London: Senior figures in the BBC are now in the firing line over the death of government scientist Dr David Kelly, writes Frank Millar, in London
The sense of immediate danger to Mr Tony Blair receded yesterday as the BBC disclosed that Dr David Kelly was the source for its disputed claim that Downing Street "sexed up" the controversial Iraqi weapons dossier.
Labour MP and anti-war critic Ms Glenda Jackson had demanded the Prime Minister's resignation on Saturday after Thames Valley Police effectively confirmed that Dr Kelly had taken his own life by slashing his wrist while taking an overdose of powerful painkillers. By last night, however, senior figures in the BBC were in the firing line as the corporation's admission raised two obvious questions:
Did Dr Kelly mislead the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee when he persuaded it that he could not have been the primary source for the BBC claim, first broadcast on the Today programme on May 29th? Or did the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan himself "sex-up" the information he received suggesting Number 10 had inserted doubtful intelligence material in the September dossier against the wishes of the secret services in order to justify the war in Iraq?
Certainly after a torrid 48 hours Mr Blair appeared to have recovered his nerve yesterday, as he dismissed calls for the return of parliament, confirmed he would appear before the judicial inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, and insisted he would not be resigning.
On Saturday morning even Blair loyalists feared the Prime Minister might indeed be swept by a tide of grotesque and bizarre events to the point of resignation, as a personal tragedy conflated with continuing controversy about the war to produce the most dangerous moment in his leadership.
Dr Kelly's suicide had been presumed from the first reports that the world-renowned scientist and Ministry of Defence adviser had disappeared, to the discovery of a body in woodland near his Oxfordshire home on Friday.
Yet is was a truly shocking moment when acting Supt David Purnell disclosed the manner of Dr Kelly's death. And the potential consequences for his government seemed etched on Mr Blair's face hours later when he stood frozen before the cameras in Japan as a journalist asked him: "Have you got blood on your hands?"
Mr Blair had earlier appealed for restraint on all sides and due respect for Dr Kelly's grieving family. He could have saved his breath. Saturday morning's headlines had carried the portent of worse to come. "Spun to death" was the Daily Mirror's verdict, quoting angry friends of the dead man left devastated "by his treatment at the hands of Labour's spin machine". The Daily Mail was even more direct. "Proud of Yourselves?" demanded the headline over photographs of Mr Blair, his communications director Mr Alastair Campbell, and Defence Secretary Mr Geoff Hoon.
The demand that heads should roll would inevitably grow still louder as the police released the text of a statement from Dr Kelly's family confirming that events over recent weeks had made his life intolerable and suggesting that "all those involved should reflect long and hard on the fact."
The revelation that Dr Kelly sent an email to a friend referring to "many dark actors" playing games also fuelled questions about the procedures followed by the MoD, and about Dr Kelly's reported five-day interrogation after he came forward to admit his unauthorised contact with the BBC journalist.
Lord Hutton's inquiry will address these questions and also ask what role Mr Hoon or Mr Campbell played in leaking Dr Kelly's identity to the press after he was reportedly promised his anonymity would be protected.
Mr Blair is hardly making a huge concession in saying he will meet the Law Lord when the perception has already taken hold - in large sections of the press and among the wider public - that these men callously threw this gentle man to the wolves, exposing him to a public trial which drove him to take his life.
Against that, another journalist to whom Dr Kelly spoke, Nicholas Rufford, reported in The Sunday Times that when he asked how the MoD had treated him, Dr Kelly replied: "They have been quite good about it." While Dr Kelly added he felt he had been "through the wringer", this does not appear to fit with suggestions that he feared his career was in ruins, had been threatened with the loss of his pension and otherwise subjected to unbearable pressure to rubbish Gilligan's claims and thus vindicate Mr Campbell in his battle with the BBC.
We have learned other things this weekend about the weapons expert characterised by friends as a shy man who hated finding himself in the limelight and loved nothing more than to walk in the woods and tend his roses.
A former member of the UN inspections team, he was reportedly tough and able to withstand pressure from Iraqi intelligence agents, who presumably were capable of being at least as nasty as their London counterparts. And, of course, he talked to many journalists in an effort to improve their understanding of the complexity of the weapons of mass destruction issue.
One of them, his personal friend Tom Mangold, clearly expected the government - and the BBC, when it broke its silence - to acquit Dr Kelly of being the person responsible for the charge that Downing Street had over-ruled the intelligence services in the composition of the dossier.
Importantly, he also told the Mail on Sunday that he had given his own main contact on the weapons issue, Dr Kelly, to another BBC journalist assigned by the Ten O'Clock News programme to seek independent corroboration of the claims broadcast by Mr Gilligan. Mangold obviously was unaware that Dr Kelly had in fact been Gilligan's main source.
But he wrote yesterday: "When that reporter was briefed by Kelly he did not fully confirm the wilder allegations made by Gilligan he gave a more sober assessment as to why WMD might not be so easily found."
Why, if Dr Kelly had discussed Mr Campbell's alleged role in "sexing-up" the dossier, would he not have confirmed this some 24 hours after Gilligan's initial broadcast to another BBC journalist sent to him by his friend? Why did Dr Kelly own up to talking to Gilligan in the first place? The BBC certainly wasn't going to reveal his identity. And why, having persuaded the Select Committee that he could not have been the BBC's primary source and that he had been badly treated by the government, did Dr Kelly despair to the point of taking his life?
We may never know. And it must be allowed that perhaps he did tell Gilligan more than he cared to admit subsequently.
What Mr Blair knows, of course, is that the fact of Dr Kelly's suicide means his and his government's reputation will remain tarnished and damaged in the minds of many people irrespective of the outcome of any official inquiry. Already distrustful of Mr Blair's stated reason for going to war, and suspecting a New Labour tendency to play fast-and-loose with truth, the widespread disposition will be to conclude that a good and faithful public servant was indeed made "the fall guy" and driven to his death by unscrupulous men for whom the power play is all.
Seeking to step beyond natural sympathy for Dr Kelly's family, however, others now are insisting that the BBC has a case to answer.
As David Aaronovitch remarked in yesterday's Observer, if Mr Campbell felt himself and the government traduced, he was absolutely right to speak out as he did. For as Mr Blair himself has said, it is hard to imagine a more serious assault on the integrity of a prime minister than to suggest he sent his troops to war, and some to their deaths, on the basis of a lie.
Nor is it good enough for the BBC or others to suggest that the government over-reacted, as though its reputation turned on a single BBC report. BBC reports enjoy global reach, and, as Gilligan put it in his original broadcast, this particular claim "went to the heart of the government's case" for toppling Saddam Hussein.
Searching questions about the veracity of that claim are presumably now being asked afresh at the heart of the corporation.