|
Yet another twist.
Funny how it always comes back to the media. Sounds more like bad reporting than bad policy to me.
| quote: | BBC's Gilligan Admits Errors in Iraq Report
Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Andrew Gilligan, a British
Broadcasting Corp. reporter, admitted to mistakes in a story that
said the government exaggerated the case for war in Iraq and
during the political row that followed.
Gilligan, giving evidence to Lord Hutton's inquiry into the
death of government weapons scientist David Kelly, also said the
BBC had made errors in defending his story against government
denials, and apologised for briefing the lawmakers who questioned
Kelly in the week of his death.
After meeting with Kelly, Gilligan reported in May that
officials ``probably knew it was wrong'' for Prime Minister Tony
Blair to have stated in a September dossier that Iraq had
chemical and biological arms ready to use at 45-minutes' notice.
``I do regret the words as spoken and I shouldn't have said
them,'' Gilligan told Hutton's London courtroom. ``It wasn't
intended, it was a kind of a slip of the tongue.''
Since Gilligan's report in May and Kelly's death in July,
Blair has seen his popularity slump as he struggles to throw off
suggestions he went to war on a false premise. Questions about
the credibility of the public broadcasting corporation will help
Blair's government.
Hutton's inquiry has heard that while some mid-ranking
intelligence analysts had doubts about the 45-minute assertion,
it was endorsed by senior intelligence officials, including Sir
Richard Dearlove, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service.
Criticism by Hutton
The manner of Gilligan's original reporting ``gives the
impression that it was the whole of the intelligence services''
that objected to parts of Blair's dossier, Hutton said,
suggesting he'll find fault with the BBC in his final report, due
next month.
Richard Sambrook, BBC head of news, also appeared before
Hutton and admitted errors in the corporation's record.
Jonathan Sumption, a lawyer representing the government,
asked Sambrook if he accepted that Gilligan's report had
``attacked the good faith of the government.''
``On reflection, I can see that,'' Sambrook replied, adding
that in retrospect, he thought Gilligan's story should have been
vetted by senior editors and a legal adviser before it was
broadcast.
`Paints in Primary Colors'
Sambrook also raised doubts about Gilligan's accuracy as a
journalist, calling him ``a reporter who paints in primary
colours rather than something more subtle.''
Kelly was found dead with a slit wrist in July, two days
after facing a parliamentary committee's inquiry into the case
for war. After his death, the BBC confirmed Gilligan used a
meeting with Kelly as the basis for his story.
In one broadcast in May, Gilligan described the origin of
his report as an ``intelligence service source.'' Kelly was not a
member of the intelligence services, though he worked with them.
``It was a mistake,'' Gilligan said, adding that he had only
made the statement once and not repeated it in other broadcasts.
Still, other BBC statements after Gilligan's first report -
- including one made by Sambrook -- repeated the incorrect
description.
Sumption said that Gilligan had allowed those statements to
go uncorrected because they bolstered the authority of his story.
`Pretense'
``You kept up the pretense that your source had been a
member of the intelligence services because you were happy with
it,'' Sumption said
``That is not the case,'' Gilligan replied.
The BBC reporter also expressed regret over an e-mail he
sent to members of a parliamentary panel that publicly grilled
Kelly in the week of his death. The e-mail suggested questions
that would increase pressure on Kelly.
``It was quite wrong of me to send it and I apologise,''
Gilligan said. ``I was under an enormous amount of pressure at
the time and I really wasn't thinking straight.''
Hutton has heard that one of Gilligan's editors thought his
story was ``marred by flawed reporting.''
BBC Director General Greg Dyke on Monday told Hutton that he
had regrets over the way the corporation handled the story and
called Gilligan's e-mail to the lawmakers ``unacceptable.''.
``It was an improper e-mail to have sent,'' Sambrook said
today, adding that no one in the BBC's management was aware that
Gilligan had sent the message.
Pension `Not at Risk'
Kelly, a weapons adviser to the Ministry of Defence, was
repeatedly questioned by his employers over his contacts with
Gilligan, and newspapers including the Daily Telegraph have said
that the scientist had been told he might have lost his
government-funded pension as punishment.
Not so, Richard Hatfield, the ministry's head of personnel
told Hutton's inquiry.
``With no possible interpretation could his pension have
been put at risk,'' Hatfield said.
More than four months since U.S. President George W. Bush
declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, the chemical
and biological arms British and U.S. leaders said justified the
war haven't been found.
Hans Blix, the former United Nations chief weapons
inspector, today said that before the war, Iraq may have
deliberately misled the world by suggesting it had weapons of
mass destruction.
``I'm certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq
has, as they maintained, destroyed almost all of what they had in
the summer of 1991,'' and later tried to give the impression of
having illegal arms, Blix told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. |
Furthermore, even if Iraq "deliberately misled the world..." it's hard to be sympathetic. Sounds more like self-fulfilling irony to me.
|
