people who run the BBC can be influenced by politicians. remember when the then cabinet minister peter mandelson was 'outed' for being gay? nobody at the BBC was allowed to say that peter mandelson was gay. and who was it who got the BBC to do this? peter mandelson.
who picked greg dyke to be the director-general of the BBC? tony blair. director-general is a political appointment. greg dyke was forced to resign, because he felt there was nothing to appolgise for. obviously he wasnt playing ball with good old tony. (he's the socialist PM, by the way).
other than claiming that the government altered the intelligence dossier, Gilligan did a very good job. its what you call investigative journalism, very rare isnt it? INTELLIGENCE CHIEF'S BOMBSHELL: "The intelligence official whose revelations stunned the Hutton inquiry has suggested that not a single defence intelligence expert backed Tony Blair's most contentious claims on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction." http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=4875
Blair told the house of commons in answer to a question that he did not realise that the (bogus anyway) 'intelligence' claim that saddam could deploy WMD in '45 minutes' referred only to battlefield weapons and not to long range missiles that could strike british 'interests'. he said he did not know this until after the Commons 'debate' in march 2003 that supported the invasion of iraq. Robin Cook, who resigned from the government before the war in protest at the manipulation of the 'evidence' for the invasion, referred in his resignation speech to the fact that the (false anyway) WMD claims were about battlefield, not long-range, capability. how did Cook know this, but not Blair? also defense secretary Hoon, admits he knew, but never bothered to tell Blair.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3460517.stm Gilligan's resignation letter: "I repeatedly said also that I did not accuse the government of fabrication, but of exaggeration."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3446443.stm KELLY'S TAPED INTERVIEW WITH ANOTHER BBC JOURNALIST, SUSAN WATTS, SUBMITTED TO THE HUTTON 'INQUIRY', SUPPORTED THE BASIC THRUST OF WHAT GILLIGAN REPORTED KELLY TO HAVE SAID. transcript PDF file:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2003/08/13/sjw_1_0037-0043.pdf Reporter Gavin Hewitt backs up Gilligan's claim the the weapons dossier had been spun:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/hutton/keyplayers/story/0,13842,1025921,00.html I WONDER WHERE LORD HUTTON WENT WRONG? WHITEWASH WHITEWASH WHITEWASH
