By Chris Marsden and Julie Hyland
WSWS.org, 29 January 2004
The report by Lord Hutton has exonerated the British government of any responsibility for the death of whistleblower Dr. David Kelly and cleared Prime Minister Tony Blair of having manipulated and falsified intelligence in order to drag the country into an illegal war against Iraq.
Hutton has produced a whitewash, delivering a ruling that is virtually bereft of criticism of the actions of Blair, his Director of Communications Alastair Campbell, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, and the Ministry of Defence, the civil service, the Joint Intelligence Committee and the intelligence services. Yet his report was made public at a time when all the lies used to justify war with Iraq have unravelled.
In the week leading up to its publication, the United States own chief weapons inspector, David Kay, resigned his position after stating that he did not believe Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. And his admission has been all but accepted by the Bush administration. Even the group responsible for providing the intelligence which Blair used to make the case that Iraq represented an immediate danger to world security, the Iraqi National Alliance, has now admitted it was false (See: Blair's 45-minute WMD claim refuted by Iraqi group that supplied the intelligence).
In order to avoid any political embarrassment for the government and Britain’s security services, Hutton proclaimed that the veracity of the intelligence on which the government made its case for war and the failure to uncover evidence that Iraq possessed any weapons of mass destruction were “not within my terms of reference”.
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He levelled his fire exclusively at the BBC and its reporter for the Today programme, Andrew Gilligan. Kelly’s death on July 18 came after he was named as the source of a report by Gilligan that there was widespread disquiet within the intelligence services as to the quality of the government’s September 2002 intelligence dossier. In May 2003 Gilligan had said that his source (Kelly) had said the government had included the 45-minute claim, “probably” knowing it to be false, in order to “sex up” its dossier, and that Campbell was responsible.
On every issue, Hutton found the BBC at fault and the government blameless. It was not possible to draw a definite conclusion as to what Kelly had told Gilligan, Hutton said, and he may have told him that Campbell was responsible. But, “I am satisfied Dr Kelly did not say the Government probably knew or suspected the 45-minute claim was wrong before the claim was inserted in the dossier”. He added, “the allegation reported by Mr Gilligan that the government probably knew the claim was wrong or questionable was unfounded”.
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Hutton was satisfied Kelly took his own life and that no third party was involved. He was also satisfied that none of those involved in the events leading up to his death would have believed that anything they did would lead Kelly to commit suicide.
The decision to name Kelly as the source of Gilligan’s reports was judged to be correct, as otherwise the government could have been accused of a cover-up. Geoff Hoon and the MoD, for which he is responsible, had behaved properly.
CONTINUED...
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2004/01/hutt-j29.html
The elite HATE a free press. Wake up: Dead Whistleblowers are a MESSAGE.
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