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The Media Reaction to the Hutton Report 807 the Media Reaction to the Hutton Report

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The Media Reaction to the Hutton Report 807 the Media Reaction to the Hutton Report The Media Reaction to the Hutton Report 807 The Media Reaction to the Hutton Report Lord Hutton BBC; Iraq; Journalism; Judicial inquiries; Public inquiries; Suicide; Transcripts The inquiry which I conducted in the summer of 2003 into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly took place against the background of the war in Iraq which was deeply unpopular amongst many sections of opinion in the country and gave rise to intense criticism of the government. Many com- mentators were hoping and predicting that my report would severely damage the government, and I knew that if I delivered a report concluding that the gov- ernment had deliberately misled the country about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and had acted towards Dr Kelly in a dishonourable and underhand way, I would be acclaimed in many sections of the media as a fear- less and independent judge. I also knew that if I did not come to such findings it was probable that my report would be subjected to considerable criticism. In my report I found that the Ministry of Defence was at fault for failing to help and protect Dr Kelly but I also concluded that the government had not been guilty of publishing information about weapons of mass destruction which it probably knew was wrong, or of dishonourable conduct towards Dr Kelly.1 Therefore, as I anticipated criticism of these latter findings on the publication of the report, I took the unusual course of setting out in it substantial parts of the evidence to show that my conclusions were fair and soundly based. However this did not prevent the report from being widely criticised,2 and now that more than two years have passed since its publication it is appropriate to look back and consider some of the coverage and comment in parts of the media. Background to Dr Kelly’s death The background events to Dr Kelly’s death are well known and are fully set out in the report but it will be convenient to refer again briefly to some of them. 1 Lord Hutton, Report of the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Dr David Kelly C.M.G. (2003–2004 HC 247, January 28, 2004) (see www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk). 2 Many newspapers described the Hutton Report as ‘‘a whitewash’’, e.g. ‘‘The Hutton Report: A Special Issue—Whitewash?’’, Independent, January 29, 2004; Jonathan Friedland, ‘‘If it went to the West End they’d call it Whitewash’’, Guardian, January 29, 2004; Andrew Alexander, ‘‘A Stain on the truth by Lord Whitewash’’, Daily Mail, January 30, 2004. [2006] P.L. Winter Sweet & Maxwell and Contributors 808 Public Law On September 24, 2002 the government published a dossier entitled ‘‘Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Assessment of the British Government’’ which in its executive summary stated3: ‘‘4. As well as the public evidence, however, significant additional information is available to the Government from secret intel- ligence sources, described in more detail in this paper. This intelligence cannot tell us about everything. However, it pro- vides a fuller picture of Iraqi plans and capabilities. It shows that Saddam Hussein attaches great importance to possessing weapons of mass destruction which he regards as the basis for Iraq’s regional power. It shows that he does not regard them only as weapons of last resort. He is ready to use them, including against his own population, and is determined to retain them, in breach of United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR). 5. Intelligence also shows that Iraq is preparing plans to conceal evidence of these weapons, including incriminating documents, from renewed inspections. And it confirms that despite sanctions and the policy of containment, Saddam has continued to make progress with his illicit weapons programmes. 6. As a result of the intelligence we judge that Iraq has: ... • military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, including against its own Shia population. Some of these weapons are deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them.’’ On May 29, 2003 at 6:07am the BBC Today programme broadcast the following report by the BBC’s defence correspondent, Mr Andrew Gilligan, introduced by Mr John Humphrys: ‘‘John Humphrys: The government is facing more questions this morning over its claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Our defence correspondent is Andrew Gilligan. This in particular Andy is Tony Blair saying, they’d be ready to go within forty five minutes. Andrew Gilligan: That’s right, that was the central claim in his dossier which he published in September, the main erm, case if you like against er, against Iraq and the main statement of the British government’s belief of what it thought Iraq was up to and what we’ve been told by one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up that dossier was that, actually the government probably erm, knew that that forty five minute figure was wrong, even before it decided to put it in. What this person says, is that a week before the publication date of the dossier, it was actually rather erm, a bland production. It didn’t, the, the draft prepared for Mr Blair by the Intelligence Agencies actually didn’t say very much more than was public knowledge already and erm, Downing Street, our source says ordered a 3 The Stationery Office, September 24, 2002. [2006] P.L. Winter Sweet & Maxwell and Contributors The Media Reaction to the Hutton Report 809 week before publication, ordered it to be sexed up, to be made more exciting, and ordered more facts to be er, to be discovered. JH: When you say ‘more facts to be discovered’, does that suggest that they may not have been facts? AG: Well, erm, our source says that the dossier, as it was finally published, made the Intelligence Services unhappy, erm, because, to quote erm the source he said, there was basically, that there was, there was, there was unhappiness because it didn’t reflect, the considered view they were putting forward, that’s a quote from our source and essentially, erm, the forty five minute point er, was, was probably the most important thing that was added. Erm, and the reason it hadn’t been in the original draft was that it was, it was only erm, it only came from one source and most of the other claims were from two, and the intelligence agencies say they don’t really believe it was necessarily true because they thought the person making the claim had actually made a mistake, it got, had got mixed up. JH: Does any of this matter now, all this, all these months later? The war’s been fought and won. AG: Well the forty five minutes isn’t just a detail, it did go to the heart of the government’s case that Saddam was an imminent threat and it was repeated four times in the dossier, including by the Prime Minister himself, in the foreword; so I think it probably does matter. Clearly, you know, if erm, if it, if it was, if it was wrong, things do, things are, got wrong in good faith but if they knew it was wrong before they actually made the claim, that’s perhaps a bit more serious. JH: Andrew, many thanks; more about that later.’’ Later in the broadcast at 7:32am Mr Gilligan said (inter alia): ‘‘I have spoken to a British official who was involved in the preparation of the dossier, and he told me that until the week before it was published, the draft dossier produced by the Intelligence Services, added little to what was already publicly known. He said: ‘It was transformed in the week before it was published, to make it sexier. The classic example was the statement that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use within forty five minutes. That information was not in the original draft. It was included in the dossier against our wishes, because it wasn’t reliable. Most things in the dossier were double source, but, that was single source, and we believed that the source was wrong.’ ’’ The report in the Today programme that ‘‘the government probably knew that that forty five minute figure was wrong, even before it decided to put it in’’ was the report of an allegation that the government had deliberately misled the country by putting in the dossier, against the wishes of the Intelligence Services, intelligence which the government probably knew was wrong. This was an extremely grave allegation which attacked the integrity of the government and the integrity of the Joint Intelligence Committee (‘‘JIC’’), the main function of which is to provide ministers and senior officials with intelligence assessments [2006] P.L. Winter Sweet & Maxwell and Contributors 810 Public Law on a range of issues. If true, the allegation would have led to the resignation of the Prime Minister and probably to the fall of the government. The report in the Today programme gave rise to a very fierce dispute between the government and the BBC which dominated the headlines for many days and influenced the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (‘‘FAC’’) of the House of Commons to decide to hold an inquiry into ‘‘The Decision to go to War in Iraq’’. The Committee announced on June 3, 2003 that: ‘‘The inquiry will consider whether the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, within the Government as a whole, presented accurate and complete information to Parliament in the period leading up to military action in Iraq, particularly in relation to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
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