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Beyond the Hutton Report
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| 28 January 2004 |
Given the Hutton Inquiry's specific terms of reference - "an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr [David] Kelly" - the report published by Lord Hutton on 28 January was never going to reach conclusions on the far wider questions surrounding the uses - or abuses - of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Nor was there any prospect that a judgement would be delivered on the quality of the intelligence included in the British government's September 2002 dossier.
Of course, the political implications of Lord Hutton's conclusions on the Kelly affair will be far reaching. The finding that Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government did not pursue a "dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous strategy" to leak Dr Kelly's name to the media has effectively cleared both politicians and civil servants of involvement in a 'plot' to name the scientist.
Likewise, Lord Hutton's judgement that 10 Downing Street and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) did not "sex up" the September dossier - at least in the sense of including intelligence that was known to be false - has delivered severe criticism of the BBC. The report pulls no punches when it comes to the key question of the "defective" editorial management of the BBC in relation to the report made by Andrew Gilligan, which prompted the resignation today of BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies.
However, although Tony Blair has been quick to issue a strong statement in the House of Commons, a number of very serious questions have remained outside the terms of reference of the Hutton Inquiry and it is vital that these key issues are not obscured by the current climate of vindication being promoted by the British government. The Hutton Report does not address the following critical matters.
The question remains unanswered as to why "undue prominence" was given to the highly controversial intelligence that indicated that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed in "45 minutes" or less. It is now established that this intelligence was based on a single source and the evidence to date from Iraq suggests that the claim was unfounded.
Lord Hutton has reached his judgement that neither the government, nor the JIC, included intelligence in the September dossier that they believed to be false. However, that does not address the key question of whether the actual intelligence was wrong. Deceit in including this questionable intelligence may have been ruled out by Lord Hutton, but incompetence has not.
An equally serious question applies to the September dossier's claims concerning Iraq's nuclear activities during the late 1990s. The documents on which much of this 'intelligence' was based have now been proved to be amateur forgeries - as was emphasised by the International Atomic Energy Agency prior to the invasion of Iraq. The implications of how and why this material was used so uncritically by intelligence professionals has been largely overshadowed by the death of Dr Kelly and the Hutton Inquiry.
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