chairman, Gavyn Davies, had resigned at 1.24pm. The report was not confirmed on the BBC until 4.33pm. Greg Dyke, the director-general resigned the following day and stepped out into a shambolic media scrum outside the Broadcasting House front door.
On 29th May 2003, Andrew Gilligan, a BBC defence reporter alleged on the BBC Today programme that Downing Street ordered the transformation of a dossier on Iraqi weapons in the week before it was published. He said that the document was "sexed up" with the claim that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were ready for use within 45 minutes. The dossier had been published in September 2002.
On 1st June Gilligan supplemented his BBC salary by writing about the same subject for the Mail on Sunday. But this time Gilligan made the additional claim that Alastair Campbell, the prime minister's communications chief was the person responsible for the dossier's transformation.
On 19th June Gilligan appeared before the foreign affairs select committee, a group of backbench MPs from the House of Commons. Gilligan repeated his hearsay assertion about Campbell but refused to name his source.
On 25th June Alastair Campbell appeared before the same committee, denied the Gilligan claims, accused Gilligan of lying and demanded an apology.
The Ministry of Defence or others then leaked the name of Dr David Kelly, a former UN weapons inspector as the possible source of the Gilligan claims. Dr Kelly had met Gilligan in an unauthorised meeting. The foreign affairs select committee then demanded that Dr Kelly appear before them on 15th July.
Some of the committee thought that Dr Kelly was not the source for Gilligan's reports. Dr Kelly himself said he thought he was not the main source for Gilligan's claims. Several of the committee members treated Dr Kelly with contempt when questioning him, and none asked sufficiently analytical questions to determine whether Dr Kelly could have been Gilligan's source.
Andrew Mackinlay let his emotions rip and spat at Dr Kelly: "I reckon you are chaff. You have been thrown up to divert our probing. Have you ever felt like a fall-guy? You have been set up, have you not?" He also pompously demanded that Dr Kelly give answers to the "high court of Parliament".
Sir John Stanley sneered as he said: "We have to assume therefore that your ministers then are responsible for treating you uniquely as a civil servant in highly publicising you before going to the committee?"
Newspapers on 16th July were full of reports lampooning Dr Kelly's performance before the select committee. The Guardian pointed out his resemblance to the mass murderer, Harold Shipman. The Daily Mail labelled him a "quivering boffin". Others called him "evasive".
Gilligan and the BBC refused to say whether Dr Kelly was the source for Gilligan's reports. The BBC also refused to apologise to Alastair Campbell, despite having no other source than Gilligan's hearsay claims. The foreign affairs select committee cleared Campbell in its report of "sexing up" the dossier, but only on the casting vote of the chairman.
On 17th July Gilligan appeared before the committee again. He was later described by the committee as an unsatisfactory witness.
On the same day Dr Kelly told his wife he was going for a walk. He did not return. Police found his body lying by woods two miles away the following morning. He had taken his own life. One of Dr Kelly's closest friends said later: "Mackinlay, that arsehole in the committee who shouted at him, took David's confidence clean away. David was actually a hero. A quiet hero. He was despised by Saddam Hussein."
During Dr Kelly's testimony to the select committee he stated that he did not believe he was the main source for Gilligan's claims. A judicial review into the suicide of Dr Kelly is likely to probe further into the bases for the Gilligan assertions. The BBC is pinning its reputation on the hope that Gilligan may have had another source.
In Gilligan's first report on 29th May, he told listeners to Radio 4's Today programme that he had been speaking to "a British official" who was "involved in the preparation" of the dossier on Iraq's weaponry, published by the government in September last year. The official alleged that the draft prepared by British intelligence had been altered "to make it sexier".
In Gilligan's Mail on Sunday article he repeated the allegations made in his BBC radio report, giving more details of the secret meeting at a central London hotel with his source.
"We started off by moaning about the railways. Only after about half an hour did the story emerge that would dominate the headlines for 48 hours, ruin Tony Blair's Basra awayday and work the prime minister into a state of controlled fury," he wrote.
Many people would infer from this that Gilligan had only one source, Dr Kelly, and that Gilligan therefore embellished his report, adding the claims about Alastair Campbell which have had no further corroboration. It is not known whether Gilligan has disclosed any other source he may have had to BBC line management for them to check the veracity of his claims.
Gilligan was questioned on 17th July in private by the foreign affairs select committee and they said he appeared to backtrack on his claims. Committee sources claim that he altered his evidence and suggested the key allegation that he made about Campbell “sexing up” the dossier was based on "inference" not "evidence".
According to one member, halfway through the session he said: "I never made the allegation that Alastair Campbell sexed up the dossier nor that Campbell had inserted the 45-minute claims." The member added that Gilligan said it was an inference that could be made.
Donald Anderson, the committee chairman, said: "Mr Gilligan appeared to change his mind on the very grave allegation in quite a fundamental way."
On 20th July the BBC finally admitted that Dr Kelly was the principal source for the Gilligan story. The BBC has still not admitted that the Gilligan allegations included untrue allegations about Alastair Campbell or the British government.
Tony Blair decided there would be a formal enquiry into Dr Kelly's death. In August 2003 Lord Hutton started the enquiry setting a pace that seemed likely to last about three months.
However, it seemed likely that the story to emerge was as follows: neither Downing Street nor Alastair Campbell ordered the sexing up of the Iraqi dossier. Dr Kelly may have suggested that to Gilligan but the story may have then been further embroidered by Gilligan.
BBC journalistic standards were so poor that the story was not checked or even tested to see if it was plausible. In any event BBC news executives who knew the identity of the source wold have also known that Dr Kelly was too junior to fit Gilligan's description of him. Dr Kelly was in no position to know whether the dossier was sexed up or not. He was considered sufficiently lowly in the Ministry of Defence to have neither an office or a desk.
Gavyn Davies, the BBC chairman, admitted the BBC misrepresented David Kelly's status in its attempt to head off a government row when it stated that Gilligan's story had come from an "intelligence source".
Dr Kelly lied to mislead Ministry of Defence officials and others about what he had said to Gilligan. As he realised the truth was likely to come out he became upset. This was made worse by a row with his wife and the knowledge that Gilligan had been recalled for a further grilling by the foreign affairs select committee.
The BBC news department, the BBC management and the BBC board of governors will not have expected that their unrepetant mendacity would not have been exposed so publicly and so swiftly. It is one thing for individual BBC staff members to have been against the military action to remove Saddam Hussein. It was quite another for their coverage on the war to have been so unbalanced and even worse to have let the Gilligan report be broadcast. The BBC's independence will have been be threatened by its blatant misuse. It can expect to be regulated by Ofcom alongside other UK broadcasters.
Tony Blair's government will have been damaged by the affair. However, its fate will probably be more damaged by the public's perception on public services and the state of the economy which have received little attention for too long.
In December 2003, The Sunday Telegraph reported that an Iraqi colonel who commanded a front-line unit during the build-up to the war in Iraq had revealed how he passed top secret information to British intelligence warning that Saddam Hussein had deployed weapons of mass destruction that could be used on the battlefield against coalition troops in less than 45 minutes.
Lt-Col al-Dabbagh who was the head of an Iraqi air defence unit in the western desert, said that cases containing WMD warheads were delivered to front-line units, including his own, towards the end of 2002.
He said they were to be used by Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitaries and units of the Special Republican Guard when the war with coalition troops reached "a critical stage". The containers, which came from a number of factories on the outskirts of Baghdad, were delivered to the army by the Fedayeen and were distributed to the front-line units under cover of darkness.