Monthly Archives: January 2004

-The 45 minute claim was not absent from the first draft of the Iraq dossier because it was considered unreliable, but because it was intelligence gathered too late to be included.

-It was from what was believed to be a trustworthy source and it was not true that there always had to be a second source for intelligence to be deemed trustworthy. Many of the assumptions that Gilligan made were likewise ignorant.

-The dossier had not been ‘sexed up’, and absolutely not in the way that Gilligan implied.

-Gilligan reported Kelly as saying things that he never actually said:

‘I am satisfied that Dr Kelly did not say to Mr Gilligan that the Government probably knew or suspected that the 45 minutes claim was wrong before that claim was inserted in the dossier. I am further satisfied that Dr Kelly did not say to Mr Gilligan that the reason why the 45 minutes claim was not included in the original draft of the dossier was because it only came from one source and the intelligence agencies did not really believe it was necessarily true.’– Lord Hutton, Chapter 12, 2.i, The Hutton Report.

In other words, Gilligan lied in referring to his source, his only source, and (we learned from Hutton if we didn’t already know) no-one at the BBC cared, or cared much. Why? I would submit because of BBC bias.

I am in agreement with Jeff Jarvis’s position on this:

‘I used to respect and even love the BBC and I didn’t join in with many others going after them at every turn. But the more I saw of Gilligan, as a symptom of the disease, and the more I saw the BBC leadership allow Gilliganitis and its lies and irresponsibility and journalism-by-agenda to spread through its organization unchecked, and the more I heard the head of the BBC attack American journalism, the more I believed that the vaunted BBC was blindly destroying its own credibility and even that of journalism.’. Go and read it all.

That article in the Sun is here.

The Telegraph reports here.

The Guardian is here.

The Times is here.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports the story in a slightly different way (‘Last Updated: Wednesday, 28 January, 2004, 08:44 GMT’, whole story pasted here to watch for stealth edits – emphasis added):

‘The Sun says the report came from someone ‘with no vested interest’

Lord Hutton is to deliver his long-awaited verdict on the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly in a few hours.

His findings were due as a row grew over what appeared to be leaked details of the report in the Sun newspaper.

It claims Tony Blair is cleared of any “dishonourable conduct”, but the BBC is accused of a series of failings.

The Tories have blamed the government for the leak but Downing Street has strongly denied it was responsible, as has the BBC.

Tory party leader Michael Howard called for the Metropolitan Police commissioner to conduct a full inquiry into the “disgraceful” leak.

Advance copies

Lord Hutton will set out his key findings in a televised statement at 1230 GMT, an hour before his full report is published.

MPs will then be able to tackle the prime minister about the report during a Commons statement at 1400 GMT.

INQUIRY BACKGROUND

September 2002: Government produces dossier about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, including claim they could be deployed within 45 minutes

May 2003: BBC Today programme’s Andrew Gilligan broadcasts report of claims Downing Street “sexed up” dossier, with 45 mins claim included against intelligence agencies’ wishes

10 July 2003:Dr David Kelly named as suspected source of report as government continues to deny the story

17 July 2003: Dr Kelly found dead

August 2003: Lord Hutton begins six weeks of hearings about the circumstances around Dr Kelly’s death

Q&A: Hutton Inquiry

Advance copies were given at lunchtime on Tuesday to the government, the BBC and the family of Dr Kelly, after they undertook not to reveal its contents.

The weapons expert apparently killed himself last July after being named as the source for BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan’s story that the government exaggerated its 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons.

According to unconfirmed reports in the Sun, Lord Hutton cites a psychiatrist’s evidence that the scientist committed suicide because he had been “publicly disgraced”.

The newspaper claims that Lord Hutton says the BBC report that Downing Street “sexed up” the dossier was “unfounded”.

BBC media correspondent Nick Higham said the Sun had throughout the inquiry put the worst construction on evidence about the BBC and the best gloss on the government’s actions.

“It may be that what we are getting is a version of Lord Hutton’s views filtered through the Sun’s eyes,” he told the BBC 10 o’clock News.

BBC COVERAGE

ONLINE:

Webcast of Lord Hutton statement and Commons debates, with full text commentary

News and analysis as it happens

Round-the-clock weblog from BBC’s team of correspondents

TELEVISION:

Hutton Report special on BBC One from noon

Round-the-clock coverage on News 24

RADIO:

Full coverage on BBC Radio Five Live

Full coverage and analysis on Radio Four in extended World at One. Live coverage from the Commons at 1400 GMT on long wave, with a special programme on FM at 1500 GMT

The Sun says the judge is also said to criticise BBC governors for failing to make a detailed investigation into whether Gilligan’s story for Radio 4’s Today Programme was supported by his notes.

The paper says the report finds there was no “dishonourable, underhand or duplicitous strategy” by Tony Blair or the government to leak Dr Kelly’s name as the BBC’s suspected source.

It claims Lord Hutton says the Ministry of Defence was “to be criticised” for not telling Dr Kelly his name could be confirmed to journalists or that it had eventually emerged.

He notes, however, that the scientist was not an “easy man to help or advise”. [Note no reported reported speech when Kelly is implicitly criticised]

The Sun says Alastair Campbell, Downing Street’s former communications chief, is “cleared completely” of any wrongdoing.

‘Filtered’ version

It is understood the newspaper has not seen the full report, but has had parts of the findings read to it.

The report comes after Blair defeated rebels on tuition fees

Downing Street on Tuesday evening categorically denied “that anyone who was authorised by the government to see this document has either shown it to, or spoken about it to, anyone else”.

But Tory co-chairman Dr Liam Fox said the government’s fingerprints were “all over” the leaking of findings from an inquiry which was itself set up to investigate the “unauthorised disclosure of information”.

Top-up fees

The report is the climax of evidence from 74 witnesses over the six weeks of the Hutton inquiry, which involved thousands of pages of documents.

Lord Hutton was asked to inquire into the circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly’s death, and has spent more than four months writing up his conclusions.

Tory leader Michael Howard and Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy are currently reading the report, having been given advance sight of it from 0600 GMT on Wednesday.

The report comes after the government scraped a five-vote victory in the House of Commons test of its controversial plans for university top-up fees.

Now there are calls for an inquiry into the leak itself. Welcome to modern Britain, the land of government by inquiry….let the circus continue!

. I was interested when I noticed (thanks to a commenter) that the BBC and Human Rights Watch are reunited once again, because the BBC, HRW and we at BBBC go back a bit. Anyway, in their latest well-timed offering (HUTTON’s nearly upon us) they ask ‘why George Bush and Tony Blair did not try remove Saddam Hussein much earlier’, part of a finger wagging theme that the war must not be retrospectively justified on humanitarian grounds. This struck me as a bit disingenuous really, not to say stupid (unless they got confused and meant Bush senior?), because although W. scarcely had time before Sept 11th 2001 struck, Clinton along with the CIA wanted to in the 90’s, and he aspired to intervene militarily to remove Saddam.

Basically this kind of non-story is given high profile because HRW and the BBC habitually get into bed together, and of course the sceptical slant against the war is now essential to the BBC’s coverage of anything. Oh, and did I mention HUTTON? It does, however, show HRW ready and willing to pour cold water on the emergence of the very values they espouse. I quote:

‘the scope of the Iraq Government’s killing in March 2003, was not of the exceptional and dire magnitude that would justify humanitarian intervention.’

Update. Jeff Jarvis has more: ‘This is a tainted, political move by Human Rights Watch… the organisation would rather fight Bush than defend the human rights of the Iraqi people’. Kinda like the BBC, really.

The BBC, with a chutzpah I can only admire has bought up all the Hutton Google links. None of that old-fashioned nonsense about an interested party to the enquiry maintaining a decent restraint from the BBC.

UPDATE: Scott Burgess is in correspondence with the BBC about this. Also note Angie Schultz’s comment.

Well not exactly – but not Hutton anyway. Jim Miller on State of the Union.

, you’ll understand.

( Link stolen from the ever-alert Tim Blair ).

that the BBC saw fit to go direct to the public with their account of the David Kelly affair and the Hutton enquiry in a 90 minute docu-drama on BBC1 last week. Hutton watchers and commentators, perhaps initially taken aback by the audacity, are coming up to speed on the issue. Anthony Cox at Black Triangle has been focusing on some interesting points, and put me onto an excellent article by Dennis Boyles in NRO that goes some way to exploring the political manoeuvring that surrounds the Hutton Enquiry. In spite of the simple moral that Boyles extracts from this very British mess for any impatient US readers, it’s complicated, if fascinating- and totally worthwhile.

Almost as good though much shorter is this piece by the mercurial Gerald Kaufman in the Times, flagged up by Anthony as a critique of that docu-drama- a programme that I for one hope will become infamous as a blatant attempt to flex media muscle in the face of democratic and judicial legitimacy. Incidentally, flexing media muscle seems to me to have been the driving force behind the BBC’s news coverage for a long time now, and the coverage of the war in Iraq, as well as the Kelly affair, might well become the case study of that phenomenon for future historians. If they can get away with events like Wednesday night, I certainly wouldn’t say that the BBC is losing in its arm wrestles with Government. There’s one cheeky parallel here I’d like to finish by making, between dictators and the BBC: democratic politicians come and go, but the BBC and dictators go on forever. Now I can’t think why I should have been drawn to think along those lines.

Those who don’t happen to think it’s a good idea for 16-year-old unmarried girls to have babies and contract STDs may have to put up with a bit of mockery and sexual innuendo from BBC reporter Richard Alwyn. He tries to claim that the abstinence movement is treading dangerously close to unconstitutionality with funding from the Federal Government under the Bush Administration.

The tightrope that these groups must walk, however, is at the heart of the American constitution, which demands the separation of church and state. The Silver Ring Thing cannot spend Bush’s bucks on God.

But is this ultimately possible? The Silver Ring Thing’s ringmaster, Denny Pattyn, is an ordained minister. Abstinence, he says, is the brainchild of God. He has been preaching it for many years, only now he has a secular medical case to add to his Christian arsenal.

Apparently, Mr Alwyn, the US Constitutional Scholar, sees something sinister here. After all, ministers should be seen but not heard unless, of course, they utter some PC mantra. Then, and only then, will the BBC withold judgement. [Note to Mr Alwyn: In point of fact, the tax revenues spent by the US Government are subject to review regularly when voters let their Congressmen, Senators and President know what they think of their revenue spending every two, six and four years, respectively, when they go to the polls.]

Onstage, 16-year-old Nikki insists that being single is cool. She exalts (sic) her young audience not to cheat, as she would have it, on their future wives or husbands.

[Note to any awake BBC copy editor– I think “exalts” should read “exhorts”. Yes, it is confusing, covering these strange gatherings. Don’t get too flustered, ok?]

Mr Alwyn, it would seem, views the Christian minister heading up the abstinence organisation behind this event as a bit of a nutter. The man actually seems to believe the Bible to be true and encourages the young people in his charge to take its teachings seriously! Whoa!

….Denny [the minister] confides that he believes that the end of the world is nigh and that Christ will return within a generation. And so where does abstinence fit into that vision? Well, abstinence, he says, is a tool to reach young people for God, safeguarding them for the Second Coming.

Amazing–a minister who believes in Christ! What will they come up with next?

A Daily Telegraph reader writes:

Re: Humble pie hard to swallow

Date: 24 January 2004
Sir – The BBC deserved to see its audience share fall away during the Panorama special, which amounted to a no-holds-barred internal examination of the role of the corporation (and others) in the matter that is the subject of the Hutton inquiry.

It was both disingenuous and discourteous to broadcast this piece, no matter how much humble pie and some would say well-timed self-criticism it included, only a week before Lord Hutton is due to report.

If a multi-million-pound independent inquiry has taken place, surely the BBC needs to be neither defiant nor apologetic in advance of Lord Hutton’s findings and must have strayed perilously close to impinging on his unfettered jurisdiction.

Had the Government proposed a prime ministerial broadcast of even a few minutes in the same vein in advance of the Hutton report, there would have been widespread outrage, and rightly so.

The BBC has further undermined its reputation by once again perceiving itself in some way to be above or outside the conventions that attach to the inquiry.

Ultimately, the corporation will have only itself to blame should it find its supposed impartiality further questioned – as well as the issue of whether it should continue to have unique financial and editorial status in its present form – after this ill-timed, ill-advised and heavy-handed pre-emptive strike.

From:

Simon Coulter, Fuengirola, Spain

, writing illuminatingly at Tech CentralStation, high-mindedness, prejudice and inaccuracy go hand in hand at the BBC.