Dyke: Blair 'Unleashed Dogs on Bbc' over Iraq

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Former BBC director general Greg Dyke tonight accused Tony Blair of reneging on a deal that no heads should roll at the corporation over the Hutton report.He also claimed that Mr Blair had forced his trusted communications director Alastair Campbell to leave No 10 because he was “out of control” and “obsessed” with his battle to beat the BBC.

In his memoirs serialised in The Observer and the Mail on Sunday, Mr Dyke claimed Mr Blair had “unleashed the dogs” after the Hutton report found the BBC had been wrong to claim the Government “sexed up” its dossier on Iraq’s weapons.According to the book, Mr Davies said: “Blair skilfully piled the pressure on and did nothing to discharge the promise there should be no resignations. I assumed he had reneged.
“I saw Campbell calling us liars and demanding heads should roll. I assumed that Blair had deliberately unleashed the dogs against us.”

Mr Dyke said that the governors panicked in the face of the pressure from Downing Street. “I had no idea I would be sacked by a board of governors behaving like frightened rabbits caught in car headlights,” he said.He claimed Mr Blair had surmised months before the Hutton report was published that he would be cleared. He quotes one of Mr Blair’s advisers, Philip Gould, as saying: “Don’t worry, we appointed the right judge”.

He is scathing about the former Downing Street communications director, describing him as a “deranged, vindictive bastard” and a “political thug”. He also described how the Government tried to “bully” the BBC into changing its coverage in the run-up to the Iraq war. “Scarlett told the journalist he was particularly worried about how the dossier had been interpreted in the press.”Mr Dyke likened Mr Blair’s methods to those of Richard Nixon’s White House.“We were duped. History will not be on Blair’s side, it will show that the whole saga is a great political scandal,” he said.

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3425296
What is really frightening is that Blair still doesn't believe or understand that what he did was fundamentally wrong
Greg Dyke

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3609072.stm

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1. Blair is sure having a bad time with the press lately. Not to mention

other members of the Labor Party. And I must say, he deserves every bit of it.