Reply #74: Repercussions at BBC were quite serious -- !!!! [View All]

British Govt tried to kill BBC reporter Gilligan: ex-BBC official Greg Dyke

Posted by DeaconBenjamin
On News/Activism 10/17/2004 4:52:49 PM PDT · 34 replies · 983+ views

Hindustan Times ^
Greg Dyke, former director general of the BBC, has claimed that the British Government "tried to kill" Andrew Gilligan. Reporter Gilligan broke the story that British intelligence had "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq that sought to justify Britain's support for US-led invasion of the country. "The Government tried to kill him," claimed Dyke about Gilligan, who was forced out of his job at the BBC in January in the wake of the Hutton report that inquired into the death of scientist David Kelly. Kelly was the main source for Gilligan. Dyke was speaking at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature...

And ...

BBC BOSS QUITS AS BRIT PROBE BARES PHONY WAR STORY

Posted by kattracks
On News/Activism 01/29/2004 2:35:46 AM PST · 9 replies · 95+ views

New York Post ^ | 1/29/04 | Post Wire Services
<p>January 29, 2004 -- LONDON - The chairman of the British Broadcasting Corporation Gavyn Davis resigned yesterday and the broadcaster apologized for some of its reporting on the buildup to the war in Iraq after it was lambasted in an inquiry by a senior judge. The inquiry by Lord Hutton criticized journalist Andrew Gilligan, the BBC's management and its supervisory board of governors, for a radio report saying the government "sexed up" intelligence in a dossier on Iraqi weapons. Hutton said the BBC report was unfounded.</p>


D&P: Reports are that like NPR/PBS here in America, there is an ongoing effort to undermine/dismantle the BBC ---


And . .. Gilligan looks like a Dan Rather -- he threatened that he would expose the top guys at the BBC who outed Kelly.

I still don't get this because the Downing Street Memos certainly make clear that Bush was "fixing the intelligence" to meet his needs -- and that the British intelligence/Blair people KNEW this!!???


Also - Kelly knocks them out on the "labs" . . .

Kelly believed it was most likely that Iraq had retained some biological weapons after the end of inspections.<3> After the end of the ground war, he was invited to join the inspection team trying to find any trace of weapons of mass destruction programmes, and was apparently enthusiastic about resuming his work there. He made two attempted trips to Iraq. The first was on 19 May 2003, when he was prevented from entering Iraq from Kuwait because he did not have the proper documentation.

The second trip was from 5 June 2003 - 11 June 2003, when Kelly went to view and photograph the two mobile weapons laboratories as a part of a third inspection team. Kelly was unhappy with the description of the trailers and spoke off the record to The Observer, which, on 15 June 2003, quoted "a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq". The expert said,

They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.<1>