BRITAIN: Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter whose claims led to the Hutton Inquiry, resigned from the corporation last night - insisting he was right and Lord Hutton was wrong.
Mr Gilligan said the BBC "was the victim of a grave injustice" because of the "unbalanced judgements of Lord Hutton". He insisted that the British government had indeed exaggerated pre-war intelligence on the threat posed by Iraq.
Mr Gilligan said in a statement: "The \ Government did sex up the dossier, transforming possibilities and probabilities into certainties, removing vital caveats; the 45-minute claim was the 'classic example' of this; and many in the intelligence services, including the leading expert in WMD, were unhappy about it. Thanks to what David Kelly told me and other BBC journalists, in very similar terms, we know now what we did not know before. I pay tribute to David Kelly."
Mr Gilligan said the Hutton Report "casts a chill over all journalism, not just the BBC's". He said: "It seeks to hold reporters, with all the difficulties they face, to a standard that it does not appear to demand of, for instance, government dossiers. I am comforted by the fact that public opinion appears to disagree with Lord Hutton and I hope this will strengthen the resolve of the BBC.
"The report has imposed on the BBC a punishment far out of proportion to its or my mistakes, which were honest ones. It is hard to believe now that this all stems from two flawed sentences in one unscripted early-morning interview, never repeated, when I said that the government 'probably knew' that the 45-minute figure was wrong.
"I attributed this to David Kelly; it was in fact an inference of mine. It has been claimed that this was the charge which went round the world, but a cuttings check shows that it did not even get as far as a single Fleet Street newspaper.
"Nor did the government mention it in its first three letters of complaint. In my view, this helps explain why neither I nor the BBC focused on this phrase as we should have. I explicitly made clear, in my broadcasts, that the 45-minute point was based on real intelligence. I repeatedly said also that I did not accuse the government of fabrication, but of exaggeration.
"I stand by that charge, and it will not go away."
Mr Gilligan lamented the resignation of Mr Greg Dyke as the BBC's director general. He was, said Mr Gilligan, the corporation's "finest director general for a generation".
Earlier yesterday, Mr Dyke said he did not accept all of Lord Hutton's conclusions. "I, others at the BBC, certainly our legal team, were certainly very surprised by the nature of the report. It is remarkable how he has given the benefit of judgment to virtually everyone in the government and to no one at the BBC." - (PA)