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The Mayor of London ousted by WMD Journalist

By The Anglo American | May 3, 2008

Anndrew Gilligan {right} with the Consrvative party leader, David Cameron 

Andrew Gilligan won the British Journalist of the Year award for his investigative skills. After the British Government had done its best to discredit him, it was a vote of confidence by his peers. If there were a journalist hall of fame he would be right there with Woodward and Bernstein.

Gilligan won this award for his investigation of corruption in the Greater London Authority - the city council for all of London. But the award resurrects his reputation as serious professional journalist - a reputation all but destroyed by the British Government. With the passage of time, it could be argued that it is the British Government whose reputation is now beyond the credibility of repair. 

Continued…….

Gilligan worked for the BBC. It is one of Britain’s ironies that the state owned broadcaster was the British Government’s biggest opponent to Iraq war. Equally ironic is that Rupert Murdoch, noted for his hatred of the organization, made sure all his British papers spoke as one - as if printing a Government press release, word for word.

It was during his tenure with the BBC that Gilligan made his fateful broadcast exposing the government’s fabrication of its case to go to war with Iraq. Fateful, through no fault of his own, for the string of political events it unleashed.

Events that ultimately cost a man his life - the highly respected weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly.

The Government told Parliament and the British people that the country was under a forty-five minute threat from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Gilligan claimed, in an early morning broadcast, that the government had “sexed up” its dossier arguing its case for war. Prime Minister Blair was incensed and demanded that Gilligan and the BBC expose their source. When both refused they launched their own investigation. It was a witch-hunt.

Dr. Kelly, came forward to his employers in the belief that he may have inadvertently been the source. Dr. Kelly had long held a semi-official position as a back door Ministry of Defense source to the press. His State employer then released his name as Gilligan’s source, which the BBC confirmed as it buckled under Government pressure. The implications were clear - he was a traitor. There has long been a tradition of New Labour to shoot the messenger, when the government’s position was questioned. There was no exception here. In fact, to extend the metaphor, they shot two, as Gilligan was also in their sights.

However, this ruthless strategy backfired. Dr. Kelly was found dead near his home. He appeared to have taken his own life. But, to this very day, the circumstances surrounding his death remain suspicious.          

The British government set up an enquiry to investigate the death of Dr. Kelly. It was called the Hutton Inquiry after the overseeing judge, Lord Hutton. Hutton is well known in N. Ireland for his judicial participation in the British internment trials of Irish people. This is where civilians were sent to prison without a jury trial - a practice that is an open wound engrained in the hearts of the Irish people for nearly a century. It was policy that ignited thirty years of civil conflict.

Lord Hutton

The transcript of inquiry’s investigation was published every day on Internet {http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk}. There was, certainly, the impression of transparency. But Hutton’s conclusions, in his final report, seemed, even to the casual reader, to have no relationship to the evidence that was presented to him. More importantly, it let the government off the hook on two counts. Firstly, it failed to make the Government account for its forty-five minute claim WMD attack from Iraq. Secondly, it failed to make the Government account for its irresponsible actions that lead to the death of Dr. Kelly - even if we accept the limited evidence before the enquiry, that he took his own life. Instead the inquiry went after Gilligan and the BBC:  

“whether or not at some time in the future the report on which the 45-minute’s claim was based is shown to be unreliable, the allegation reported by Mr. Gilligan on the 29th. May 2003, that the Government probably knew that the 45 minutes claim was wrong before the government put it into the dossier, was an allegation which was unfounded” {Hutton Report, January 2004}.

It would be true to say that Gillgan’s notes were not the best in the world. It would also be true that BBC editors needed a checks and balances exercise with Gilligan so that the BBC could fully back its reporter. But Hutton’s mistake was to assume that press reporting needed the same level of scrutiny as evidence brought before a court in a trail.

Subsequent events have proved Andrew Gilligan, and Dr. Kelly to be right and the Government, including Hutton, to be wrong.

But long before it was established that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction the British Government had proved that it had the weapons of media destruction. The Director General of the BBC, Greg Dyke was pushed from office and Andrew Gilligan fell before he was pushed. Staff moral, in this much loved institution, has never recovered and BBC news reporting today is best described as timid. It is as if the guts have been torn from the organization.

It is events such as this that have proved to be one of the underpinning nails in New Labour’s coffin. Recent local town and county elections have proven to be catastrophic for Labour. The mortal blow however is the ousting of Labour’s Mayor for London, Ken Livingtson. That Andrew Gilligan and the Evening Standard, his new employer, played their part in Labour’s downfall must be sweet justice indeed.

©The Anglo American     

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