Mr Gilligan sloppy? Utterly reliable, I say

After some days of turning up at Lord Hutton's inquiry, and a longer period of following its proceedings at a distance, I find myself a member of a communion as exclusive, even perhaps as eccentric, as, say, the Wee Frees. We are the Friends of Andrew Gilligan. There are not many of us. We tend to gather at The Spectator kirk: Mr Stephen Glover, Mr Frank Johnson, Mr Rod Liddle, perhaps one or two others. Most of his earlier admirers have fallen away like the seasonal leaves.

It looks as if he will now go down in history - for initial impressions are rarely erased, whatever Lord Hutton may conclude - as the epitome of the sloppy and unscrupulous journalist. He possesses the additional advantage, from the point of view of central casting, of looking the part.

And yet, like Whitaker Chambers in the Alger Hiss case (an earlier journalist to whom he bears a passing resemblance), Mr Gilligan was right. With every week that has passed in the light-oak-and-Formica of Court No 73, the more evident has Mr Gilligan's rightness become. For there clearly was an attempt, largely successful, to exaggerate Saddam Hussein's capacity for war.

On Thursday Lord Hutton asked counsel for the Government, Mr Jonathan Sumption - and where, I should like to know, has the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, been throughout these proceedings? - whether the "strengthening" of the dossier could legitimately be described as "sexing up". Certainly not, Mr Sumption replied stiffly, so pursuing his line, which may turn out to have been misconceived, that the Government did not make one single mistake throughout the entire affair.

Mr Sumption possesses an enviable certainty about what is and is not constitutionally correct. He asserted, for example, that a civil servant had no right to anonymity. This is by no means self-evident. A civil servant is not simply a servant of the Crown employed under the royal prerogative. His or her conditions of employment are controlled by statute. In case of conflict, as Mr Sumption knows as well as anyone, statute overrides prerogative. Mr James Dingemans, counsel to the inquiry, touched on this matter in his own closing speech. No doubt Lord Hutton will be able to give us an authoritative ruling when the time comes on the rights enjoyed by civil servants in this respect.

Perhaps the most crucial evidence came from Mr John Scarlett, the chief of the Joint Intelligence Committee. He does not seem to me to be a very senior figure to be occupying such a position. He certainly appeared to want to keep on the right side at No 10 both of Mr Alastair Campbell and, perhaps more so, of Mr Jonathan Powell. Indeed, whether he was dealing with either of them, he reminded me of nothing so much as of a bright young journalist conferring with Lord Beaverbrook 40 years ago.

"Ah Mr Scarlett, I see in your article that you describe Asquith as a good man. Surely what you mean is that he was not a good man?"

"Exactly what I did mean, sir."

"Of course, it is your article and no one else's, Mr Scarlett."

As then, so now. It was Mr Scarlett's dossier. He kept telling us it was. But on no occasion does he appear to have rejected the helpful suggestions for improvement proffered by Mr Powell or Mr Campbell.

With the 45-minute warning, the Government has not made any attempt to justify itself. In fact it admitted that the period in question did not, and was never intended to, refer to an attack on, say, our base in Cyprus but to a battle on Iraqi soil. Mr Tony Blair, however, even contrived to convey the impression that the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children was somehow under imminent threat.

When asked whether this impression should have been corrected, Mr Geoff Hoon asked in return whether the questioner had ever tried to persuade a British newspaper to correct anything. This was rich, not to say fruity! It suited the purposes of ministers admirably at the time to give the idea of imminent danger from Saddam. Yet they knew perfectly well that, whether the 45-minute claim was justified or not within its own narrow terms, it had been completely misunderstood.

Why then is Mr Gilligan accused of not telling the truth, whether about this or about the broader question of the strengthening of the dossier at the hands of No 10? The BBC has chosen to beat a tactical retreat, with lots of confessional, defensive stuff about "sloppy journalism".

At the same time, however, the corporation has tried to maintain a foolish distinction between reporting a source and claiming to endorse that source. The slightest acquaintance with the law of libel would have shown that the lawyers do not recognise any such distinction. And, for once, the lawyers are right. You cannot be allowed to get away with saying that Bloggs is a paedophile (far worse, these days, than a murderer) but that you are only saying so because Jones told you he was. There was no need for the corporation to maintain this silly line of defence. It could have chosen instead to support the essential truth of Mr Gilligan's report for rather longer than it did.

The last few months have been fascinating because they illuminate the different ways of going about things not only among politicians and their hangers-on but among lawyers and journalists. Of course, we already knew something of the last two. Suppose a reporter in a libel case is being cross-examined by Mr Silk QC:

Silk: Mr Dingehack, could you tell us, please, why you chose to write "My night of passion with England star" over your article?

Dingehack: Well I didn't write it.

Silk: You didn't write it? But (in tones of astonishment) it's got your name on it.

Dingehack: I know. But they do that back in the office.

Silk: I see (in tones of scorn), in the office. And what else do they do in the office?

The point is that lawyers know perfectly well that headlines are not written by the journalist concerned but they pretend not to know. Lord Hutton, the embodiment of old Ulster courtesy, showed no comparable judicial affectations. He clearly believes, however, that Mr Gilligan or one of his editors should have gone to No 10 and put his story to the apparatchiks before it was broadcast. And what does he think would have happened then? I will tell him. The wheels would have spun, the story would have been killed and we should not have gained the fascinating glimpse into public affairs which we have been granted over the past few months. So three cheers for Mr Gilligan.