Listening in on BBC report, it is even more sweeping. This article is understating the damning of the BBC and its agenda driven news.

From AP:
Wednesday, January 28, 2004

LONDON — A judge cleared Prime Minister Tony Blair's administration Wednesday of any direct involvement in the suicide of a government expert on Iraqi weapons but criticized the BBC for its reporting in the scandal that shook the British leadership.

Senior appeals judge Lord Hutton (search), who was appointed by the Blair government to investigate the death of David Kelly (search), said he was satisfied that nobody involved in the matter could have foreseen that the weapons expert would take his own life.

He killed himself after being identified as the anonymous source of the British Broadcasting Corp. (search) report accusing the government of exaggerating claims about Iraqi weapons to bolster support for war.

Hutton also said the BBC report that Blair's government had manipulated its intelligence in an official dossier about Iraq's weapons was unfounded. He specifically rebutted the BBC report that the government had "sexed up" the dossier.

"I am satisfied that none of the persons whose decisions and actions I later describe ever contemplated that Dr. Kelly might take his own life. I'm further satisfied that none of those persons was at fault in not contemplating that Dr. Kelly might take his own life," Hutton said on national TV as he read from his 328-page decision.

"Whatever pressures and strains Dr. Kelly was subjected to by the decisions and actions taken in the weeks before his death, I am satisfied that no one realized or should have realized that those pressures and strains might lead him to take his own life," Hutton said.

In his report, BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan (search) had quoted his source as saying that Blair's government had "sexed up" the intelligence dossier on Iraq's arms to bolster its argument for the war in Iraq, including a claim that they could be deployed in 45 minutes.

The subsequent feud between the government and the BBC over the report raised widespread concerns about Blair's integrity and led to the biggest crisis of his seven years in office.

"The report on which the 45-minute claim was based was shown to be unreliable, the allegations reported by Mr. Gilligan on 29 May 2003 that the government probably knew that the 45-minutes claim was wrong before the government decided to put it in the dossier was an allegation that was unfounded," Hutton said.

The judge also said that Kelly had acted improperly by meeting with Gilligan and had breached rules regarding government employees' contacts with the media because he hadn't been given permission from his superiors to meet with the reporter.