Gilligan's story

More than a little late to save himself and the BBC from censure, Andrew Gilligan today admitted to a catalogue of errors in his appearance before the Hutton inquiry.

The transcript of Gilligan’s testimony is not yet available on the inquiry’s site, so I’m relying for the moment on reports from the Guardian and the BBC.

Here’s a list of the errors to which Gilligan now admits:

He was wrong when, in an early morning broadcast on the day the dossier story broke, he said the government probably knew the 45-minute claim was wrong.

Dr Kelly never suggested to him that the government knew intelligence included in its dossier about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was wrong or unreliable.

This claim was Gilligan's, not Kelly's, and he now accepts it was wrong.

It was wrong for the BBC to broadcast the story without having asked the Ministry of Defence for a point-by-point response to the claims.

He was wrong to describe David Kelly as his "intelligence service source".

He was wrong in e-mailing an MP on the foreign affairs committee during its investigation of the story.

It was wrong of him to suggest that Kelly was the source for BBC Newsnight reports about Iraqi weapons particularly as at that time he wasn't sure who the source was.

Seemingly unfazed by his admissions, Gilligan insisted that he was right on at least two occasions:

His decision not to correct the statement made by the BBC governors on July 6 in which Dr Kelly was wrongly referred to as an "intelligence source".

His decision not to correct the foreign affairs committee’s mistaken belief that Dr Kelly was an "intelligence source" when the committee had asked him directly whether this was an accurate description of his anonymous source.

Gilligan also denied that he lied about the nature of his source so that people would take his allegations against the government more seriously.

I guess Lord Hutton will be the judge of that.

Next up: Richard Sambrook.

UPDATE
The transcript of Gilligan's testimony is now available.