London — A British judge cleared Prime Minister Tony Blair's government Wednesday of any direct involvement in the suicide of a government expert on Iraqi weapons, but criticized the BBC for its reporting of the scandal that shook the British leadership.
The chairman of the British Broadcasting Corp.'s board of governors resigned hours after the report was issued by appeals judge Lord Hutton, who was appointed by Mr. Blair to investigate the death of weapons expert David Kelly.
Lord Hutton concluded that the government did not act in a "dishonourable, underhand or duplicitous" way in revealing Dr. Kelly's identity.
Lord Hutton said he was satisfied that nobody involved in the matter could have foreseen that Dr. Kelly would take his own life. He killed himself after being identified as the anonymous source of the British Broadcasting Corp. report accusing the government of exaggerating claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to bolster support for war.
| In the death of David Kelly | |
|---|---|
| Key dates surrounding the death of David Kelly | |
| 2002 | |
| Sept. 24 | British government publishes dossier on unconventional Iraqi weapons, says Iraq could deploy some chemical and biological arms on 45 minutes notice and that it had sought uranium in Africa. |
| 2003 | |
| March 20 | U.S. forces drop first bombs on Baghdad, starting war on Iraq. |
| May 29 | British Broadcasting Corp. military correspondent Andrew Gilligan reports that a senior British official claims government "sexed up" September dossier to make a more convincing case for war. |
| June 1 | Mr. Gilligan, writing in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, says the source told him that Prime Minister Tony Blair's director of communications, Alastair Campbell, was responsible for adding the 45-minute claim. |
| July 8 | Ministry of Defence issues statement saying unidentified employee had come forward to say he met Mr. Gilligan to discuss dossier. |
| July 9 | Ministry confirms that the official was David Kelly, a microbiologist and weapons adviser. |
| July 15 | Dr. Kelly tells House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that he met Gilligan, but does not recognize his comments in reporter's central claims and believes he was not the source of report. |
| July 17 | Dr. Kelly's wife, Janice, reports him missing from their home in Oxfordshire. |
| July 18 | Dr. Kelly's body is found in woods near his home. Mr. Blair learns of death during flight from Washington to Tokyo, announces independent judicial inquiry. |
| July 20 | BBC confirms Dr. Kelly was Mr. Gilligan's main source. |
| July 22 | Mr. Blair tells reporters he did not authorize the leaking Dr. Kelly's name. |
| Aug. 11 | Senior appeals judge Lord Hutton holds first hearing on events surrounding Dr. Kelly's death. |
| Aug. 27 | Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon testifies at inquiry that Dr. Kelly was "very well treated" by his supervisors. |
| Aug. 28 | Mr. Blair testifies that Mr. Gilligan's allegations were "extraordinary" and says he would have had to resign as Prime Minister if they were true. |
| Aug. 29 | Mr. Campbell announces his resignation as Blair communications chief, says move unrelated to Kelly affair. |
| Sept. 1 | Dr. Kelly "felt totally let down and betrayed" by leak of his identity, Janice Kelly testifies. |
| Sept. 25 | Lord Hutton adjourns inquiry. |
| Oct. 13 | Sir Kevin Tebbit, top Ministry of Defence civil servant, says in delayed testimony that Mr. Blair presided over meeting where officials decided to confirm Dr. Kelly's identity to the press. |
| 2004 | |
| Jan. 28 | Lord Hutton issues his report into Dr. Kelly's death. He clears the government of any dishonourable behaviour but criticizes the BBC for its "defective" handling of Mr. Gilligan's story. |
"The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence on WMD is itself the real lie," Mr. Blair said in the House of Commons. "And I simply ask that those that made it and those who have repeated it over all these months now withdraw it, fully, openly and clearly."
BBC chief executive Greg Dyke accepted that "certain key allegations" in its report were wrong and the BBC apologized. But he said the network had never accused the Prime Minister of lying.
Gavyn Davies, chairman of the BBC's board of governors, announced his resignation, and the governors said they accepted it "with great reluctance and regret."
The nationally televised report by Lord Hutton after gathering months of evidence appeared to exonerate Mr. Blair after the biggest crisis of his seven years in office. The BBC report had challenged his integrity and the case he had made for British forces to join the war in Iraq. The scandal also damaged the BBC's reputation.
Lord Hutton said the BBC report that Mr. Blair's government had manipulated its intelligence in an official dossier about Iraq's weapons was unfounded. He specifically rebutted the BBC report that the government had "sexed up" the dossier to bolster its argument for the war in Iraq.
"I am satisfied that none of the persons whose decisions and actions I later describe ever contemplated that Dr. Kelly might take his own life. I'm further satisfied that none of those persons was at fault in not contemplating that Dr. Kelly might take his own life," Lord Hutton said on national TV as he read from his 328-page decision.
"Whatever pressures and strains Dr. Kelly was subjected to by the decisions and actions taken in the weeks before his death, I am satisfied that no one realized or should have realized that those pressures and strains might lead him to take his own life," he said.
In his report, BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan said a government statement that Iraqi forces could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes was based on false intelligence that officials knew was unreliable.
"Whether or not at some time in the future the report on which the 45-minute claim was based was shown to be unreliable, the allegations reported by Mr. Gilligan on 29 May 2003 that the government probably knew that the 45-minutes claim was wrong before the government decided to put it in the dossier was an allegation that was unfounded," Lord Hutton said.
He sharply criticized the publicly funded BBC's "defective" handling of Mr. Gilligan's story, saying editors had failed to properly check the reporter's allegations and did not properly investigate the government's complaints about his report.
The judge criticized the BBC's Board of Governors for failing to fully investigate the criticism of the report, saying they probably would have discovered it to be unfounded if they had.
"If they had done this, they would probably have discovered that the notes did not support the allegation that the government probably knew that the 45 minutes claim was probably wrong," Lord Hutton said.
Lord Hutton criticized the board "for failing to give proper and adequate consideration to whether the BBC should publicly acknowledge that this very grave allegation should not have been broadcast."
The judge also said that Dr. Kelly had acted improperly by privately meeting with Mr. Gilligan and had breached rules regarding government employees contacts with the media because he hadn't been given permission from his superiors for such a meeting.
Critics had accused the government and Mr. Blair personally of cynically exposing Dr. Kelly to massive media scrutiny, thereby contributing to his death. Dr. Kelly's body was found near his home in a rural area in July, his left wrist slashed.
Lord Hutton's hearings, lasting most of August and September, transfixed the country, which remains deeply divided about Mr. Blair's decision to back the U.S. attack on Iraq.
The retired chief U.S. weapons inspector, David Kay, said last week that he concluded that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, which were the basis of Mr. Blair's case for war.
