h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Who on earth would have leaked it to the Sun one day before publication?


(for non UK readers, the Sun is a tabloid newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch. He has stated his support for the war in Iraq many times.)

Hi purplejenny,

Here across the pond, Murdoch's Weekly Standard tends to be one that leaks like a sieve. Luckily some of their leaks that claim links between Iraq and Al Qaeda have been undermined by later FBI or CIA statements.

I don't know as much about David Kelly or the Hutton Inquiry, and the US media hasn't been covering it very closely (at least until tonight). Could you explain a few details for me?

First, who is Lord Hutton and why does his judgment matter enough to make people change their minds? Our highest court in the US has 9 people on it, so it gives the impression that the judgment is in the hands of more than one person. Unfortunately, 5 out of the 9 people can still force idiotic rulings, as evidenced by their decision on the 2000 presidential (s)election.

But I don't know if the Supreme Court usually rules on these kinds of inquiries in the US. I think the nearest equivalent would be a Congressional investigation, or this 9/11 Commission for example. The Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination. But from listening to the BBC World Service tonight, it sounded like every takes Hutton very seriously. In the US, we would just scoff at the Congressman or Commissioners who passed judgment on these things.

After he was revealed as the source, did David Kelly make later statements to others to clarify what he had told the BBC reporter, or what parts of the report had supposedly misquoted him? I thought he died within a few days after being outed, so I didn't hear if he discussed the matter, or what he might have said about it.

Thanks,
Deidzoeb

Ooops! FBI? CIA? Pentagon? What's the difference? I knew it was some govt agency that was not quite within the grasp of Bush or Cheney, but it's actually the Pentagon!

Here's an article clarifying the point I just muddled:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/01/27/cheney/index_np.html

'The conservative Weekly Standard published its article on the Saddam-al-Qaida connection, "Case Closed," by Stephen Hayes, in its Nov. 24, 2003, issue....'

'...the next day, the Pentagon issued an extraordinary statement calling the story "inaccurate" and explaining it was based on raw intelligence (or a "classified annex") that had not been evaluated.'
...
'Yet on Jan. 9, Cheney, in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, spontaneously lauded the discredited Weekly Standard article and described it as "the best source of information."'

Hi subcom,

>First, who is Lord Hutton and why does his judgment matter enough to make people change their minds?

Lord Hutton is a senior judge, a 'law lord' who - I think, sits in the house of Lords (our second chamber of parliament) and has a long and distinguished career in law. He was appointed by Lord Falconer(the secretary of state for constitutional change) who is, unsuspiciously, an old freind of the Blairs.

None of this makes 'forced idiotic rulings' any more (un)likely. However, there is supposed to be a clearly defined separation between the executive (Blair) and the judiciary (Hutton) which is sposed to mean that such judicial inquiries are free from political manipulation.

I don't believe that is the case though, specially given that if one reads the Hutton report carefully its clear that on each occasion where there are two accounts of the truth, Hutton has tended to take the government's word over the bbc's.

>But I don't know if the Supreme Court usually rules on these kinds of inquiries in the US. I think the nearest equivalent would be a Congressional investigation, or this 9/11 Commission for example. The Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination. But from listening to the BBC World Service tonight, it sounded like every takes Hutton very seriously. In the US, we would just scoff at the Congressman or Commissioners who passed judgment on these things.

Well, a cynic like myself would naturally scoff at such official reports. But it also seems that many other people in the country feel that the Hutton report is a whitewash. Its a shame because it undermines the ideal that judges can be trusted to make rulings on the actions of government, and be seen to be fair when they do so.

>After he was revealed as the source, did David Kelly make later statements to others to clarify what he had told the BBC reporter, or what parts of the report had supposedly misquoted him? I thought he died within a few days after being outed, so I didn't hear if he discussed the matter, or what he might have said about it.

As far as I know, he didn't make any statements after being named as the source of the bbc's report that the document on reasons for going to war was exaggerated. I'm not totally sure about that though.

To me the main problem with all this is that the most important question has not been answered - which is why go to war in Iraq?

I also believe that the government leaked the Hutton report to the Sun the day before it was published, in order to spin the news in their favour. That, to me, seems doubly shameful, since the Hutton report was about leaks and spin in the first place.

That's the part I don't understand. I heard a little of Hutton's judgment on the radio. He sounded pretty convinced that Kelly had not said the things that the BBC dude attributed to him. Who could know that other than Kelly and Gilligan? And if Kelly died before talking about it, then who else confirmed what he said -- Gilligan?

But you're right, it's odd that the bigger story is the leak and the damage to BBC, instead of Blair ignoring the will of his people, ignoring the UN Charter. I mean, wasn't it Richard Perle who admitted that the so-called Coalition's attack on Iraq broke international law? He was trying to claim that the Coalition's goals were more important than international law, but he said it pretty straightforwardly. Doesn't matter what your definition of "is" is.

According to the Guardian he said, '"international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html

Why is it a bigger story that one BBC reporter may have slandered Tony Blair, instead of the story that one of the chief architects of the US plan to invade Iraq admitted that the invasion breaks international law?