I’ll explain it derech moshol. Do you remember the tropper fiasco? He got together scores of rabbonim to a meeting for his conversion organization. Were they all not gedolim because they couldn’t see past him and know that he was a sinner? Did they all ignore the audio taped evidence? Does it mean that what he did was ok, because the gedolim supported him? Or do we say that haskamos don’t mean anything if the issue is clearly bad.
100 rabbonim saying a piece of pig meat is kosher doesn’t make it so; it means a mistake happened. We can’t put our heads in the sand and pretend what rabbi kook said is ok. It’s not, it’s chazer treif.
Some knew that metzius, and others didn’t, and you can’t fault them for it – gedolim have more important things to do than study the works of controversial rabbinic figures. They learn torah day and night, and lead klal yisroel.
Calling rabbi kook a tzadik or rasha is only relevant when someone sees the forbidden things he said and mistakenly thinks rhat it’s ok to think such things, because after all, didn’t the tzitz eliezer refer to rabbi kook as maran? In times like that, it’s important to know right from wrong, tamei from tahor, rasha from tzadik. Who knows how they view rabbi kook in shomayim? It’s not really my concern, and i wouldn’t care if he was “really” a tzadik? It wouldn’t make his ideas or statements any less treif.
And that’s the danger of gedolim-approval of individuals vs. ideas/actions. Nobody would say that the gedolim approve of troppers actions, even though im sure there are still rabbonim who think he’s an ehrliche person – so too, the gedolim who respected rabbi kook is not a hechsher on his statements; that’s why i said it’s a tzarich iyun, much like the rabbis who defend tropper(if there are still any, I don’t know)