Hutton's tergiversations

The outstanding popular novelist Robert Harris makes a welcome return to political commentary in The Sunday Times - with an article, lambasting the government's showing at the Hutton inquiry, that I agree with in almost no respect. In Harris's version of events:

It is ... clear that Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, is refusing to play the role of sacrificial victim so thoughtfully allotted to him by briefings from No 10. At the same time, despite the embarrassment to the BBC of Andrew Gilligan’s contacts with the foreign affairs committee, it is becoming obvious to most independent-minded people that their journalism was remarkably well-sourced: that they did reflect what Dr Kelly had told them and that he in turn was only reflecting a widely held belief in the intelligence world that the weapons dossier had been “sexed-up”.

In short, the Hutton inquiry — by the time the prime minister ran the gauntlet of booing and jeering last Thursday — was not going well for the government and, with Mrs Kelly due to give evidence tomorrow, there is every likelihood that it might be about to turn worse.

Plainly I have no idea what conclusions the deliberations of the inquiry - which ought never to have been set up and the prime minister ought not to have appeared before - are leading to. But my reading is different from Harris's.

Andrew Gilligan's priming the Foreign Affairs Committee with questions for Dr Kelly was not merely an embarrassment: it was an abuse of privileged sources and professional responsibilities. So far from his original report's having been well-sourced, it was contradicted not only by the author of the government's dossier on Iraq's weapons, John Scarlett, but also by Gilligan's BBC colleague Susan Watts. The BBC Chairman, Gavyn Davies, failed to exercise management control of this loose cannon, or even to evidence interest in the subject at all till Alastair Campbell challenged the BBC on the veracity of its reporting. The obvious course for Davies would have been then to act on the suggestion of the prime minister that the BBC state that, while it stood by its right to broadcast the original Gilligan report, it now accepted the factual basis of that report to have been wrong. If Davies had done that he would have limited the damage to the corporation and upheld his reporters' right to exercise judgement, while taking the honourable and professionally-required course of correcting a serious mistake. Because none of us knows the reasons for Dr Kelly's suicide, I shan't speculate on what effect this would have had on his actions; it would simply have been right for Davies to acknowledge that the BBC had got itself into a position incompatible with its status as a public-service news organisation.

I do not either believe that Geoff Hoon acquitted himself in a dignified or responsible manner. The serious fault that the government committed in this affair was to allow Dr Kelly's name to become public. Hoon's entire testimony before the inquiry reduced to the insistence that he had no idea what was going on in his own department. A man like that is unfit to hold ministerial office.

Comments

[Francois Brutsch]

I understand I'll miss Robert Harris in the Telegraph -- where he was a reluctant supporter of the war in March 2003, after having been against attacking Irak in September 2002. In both cases, his approach was not moral but bafflingly narrow-minded: not undermining the Labour government, absence of an imminent threat against Britain.

[Franco Alemán]

"The serious fault that the government committed in this affair was to allow Dr Kelly's name to become public"

Are you referring to the specific method (the silly Q&A & leaks) or you rather think that Dr Kelly's name should have never become public at all? If so, what would be, in your view, the right method to respond to what is clearly a case of bad reporting, to say the least, by the BBC?

Would be interested to know your opinion; I personally think that the method was silly; but that there was no serious way to avoid Kelly's 'outing', otherwise there was no way to counteract at such a serious accusation as Gilligan's. The BBC management, and Gilligan himself, were standing so firm behind the story, and it has emerged that at the same time BBC's board wasn't at all sure about the famous 'report' (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly/story/0,13747,1032292,00.html)

Best

F.A.

[FW]

"The serious fault that the government committed in this affair was to allow Dr Kelly's name to become public"

I personally think that the mistake was the extent to which the government assured Dr Kelly that his name would not be made public, but then "leaked" his name without informing him. There are however reports that civil cervants had indicated to Dr Kelly that it was "inevitable" that his name would come out, and that Dr Kelly understood that. But whether the government was totally upfront with Dr Kelly about the government leaking his name is not clear.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/09/02/nkell02.xml:
"He had been led to believe it would not be in the public domain. He had received assurances from his line manager, from all their seniors and from the people he had been interviewed by." Civil servants from Downing Street and the MoD said earlier in the inquiry that Dr Kelly had been told he was likely to be named.

Richard Hatfield, the ministry's personnel director, said he had shown Dr Kelly a copy of the press statement that was to be released and discussed it with him. The Prime Minister said he had been told that the weapons expert was aware that his name would inevitably come out.