A judicial inquiry into the suicide of weapons expert David Kelly has cleared British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government of ”dishonourable conduct” or embellishing its September 2002 dossier on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, The Sun newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The popular tabloid said it had seen extracts of the conclusions of the report which Lord Brian Hutton was to make public at 12:30pm (1230 GMT) on Wednesday. Blair was to make a statement in parliament 90 minutes later.
”There was no dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous strategy by the government covertly to leak Dr Kelly’s name to the media,” The Sun quoted Hutton as saying in the report.
Kelly, a respected Ministry of Defence expert on biological weapons, killed himself last July a few days after he was exposed as the source of a BBC radio report in May which alleged that Blair’s government had ”sexed up” a September 2002 dossier on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.
His suicide hurled Blair into the worst crisis since taking office in 1997.
The Sun said the report — which Hutton went to great pains to keep secret in the run-up to its publication — criticised BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan for failing to put his story to the Ministry of Defence before airing it.
It added that Hutton’s 320-page report largely cleared Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon of wrongdoing. Political analysts have been expecting Hoon to take the fall for the Kelly affair.
”The decision by the MoD to confirm Dr Kelly’s name was not part of a covert strategy to leak his name, but was based on the view that it would not be sensible to try to conceal his name,” wrote Hutton, according to The Sun.
Speaking on BBC radio, The Sun’s political editor Trevor Kavanagh said Tuesday his newspaper had seen ”extracts from the conclusions” of Hutton’s report. He did not disclose how they were obtained.
A few copies of the report were given on Tuesday to key players in the Kelly affair, including Blair’s government, Kelly’s family, the BBC and Gilligan, after they promised in writing not to disclose the contents.
A Downing Street spokesperson told AFP on Tuesday: ”We categorically deny that anyone who was authorised by government to see this document has either shown it to, or spoken about it to, anyone else.”
According to The Sun, Hutton concluded that Kelly was to blame in the first place for contacting journalists such as Gilligan to discuss the September 2002 dossier, a key part of Blair’s effort to get British public opinion behind the US-led campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime.
”His meeting with Mr Gilligan was unauthorised and, in discussing intelligence matters with him, Dr Kelly was acting in breach of the civil service code of procedure,” Hutton reportedly wrote.
During public hearings in August, September and October, Hutton heard that Kelly expressed concern about the September 2002’s headline-grabbing claim that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in just 45 minutes.
Kelly, the inquiry heard, was worried that the 45-minute claim — which originated from just one intelligence source — was inserted by Blair’s inner circle to, in Gilligan’s words, ”sex up” the dossier.
According to The Sun, Hutton concluded: ”The allegation by Mr Gilligan (in his May 29 broadcast) that the government knew the 45 minutes claim was wrong before putting it in the dossier was unfounded.”
Hutton, according to The Sun report, also absolved Blair’s powerful communications director Alastair Campbell, who has since left Downing Street, of wrongdoing.
Gilligan, in a Mail on Sunday column after his May 29 broadcast, had fingered Campbell as the man responsible for supposedly embellishing the dossier.
The BBC, according to The Sun, came in for sharp criticism from Hutton, a former chief justice of Northern Ireland and one of Britain’s most respected jurists.
He reportedly faulted BBC executives for failing to properly investigate the allegations in Gilligan’s report, and for not taking Downing Street’s denials seriously in the weeks before Kelly took his life by slitting his wrist.
”The governors (of the public broadcaster) are to be criticised for failing to make a more detailed investigation into whether the allegation by Andrew Gilligan was properly supported by his notes and failing to give proper and adequate consideration to whether the BBC should publicly acknowledge that this very grave allegation should not have been broadcast,” Hutton reportedly said. – Sapa-AFP