Told you it wasn't Blair that was going to get the fanload in the face.

From the London Times.

THE BBC was fighting to save its credibility last night after finally disclosing that David Kelly, the weapons expert who committed suicide last week, was the main source of its claims that Downing Street had “sexed up” its dossier on Iraqi weapons.

...The admission casts further doubt on the report that sparked the battle with Downing Street because Dr Kelly told a Commons committee last week that he could not see how he could have been Mr Gilligan’s source on the basis of their conversations because it ascribed views that he had not expressed. “I believe I am not the main source,” he said.

And it left a big question mark over the head of Richard Sambrook, BBC director of news, and Greg Dyke, the Director-General. Mr Sambrook said on June 26 that the story was based on “one senior and credible source in the intelligence services”.

Mr Dyke is understood to have persuaded the BBC Board of Governors to back the story on July 6 when they issued a statement that journalists could use single sources if the information came from “senior intelligence”.

Dr Kelly, a weapons expert, was not a member of any intelligence agency and could not, according to the Ministry of Defence, accurately be called an intelligence source.

My take on it (no hard evidence yet...we'll see if I'm right): Gilligan lied about who his source was, and lied about what the source said. Under normal circumstances, proving this would be almost impossible, but Kelly threw a spanner in the works.

Something to think about:

How many other big news stories criticial of Bush and Blair on both sides of the Atlantic rely for their information on "unnamed intelligence/administration sources?"

It would be refreshing if the razor-sharp skepticism directed by the media at every single nuance of Bush and our intelligence agencies could be directed at the flood of stories coming out whose credibility is founded only on the writer's word that he actually got it from a reliable source.

This is especially important in light of many recent revelations about sources and fabrication of stories.

I'm going to be watching this one.