Gilligan: Report supports much of what I said
The BBC journalist who lost his job after alleging the British government had “sexed up” its pre-war Iraq dossier today praised the Butler report.
Andrew Gilligan said: “I am very pleased with Lord Butler’s report, which supports much of what I already said – and what the government has always denied.
“Although Lord Butler says he finds no evidence of deliberate embellishment or misleading, many of his findings of fact do exactly that.”
He added: “Lord Butler finds that more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear; that the Joint Intelligence Committee’s neutrality and objectivity were strained by the dossier process: and that the Joint Intelligence Committee chairman must be a person beyond influence.
“He finds that ministers misrepresented the quality, quantity and certainty of intelligence judgments to parliament and the public.”
Mr Gilligan went on: “He finds that crucial caveats were dropped and he finds that the 45 minutes claim, the core of the dispute between the BBC and the government, should never have been in the form it took leading to ‘suspicions that it had been included because of its eye-catching character’.”
He concluded: “I am pleased with Lord Butler’s judgement but I am not triumphant or triumphalist.
“I recognise what Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell did not after their pyrrhic victory in January – that nobody in this saga behaved perfectly.”
He said there was no doubt that the British government’s behaviour was “far worse” than that of the BBC’s or his own.
