One striking element of the Hutton inquiry already has been its efficiency. In a remarkably short period of time, the law lord and his team have sifted through an extensive amount of paperwork and hundreds of e-mails relating to the BBC, the Ministry of Defence and Downing Street, and produced the most salient of these items to witnesses often to their extreme discomfort. The difficulty with citing selected memos or e-mails is, however, that they inevitably represent only part of an evolving conversation. They are capable of competing interpretation and misrepresentation, even outright distortion, if taken out of context. It was the turn of Jonathan Powell, chief of staff at Downing Street, to find himself placed on the defensive by his own words yesterday.
Mr