The Hutton Report
Ever since Lord Hutton drily presented his long-awaited report on Wednesday there has been consternation, one might even say rage, about his findings. The British press are almost uniformly negative about it. The BBC are in shock from top to bottom, astonished and demoralized. I think everyone was expecting the judge to give a completely different ruling; perhaps the whole thing was overhyped. Lord Hutton was not asked to investigate the morality or otherwise of the invasion of Iraq, whether or not weapons of mass distruction existed, nor to rule on the rights and wrongs of the conflict between the BBC and Alistair Campbell or Blair's abuse of the intelligence services. Indeed, those issues still exist and need to be resolved, but not by poor Lord Hutton.
To anyone who followed the hearings closely, especially the summing up stage in early October, and was aware that almost the first action of the judge was to carefully and rigorously define his narrow terms of reference, his findings can not be a surprise. The government players were able to explain their actions in the context of unfolding events, while the BBC was clearly at fault in many areas. Gilligan made a fool of himself and was declared to be an unsatisfactory witness, while the management failed totally to investigate whether his infamous report of May 29 was truthful.
After the weekend forecasts of gloom, and the most difficult week of his reign, Tony Blair was triumphant, and presented his case crisply, eloquently and powerfully, while the Leader of the Opposition floundered. Campbell was maybe over the top in his reaction, while the BBC bigwigs departed bitterly, crying foul, followed two days later by Andrew Gilligan, who should have been the first to go. Jeff Jarvis has no sympathy for him and I am inclined to agree. I also do not buy at all the widely-voiced opinion that Lord Hutton's report represents a threat to the independence of the BBC or any of the other wild conspiracy theories flying around.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, David Kay was testifying before the Senate, and stating that all of the intelligence services were misinformed about WMD.
So, Lord Hutton's report, while bringing closure to the tragic case of David Kelly, has merely inflamed the issues surrounding the reasons for going to war and brought an unneeded crisis to the BBC, with two very good men paying the price.
The Guardian has an excellent Special Report on the whole exercise, while The Economist has a typically neat and brief summing-up.
10:17:01 PM 
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