BRITAIN: The British Prime Minister and employees in his Downing Street office were cleared yesterday of BBC claims that they "sexed up" a pre-war dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The exoneration came from retired law lord, Lord Hutton, appointed by Mr Blair to investigate the claim, which led to the suicide of Dr David Kelly, the government's expert on Iraqi weapons.
Lord Hutton made it clear the Prime Minister, his former communications director Mr Alastair Campbell, and No 10 staff had no "improper" influence on the preparation of the dossier, and did not override the opinion of the intelligence community.
But he did say he could not rule out that Mr Blair's widely known desire for the document to be "as strong as possible" might have subconsciously influenced intelligence chiefs preparing it.
And he concluded it could have been said the government had sexed up the dossier if the phrase had referred to Downing Street making suggestions on how to draft it in such a way as to make the case against Saddam as strong as possible but still based on reliable intelligence. But he said journalist Andrew Gilligan, in his broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on May 29th last year, had not meant that.
Lord Hutton's findings were a welcome boost to the Prime Minister and Mr Campbell. They had faced eight months of accusations which Mr Blair described as attacking the very integrity of himself and his government. He had said he would have had to resign if they were true.
Mr Gilligan, in his broadcast, alleged that the claim that Saddam could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes had been inserted into the dossier with the Government "probably" knowing it to be false.
He also claimed the information had been inserted late and against the wishes of the intelligence services, who were supposedly responsible for drafting the document.
But Lord Hutton concluded that the 45-minutes claim had come from a source the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) considered reliable.
"Therefore, whether or not at some time in the future the report on which the 45 minutes claim was based is shown to be unreliable, the allegation reported by Mr Gilligan . . . was an allegation which was unfounded.
"The allegation was also unfounded that the reason why the 45-minutes claim was not in the original draft of the dossier was because it came from one source and the intelligence agencies did not really believe it was necessarily true."
He said the reason it went in late was because it was not received by the SIS until later. He stressed the intelligence services "approved the wording in the dossier" and that the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Mr John Scarlett, had overall responsibility for the drafting.
Lord Hutton said Mr Campbell had made it clear to Mr Scarlett that the Prime Minister wanted the wording to be as strong as possible but also that "nothing should be stated in the dossier with which the intelligence community were not entirely happy".
He stressed Mr Scarlett only accepted drafting suggestions from Number 10 which were consistent with intelligence.
"However, I consider that the possibility cannot be completely ruled out that the desire of the Prime Minister to have a dossier which . . . was as strong as possible in relation to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's WMD, may have subconsciously influenced Mr Scarlett and the other members of the JIC . . ." - (PA)