Gilligan comes out fighting after Hutton drubbing

Andrew Gilligan today came out fighting with a statement issued on his behalf describing Lord Hutton's report as "grossly one-sided".

He is struggling to hold on to his BBC career after Lord Hutton issued a damning criticism of his Today programme report, describing the central claim that the government had "sexed up" its dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as "unfounded".

In what amounted to a complete demolition of Gilligan's controversial report. Lord Hutton cast doubt on the "sexing up" claim and rejected as "unfounded" the allegation that the infamous 45-minute claim had been inserted at the request of the government.

However, the National Union of Journalists, which represented Gilligan, today hit out at the report's conclusions.

"Whatever Lord Hutton may think, it is clear from the evidence he heard that the dossier was 'sexed up', that many in the intelligence services were unhappy about it, and that Andrew Gilligan's story was substantially correct," said Jeremy Dear, the president of the NUJ, which is representing Gilligan.

"The report is selective, grossly one-sided and a serious threat to the future of investigative journalism".

By focusing his conclusions almost exclusively on Gilligan's unscripted 6.07am report on the Today programme on May 29, Lord Hutton has exceeded the Today reporter's worst fears.

Gilligan admitted during the inquiry he "unwittingly and unintentionally" gave listeners the wrong impression about whether the intelligence was real or made up when he said the government "probably knew" the 45-minute figure was wrong.

But he changed the wording for subsequent reports, and has always stood by the central claim that the intelligence community was unhappy about government attempts to influence the wording of the dossier.

Mr Dear said today that from Gilligan's 19 broadcasts on the morning of May 29 Lord Hutton had taken "a single sentence barely noticed at the time and has used it to condemn the entire story".

The NUJ president added Lord Hutton had "taken an unwarranted sideswipe at Andrew Gilligan's note-taking, when other reporters recorded David Kelly as saying very similar things".

In his report, Lord Hutton referred to the "uncertainties arising from Mr Gilligan's evidence", and said the two sets of notes he made of his conversation with Dr Kelly made it impossible to say for sure what had been said.

Crucially, Lord Hutton said he did not believe the dossier had been "sexed up", as Gilligan reported Dr Kelly as saying.

He said the BBC's listeners would have interpreted this to mean the "intelligence set out in the dossier was unfounded", something he didn't believe to be true.

Lord Hutton's conclusions appear to confirm Gilligan's worst fears and the reporter has been embroiled in meetings with the NUJ in an effort to shore up his position since receiving his copy of the report last night.

Today Mr Dear called on the BBC's governors to "stand firm, defend their reporter and the essential truth of their story", and warned that the corporation could face an industrial dispute if it sacked or disciplined Gilligan.

The former Sunday Telegraph journalist has told friends he would prefer to rebuild his career at the BBC but that if he was sidelined he would think carefully about writing a book based on his experiences and return to print journalism.

4pm

http://media.guardian.co.uk/huttoninquiry/story/0,13812,1133385,00.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Liddle launches defence of Gilligan

Dominic Timms, John Plunkett and Ciar Byrne Wednesday January 28, 2004

Liddle: Hutton is 'blind' if he believes dossier was not 'sexed up'

Rod Liddle, the former Today programme editor and biggest champion of Andrew Gilligan's cause, today dismissed Lord Hutton as "out of touch" with the real world. As the BBC came to terms with Lord Hutton's devastating verdict on the corporation's journalism, Liddle leapt to Gilligan's defence - suggesting the law lord was "blind" to the realities of how the intelligence dossier was put together.

And today Tom Mangold, a former BBC journalist, and a friend of David Kelly's family, said it was "a bad, sad, day for BBC news and current affairs."

Liddle said Lord Hutton's report, in which the BBC was castigated for a raft of managerial and journalistic failings, was symptomatic of similar historical investigations that inevitably found in favour of the government.

"It happened back in 1963 with Lord Denning and Profumo and it's the same again. You never get a law lord criticising the government. If anyone can name a report from a law lord where the government of the day hasn't got off pretty much scot-free, I'd like to know," Liddle said on Radio 4.

He defended the BBC for "doing a brilliant thing breaking a very, very important story" and doing what he described as the "right thing" in defending the journalism of Andrew Gilligan against "immense bullying and pressure from 10 Downing Street".

Liddle said he thought that most people in the country - though not Lord Hutton - believed Gilligan's allegations that the government had "sexed up" the Iraq dossier, even if the BBC reporter's initial 6.07am broadcast was "wrong".

"I think most people tend to take the view that the story was fundamentally correct," Liddle told Radio 4 this afternoon. "Much of what Lord Hutton said today seems so divorced from the real world."

"I think he [Hutton] is blind if he believes that [the allegation were unfounded]," Liddle later added in a Sky News interview.

Despite his support for Gilligan, Liddle said there would be "bad" consequences for the BBC.

"There will be bad ramifications in some parts of the BBC - that's probably inevitable given that the way these things work."

He also said Gilligan would be "depressed " at the findings of the report, as would the Today programme.

However he said both had reputations that would be difficult to gloss over: "Of course he [Gilligan] will be depressed and the Today programme will be depressed, but he's still reigning reporter of the year for the excellent work he did and Today still has reputation as the best broadcast news programme in the country - and I don't think that reputation will be tarnished.

"It will be an organisational problem for the BBC."

But he was adamant that the intelligence dossier was the root of the problem and Lord Hutton had taken a bewildering view of the events that lead up to the death of David Kelly.

"The document was sexed up, there is not the slightest doubt. Lord Hutton takes a very bizarre view and actually suggests it is not beyond the realm of possibility that John Scarlett may have been influenced subconsciously by the prime minister. I don't think Lord Hutton is living in the real world. Do we really think Alastair Campbell didn't have influence on these documents? We already know that there were 14 changes made to the dossier by Campbell.

"No-one heard the seven minutes past six story. It was only talked about a few weeks later. Gilligan was wrong to suggest the government knew the 45-minute claim was inaccurate."

"I have great faith in the British public, and I think most people will tend to take the view [that the story] was fundamentally correct. I don't think the 270 pages suggest otherwise. They suggest it was wrong at seven minutes past six.

"Lord Hutton believes that the document was not sexed up. I think he is blind if he thinks that. Most people in the country think that too. The BBC has to be very rigorous the way it does journalism of this nature, there's no doubt about that. It was a very important story, it was brave to do it and brave to stick up for reporter.

"Multifarious law lords have been asked to investigate the government over the years, and if anyone can name one where the government has not been exonerated pretty much entirely I would be interested, from Profumo onwards. Law lords do not often attack the government, what we usually see happen with inquiries is that the ministers get off scott free."

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