CAIRO, 3 February 2004 — Lord Hutton’s arbitration of the row between the British government and the BBC was supposed to be the last word on the events and motives leading up to the death of weapons expert Dr. David Kelly. The reaction of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Parliament on the day the Hutton report was released was one of glee bordering on gloat.
Grinning from ear to ear, Blair taunted his Conservative counterpart to apologize for slurs earlier made on his veracity and threw a warning jibe at the BBC, whose license is due for renewal. Coming hard on the heels of Blair’s parliamentary coup over university top-up fees, Hutton’s total exoneration was the icing on the cake. While the pundits were predicting his political death knell, Blair, the Houdini of British politics, had done it again... or so it seemed.
The Law Lord had spoken with the result the prime minister and former Downing Street spin doctor Alastair Campbell were awarded halos, the Department of Defense was mildly reproached while the BBC governors, management and errant reporter Andrew Gilligan were hauled over the coals. Dr. David Kelly didn’t escape censure either for talking with the press in the first place and later being economical with the truth under questioning.
Blair’s celebratory mood was not to last long. On the following morning front-page headlines on most British newspapers screamed “Whitewash”. Several polls showed that the British public wasn’t having any of it with over three-quarters putting more faith in the BBC than the government. Taking the view that the referee’s decision is always final, BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies was the first to fall on his sword and resign. Greg Dyke, the broadcaster’s larger than life and highly popular director general followed suit asking that a line now be drawn under the matter. Blair hastily came forward to agree that bygones should be bygones and vowed to uphold the independence of the corporation.
If the government and the BBC governors — accused of behaving like rabbits startled by headlights when they accepted the resignations of Davies and Dyke — thought it was business as usual, they were sadly mistaken. Dyke’s exit from his job was hardly that of a man cowed and beaten. On the contrary, adoring BBC employees queued up to pat him on the back while thousands more took to the streets in a token walkout. Others, including well-known names, clubbed together to pay for a full-page newspaper advertisement bemoaning the departure of Dyke and insisting on the corporation’s future editorial independence. BBC employees were angered by the groveling apology made to the British government on their behalf by acting BBC Chairman Lord Ryder — a man they consider an establishment diehard out to defang the corporation’s capacity for investigative journalism. Some questioned what a professional, internationally respected organization like the BBC was apologizing for.
When first asked about the Hutton report, Dyke declined to comment but has since succeeded on turning the tables on Downing Street. During an interview on the BBC last Sunday, he said: “We were shocked that it was so black and white. We knew mistakes had been made by us but we didn’t believe they were only by us.” He also accused the Blair camp and especially Alastair Campbell of “systematic bullying” and “intimidation” of the BBC over its Iraq war coverage. Campbell had attempted unsuccessfully to turn the BBC into a government propaganda arm.
A leaked document revealed that other BBC executives believed the report was biased and ignored much of the broadcaster’s evidence, while another leaked BBC report prepared for Hutton gives details of a meeting between Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of M16, and the editor of the Today program Kevin Marsh. According to Marsh, Dearlove said: “Hard evidence of WMD in Iraq would never be found”.
It is the absence of WMD in Iraq and the dissatisfaction of Britain’s intelligence community over “the 45-minute claim” which is at the heart of the public furor over Hutton’s conclusions. It may be the law lord’s personal opinion that the Blair government behaved in a whiter than white fashion when it came to altering the wording of an intelligence dossier and publicizing the name of Dr. David Kelly but it appears the public doesn’t agree.
After all, this is the same government, which circulated the previous dossier, known as “the dodgy dossier” much of it directly lifted from a student’s thesis on the Internet, and it was Britain which had handed forged correspondence purporting to be between Iraq and Niger concerning uranium yellowcake to the US intelligence community.
The weighty considerations of Lord Hutton were, as he maintained on several occasions, limited by his narrow remit but even so, he failed to take account of the publicized Campbell diaries proving the naming of David Kelly was done out of political expedience in order to damage Andrew Gilligan. He also ignored the fact that while Blair had told the press he had nothing to do with the outing of Kelly it was later proved that he chaired the very meeting when it was decided to do so.
In the great scheme of things, the British government took the country to war, with all the loss of life that entailed, on what is appearing more and more to be a false premise while a BBC reporter made a couple of errors during a 6 a.m. unscripted broadcast, which few would have noticed if Campbell hadn’t latched on to them like a dog with a bone. Most commentators believe that in essence Gilligan’s assessment was correct. The dossier did exaggerate Iraq’s WMD capability and if the government hadn’t realized this, it surely should have.
Hans Blix has said there are and were no WMD in Iraq and so has former Iraq Survey Group leader David Kay while senior Bush administration officials and, indeed, the president himself are beginning to express their doubts over faulty intelligence. Yet in Hutton’s world the British government was right and everybody else quite wrong. His pronouncements have reflected badly on his personal standing, driven the BBC into turmoil and produced a backlash against the government by an incredulous public, which increasingly believes the wool is being pulled over its eyes.
It’s clear that however many whitewashing law lords Blair pulls out of his hat, it will take a lot more than their support to regain the confidence of the British people. The issue of Iraq’s WMD — or absence of it — must be tackled in a transparent fashion... and soon.
— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs and can be contacted at [email protected]
