Smoke and mirrors

The BBC has revealed that it has an audiotape of Newsnight science editor Susan Watts speaking with Dr David Kelly, the scientist at the centre of the Iraq weapons dossier story.

The Guardian (whose story was on-line shortly before the BBC’s) has this to say about the news:

The BBC believes the tape is the "smoking gun" that will exonerate Andrew Gilligan.

The tape's existence explains the corporation's determination to stick by its story under the onslaught of criticism from No 10.

This suggests to me that the BBC thinks it has just pulled a rabbit out of a hat.

It hasn’t of course. Nevertheless, I am sure the BBC will work hard to convince us that the tape provides corroboration and supporting evidence for Andrew Gilligan’s story and somehow justifies the decision to publish the original reports.

If the BBC gets a pass on this then we should expect an avalanche of big, important, “This will change the world if it’s true!” stories, all beginning with the words: “I got back from the pub last night and someone had left this message on my answering service…”

There are a thousand stories in the naked city and this is just one.

Some of them are interesting, few of them are true and not one of them is worth the BBC’s reputation.