Thursday, May 13, 2004
"Whitewash? Me? With my reputation?"
Asked about the "inexplicable" narrow focus of the inquiry, [Lord Hutton] said it would have taken too long if he had gone into wider intelligence issues. He denied his narrow focus "distorted" his conclusions... Lord Hutton said: "If I had brought the prime minister back to be cross-examined, I have to say, I considered I would be regarded as simply playing to the gallery."
Asking the prime Minister to come back and be questioned, that's just not what chaps do is it? I looked him in the eye and that's good enough for me...
He said he had been "very unhappy" about the leaking of his report's conclusions to the The Sun newspaper, but an inquiry into how this happened "had not been able to find the source of the leak".
I suppose no one thought to find out what Ali C had been doing that day then? No one wondered about the known closeness between the Blair Government and the Murdoch Press, or the fondness this administration had for announcing new policy initiatives through The Sun rather than the despatch box in the House of Commons?
Asked about the "inexplicable" narrow focus of the inquiry, [Lord Hutton] said it would have taken too long if he had gone into wider intelligence issues. He denied his narrow focus "distorted" his conclusions... Lord Hutton said: "If I had brought the prime minister back to be cross-examined, I have to say, I considered I would be regarded as simply playing to the gallery."
Asking the prime Minister to come back and be questioned, that's just not what chaps do is it? I looked him in the eye and that's good enough for me...
He said he had been "very unhappy" about the leaking of his report's conclusions to the The Sun newspaper, but an inquiry into how this happened "had not been able to find the source of the leak".
I suppose no one thought to find out what Ali C had been doing that day then? No one wondered about the known closeness between the Blair Government and the Murdoch Press, or the fondness this administration had for announcing new policy initiatives through The Sun rather than the despatch box in the House of Commons?
