BBC Takes More Hits

The Hutton Inquiry continues, and today John Scarlett, the chairman of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee, testified. Scarlett’s testimony was devastating to the BBC. He said that he was responsible for the content of the dossier that was attacked by the BBC; that the claim that the Blair government in general or Alastair Campbell in particular “sexed up” the dossier was false; that there were no disagreements between Campbell and himself over the content of the dossier; that the famous 45-minute claim was included in the dossier by him, not at Campbell’s suggestion, because he believed it to be true based on very recent intelligence obtained from Iraq.
In short, Scarlett testified that the attack on the dossier by BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan was false in every relevant particular. The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian report.
The BBC will survive this scandal, but Gilligan won’t. And neither will public trust in the BBC.