Hutton Inquiry
Hutton Inquiry
Based on Wikipedia: Hutton Inquiry
"I will probably be found dead in the woods."
David Kelly spoke these words to a British diplomat in Geneva, five months before his body was discovered in an Oxfordshire field. At the time, the diplomat assumed Kelly was worried about Iraqi revenge. Only later did the chilling alternative interpretation become clear.
Kelly's death in July 2003 triggered one of the most consequential judicial inquiries in modern British history—an investigation that would bring down the leadership of the British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC), expose the inner machinery of government communications, and leave lingering questions about how democracies justify going to war. The Hutton Inquiry, named for the law lord who chaired it, became a prism through which the British public examined the fraught relationship between journalism, intelligence services, and political power.
The Man in the Middle
David Kelly was not a household name. He was a government scientist, a biological warfare expert who had spent years inspecting weapons facilities in Iraq for the United Nations. He knew the arcane details of anthrax production and nerve agent storage. He had Iraqi sources, professional relationships built over years of careful diplomacy.
But by the spring of 2003, Kelly found himself in an impossible position.
The United States and Britain had invaded Iraq in March, claiming Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat. The British government had published a dossier the previous September making this case to Parliament and the public. One claim stood out: Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so.
Kelly had doubts. So did some of his colleagues in the intelligence community. And Kelly—fatefully—had been talking to journalists.
The BBC Reports
On May 29, 2003, Andrew Gilligan went on air during BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the most influential morning news show in Britain. Politicians, civil servants, and journalists across the country tune into Today while eating breakfast. What Gilligan said that morning would reverberate for years.
He reported that a senior official had told him the government "sexed up" the September Dossier—that they had knowingly exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons capabilities. Specifically, Gilligan claimed, the government "probably knew" that the 45-minute claim was wrong. The driving force behind these embellishments, Gilligan alleged, was Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's chief communications strategist.
Two other BBC journalists aired similar reports in subsequent days. On June 1, Gilligan went further, writing in The Mail on Sunday and naming Campbell directly.
The accusation was explosive. If true, it meant the Prime Minister's office had manipulated intelligence to make the case for war—had, in effect, lied to Parliament and the British people to justify an invasion that was already deeply controversial.
The government denied everything. Campbell, a combative former journalist known for aggressive media management, went on the offensive. He accused the BBC of shoddy journalism and demanded a retraction.
The BBC refused. They had a reliable source, they said. They stood by their story.
The Outing
For weeks, a bizarre guessing game played out in the British media. Who was Gilligan's source? The government maintained it didn't know. The BBC wouldn't say. Journalists speculated wildly.
Behind the scenes, something more calculated was happening.
Kelly, apparently troubled by the growing controversy, went to his superiors at the Ministry of Defence and admitted he had spoken with Gilligan. He didn't believe he was the main source for the most damaging allegations, but he acknowledged the contact.
What followed remains disputed in its precise choreography, but the outcome is clear. On July 9, newspapers named David Kelly as Gilligan's source. The Ministry of Defence confirmed it when journalists guessed correctly. Kelly was suddenly the most exposed man in Britain.
Two days earlier, he had been hauled before parliamentary committees and questioned intensely. Television cameras captured a slight, soft-spoken scientist looking uncomfortable under the glare. He denied being the source of Gilligan's most inflammatory claims. But the pressure was immense.
On July 17, Kelly left his Oxfordshire home for an afternoon walk. He never returned.
His body was found the next morning in a wooded area nearby. He had cut his wrist and taken an overdose of painkillers. He was 59 years old.
Lord Hutton Takes Charge
Within hours of Kelly's death being confirmed, the government announced an independent inquiry. Lord Hutton, a former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland with a reputation for careful, methodical jurisprudence, was appointed to investigate "the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly."
The inquiry that followed was unlike anything Britain had seen before.
Hutton opened the proceedings to extraordinary scrutiny. Nearly every document submitted as evidence was published on the inquiry's website, often the same day it was presented. Internal government emails, intelligence assessments, handwritten notes—all became public. The British people could read the actual communications between Alastair Campbell and intelligence officials. They could see the drafts of the September Dossier, with tracked changes showing who had suggested which modifications.
Over 22 days of hearings, 74 witnesses testified. Gilligan appeared. So did Campbell. The Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon. The BBC chairman, Gavyn Davies. Even Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, gave evidence. Five Queen's Counsellors—senior barristers—conducted examinations and cross-examinations.
At the conclusion of the evidence-gathering phase, there was widespread praise for how Hutton had conducted the inquiry. The transparency was remarkable. The access unprecedented. Whatever conclusions Hutton reached, no one could accuse him of hiding the evidence.
The Verdict
On January 28, 2004, Lord Hutton published his report. It ran to 750 pages, though most of this comprised excerpts from the evidence. The conclusions, when they came, landed like a thunderbolt.
Hutton cleared the government almost entirely.
The September Dossier, he found, had not been "sexed up" in the way Gilligan alleged. It reflected the available intelligence. While Hutton acknowledged the Joint Intelligence Committee—the body that compiles assessments for ministers—may have been "subconsciously influenced" by the government's desire for a strong case, this fell far short of deliberate falsification.
Gilligan's accusation, Hutton wrote, was "unfounded."
On David Kelly's naming, Hutton found no "underhand strategy" by the government. The Ministry of Defence was criticized for not telling Kelly how exposed he would become, but this was treated as a failure of communication rather than deliberate cruelty.
The BBC, by contrast, was savaged.
Hutton found the corporation's editorial processes "defective." Management had accepted Gilligan's account without adequate verification. His notes of the crucial conversation with Kelly were incomplete. The BBC governors, under Chairman Davies, had dismissed the government's complaints without proper investigation. The entire chain of editorial oversight had failed.
The report was published at half past noon. By that evening, Davies had resigned.
The BBC Falls
The day the Hutton Report dropped remains seared in the institutional memory of the BBC. Journalists from rival network ITN described it as "one of the worst in the BBC's history."
Gavyn Davies, the chairman, fell on his sword immediately. He had staked his position on defending the corporation's journalism, and Hutton had found that journalism wanting.
Two days later, the Board of Governors met to discuss what came next. Greg Dyke, the Director-General—the BBC's chief executive—initially offered his resignation. Then he withdrew it. The governors, reportedly with only about a third supporting Dyke, decided to fire him.
Dyke walked out of Broadcasting House and addressed the waiting cameras:
"I was brought up to believe you should stand up for what you think is right. I believe in the independence of the BBC and feel strongly that it should not be bullied by the government of the day."
BBC staff staged impromptu protests. Hundreds walked out of their offices and stood in solidarity with Dyke. The scene was unprecedented—employees of Britain's public broadcaster demonstrating against what they saw as a miscarriage of justice.
Andrew Gilligan resigned on January 30, accepting that his journalism had been flawed, though questioning the broader conclusions of the report.
Whitewash?
The British press reacted with barely concealed fury—or in some cases, unconcealed fury.
The Daily Mail, a right-leaning tabloid usually no friend to the BBC, ran an editorial dripping with contempt: "We're faced with the wretched spectacle of the BBC chairman resigning while Alastair Campbell crows from the summit of his dunghill. Does this verdict, my lord, serve the real interest of truth?"
The Independent, a left-leaning broadsheet, published one of the most memorable front pages in British newspaper history. Above the fold, the page was almost entirely white space. In tiny red letters sat a single word: "whitewash?"
The Daily Express, the Guardian, even papers that had no love for the BBC—the consensus across the political spectrum was that Hutton had somehow missed the point. The evidence presented to his own inquiry, critics argued, showed that the dossier's language had been strengthened, that Campbell had suggested changes, that intelligence experts had expressed reservations. How could all this add up to a clean bill of health?
Hutton's defenders pointed to a crucial distinction. The intelligence community's doubts had been filtered out before reaching ministers. The Joint Intelligence Committee, the senior assessors, had signed off on the dossier. Whatever reservations existed lower in the system, the people at the top believed what they published. Therefore, Gilligan's claim that the government "probably knew" the intelligence was wrong—that claim itself was wrong.
This technical vindication satisfied almost no one.
The Sunday Times depicted Lord Hutton as the three wise monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
What Hutton Left Unanswered
Lord Hutton had been asked to investigate the circumstances of David Kelly's death. He interpreted this narrowly. Questions about whether the intelligence itself was accurate, whether the case for war had been honestly made, whether weapons of mass destruction actually existed in Iraq—all this, Hutton ruled, fell outside his remit.
But these were exactly the questions that mattered to the British public.
Within weeks of the Hutton Report, the government announced another inquiry. The Butler Review, as it came to be known, would examine the intelligence on Iraq's weapons. When Lord Butler reported in July 2004, he was notably more critical. The 45-minute claim, Butler found, had been included partly because of its "eye-catching character." The intelligence assessments had been flawed. The government's case for war had rested on shakier ground than acknowledged.
Andrew Gilligan claimed vindication. The dossier had been sexed up, he argued—Butler had essentially confirmed it.
The Longer Arc
More than a decade later, in 2016, Sir John Chilcot published the most comprehensive investigation into Britain's involvement in Iraq. Seven years in the making, his report ran to 2.6 million words across 12 volumes.
Chilcot was devastating.
Tony Blair had overstated the certainty of intelligence. The legal basis for war was far from secure. Planning for the aftermath had been wholly inadequate. The decision to invade, Chilcot concluded, had been taken before peaceful options were exhausted.
The Financial Times observed: "Every previous inquiry into Britain's decision to invade Iraq has swiftly been condemned by the public as a 'whitewash.' Such a description hardly applies to the monumental inquest that has been published by Sir John Chilcot."
But by 2016, Tony Blair had long since left office. Alastair Campbell had reinvented himself as a mental health campaigner. The BBC had recovered its footing. David Kelly remained dead.
The Meaning of "Sexed Up"
At the heart of the entire controversy lay a phrase: "sexed up."
Lord Hutton devoted considerable attention to what ordinary people would understand this to mean. He concluded that most listeners would interpret "sexed up" as indicating deliberate falsification—that the government had included claims it knew to be lies.
Based on this interpretation, Gilligan's report was indeed unfounded. The evidence suggested embellishment, selective emphasis, a thumb on the scale—but not outright fabrication.
Critics found this reasoning almost comically legalistic. Surely, they argued, "sexed up" could simply mean "made to look more exciting and impressive than the facts warranted." That was exactly what had happened. The dossier had been polished, sharpened, given a harder edge. Intelligence caveats had been quietly dropped. Strong claims had been made stronger.
Was this not sexing up? Or did the phrase require criminal intent?
Hutton chose the stricter definition. His critics believed he did so deliberately.
The BBC's Reckoning
The Hutton Report forced the BBC into an agonizing self-examination.
Lord Ryder, serving as Acting Chairman after Davies resigned, issued an "unreserved" apology for errors during the affair. Greg Dyke, watching from outside, said he "could not quite work out" what exactly the BBC was apologizing for.
Years later, documents emerged showing the BBC governors had been advised by their own lawyers that the Hutton Report was "legally flawed." They apologized anyway. The political pressure, it seemed, had been overwhelming.
The episode left lasting scars on the relationship between the BBC and the government. Some argued the corporation became more cautious, less willing to challenge official narratives. Others believed it learned necessary lessons about editorial rigor. The truth probably contains elements of both.
The Leak
One final peculiarity marked the Hutton saga.
The night before the report's official publication, someone leaked its contents to The Sun newspaper. Political editor Trevor Kavanagh received a telephone call from an unnamed source who accurately described the main findings. The Sun splashed the story. Other newspapers scrambled to catch up.
Hutton ordered an investigation into the leak. A solicitor spent months examining how security had been breached. The investigation failed entirely. No source was identified. No weaknesses in security procedures were found. No recommendations emerged for preventing future leaks.
The mystery remains unsolved.
David Kelly's Legacy
At the close of his report, Lord Hutton stepped back from the political warfare to consider the man at the center of it all:
"It is right that my report should record, as I do, that Dr Kelly was a distinguished scientist who gave valuable service to his country over many years, and whose memory deserves to be preserved with honour."
Kelly had spent his career in quiet, painstaking work—inspecting facilities, interviewing scientists, piecing together the puzzle of foreign weapons programmes. He had assured his Iraqi contacts there would be no war if they cooperated. When war came anyway, he found himself in what he had called an "ambiguous" moral position.
He talked to journalists. Perhaps he shouldn't have. Perhaps he was trying to ensure the truth emerged. Perhaps he was simply a scientist uncomfortable with the political uses to which his expertise was being put.
Whatever his motivations, he became collateral damage in a battle between media and government, each institution defending its credibility, neither particularly interested in the welfare of a 59-year-old weapons inspector from Oxfordshire.
The questions Kelly raised—about intelligence and its interpretation, about how governments make cases for war, about the responsibilities of journalism—outlived him. They outlived the Hutton Inquiry. They outlive us still.
He said he would probably be found dead in the woods. He was right, though perhaps not for the reasons he originally meant.
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