The judge investigating the suicide of British arms expert David Kelly on Wednesday cleared the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair of any wrongdoing, but launched a scathing attack on the BBC.
Summarising his findings, judge Brian Hutton said a BBC radio report that the government deliberately exaggerated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the US-led invasion on March 20 last year was "unfounded".
Kelly slashed his wrists and bled to death during the night of July 17-18 after his employer, the ministry of defence, identified him as the source of the report, produced by the BBC's defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan.
Two days earlier, he had been subjected to a highly stressful public grilling by the parliamentary foreign affairs committee.
Hutton's 328-page report and more than 400 pages of annexes were published shortly after midday (1200 GMT).
Within an hour, Blair was on his feet in the House of Commons, challenging the opposition to withdraw allegations that he misled parliament when making the case for war on Iraq.
"The report itself is an extraordinarily thorough, detailed and clear document. It leaves no room for doubt or interpretation. We accept it in full," Blair said to cheers from members of his Labour Party.
In it, Hutton said Gilligan had made "a very grave" accusation when he said that the government had "sexed up" its Iraq dossier by claiming that Baghdad could deploy chemical weapons within 45 minutes.
Hutton said it was not his remit to assess the strength of British military intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
But, he said, Gilligan's charge that the government made the 45-minute claim even though it knew it was wrong "was an allegation which was unfounded."
Blair told the Commons: "The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence on WMD is itself the real lie."
Glaring at the leader of the main opposition Conservative Party, Michael Howard, he added: "Those who made the charge should now withdraw it."
Hutton also laid into BBC senior management, saying its editorial system was "defective" in allowing Gilligan to broadcast his early-morning report without editors having seen or approved a script of what he was going to say.
Moreover, Hutton said, "the BBC management was at fault ... in failing to investigate properly the government's complaints" that Gilligan's report was false.
That remark appeared to exonerate Blair's former communications director, Alastair Campbell, who resigned in August after repeatedly clashing with the BBC.
In his report, Hutton also cleared the government of any wrongdoing which contributed to Kelly's suicide.
"There was no dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous strategy by the government to covertly leak Dr Kelly's name to the media," he said.
The government had rightly concluded that Kelly's name was bound to come out, he said.
Hutton noted that Blair was "directly involved" in talks that led to the naming of Kelly, but said he was "satisfied that no one realised or should have realised" that Kelly was under such strain that he might kill himself.
Hutton said the defence ministry "was at fault" for not informing Kelly that its press office would confirm his name to any reporter who suggested it.
In mitigation, ministry officials had tried to help Kelly, he said, but "because of his intensely private nature, Dr Kelly was not an easy man to help or whom to give advice."
It was left to the solicitor for Kelly's family, Peter Jacobsen, to make a plea on their behalf for the government "to take action to ensure that the ordeal suffered by David Kelly will never be repeated.
"No other person should have to suffer the pressure that he experienced," Jacobsen told reporters outside the Law Courts where Hutton released his report.
Publication of Hutton's report also took some of the steam out of opposition charges that the government had selectively leaked it to the tabloid newspaper The Sun, in violation of a written pledge not to do so.
The full published version showed that the quotes in The Sun's early morning edition were largely accurate.
Blair said through a spokesman that he was "very angry" at the leak, while Hutton told reporters that he would considering "legal and investigative action" against the tabloid.