Hearing Transcripts

105
1 will sit again at 2 o'clock.
2 (1.00 pm)
3 (The short adjournment)
4 (2.00 pm)
5 LORD HUTTON: Yes, Mr Dingemans.
6 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Powell, we had got to 8th July, which is
7 a Tuesday. The Prime Minister has gone off to his
8 Liaison Committee meeting and you have been at home
9 until, I think you told us, about 10 o'clock in the
10 morning.
11 The Prime Minister returns from the Liaison
12 Committee meeting, I think you also told us, about
13 11.30; is that right?
14 A. That is correct.
15 Q. Do you then see him?
16 A. Yes. Immediately after he came back from the House of
17 Commons the briefing team gathered in the Prime
18 Minister's Office.
19 Q. Who was in the briefing team?
20 A. It would be the Parliamentary assistants, the private
21 secretary who deals with Parliamentary matters,
22 Claire Sumner, the PPS, David Hanson, people like that.
23 As well as, in this case, people who had specifically
24 been involved in the briefing that day, so it included
25 John Scarlett and others.

106
1 Q. John Scarlett is chairman of the JIC?
2 A. That is correct.
3 Q. You go into this meeting, is that right?
4 A. That is right.
5 Q. Who is there?
6 A. The Prime Minister then sent most of the briefing team
7 away; we had David Omand, David Manning, John Scarlett,
8 Alastair Campbell, Tom Kelly and myself.
9 Q. Right. So the others had been sent out. You are in the
10 Prime Minister's Office?
11 A. In the Prime Minister's Office.
12 Q. What do you discuss here?
13 A. Again, I tried to reconstruct the meeting. Would you
14 like me to read that?
15 Q. Yes. Yes.
16 A. "David Omand reported back that he had heard from the
17 MoD that Dr Kelly's reinterview had confirmed the
18 earlier story from his first interview. There were
19 inconsistencies remaining, but it looked as if Dr~Kelly
20 was the main explanation for Mr Gilligan's story and
21 that Mr Gilligan appeared to have heavily embellished
22 the conversation of the controversial parts of his
23 story. In discussion of what should be done with this
24 information, the following points were made."
25 Q. Then, I hope one can take this shortly --

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1 A. Yes.
2 Q. -- you looked at the Government witnesses before the
3 Intelligence and Security Committee might be asked
4 questions about who the source was?
5 A. And what did they say.
6 Q. And you did not want to be in a difficult position. It
7 was relevant the individual had come forward
8 voluntarily. Perhaps you could deal with that aspect of
9 it.
10 A. Yes. We were told he did not expect to continue to
11 remain anonymous.
12 Q. Who told you that?
13 A. I think it must have been David Omand who mentioned that
14 in a meeting on the basis of a conversation with
15 Kevin Tebbit, but I cannot be 100 per cent certain.
16 Q. Dr Kelly did not expect to remain anonymous?
17 A. We were told it had been discussed with Dr Kelly by the
18 MoD.
19 LORD HUTTON: At that stage was any thought given to
20 protecting the civil servant who had come forward from
21 being placed in the full glare of publicity on a very
22 controversial matter?
23 A. I think from the very beginning it was the view of most
24 of us, in fact probably all of us, including I think if
25 we take Kevin Tebbit's first letter to the MoD, that in

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1 the end this was going to become public. This was the
2 sort of thing we thought would become public if enough
3 people knew about it. In fact in may ways we were
4 surprised it had not already become public, both the
5 fact that a person had come forward and who that
6 particular individual was. So really the premise we
7 were working from was not that this would indefinitely
8 remain secret but that it probably would become public
9 at some stage.
10 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
11 MR DINGEMANS: The next issue appears to have related to
12 personnel procedures and that it should be handled in
13 accordance with their procedures.
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. You have noted, I think, the field of experts in weapons
16 of mass destruction was small and therefore it was
17 likely he would be identified, I think you say.
18 A. Correct.
19 Q. How did the meeting conclude?
20 A. I think we came to the conclusion that it was fairly
21 clear that was going to be the source and that it was
22 relevant both to the ISC and to the FAC, and it was
23 difficult to see how that fact could not be communicated
24 given its relevance to the proceedings.
25 Q. So a recognition that Dr Kelly's name would be given to

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1 the ISC and FAC?
2 A. We had before us the MoD press release from the previous
3 night but David Omand, I think it was, suggested it
4 might be more suitable for him to write to the chairman
5 of the ISC and pass on this fact, not the name of the
6 person but the fact that this person had come forward.
7 Q. The chair of the ISC is Miss Taylor MP, is it not?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Why did Sir David Omand suggest he should write to
10 Miss Taylor?
11 A. Because the ISC Inquiry was still going on.
12 Q. Do you know what the remit of the ISC Inquiry was?
13 A. I could not tell you accurately. I am afraid you would
14 need to ask the subsequent witness. The idea was if we
15 sent a letter to the ISC, possibly copied to the FAC,
16 and that would become public, the letter would be made
17 public.
18 Q. That would inevitably mean that Dr Kelly's name was in
19 the public domain?
20 A. No, this would simply be the fact a person had come
21 forward, not with his name. His name would be provided
22 in confidence to the chairman of the ISC.
23 Q. Then the ISC take evidence in private, is that right?
24 A. That is correct.
25 Q. So no-one is likely to have known Dr Kelly's identity

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1 then?
2 A. Well, I think that is -- you cannot be certain of those
3 circumstances. There are a large number of people
4 involved, so you cannot be certain. But he would not
5 have been in the full glare of publicity in the way that
6 the FAC --
7 Q. What about the FAC? It was intended to ask help to
8 interview him as well?
9 A. No, the idea was that the letter would be copied to the
10 FAC and be made public.
11 Q. Right. And the FAC would inevitably then come to hear
12 of the letter and may make a similar request: can the
13 person come forward and be interviewed by us?
14 A. Yes. As the minutes of the meeting says -- the
15 reconstruction of the meeting says it was recognised
16 that once the FAC was aware it was highly likely they
17 would invite him to appear as well.
18 Q. Was there a preference, amongst those at the meeting,
19 expressed for the ISC or FAC for this particular further
20 investigation?
21 A. I think that the sense was that the ISC would be better,
22 but a recognition that once the ISC had done it, it was
23 almost certain that the FAC would ask as well.
24 Q. And was there any discussion about whether Dr Kelly's
25 name should be released to anyone else, for example the

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1 BBC?
2 A. There was a discussion towards the end of the meeting
3 about what we should do with the BBC on the name.
4 Should we write to them, again in confidence, and if so
5 to whom, letting them know the name or should we write
6 to some third party, like the chair of the ISC, giving
7 her the name in confidence. The problem we envisaged
8 was this question of source protection. They would
9 simply deny the name. So we were thinking of some way
10 in which we could give the name without meeting that
11 objection.
12 Q. Can I take you to a document, CAB/1/4 which is an
13 extract from an earlier chronology that was prepared.
14 It is item 21 that I would like you to look at. You
15 have told us there were no notes of the meeting made,
16 and this note of the meeting was supplied to us a wee
17 bit earlier than the note you have just looked at.
18 A. Hmm, hmm.
19 Q. This says:
20 "Meeting to discuss actions in the light of
21 reinterview. Acceptance that in the light of the second
22 interview no option but to make public the fact that
23 someone had come forward who might be the source."
24 Can you explain why that view was taken?
25 A. Yes, I mean, again, I take you back to Kevin Tebbit's

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1 letter of Friday and the point (a) we discussed earlier
2 in that letter, that it was clear if this was indeed the
3 case, that this person was Mr Gilligan's source, then it
4 would be important that we make this public and not try
5 to hide it.
6 Q. Right. Because, I mean, if you go to a document,
7 MoD/1/54, which is a report of the second interview --
8 first of all, have you seen this letter before? This is
9 a letter from Mr Hatfield which relates what happened at
10 the second interview.
11 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, we are on MoD?
12 MR DINGEMANS: 1/54, my Lord.
13 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much.
14 A. I saw this not at the time but subsequently when the MoD
15 submitted a chronology to you. This was attached to
16 that.
17 MR DINGEMANS: So you saw it then?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. But not contemporaneously. Was this the gist of what
20 was being reported, paragraph 2:
21 "As I told you last night, there was no change in
22 the essentials of his story and in particular he stoutly
23 maintains that, as in his original letter, he did not
24 make accusations about the dossier and, in particular,
25 did not suggest that any material had been added by

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1 Downing Street."
2 A. That is correct, and to the extent he maintained what he
3 had said to Gilligan. But it was clear to those who
4 interviewed him that they thought -- at least
5 Martin Howard appeared to think he was indeed the source
6 on the basis of what he had said, but that Gilligan that
7 had embroidered and embellished the story.
8 Q. It is really this point: if on Friday you have the
9 original version or a summary of the original version of
10 interview and at that stage it is decided, for the
11 reason you have given, not to put his name in the public
12 domain; we know there is now a second interview and the
13 letter says: no change in the essentials of the story.
14 Why is it now decided, whereas on Friday you decided not
15 to put his name up to the Committees, it is now decided
16 to put his name up, as it were?
17 A. This, of course, is not a letter, this is an internal
18 MoD minute which we did not see.
19 Q. No.
20 A. What we had been told was that the interview, as I think
21 I said earlier, did seem to confirm he was indeed the
22 source and that some of the contradictions had been
23 resolved from that point of view.
24 Q. Right. And I mean, can I just ask you a series of
25 questions about Dr Kelly's name coming out into the

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1 public domain? I mean, was one of the reasons that
2 Dr Kelly's name was wanted to be put into the public
3 arena was to correct -- was to show that Mr Gilligan was
4 wrong about what he claimed to have been told?
5 A. Not Dr Kelly's name. I mean, the fact that someone had
6 come forward certainly, as again I referred to that
7 Kevin Tebbit letter of Friday made it clear: if we had
8 these facts, we should make them public. One just has
9 to think for a second what would have happened if we had
10 not made them public and what we would have been accused
11 of in those circumstances in terms of a cover up.
12 Q. How seriously did you take the claims, and those around
13 you, and you are obviously right within the centre of
14 No. 10 Downing Street, the claims that had been made by
15 Mr Gilligan's broadcast?
16 A. Well, we thought they were a very, very serious
17 allegation to make against a Government, that it had
18 inserted into the dossier some intelligence which it
19 knew to be untrue and stuck them in there for its own
20 purposes. We thought that was an extremely serious
21 allegation.
22 Q. Did you at this stage consider, and to what extent, the
23 strain and burden that might be imposed on Dr Kelly
24 giving evidence to both the FAC and ISC?
25 A. I mean, no, it was not something that came to us.

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1 I would emphasise here again: the Prime Minister
2 constantly said that this must be dealt with in terms of
3 the MoD officials from a personnel point of view and
4 handling the person. What we were looking at was the
5 implications for the FAC investigation, the ISC
6 investigation and the Government's position more
7 generally.
8 LORD HUTTON: May I just ask you, Mr Powell, when you refer
9 to the Government's position more generally, if we could
10 just look again at Sir Kevin Tebbit's letter of 4th July
11 on page 2, it is CAB/1/11.
12 Just scroll it up a little if you would, please.
13 Yes, thank you very much.
14 In point (a) Sir Kevin is making the point that one
15 possibility is that if Mr Gilligan had embellished the
16 official's meeting with him and that he is the "single
17 anonymous source" then:
18 "In the case of (a) we would have the strongest
19 possible reason for publicly correcting the
20 misrepresentation made by Gilligan in the interest of
21 factual accuracy."
22 You just told Mr Dingemans that the Government
23 regarded Mr Gilligan's report as being a very serious
24 and erroneous report that the Government had inserted
25 information which it knew to be incorrect.

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1 If this civil servant was the source of
2 Mr Gilligan's story, and if Mr Gilligan had embellished
3 that account, now that you knew who his source was you
4 could have asked that source to go public and to state
5 publicly that he had not made the type of allegation
6 which Mr Gilligan reported him as having made.
7 A. Hmm.
8 LORD HUTTON: I mean, was that part of your thinking?
9 A. I mean, we did not address that particular option of
10 asking him to go up and, say, do a press interview or
11 anything like that. No, I think we thought that the
12 appropriate place was the ISC for him to go and give his
13 evidence on this point.
14 LORD HUTTON: But was the purpose of that to bring it into
15 the public domain, to let the public see?
16 A. Yes.
17 LORD HUTTON: However it was done, whether it was before the
18 ISC or the Foreign Affairs Committee or in some other
19 way --
20 A. Yes.
21 LORD HUTTON: -- was it part of your thinking that now that
22 you knew who the source was, that source could be asked
23 or could be required to state publicly that what
24 Mr Gilligan had reported was, to a considerable extent,
25 embellished?

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1 A. Yes -- I mean, we always thought it would become public
2 that there was such a source. Whether he would answer
3 questions or not was the subject of a subsequent point
4 because the first point, I think, is that the very fact
5 of who he was, i.e. he was not a senior intelligence
6 figure, he was not involved in the intelligence part of
7 the dossier, the very fact of who he was gainsaid
8 Mr Gilligan's piece, regardless of what he had or had
9 not told Mr Gilligan. It was the very identity of this
10 person, i.e. not that he was Dr Kelly but he was an
11 expert not an intelligence official. So the very fact
12 itself was the key and salient point.
13 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see. You see, you have been stressing
14 that your concern was that if you did not furnish
15 Dr Kelly's name to the FAC you would be regarded as
16 a cover up.
17 A. Yes.
18 LORD HUTTON: But as I understand your evidence, and please
19 correct me if I am in the slightest degree wrong because
20 I want to understand this as fully as I can, it was not
21 a strong part of your thinking at this meeting on
22 8th July that: now we have the source, we can use that
23 source to show that Mr Gilligan's report was largely
24 incorrect.
25 A. Again, I would say the fact we had the source and the

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1 source was not what Mr Gilligan had claimed the source
2 to be was the key factor, rather than necessarily what
3 he would say about what he had said to Mr Gilligan and
4 vice versa, although that was obviously an important
5 point as well.
6 LORD HUTTON: I see. Thank you.
7 MR DINGEMANS: Can I just ask you in fact what you knew
8 about Dr Kelly at this stage? Did you know, as I think
9 we heard on the first day, that he was one of the United
10 Kingdom's leading experts on Iraqi weapons of mass
11 destruction in terms of chemical and biological warfare?
12 A. No, my knowledge of Dr Kelly was fairly sketchy and
13 confined to what we had been told in those various
14 meetings that I referred to, for example that he had sat
15 next to Jack Straw at a FAC meeting, that he was an
16 expert, a scientist, that he was a former inspector.
17 Those were the sort of things that we knew.
18 Q. Did you know that he had contributed to the writing of
19 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office part of the dossier,
20 the history of UN inspections?
21 A. I think we did know that, although I could not be sure
22 which day we knew that, but yes.
23 Q. Did you know as at 10th September he was passing
24 comments on, we have seen the e-mail, the amount of
25 growth material that the Iraqis might have, being

119
1 suggested in the report?
2 A. No, I did not know that.
3 Q. Did you know that on 19th September he was taking part
4 in a DIS meeting reviewing the final draft of the
5 dossier?
6 A. No, I did not know that, no.
7 Q. If you had known all those things, would that have had
8 any effect on your decision to put his name out into the
9 public domain?
10 A. No, I do not think so.
11 Q. Because all those things suggested he was closer to the
12 dossier than your contemporaneous understanding. First
13 of all, do you accept that, that those matters I have
14 just put to you suggest that he was closer to the
15 dossier than your contemporaneous understanding?
16 A. I do recall when we were suggesting amendments to the
17 MoD press release we did want to put into that the fact
18 he was a senior expert. I cannot remember the precise
19 words we used. The point had been made if he was
20 sitting next to Jack Straw it could hardly be claimed he
21 was not someone who was intimately involved in these
22 things. The point was he was not involved in the
23 intelligence part of the dossier; he could not know
24 whether or not the 45 minutes had been added by
25 No. 10 Downing Street.

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1 Q. He could know, and apparently did, when the 45 minute
2 claim had been made. We know from the e-mail he had
3 seen the draft of the dossier, must have been
4 5th September which does not have the 45 minutes claim.
5 We know on 19th September he is looking at a draft of
6 the dossier which we have been able to establish does
7 have the 45 minutes claim. He must have been able to
8 know when the 45 minutes claim was added. Did you know
9 he had that kind of knowledge?
10 A. No, I did not know he had that kind of knowledge, but
11 that still would not have put him in a position to know
12 who had added the 45 minutes or why it had been added
13 and therefore, from the point of view of the Gilligan
14 story, it would not stand up because he was not one of
15 those who participated in doing that.
16 Q. Do you have any general view or understanding about the
17 circumstances in which, in principle, the name of
18 a civil servant is put into the public arena?
19 A. No, I cannot claim to be a -- to know that.
20 Q. We are still on 8th July. Is there anything else that
21 is happening this day? You have another meeting, is
22 that right?
23 A. Yes, so the conclusion of that first meeting was that
24 David Omand would go away and draft the letter to the
25 chair of the ISC. He had to leave for Ottawa for an

121
1 official visit and he asked John Scarlett to do the
2 drafting for him.
3 Q. Right.
4 A. The Prime Minister and I and others had to go into
5 a meeting immediately after that meeting we have just
6 been discussing, the 11.30 meeting.
7 Q. I think a point you wanted to make was there were lots
8 of other things going on at the time. Perhaps, just to
9 make the point, you can give some illustration about the
10 other political issues et cetera you were looking at.
11 A. Indeed, as I think I mentioned in what I said in writing
12 to you, the --
13 Q. You will understand that private witness statements are
14 not being put into the public domain, so if you want to
15 say anything it is important you say it.
16 A. Thank you. This was a very minor part of what we were
17 doing or what I was focusing on in No. 10 Downing Street
18 at that stage. We had just had the meeting with Bertie
19 Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach about the Northern Ireland
20 peace process and we were following up what to do about
21 that. The Prime Minister was drafting his speech to the
22 Congress, which he would give the following week at the
23 US Congress. A lot of time and effort went into that.
24 We had had a video conference with President Bush which
25 we had to prepare for and follow up. There were two

122
1 all-day sessions of the Cabinet at the end of that week
2 that needed to be prepared for on the Thursday and
3 Friday was the third-way conference that the Prime
4 Minister needed to be prepared for. There were a whole
5 series of other issues going on and this was very much
6 in the interstices between those various bits.
7 Q. Subject to those qualifications, if I can now take you
8 to that afternoon meeting. What time do you think it
9 started?
10 A. I think it started at about 1.30.
11 Q. What time had your 11.45 meeting on Dr Kelly finished?
12 A. I think that finished about 12.30.
13 Q. So there is not much time off between 12.30 and 1.30?
14 A. We had gone straight into another meeting, as I said.
15 When we came out of that, we resumed this meeting.
16 Q. What were you looking at in the meeting?
17 A. The idea was to look at the draft of the letter to the
18 ISC which had been prepared by John Scarlett in the
19 intervening period.
20 Q. Did you in fact send that letter?
21 A. No, in the course of the meeting we got a message from
22 the ISC, via David Omand, who was at the airport at that
23 stage, saying they would not welcome such a letter but
24 they would have no objection to a press release which
25 said that the person in question was willing to be

123
1 interviewed by the ISC.
2 Q. I mean, do you understand any of the reasoning behind
3 that?
4 A. Well, yes, the work of the ISC is not public and they
5 would not welcome the fact of their work being made
6 public, by us or anyone else.
7 Q. So they did not want a letter that was published?
8 A. Published saying what they would be doing or whether
9 they would be interviewing this person and so on.
10 Q. So what was wrong --
11 LORD HUTTON: Is it also right that they like to set their
12 own agenda rather than have it suggested to them by
13 other people?
14 A. That is a good point, yes.
15 MR DINGEMANS: So what was wrong with sending them a private
16 letter? The concern, as I understand it, is Dr Kelly
17 putting the record straight, Intelligence Security
18 Committee identified as the proper Committee. ISC do
19 not want a public letter because that publicises what
20 they do, so why not send a private letter?
21 A. You recall from the previous meeting what we had been
22 discussing was how we should make the fact that someone
23 had come forward public because we thought it would be
24 wrong to withhold that information. So we were clear it
25 was going to become public. The manner in which we had

124
1 discussed doing it in the first meeting was that letter
2 to the ISC. That was now no longer possible since the
3 ISC did not want us to do it that way, so we had to look
4 at other means of doing so.
5 Q. What were those other means? First of all with the ISC,
6 how did you sort that out?
7 A. Well, with the ISC we adopted the idea that had been put
8 to us by them, that we could refer at the end of our
9 press release to the fact that this individual was
10 willing to be interviewed by them. But in terms of how
11 we would make it public we reverted to the idea of
12 a press release, which is what had been sent to us by
13 the MoD the previous evening.
14 Q. So the 8th July, because the ISC are not happy with you
15 publicising the letter to them --
16 A. Hmm.
17 Q. -- you are now going back to the Ministry of Defence
18 press release?
19 A. That is correct.
20 Q. You, in fact, produced some Q and A material. Can
21 I take you to CAB/1/59? You can see that there is an
22 e-mail. Can you tell everyone who that e-mail is to and
23 from?
24 A. Yes, the first one in the sequence is from our
25 Parliamentary private secretary, the person who deals

125
1 with Parliamentary affairs, to me. Then it is replied
2 from me to her.
3 Q. Right. What is the first one about?
4 A. Well, they are both about a Q and A on the issue of this
5 official coming forward.
6 Q. Right. And why were you drafting this?
7 A. Well, it turns out, having spoken to this official
8 subsequently, this was actually a misunderstanding.
9 There was -- this official thought she was drafting
10 a Q and A for the Prime Minister's questions on
11 Wednesday, which is her job to prepare for that.
12 I thought she was drafting a more general Q and A on
13 this issue.
14 Q. Right. So these are draft -- if you turn to page 60,
15 you can see most of these will need to be answered by
16 MoD:
17 "When was the PM made aware that the individual had
18 come forward? And by who?"
19 You can see it appears to be directed towards
20 questions to the Prime Minister.
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. So these are drafts of what was understood, then, to be
23 an issue that might be raised at Prime Minister's
24 questions, is that right?
25 A. That is correct. It was a rather sort of a -- not

126
1 a terribly well-developed piece of work. It was a very
2 rapid series of quick fire questions and even less
3 series of responses which I e-mailed back very quickly,
4 but this piece of work did not go anywhere subsequently.
5 Q. You also decided to chase down one other specific aspect
6 on 8th July. Can I take you to CAB/1/62? What is this?
7 A. Yes, this is an e-mail from me to John Scarlett; and
8 I have noted somewhere that Mr Gilligan claims, I do not
9 know where this was, whether it was in an article or in
10 his evidence to the FAC or where it was, that the source
11 had expressed scepticism to him about the uranium for
12 Niger. I wondered if Dr Kelly had said he had discussed
13 that with Gilligan as well, because that would be
14 a confirming point about being the source or not being
15 the source.
16 Q. Did you get any reply to this?
17 A. I do not think I got any reply to this, no.
18 Q. Right. We then come, on page 63, CAB/1/63, to the MoD
19 press statement. Did you have any input into this?
20 A. Yes. The MoD statement, as I said, was faxed to us, or
21 at least two versions were faxed to us on the -- are we
22 at Tuesday? Tuesday night. And on Wednesday morning
23 when I came in, while the Prime Minister was still at
24 Liaison Committee, I scribbled some comments on the
25 longer of the draft MoD statements.

127
1 Q. Right.
2 A. Would you like me to explain a bit more about that?
3 Q. Yes.
4 A. I had then given that to Alastair Campbell in the course
5 of the meeting which we were -- the first meeting I have
6 just described, the earlier of the two meetings, and
7 which he has scribbled on some further comments. At the
8 end of the meeting I put those two comments together
9 into one manuscript draft, which I gave to John Scarlett
10 to help him with the letter he was going to draft to the
11 ISC after that meeting.
12 Q. Did those get incorporated into the MoD press statement
13 itself?
14 A. Some of them were incorporated into the draft letter to
15 the ISC which itself then informed the final MoD press
16 release.
17 Q. Press statement?
18 A. Press statement.
19 Q. Was there anything further that happened on 8th July?
20 A. Yes. At the end of this meeting I was describing, the
21 subsequent meeting to look at the letter to the ISC,
22 Kevin Tebbit returned from an official visit to
23 Portsmouth, just as the meeting was ending. And he and
24 the officials from the meeting then went to another room
25 to try to draft up what the MoD press statement might

128
1 look like.
2 Q. And how did they get on with that? Did they finalise it
3 up?
4 A. Kevin Tebbit had brought a different version with him
5 and we had all these various bits of paper and we typed
6 out a version.
7 Q. Who is there drafting this press statement?
8 A. There is Kevin Tebbit, Alastair Campbell, Tom Kelly,
9 Godric Smith, myself, John Scarlett -- and I think that
10 is it.
11 Q. All working on the MoD press statement going out on the
12 evening of 8th July?
13 A. Well, working on a draft of the MoD press statement.
14 Q. Right, going out -- this must be some time before 5.45
15 because I think we hear from Pam Teare she thought it
16 went out at 5.45?
17 A. It was immediately after this earlier meeting
18 I mentioned to you, so it must have been something
19 around 2.30.
20 Q. So before 4.45?
21 A. Well before 4.45.
22 Q. Is that the extent of the dealings you had that day
23 concerning Dr Kelly?
24 A. No, I think there is an important point at the end of
25 this exercise with Kevin Tebbit on the MoD press release

129
1 that we said to him -- I said to him expressly he should
2 take this back to the MoD, that he should not be bound
3 by it, that he should amend it in way he felt like and
4 that it should certainly not be issued unless they were
5 entirely and utterly comfortable with it. And
6 I repeated this a number of times.
7 Q. Did he make any changes to the draft?
8 A. Yes, the draft that was issued was amended from the
9 version that we saw. He called me later that afternoon
10 to tell me it had been cleared with Dr Kelly.
11 Q. What were the changes? Do you --
12 A. I mean, there is one large-ish paragraph about the BBC
13 that was dropped, but I cannot recollect the other
14 changes.
15 Q. That concluded your involvement with Dr Kelly on 8th
16 July, is that right?
17 A. I think that is right.
18 Q. Can I take you to 9th July? We are here on Wednesday
19 morning. CAB/1/86. We pick up your involvement through
20 some e-mails. If we look at the bottom of the page, and
21 we are working up, as it were --
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. -- the first one is from Sandra Powell on behalf of
24 Alastair Campbell. I assume Sandra Powell has nothing
25 to do with you; it is just a coincidence?

130
1 A. No relation, no.
2 Q. She is working for Alastair Campbell and she is writing
3 to Clare Sumner and you are copied into it, is that
4 right?
5 A. That is correct.
6 Q. Can you just read out for us the e-mail?
7 A. The whole thing?
8 Q. Yes, if that is all right.
9 A. Alastair says:
10 "I am wondering whether in the light of yesterday's
11 developments, there is not a case for me doing more with
12 the ISC than the half hour with a limited focus on
13 intelligence handling."
14 The reason it is half an hour is we were going to
15 leave that day for Washington, so there was a limited
16 window for him to do the interview:
17 "If the BBC situation develops as it might, surely
18 it is in our interest for the ISC to delve deeply into
19 this, by interviewing the source, and Gilligan and
20 myself, and for us all putting over our concerns about
21 the damage this could do to the integrity of the
22 Intelligence Services."
23 Q. Obviously there are questions I can ask Mr Campbell in
24 relation to this. What did you understand this to be
25 getting at?

131
1 A. I think he was talking about whether the ISC would
2 interview the source, Dr Kelly; whether they would
3 interview Mr Gilligan about what his report said; and
4 whether they should interview Alastair Campbell.
5 Q. Right. And I mean it looks, if one is reading the
6 e-mail, as if some of the ISC's agenda is at least being
7 suggested to them, you know: half an hour limited focus
8 on intelligence handling and now you have the
9 information about Dr Kelly, let us go into it a little
10 more deeply. Is that fair or unfair?
11 A. I think what he is doing is volunteering -- rather than
12 just giving them half an hour constrained by him leaving
13 for Washington, to give them a longer interview for him
14 to say more about this. He is not setting their agenda.
15 LORD HUTTON: In the penultimate line what is the reference
16 to "this"? What is "this" referring to?
17 A. I suppose it refers back to the BBC source situation but
18 as not the author I suppose I am not the best placed --
19 LORD HUTTON: Yes, we can ask Mr Campbell about this.
20 MR DINGEMANS: Then you say:
21 "I've not gone back to them yet. We could offer
22 them 8.30-9.45 on 17th July."
23 That is for his evidence?
24 A. I do not say that, Claire Sumner says that.
25 Q. Right. Looking at his diary. Is that after he has

132
1 returned from Washington?
2 A. I cannot remember the date of the visit, I am afraid, so
3 I am not sure if that after or before, or whatever it
4 is.
5 Q. The situation before and after Dr Kelly's arrival on the
6 scene, so far as you are concerned, that must have been
7 a gap that could have been offered to the ISC in any
8 event?
9 A. I do not know.
10 Q. And you then do come in at the top and you reply to
11 Claire Sumner and Alastair Campbell:
12 "We should certainly get them to interview Gilligan
13 and source, and best if you give evidence after both of
14 them."
15 What are you suggesting there?
16 A. That I thought the idea suggested by Alastair was an
17 extremely good one and the ISC which, as you will
18 recall, was our favoured conduit for this rather than
19 the FAC, should talk to all three of them to get
20 a picture of it.
21 Q. If one then turns to CAB/11/135, these further e-mails,
22 you can see, effectively, that e-mail that has come --
23 A. I have the same one on my screen.
24 Q. The same one. Then 136, there is a further e-mail from
25 the Garden Rooms of the House. I imagine that is

133
1 somewhere in the House of Commons, is that right?
2 A. Exactly. That is our secretarial office in the House of
3 Commons.
4 Q. It is sent to D News and Defence Secretary. You are
5 copied in.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. It is Alastair's note of 9th July.
8 A. What is that?
9 Q. Do you recall seeing this document?
10 A. I must have seen it if it was e-mailed to me.
11 Q. Let me show you the note. CAB/11/137. This is
12 Mr Campbell's letter or draft note, as it is described:
13 "Thank for your letter replying to mine of X.
14 "You appear to misunderstand the purpose of my
15 letter. I am not asking you to divulge your reporter's
16 source, and I fully understand why you would not do so.
17 "The issue here, however, is not source
18 protection..."
19 Then talking about:
20 "If he is not the source, then we need press the
21 matter no further.
22 "However, given the controversy this has caused, and
23 as your defence of your reporting rests on the claim
24 that the SOURCE, not the BBC, was making the
25 allegations, I think it is important that the name of

134
1 the person be given to the BBC".
2 Then a number of further points, before leading in
3 the penultimate paragraph:
4 "I can tell you that the person is named X X, and he
5 is employed as Y Y, (with some explanation about the
6 unusual status)."
7 Did you look at this draft note at the time?
8 A. What I think this is a draft letter from Geoff Hoon to
9 the chairman of the BBC. I am not sure, but I think it
10 is.
11 Q. If we look at MoD/1/71, what we see is Mr Campbell's
12 note is not word for word, because there has been some
13 changing around a bit and some shortening of it, but you
14 can see the essential gist of it forms Mr Hoon's letter
15 to Mr Gavyn Davies of the BBC.
16 A. Yes. Were there not two letters to Mr Davies? I have
17 forgotten what the sequence was.
18 Q. Yes, there was an original letter. We have not seen --
19 maybe it exists -- any draft that Mr Campbell produced
20 of that.
21 A. I see, yes.
22 Q. We have not seen you copied into that. Do you know
23 whether Mr Campbell was involved in the earlier draft of
24 Mr Hoon's letter?
25 A. He certainly discussed with Geoffrey what a letter to

135
1 Gavyn Davies should say, yes.
2 Q. We can see at least his suggestions, some of which were
3 accepted, some of which were not, in that e-mail and
4 then Mr Hoon's letter that deals with it.
5 Those appear to be the main e-mails that you were
6 involved in on that day. And we know that the defensive
7 Q and A material is being deployed from last night and
8 that various journalists are ringing up throughout the
9 course of the day.
10 A. Hmm.
11 Q. Did you have any other involvement on 9th July?
12 A. The only involvement that I recall on that day was when
13 the press office told me that a number of newspapers had
14 got hold of Dr Kelly's name.
15 Q. Right. And what was your reaction to that news?
16 A. My reaction was to go along to the press office, to
17 Godric and Tom's office, to say I hoped someone was
18 doing something to make sure Dr Kelly was protected,
19 that if the press were going to besiege his house he had
20 somewhere else to go, that he had a press officer with
21 him. I was reminded of a number of other incidents in
22 Government where people are besieged by the press in
23 these circumstances.
24 Q. What were you told about on that?
25 A. Godric or Tom, I cannot remember which, called the MoD

136
1 and then called me back to say it was in hand, it was
2 already in hand. It was not my idea that was in hand.
3 Q. That is 9th July. Did you have any other involvement on
4 that day, apart from those e-mails that I have shown you
5 and your discussion about protection from the press?
6 A. I do not think so, no.
7 Q. Can I then take you to a document, CAB/1/75?
8 This is a letter which has you addressed on the top
9 of it, but it is suggested, I think, this gets to you on
10 10th July. We have had Monday 7th, Tuesday 8th,
11 Wednesday 9th and now we are on Thursday 10th July.
12 This is from Martin Howard to John Scarlett, asking:
13 "You asked for a short note of Dr Kelly's views of
14 the Iraqi WMD programme and the Government's dossier,
15 published last September. What follows reflects points
16 made by David Kelly [both in interview and in his
17 letter]."
18 It says "Jonathan Powell" at the top. Can you read
19 the rest of the writing?
20 A. Yes, that is John Scarlett's writing. It is addressed
21 to me saying "Jonathan Powell."
22 Q. It seems to suggest --
23 A. It says "Re: Prime Minister meeting". I am wrong, it
24 says:
25 "The Prime Minister may find this of interest"; in

137
1 John Scarlett's writing.
2 What this is referring back to is the point we
3 discussed before from the Monday meeting about what
4 Dr Kelly's views were on weapons of mass destruction in
5 general. If you recall, Kevin Tebbit said he would go
6 away and find more information about that.
7 Q. Right. We have the letter of 8th July. Can we go to
8 CAB/1/77. We can see some more handwriting in the top
9 right-hand corner. First of all, can you read it?
10 A. It is a test.
11 Q. It is not designed to be difficult.
12 A. I think it says:
13 "See over the page and the attached extract from
14 Gilligan evidence to the FAC."
15 Q. Do you recognise whose handwriting this is?
16 A. That is also John Scarlett's handwriting.
17 Q. And "Note after?"
18 A. "Note after that Kelly may ..."
19 Q. "... state his view ..."?
20 A. "... if given ..."
21 Q. "... the chance ..."
22 A. "... by the FAC that the trailers are not for BW
23 production. It is not clear (to me) how widely the FAC
24 will go in their questioning."
25 Q. But that is Mr Scarlett's note, so I should ask him

138
1 about all that. Sorry, I was not clear whether you had
2 anything to do with that aspect.
3 A. My writing is even worse than that, I am afraid.
4 Q. You alerted, I think, at this stage, you had received
5 invitations from both the ISC and the FAC for Dr Kelly
6 to give evidence to the respective bodies, is that
7 right?
8 A. The MoD sent to us, on that morning, copies of letters
9 they had been sent by the chairs of the ISC and the FAC.
10 Q. Do you know if there had been any further contact? We
11 know what the contact was with Miss Taylor. She had
12 been told: you are going to get a letter, it is going to
13 be published. She said: I am not interested in that,
14 you can make a press statement. You do and there had
15 been a follow up letter.
16 A. Hmm, hmm.
17 Q. Had there been any contact with the FAC about these
18 matters?
19 A. Not that I am aware of, no.
20 Q. What was, at this stage, the atmosphere in
21 Downing Street? We have only really got the e-mails to
22 judge it by. I mean, was it now a situation where
23 people were perceiving that the BBC were going to have
24 to cave in on their story?
25 A. No, I do not think we had such high expectations of the

139
1 BBC after what we had been through.
2 Q. Was there any thought of Dr Kelly's role in all this?
3 You know, what he might be going through, with his name
4 now in the press et cetera?
5 A. They were concerned. Anyone in the eye of the storm
6 with the press, you know, has a pretty tough time of it.
7 Q. Can I take you to a document? It is CAB/1/93. It is an
8 e-mail addressed to you. This is just before 3 o'clock
9 in the afternoon. It is from Tom Kelly. Who is
10 Tom Kelly?
11 A. Tom Kelly is one of the two Prime Minister's official
12 spokesmen, along with Godric Smith.
13 Q. It is to you. Tom Kelly writes this:
14 "This is now a game of chicken with the Beeb -- the
15 only way they will shift is they see the screw
16 tightening."
17 Was Dr Kelly's role in this game of chicken a player
18 or being played with?
19 A. I do not think this is referring to Dr Kelly at all as a
20 matter of fact. I think Tom is a former employee of the
21 BBC. He worked for the BBC in Northern Ireland for a
22 very long period of time. He had throughout this been
23 trying to find a ladder for the BBC to climb down so
24 they could leave this in a dignified way and accept they
25 had got the story wrong. I think he felt by the stage

140
1 we had got to this point we were sort of locked on
2 confrontation and there was no way that the BBC could
3 gracefully climb out. I think that is what he was
4 saying in this note. That is my best supposition, but
5 of course you can ask him.
6 Q. I will ask him. Did you go back and ask him what was
7 meant by this e-mail?
8 A. No, I did not. I think I would have interpreted it in
9 that same way that day, because I knew the efforts Tom
10 had been making to find a way out.
11 Q. Well, find a way out; and he suggests that the way out
12 is the screw tightening; and was Dr Kelly's evidence
13 part of the screw tightening on the BBC?
14 A. I think you will have to ask Tom Kelly that. I cannot
15 interpret it much more than I have done.
16 Q. Did you dissent from the views expressed by Tom Kelly in
17 this e-mail?
18 A. I think that we had reached a point where it was going
19 to be very hard for the BBC to climb down, given what
20 they had said up to that point.
21 Q. Just lower down, can I ask about this? This is an
22 e-mail, slightly earlier, that is from you to
23 Claire Sumner and copied in to the Prime Minister's
24 official spokesman and Alastair Campbell. You said
25 this:

141
1 "We tried the Prime Minister out on Kelly before FAC
2 and ISC next Tuesday. He thought he probably had to do
3 both but need to be properly prepared beforehand.
4 I passed this on to MoD."
5 What was this all about?
6 A. This was after I received the copies of the letters from
7 MoD that had been sent to Dr Kelly and to the MoD by the
8 chair of the FAC and the ISC. I told the Prime Minister
9 that those letters had come in. I said: what did he
10 think? As really had been the conclusion of the meeting
11 on Tuesday, as you will recall from the note of that, he
12 felt that if summonsed by the FAC it was very hard to
13 explain why we were not going to send him to the FAC;
14 what would be the justification in or refusing to send
15 him before the FAC. He did think he should be properly
16 prepared before the meeting in the way the
17 Prime Minister is prepared before the Liaison Group or
18 any of these other meetings that ministers and officials
19 go to before Parliament. They always have a briefing
20 session beforehand so they know the sort of questions
21 they might face.
22 Q. We have seen, last week, some of the preparations and
23 questions that Dr Kelly had, including a note which
24 suggested that Dr Kelly had been briefed about tricky
25 areas. Is that what you were expecting to happen when

142
1 you sent your memo?
2 A. I do not know anything about it, I am afraid. What we
3 expected was that he would be briefed in the same way
4 the Prime Minister, any other minister or an official
5 would be before appearing before a Parliamentary
6 Committee.
7 Q. Just before leaving this e-mail, I mean some of the
8 questions, obviously, on the top part of the e-mail are
9 obviously for Mr Kelly, but you received the e-mail so
10 it is obviously right I should give you the chance to
11 deal with that. You understood this to be referring,
12 then, to the story about Mr Gilligan's sources with the
13 BBC; is that right?
14 A. Yes, indeed. Yes.
15 Q. Can I take you to another e-mail that you appear to have
16 got later on that day? It is CAB/11/11.
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. This is Tom Kelly again. It is to you, FAC.
19 "The [Ministry of Defence] tell me there is
20 a possibility that David Kelly may appear before the ISC
21 rather than the FAC. But the latter would surely be
22 better, because if Kelly appears next Tuesday, they
23 could recall Gilligan next Wednesday."
24 I had understood you to be saying that you were
25 quite happy with the proposition that the ISC would deal

143
1 with the matter.
2 A. Hmm, hmm.
3 Q. And the FAC would not. But here is Mr Kelly, who is
4 a member, I think he is a Prime Minister's official
5 spokesman, is he not, suggesting that the FAC is going
6 to be a better forum for this? Do you know why he
7 thought that?
8 A. No, you would need to ask him, but I would just point
9 out that follows the e-mail that I had sent earlier in
10 the day saying the Prime Minister was content with him
11 going to both, or was reconciled to him going to both.
12 Q. Which is I why I put that e-mail to you first.
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. It certainly seems that some in Downing Street were
15 holding the view that perhaps the ISC was not the
16 appropriate forum, the FAC would be better. I will ask
17 him.
18 That takes us really to the situation where Dr Kelly
19 is now destined to give evidence to both the FAC and ISC
20 and your involvement on the 10th July.
21 Did you have any other involvement in relation to
22 this matter?
23 A. On the 10th?
24 Q. Yes.
25 A. I do not think so.

144
1 Q. And then what happened on 11th July? We are now on
2 Friday.
3 A. The one salient thing I think that happened then was
4 John Scarlett called me, I think in the morning, to say
5 the idea had been put forward of a public session of the
6 ISC, instead of Dr Kelly going to both the FAC and the
7 ISC. He was very strongly opposed to this on the
8 grounds it would subvert the whole work of the ISC,
9 which invariably meets in private. The whole point of
10 it is to meet in private so it can consider intelligence
11 material. He was therefore strongly opposed to it.
12 I agreed with him that it would be a very bad solution.
13 I spoke to the Prime Minister and others in No. 10 and
14 I called -- telephoned the private office in the MoD to
15 say that was our view.
16 Q. Was that after you had spoken with the Prime Minister
17 about that?
18 A. Yes, I spoke to the Prime Minister and others in No. 10,
19 and then I passed that view on.
20 Q. And, for example, I will ask Tom Kelly about his e-mail
21 that I have taken you to, I mean, did you pass on that
22 e-mail to the Prime Minister or was he made aware of
23 those comments?
24 A. No, he was not.
25 Q. And the comments that we have seen that Tom Kelly made,

145
1 did that reflect the general atmosphere in
2 Downing Street at the time, that this was perhaps a game
3 of chicken with the BBC? They were being intransigent,
4 they were not accepting they were wrong on parts of
5 their story, and you knew you were right?
6 A. It is hard to speak for the generality of No. 10, but I
7 think people thought it was going to be very hard at
8 that stage for the BBC to climb down.
9 Q. If it was going to be hard for them to climb down and
10 you wanted to win the argument and Dr Kelly's arrival on
11 the scene was a happy coincidence in all that?
12 A. I do not think that is the case. The point we had been
13 trying to make, as I said earlier, Tom Kelly, in
14 particular, was to find a way that the BBC could find a
15 ladder on which to climb down gracefully and admit they
16 got it wrong.
17 Q. Is there anything else that you know of the
18 circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly that you
19 can help his Lordship with?
20 A. I do not think so, no.
21 Q. And is there anything else that you would like to say in
22 relation to the matters that you have set out?
23 A. No, I do not think so.
24 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much indeed.
25 A. Thank you.

146
1 MR DAVID MANNING (called)
2 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
3 Q. Can you tell his Lordship your full name?
4 A. David Jeffrey Manning.
5 Q. What is your current occupation?
6 A. I am currently the British Ambassador for the
7 United States.
8 Q. What was your occupation earlier on in July this year?
9 A. Earlier on this year I was the foreign policy adviser to
10 the Prime Minister and also the head of the overseas and
11 defence secretariat in the Cabinet Office.
12 Q. How long did you hold that role for?
13 A. I took that job on at the beginning of September in
14 2001.
15 Q. So you were in post effectively at the time that the
16 dossier was being written and prepared?
17 A. Yes, I was.
18 Q. Did you have anything to do with the preparation of the
19 dossier?
20 A. I was aware of the preparation surrounding the dossier.
21 I was not actually involved in drafting it.
22 Q. Right. And you had nothing to do with any of the
23 intelligence aspects to it?
24 A. No. I would have seen some of the intelligence that
25 went into the dossier but I was certainly not involved

147
1 primarily with the intelligence.
2 Q. Coming on then to early July, if I may, and the
3 circumstances in which you first become aware of
4 Dr Kelly's existence. First of all, before that, had
5 you ever heard of Dr Kelly at all?
6 A. No, to the best of my knowledge I had never heard of
7 him.
8 Q. When was your first involvement in the matter?
9 A. It was on the evening of 4th July.
10 Q. And what happens then?
11 A. I was telephoned by, I think, either David Omand or
12 John Scarlett, to say that they had been told by
13 Sir Kevin Tebbit, who is the permanent undersecretary in
14 the Ministry of Defence, that someone had come forward
15 in the Ministry of Defence who had said that he had been
16 in contact with Mr Gilligan; and they asked if they
17 could come down and discuss this issue.
18 Q. Sir Kevin Tebbit asked if he could come down and discuss
19 it?
20 A. No, David Omand and John Scarlett, in the light of the
21 phone call to David Omand.
22 Q. We have heard from Jonathan Powell there was a meeting
23 at 6 o'clock. Did you have any discussions before that
24 meeting at 6 o'clock?
25 A. Yes, we did. We met as a threesome initially.

148
1 Q. Just help me with who?
2 A. First of all, David Omand and John Scarlett came to see
3 me after phoning me to ask if they could come and
4 discuss this. The three of us sat down and discussed
5 it.
6 Q. That was in Downing Street?
7 A. That was in Downing Street in my office.
8 Q. You discussed it. Can you tell us what the gist of
9 those discussions were?
10 A. Yes. I think there were two things that we discussed
11 particularly. The first was whether or not we should
12 make the fact that an official had come forward --
13 whether we should make this available to the Foreign
14 Affairs Committee and also to the ISC, the Intelligence
15 and Security Committee, because we knew that they were
16 both meeting to discuss the issue of the allegations in
17 Mr Gilligan's broadcast.
18 Q. Do you know what the remit of the Intelligence and
19 Security Committee was?
20 A. I do not know exactly. I would assume that they would
21 have been asked to look in particular at the
22 intelligence element in the dossier, because they
23 operate in private and are therefore able to look at the
24 intelligence material in a way which the Foreign Affairs
25 Committee cannot.

149
1 LORD HUTTON: By whom would they have been asked, Sir David?
2 A. I presume, my Lord, they would have been asked --
3 I think probably would have asked to do this themselves
4 when they heard that there was the controversy over
5 Mr Gilligan's arguments. I assume that Ann Taylor MP,
6 the chair, would have asked to set up this committee,
7 but I do not know for sure.
8 LORD HUTTON: Do they to some extent set their own agenda?
9 Do they have a general responsibility to consider
10 intelligence and security matters and then they decide
11 what matters they will consider?
12 A. I think they probably do, my Lord. I think we would
13 need to ask John Scarlett exactly how it works. But my
14 understanding is that they do ask to set their own
15 agenda and that probably, from time to time, they
16 consult the Prime Minister, to whom they report.
17 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you very much.
18 MR DINGEMANS: And so there is discussion about the ISC and
19 FAC. And were any conclusions reached?
20 A. The conclusions were that they should certainly consider
21 whether we should make this information available to
22 them. No conclusion was reached in the sense that we
23 decided that we definitely should; but we were concerned
24 that this was important, perhaps material, to their
25 enquiries and we should therefore consider very

150
1 carefully whether to make this information known to
2 them.
3 Q. Were you aware of the cooperation or extent of
4 cooperation that the Government had provided to the FAC
5 when it was preparing its report?
6 A. I was not aware in great detail, no.
7 Q. Can I take you to a short passage? I am not sure what
8 you have seen of Mr Powell's evidence, but FAC/3/10, and
9 take you to paragraph 6, if I may, of that report, where
10 it is apparent from that that the FAC considered,
11 rightly or wrongly, that they were not getting the
12 cooperation that they expected from the Government.
13 They point to the fact that the Cabinet Office
14 intelligence coordinator, chairman of the JIC, who we
15 know is John Scarlett, the chief of Defence
16 Intelligence, head of Secret Intelligence Services and
17 director of GCHQ, none of them applied to invitations
18 and the Foreign Secretary told them they would not
19 apply; and there was some discussion about whether
20 Alastair Campbell would give evidence, which had been
21 resolved in favour of him giving evidence, and they had
22 not been given all the relevant extracts of the JIC
23 assessment, although they had been shown some in private
24 session.
25 So, on the face of it, a sudden concern to cooperate

151
1 with an Inquiry who produces a report recording you have
2 not cooperated seems unusual. Can you help me with
3 that?
4 A. I think I may be able to. It does not surprise me that
5 the people in this list did not appear before the
6 Foreign Affairs Committee. They would expect to appear
7 before the Intelligence and Security Committee. They
8 are all, I believe, officials who are dealing with
9 intelligence matters; and, as I said earlier, the ISC
10 has responsibility for investigating matters pertaining
11 to intelligence and can do so because it meets in
12 private. It is what is known as being "inside the ring
13 of secrecy". So these people would normally have
14 testified before the ISC. I am not sure whether any of
15 them have ever testified before the FAC.
16 Q. I think later on in the report they refer to the
17 situation before the ISC was set up.
18 A. Yes. Perhaps before it was set up.
19 Q. And that they had in the past.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. At paragraph 7 it says:
22 "... the Prime Minister has repeatedly said in the
23 House that he will cooperate fully with a parallel
24 inquiry by the statutory Intelligence and Security
25 Committee. This is hardly surprising, since the

152
1 Committee was appointed by and reports to him, and it
2 meets entirely in private."
3 They obviously felt slighted by that.
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. It is no part of our questioning to work out what was
6 going on in that respect. But the sudden concern to
7 ensure that Dr Kelly should appear before the FAC, or
8 the Government should be seen to be cooperating with the
9 FAC, seems on the face of it inconsistent with the
10 attitude that had been displaced before.
11 A. Well, I can only speak for myself but I would have
12 thought that we should certainly make the fact available
13 to the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee that
14 this had happened. It would be for him then to decide
15 what he wanted to do with that knowledge. But if I had
16 been asked for my advice at that stage, I would have
17 said that since there had been a major Public Inquiry
18 conducted by the Foreign Affairs Committee on this
19 issue, if someone had come forward who seemed to be
20 potentially very important we must at least consider,
21 which is what we were discussing on that Friday night,
22 whether that fact should be made available to him.
23 Q. One of the major matters investigated by the FAC was,
24 for example, whether the dossier had been, in that
25 expression, "sexed up" by Downing Street in September.

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1 I mean, if Downing Street was very keen to be
2 cooperating with the FAC, a possible way of cooperating
3 would have been to provide the drafts of the dossier.
4 But one of the complaints the FAC make: we did ask for
5 them, we did not get them.
6 Again, the question really is the same: is there not
7 an inconsistency in the approach to the FAC?
8 A. Well, I think we are back into this division between
9 what the FAC sees as its role and the ISC sees as its
10 role. I do not know how that decision was reached. But
11 my assumption would be that the drafts would go to the
12 ISC because they would be intelligence based and that,
13 therefore, it would seem to be appropriate to give them
14 to the ISC rather than to the FAC. But perhaps on this
15 question of cooperation -- it is worth, perhaps,
16 pointing out that in the end Alastair Campbell did
17 appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee; and again,
18 I think in the normal run of events he might well have
19 not done that because there is a convention that those
20 working in private offices or for Ministers do not
21 appear in front of Parliamentary Committees.
22 Q. Can I then take you to the letter you did see later on
23 that afternoon, which is MoD/1/34. We have seen it
24 a number of times now. This is the letter from
25 Sir Kevin Tebbit to Sir David Omand. This is what you

154
1 saw later on that Friday --
2 A. In fact, I did not see this.
3 Q. Right.
4 A. Because I left shortly after the enlarged meeting, when
5 Jonathan Powell joined us.
6 Q. Which I think he told was at 6 o'clock.
7 A. Yes, that is right. And I had not seen this before
8 I had to leave.
9 Q. Where had matters got to at the time when you left?
10 A. The conclusion of our meeting when the four of us were
11 present, David Omand, John Scarlett myself and
12 Jonathan Powell, was that Jonathan would speak to the
13 Prime Minister, alert him to this development and see
14 how he responded. So we had taken no decisions to do
15 anything except inform him.
16 Q. And after that occurs, what is your next involvement?
17 A. It is on Saturday, when, as I recall, early in the
18 afternoon of Saturday, John Scarlett telephoned me when
19 I was at home.
20 Q. Yes.
21 A. And he quite frequently used to speak to me in my last
22 job at weekends, when we would just run quickly over
23 developments. I recall that we spoke about Iraq but
24 that in the course of that he also told me that he had
25 been in touch with others during the course of the

155
1 morning and that the Prime Minister had been informed
2 about developments. He, the Prime Minister, and I think
3 John himself, had seen Kevin Tebbit's letter, though
4 I am not sure about John, and concluded that nothing
5 further should be done over the weekend.
6 Q. You did not offer any view on that suggestion?
7 A. Well, as I recall, John said to me that Kevin Tebbit's
8 letter left open areas of doubt, that Kevin was
9 concerned about discrepancies between what the Gilligan
10 text had said and what Andrew -- and what Dr Kelly was
11 saying. And in the light of this, it seemed better not
12 to do anything precipitate, and I gather that was the
13 Prime Minister's view and that seemed to me to be right.
14 Q. Did you then have anything further to do with issues
15 relating to Dr Kelly until the Monday morning?
16 A. No, I did not.
17 Q. So you come into work on Monday morning; and do you have
18 any meetings relating to this matter?
19 A. Yes, we did. We met at 9.30 that morning. Perhaps
20 I could just say, preceding that I was not involved with
21 the other earlier meeting because, as I recall, I was
22 meeting my successor in my job who was coming to spend
23 three days with me, from the Monday to the Wednesday.
24 So that would, I think, be the 7th and 8th in terms of
25 this Inquiry. And I think I took him with me, but I

156
1 cannot be absolutely sure about this, to a meeting
2 I certainly went to at 9.30 in the Prime Minister's
3 office.
4 Q. So who is present at the meeting?
5 A. To the best of my memory it is David Omand,
6 Kevin Tebbit, Jonathan Powell, Alastair Campbell, the
7 Foreign Secretary, myself, Nigel Scheinwald, and
8 possibly Godric or Tom, Godric Smith or Tom Kelly, but I
9 cannot be absolutely sure.
10 Q. The last two we know to be the Prime Minister's official
11 spokesmen and you gave another name, Nigel Scheinwald?
12 A. Nigel Scheinwald is the person who is taking over from
13 me at the end of this month as the Prime Minister's
14 foreign policy adviser and who came to be in No. 10 and
15 work alongside me on 8th, 9th and 10th July.
16 Q. Effectively shadowing you through this process?
17 A. Exactly.
18 Q. What was said about Dr Kelly at this stage?
19 A. Well, this -- I should say that this meeting at 9.30,
20 which was a rather fluid event, with people coming and
21 going quite a lot, was about essentially the
22 Government's response to the Foreign Affairs Committee
23 report.
24 Q. Right.
25 A. So it was not a meeting called to talk about Dr Kelly as

157
1 such; but Dr Kelly's name did indeed come up at that
2 stage and, as I understand it, the MoD had concluded,
3 not least in the light of press interest over the
4 weekend, that it was important to reinterview Dr Kelly
5 to get at the facts. I think this was something the
6 Prime Minister readily agreed to, because he did not
7 want us to do anything precipitous and felt we needed to
8 try and establish more closely what the connection was
9 between Mr Gilligan and Dr Kelly.
10 Q. At this stage had you been told Dr Kelly's name?
11 A. Yes, I think I first heard Dr Kelly's name on Friday
12 night at the meeting at 6 o'clock and I think he was, at
13 that stage, mentioned to me as somebody working either
14 for the Foreign Office or for the Ministry of Defence.
15 Q. Had you been told any details surrounding Dr Kelly?
16 A. Not at that stage, no.
17 Q. You, at that stage, just know he is either with the MoD
18 or the FCO?
19 A. Yes. As I recall, the details about Dr Kelly started to
20 emerge in meetings on Monday and Tuesday.
21 Q. Was there any discussion at this Monday morning
22 meeting -- where did this meeting take place?
23 A. It took place in the Prime Minister's Office on Monday
24 morning.
25 Q. Is there any discussion here about putting Dr Kelly's

158
1 name out into the public domain?
2 A. I do not think at that stage there was. I think this
3 was quite a brief reference to Dr Kelly, as I recall,
4 and it was simply for the Prime Minister, and indeed all
5 of us who were there, to discuss whether or not we
6 needed to try to get more facts; and at this point, in
7 the light of, I think, Kevin Tebbit having said there
8 was a lot of press interest over the weekend, this made
9 him think that perhaps the balance of probability was
10 tilting towards Dr Kelly being the source. The
11 conclusion of the meeting was that Dr Kelly should be
12 reinterviewed.
13 Q. We know that a letter was written -- can I take you to
14 MoD/1/41, which is a letter from Sir David Omand to
15 Sir Kevin Tebbit. Although it is dated 5th July --
16 sorry, we know that Sir David Omand is effectively
17 writing to Sir Kevin Tebbit -- I am sorry, I have given
18 you the wrong reference -- asking for a further, more
19 detailed analysis. If one scrolls down the page,
20 effectively:
21 "The Prime Minister asked for a deeper analysis of
22 what the official has actually said."
23 And that appears to have been written at a time
24 before your meeting on 7th July. So was there any
25 further discussion? Because to the extent there was

159
1 a discussion about: let us give him a further interview,
2 the decision appears already to have been made?
3 A. I can only assume this letter is based on discussions
4 David Omand had either with the Prime Minister or
5 others, and that the meeting on Monday morning is
6 confirming there should indeed be such a reinterview.
7 Because there would not have been an opportunity,
8 I think, to interview Dr Kelly over the weekend.
9 Q. So the Prime Minister's view, expressed through
10 Sir David Omand, is a deeper analysis and you all have
11 a meeting on the Monday morning and conclude that is
12 a correct view?
13 A. Yes, but that is a subsidiary element of a meeting that
14 is actually about the FAC --
15 Q. Primarily designed to deal with the Government's
16 response to the Foreign Affairs Committee report?
17 A. Exactly.
18 Q. Did you have any further dealings on 7th July?
19 A. As I recall, Kevin Tebbit telephoned me in the afternoon
20 of 7th July just to say there would be a further
21 interview; that he had decided he should not do it
22 himself. I think I commented I personally thought that
23 was absolutely right --
24 Q. Can you just help us with your reasoning on that?
25 A. It seemed to me that the MoD should follow its proper

160
1 procedures throughout. The Prime Minister had been very
2 insistent on this, and I think it would have been very
3 strange if the permanent undersecretary had taken on the
4 interviewing of someone who had come forward in the way.
5 It seemed to my quite correct he should ask somebody
6 else in the chain of command to do that and then come to
7 report to the Prime Minister.
8 Q. Can I ask you about MoD procedures at this stage? There
9 is reference to you saying, and Jonathan Powell saying,
10 that it should all be conducted according to Ministry of
11 Defence procedures. Do you know what Ministry of
12 Defence procedures were applicable to this?
13 A. I do not know in detail, but each department in
14 Whitehall will have its own procedures for dealing with
15 somebody who has apparently come forward and said they
16 may have been talking out of turn or there may be some
17 disciplinary issue. I think our concern was that it
18 should be left in their hands.
19 Q. Do you know, on a wider basis, whether there are any
20 procedures governing the circumstances in which the
21 names of civil servants are given to the press?
22 A. I do not know that there are firm guidelines for this.
23 In something like appearing before a Parliamentary
24 Committee however, the expectation, I think, would be
25 that anyway middling to senior members of a department

161
1 would appear in public, if required to do so, and in
2 those circumstances their names inevitably become
3 public. I do not know of any, as it were, guidelines
4 that govern all eventualities, no.
5 LORD HUTTON: This might be a time to give the stenographers
6 a break. I will rise for five minutes.
7 (3.13 pm)
8 (Short Break)
9 (3.20 pm)
10 LORD HUTTON: Yes, Mr Dingemans.
11 MR DINGEMANS: I was asking you about guidelines for civil
12 servants appearing in the public eye and you told me
13 about Parliamentary Committees. Are you aware of any
14 guidelines that relate to the naming of individuals to
15 the media?
16 A. No, I am not aware of any specific guidelines on that.
17 Q. Can I just take you to a portion in the defensive
18 Q and A material that was prepared for the Ministry of
19 Defence? At MoD/1/63. The third paragraph down, where
20 it is said, in the question that is expected to be asked
21 by the journalist:
22 "It is unprecedented for a Government department to
23 make a statement of this sort. Why have you done it?"
24 Proposed answer:
25 "There is no comparable situation that springs to

162
1 mind. We have set out the facts as they have been put
2 to us, on an issue of considerable public concern. The
3 official volunteered the information to us."
4 Is the basis on which the answer is drafted right,
5 that it is unprecedented for a Government department to
6 make a statement of this sort?
7 A. I cannot think, immediately, of another example. I do
8 recall, however, at one of the meetings on Monday or
9 Tuesday, so that is the 7th or 8th, that we were told
10 that it had been put to Dr Kelly that his name was
11 likely to be given to the two Parliamentary Committees
12 and that he was content with that. But I do not know of
13 another occasion quite like this, when a Public Inquiry
14 by a Parliamentary Committee turned on -- I think
15 particularly on a very small number of possible
16 witnesses.
17 Q. Who told you about Dr Kelly's views on that? Do you
18 remember who said that at the meeting?
19 A. I cannot be sure about this. I know it cannot --
20 I think I know it cannot be Kevin Tebbit because I think
21 it was on Tuesday morning and he was not at the meeting.
22 I therefore think it was probably David Omand, but that
23 may be wrong. I am confident somebody said that.
24 Q. Did that influence your thinking of the matter, namely
25 the understanding that Dr Kelly was happy for his name

163
1 to go forward?
2 A. It seemed to me important that he should be consulted on
3 this, yes.
4 Q. Important that he should be consulted; but his reported
5 answer or the answer reported to you, that was obviously
6 a factor in your approach to it, is that right?
7 A. Yes, it was a factor in my approach. But I have to be
8 honest with you, I thought it very unlikely that if the
9 conclusion was reached that Dr Kelly might well be
10 Andrew Gilligan's source, that it would be possible to
11 shield his name from public knowledge.
12 Q. Why is that?
13 A. Because I was struck by the article in The Times on
14 Saturday the 5th which, if I recall, was a front page
15 article which clearly showed that the press were very
16 interested in who Andrew Gilligan's source or sources
17 might be. And it seemed to me that it was unlikely
18 given the level of press and public interest, that if
19 somebody had come forward in this sort of way that their
20 name was likely to remain secret.
21 Q. If you had known, for example, that Dr Kelly was less
22 than happy about his name coming out, if that had been
23 his view, would that have affected your views on whether
24 his name should be given to the FAC or ISC?
25 A. I think if I had known he was unhappy about it, it would

164
1 have perhaps qualified the way that we spoke or
2 indicated to the chairs of those Committees; but I would
3 still have taken the view that we should make it known
4 to the chairman and the chair of the ISC, the chairman
5 of the FAC, that someone had come forward.
6 Q. Can I just ask you about Ministry of Defence procedures
7 et cetera? Because we have heard evidence earlier on
8 that Dr Kelly is interviewed on the Friday afternoon,
9 and it is Dr Wells and Mr Hatfield that sit in on that
10 interview. Mr Hatfield writes up a note and he, at the
11 end of it, suggests to Dr Kelly that he is not going to
12 take official disciplinary action but he is going to
13 tell him off for having unauthorised contacts with
14 journalists and writes him a letter. We subsequently
15 see the letter. As far as the record appears to go, and
16 this was Dr Wells' understanding, and Dr Wells was his
17 line manager, that appeared to be the end of it.
18 Indeed, on the Monday morning or Sunday night after,
19 Dr Kelly goes to RAF Honnington where he is going to do
20 some training.
21 If there was all the concern about all this being
22 dealt with in accordance with Ministry of Defence
23 procedures, why was there, on the face of it, an
24 interference and a suggestion: right, give a second
25 interview?

165
1 A. I am not sure there was an interference. As I recall,
2 Sir Kevin Tebbit said earlier on there might well have
3 to be a further interview. I think he may well have
4 said that in the very first telephone conversation with
5 David Omand that I was aware on the Friday. The idea he
6 should be reinterviewed came from either the MoD or
7 David Omand. I have no recollection of that coming from
8 either No. 10 or the Prime Minister. Having said that,
9 it seemed to me a perfectly sensible course of action.
10 Q. Do you know whether or not Dr Kelly was ever given
11 a security style interview, whatever that might mean?
12 A. No, I have no idea.
13 Q. So that is the 7th July. Do you have any further
14 contacts in relation to this matter?
15 A. Yes, on 8th July there are --
16 Q. Or on 7th July?
17 A. No, as far as I recall none further after my telephone
18 conversation with Sir Kevin Tebbit. As far as I recall,
19 that is my last dealing.
20 Q. You are dealing with other issues and matters. Then you
21 come on to Tuesday 8th July.
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Can you tell us what your involvement is then?
24 A. Yes, there was an early morning meeting in the
25 Prime Minister's office at about 8.15.

166
1 Q. What was that for?
2 A. This was to prepare him or at least go through areas he
3 might want to discuss before he appeared before the
4 Parliamentary Liaison Committee, which is a Committee
5 I believe that is the chairman of all the Parliamentary
6 Committees. Which is something he does, I think, every
7 six months.
8 Q. Who was present at that meeting?
9 A. Well, if my memory serves, it would have been
10 Alastair Campbell, almost certainly his Parliamentary
11 briefing team, so Claire Sumner; and I think probably
12 John Scarlett was there. I think someone who works with
13 me as one of the foreign affairs private secretaries
14 Matthew Rycroft would probably have been there. I do
15 not have a complete sense of who was there, I am afraid.
16 LORD HUTTON: Can I ask you, Sir David: when the
17 Prime Minister appears before the Parliamentary Liaison
18 Committee, is he open to questions on virtually subject
19 that a member of the Committee wishes to raise?
20 A. I believe so, my Lord, though I think that they indicate
21 to him beforehand the sorts of areas that they will want
22 to address.
23 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see.
24 A. Which may be very general.
25 LORD HUTTON: Yes.

167
1 MR DINGEMANS: And insofar as the discussions were about
2 other matters, no interest at all; but was there any
3 discussion about Dr Kelly?
4 A. I think that there was a brief mention of Dr Kelly
5 because by this stage he had been reinterviewed, the
6 afternoon before.
7 Q. Had you been told about the results of the reinterview
8 before this meeting?
9 A. No, I did not know what the results were; and I think on
10 the basis of that we just told the Prime Minister that
11 he had been reinterviewed. But I believe that the main
12 point, and this~--
13 Q. You say "we told", it could not have been you because
14 you did not know --
15 A. I think some people at the meeting said he had been
16 reinterviewed.
17 Q. Who told him that?
18 A. I think it probably would have been David Omand at that
19 stage. But I do not think there was any discussion in
20 any detail. The Prime Minister's main preoccupation at
21 that meeting about Dr Kelly was what should he say if
22 the Parliamentary Liaison Committee asked him. First of
23 all, did he, the Prime Minister, think he knew who
24 Andrew Gilligan's source or sources were, and had anyone
25 come forward?

168
1 Q. You agreed a line to preserve the situation if he had
2 been asked about that?
3 A. Yes. The Prime Minister was obviously reluctant to be
4 drawn on this until further work had been done, he did
5 not want to commit himself; and he wanted to be fair to
6 Dr Kelly. He said he did not want to do anything
7 precipitative at that stage and therefore concluded, as
8 he was summing-up, I think, that meeting, that it would
9 be best for him not to be drawn at that stage.
10 Q. And was he drawn on that?
11 A. As far as I know, he was not.
12 Q. So he goes off to the Parliamentary Liaison Committee
13 and returns.
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Do you then take part in any other briefings or
16 discussions?
17 A. Yes, I do. There was a meeting that I think began at
18 about 11.30.
19 Q. Who is present at this meeting?
20 A. At this meeting, David Omand, John Scarlett, myself,
21 I think Jonathan Powell was present, Alastair Campbell,
22 perhaps other members of the press team and perhaps my
23 colleague, Matthew Rycroft. What I cannot remember,
24 I am afraid, is whether or not my successor,
25 Nigel Scheinwald, came to that meeting or not.

169
1 Q. We have heard from Jonathan Powell about whether or not
2 notes are made. As far as you are aware, are any notes
3 made of these meetings?
4 A. It varies quite a lot. If it is something on the
5 foreign policy side, particularly if we have, say,
6 a foreign visitor to 10 Downing Street, then a note is
7 made. If there is a big meeting at which key decisions
8 are going to be made, there may well be note taking.
9 But if it is a meeting when the Prime Minister is, in
10 a sense, having a discussion with his advisers or there
11 is just sort of a quick consultation then, no. I do not
12 think there is any hard and fast rule.
13 Q. And your recollection is that no notes were made of
14 these meetings that you are talking about at the moment?
15 A. No.
16 Q. Sorry, I interrupted. First of all, where did this
17 meeting take place?
18 A. This was in the Prime Minister's office again.
19 Q. What was discussed at this meeting?
20 A. At this meeting there was a discussion about what action
21 we should take in the light of the view that I think was
22 expressed by David Omand, given Kevin Tebbit's absence,
23 that MoD now did think there was quite a strong
24 possibility that Dr Kelly was Mr Gilligan's source.
25 Q. Who communicated that view?

170
1 A. I think it was David Omand; but, as I say, I cannot be
2 absolutely sure. I am confident that Kevin Tebbit was
3 not present.
4 Q. Right.
5 A. And I think, in that case, David Omand must have been,
6 as it were, standing in on that side.
7 Q. So there is now the belief that Dr Kelly is the source
8 of the story; and what is said about further action?
9 A. Can I just correct you on one thing: there is a belief
10 that he may well be; it is not absolutely conclusive.
11 Q. Sorry.
12 A. I think we came back to the issues that we had first
13 debated on the Friday, which is whether or not we should
14 convey this fact that someone has come forward who may
15 be the source to the chairman of the Foreign Affairs
16 Committee, the chair of the ISC; and also whether or not
17 we should inform the BBC.
18 Q. Right. Well if, on Friday, the situation is he may be
19 the source, and on Monday evening when the interview is
20 finished, so Tuesday morning when you are discussing it,
21 the situation is broadly the same, he may be the source,
22 why is the decision taken to communicate to the FAC/ISC?
23 A. Because I do not think that the situation is the same.
24 I think the balance of probability has shifted by
25 Tuesday morning in the light of the second interview;

171
1 also in the light of the press articles over the
2 weekend; and also I know that John Scarlett had looked,
3 very carefully, at the witness statement by
4 Andrew Gilligan to the Foreign Affairs Committee, when
5 I think I recall Andrew Gilligan had said only one of
6 his sources had talked to him about the 45 minutes. And
7 it has become clear, by Tuesday morning, that Dr Kelly
8 acknowledged that in some form or other there was
9 a reference to this. So by this stage, if I am correct,
10 there is more of a likelihood than there had been on
11 Friday or Monday that Dr Kelly might be Mr Gilligan's
12 source.
13 Q. Can I just ask you about John Scarlett's involvement and
14 take you to a document, CAB/1/46? This is a document
15 dictated on behalf of John Scarlett on 7th July 2003.
16 So that is the Monday. And you are right, he is, at the
17 moment, saying:
18 "I agree with Kevin Tebbit's letter of Saturday
19 [which followed, if you will remember, the article in
20 The Times] that the finger points strongly at
21 David Kelly as Gilligan's source. I have been through
22 the Gilligan/FAC transcript again [your recollection he
23 had looked at]. I attach copies of two pages in
24 particular which seem to make it clear that Gilligan has
25 only talked to one person about the September dossier.

172
1 If he could have referred to any corroborating
2 information he would have done so. If this is true,
3 Kelly is not telling the whole story.
4 "Gilligan must have got the 45 minute single
5 intelligence report item from somewhere, presumably
6 Kelly. Conclusion: Kelly needs a proper security-style
7 interview in which all these inconsistencies are
8 thrashed out. Until we have the full story, we cannot
9 decide what action to take. I think this is rather
10 urgent. Happy to discuss."
11 Now, we have looked at the records -- I appreciate
12 you were not here last week -- of the 4th July interview
13 and the 7th July interview, and Dr Kelly is not asked,
14 for example, whether he knew about the 45 minute
15 allegation being added in late.
16 We have discovered, last Monday, that in fact he
17 probably would have done because he had seen the dossier
18 at least on 9th September, and he saw it again on
19 19th September. He is never asked that in interview by
20 the Ministry of Defence.
21 Here you have John Scarlett saying: Kelly is not
22 telling the truth. Yet instead of thrashing it out with
23 Dr Kelly in private, he is put to the FAC and ISC.
24 Can you explain the circumstances in which that
25 happens?

173
1 A. Well, I cannot explain the exact circumstances and
2 I think it would be for John Scarlett to say. I do not
3 have the date of this on the screen but I am assuming --
4 Q. 7th July, if you go down to the bottom.
5 A. I think this will be before the 8th July meeting,
6 therefore.
7 Q. Right.
8 A. And therefore I assume it is before the second
9 interview.
10 Q. Right.
11 A. And certainly on 8th July the impression that the
12 meeting was given, just before lunch, so the late
13 morning meeting after the Prime Minister's appearance at
14 the Parliamentary Liaison Committee, was it now did seem
15 more likely.
16 Q. So the extent John Scarlett had asked for
17 a security-style interview, your understanding is that
18 is what had taken place on the Monday afternoon?
19 A. I do not know exactly what he meant by "security style".
20 Q. Certainly I will ask him.
21 A. But what I assume from the force of this is that he
22 wanted a more, if you like, forensic discussion,
23 examination of the facts. But I do not know exactly
24 what he meant by it.
25 Q. And at this stage do you yet have any knowledge of

174
1 Dr Kelly's own role in the dossier?
2 A. No, nothing very substantive. I have to be careful now
3 because since the Inquiry began I have, of course, seen
4 a lot of witness transcripts. But I think, over the
5 Monday and the Tuesday meetings, it became clear that he
6 was, indeed, a very considerable expert on WMD and that
7 he had had quite a lot of dealings with the press,
8 media, but that he had not been involved in the drafting
9 of the intelligence sections of the September dossier.
10 I think I know all that from the Monday and Tuesday
11 meetings, but I have to say it may be knowledge
12 contaminated by what I have subsequently read.
13 Q. Had you been shown, for example, evidence showing that
14 he had made specific comments on growth media possessed
15 by Iraq, which was passed on on 10th September?
16 A. No, I was not aware that he had done that.
17 Q. Were you aware, at this stage, that he appeared to have
18 taken part in a DIS intelligence review on
19 19th September where a whole series of detailed comments
20 were made about the drafting of the dossier?
21 A. No, I was not.
22 Q. And did anyone in your group raise the issue of what
23 Dr Kelly actually did know, at this stage?
24 A. Well, I think that probably the answer to this will be
25 yes, because I assumed that when Kevin Tebbit,

175
1 David Omand and John Scarlett were discussing these
2 issues, then I would think, almost certainly. But
3 I personally was not familiar with Dr Kelly's career.
4 I had not heard about him. And I did not know at what
5 meetings he had taken part in the DIS or elsewhere.
6 Q. So, effectively, the people to ask about these specific
7 questions are Sir Kevin Tebbit, Sir David Omand and
8 John Scarlett?
9 A. Well, that would be my assumption, yes.
10 Q. Right. And what is concluded at this meeting that
11 started at about 11.30 on Tuesday 8th July?
12 A. I think the conclusion was that we should inform the
13 chair of the ISC, since the ISC was still conducting its
14 enquiries and it was therefore a live Inquiry, and that
15 this should be done by means of a letter to Ann Taylor,
16 who is the chair, and that it should probably go from
17 David Omand and that this letter, I think, should be
18 copied to Donald Anderson, the chairman of the Foreign
19 Affairs Committee.
20 Q. Right. I think you have explained why Ann Taylor is
21 going to get the letter, because she has an ongoing
22 Inquiry. Why is it going to be copied to
23 Donald Anderson?
24 A. Because, as I think I said earlier, we felt that it was
25 very important that we were not in the position of

176
1 apparently withholding key information from the Foreign
2 Affairs Committee, which had just spent several weeks
3 investigating this matter when something that was
4 perhaps very important had just emerged and that as a
5 courtesy, to say the least, we should tell the chairman
6 of the Foreign Affairs Committee what had happened.
7 Q. There was, I think we were told, a proposal to publish
8 the letter. Do you know why that was suggested?
9 A. I do not. I do not.
10 Q. Did you have any view on whether the letter should be
11 published?
12 A. I do not recall having expressed any view on, whether it
13 should be published or not. It seemed to me that if
14 a letter went out that was copied to the Foreign Affairs
15 Committee, the fact of the letter might very well become
16 public; but I think that is a different thing from
17 advocating that it should be published. My assumption
18 would have been that if we decided that we were going to
19 send a letter to the chair of the ISC and the chairman
20 of the FAC, then it would probably become public
21 knowledge.
22 Q. But once you decide to publish the letter, obviously
23 that makes it very much easier for all the circumstances
24 to come out. Publication of the letter itself did not
25 add anything to the duties or your discharge of the

177
1 duties of notifying the ISC and FAC, did it? It did not
2 help you to notify them?
3 A. But my understanding is that the letter would have gone
4 to Ann Taylor simply saying: this person has come
5 forward, and would have been copied to the chairman of
6 the FAC; and that on this basis the name would not have
7 been included in the letter but that the name would have
8 been divulged privately, I believe was the plan, to
9 Ann Taylor, separately in a telephone call, I think,
10 from David Omand.
11 Q. Right. We then know that there is apparently contact
12 with Ann Taylor who says she does not want the letter,
13 she would rather it was announced in a press statement.
14 We will no doubt hear from Ann Taylor about that later
15 on.
16 Were you party to any of these discussions or
17 anything?
18 A. No. The discussion on the Tuesday morning, I think, was
19 resumed, as it were, early in the afternoon. But I had
20 by that stage left the meeting with Nigel Scheinwald, my
21 successor, and had gone off to discuss really my
22 handover with him.
23 Q. Were you part of any of the press statements being
24 issued by the Ministry of Defence? Did you have any
25 involvement with that?

178
1 A. No, I did not.
2 Q. Did you have any involvement in the defensive Q and A
3 material that I have shown you part of?
4 A. No. No, I did not.
5 Q. Did you in fact have any further involvement in the
6 matters relating to Dr Kelly being named?
7 A. No, I did not. I should perhaps explain that I was in
8 the process of trying to clear my desk, and also
9 preparing, insofar as I could, for the Prime Minister's
10 visit to the Far East. And I was therefore, as it were,
11 trying to shed paper rather than acquire it, and I had
12 nothing further to do with Dr Kelly, the events around
13 Dr Kelly, after that meeting at lunchtime on Tuesday.
14 Q. What was the atmosphere in No. 10 at this stage? Was
15 it: we are now going to win against the BBC because we
16 have Dr Kelly coming out?
17 A. No, I do not think that was the atmosphere. Certainly,
18 it was not the atmosphere as far as I was concerned
19 where the private secretaries sit. I should say there
20 was strong feeling about the accusations that had been
21 made by Andrew Gilligan.
22 Q. Can you perhaps tell us about your feelings in that
23 respect?
24 A. I think because it was seen as a pretty direct attack on
25 the integrity of the Prime Minister and officials at

179
1 No. 10, in the sense that they would try to persuade the
2 chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee to massage
3 or to revise his conclusions, his recommendations, for
4 political convenience, I saw it personally as also an
5 unjustified attack on John Scarlett personally, the
6 chairman of the JIC, because implicit in this is the
7 assumption that he is willing to do this. But having
8 myself, in a previous incarnation, sat on the Joint
9 Intelligence Committee, I also thought it absolutely
10 inconceivable that even if there were to be such
11 collusion between officials in No. 10 and the chairman
12 of the JIC, it was absolutely inconceivable that the
13 senior figures around the JIC table would agree to this.
14 So I felt it was a very serious attack, not only,
15 however, upon the integrity of individuals but a very
16 serious attack on the integrity of the processes of
17 Government. The JIC process is of no use if it is one
18 that can be moulded or massaged by political fiat. It
19 must be seen to be the best and most scrupulous
20 assessment possible. Therefore there were very strong
21 feelings about this attack. I think that is how
22 I perceived it.
23 I did not see it, myself, as a row between two
24 particular individuals or between No. 10 and
25 a particular part of the media. I saw it as something

180
1 where it was important that we tried to restore elements
2 of trust, which had been challenged by this very direct
3 assault on the integrity both of people and of process.
4 Q. You mentioned that it was not perceived as such amongst
5 the senior civil servants, effectively, which is where
6 you were dealing with it from.
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. But you obviously had substantial interaction with those
9 who are not civil servants. Was it perceived as such
10 amongst them, do you know, from your own knowledge?
11 A. Well, I think there were certainly moments of personal
12 anger. I do not want to pretend they were not
13 personally affronted by some of these attacks. But
14 I think there was a sense this was an attack or a charge
15 or an allegation of a different kind. It struck the
16 very heart of whether or not you believe that the
17 Prime Minister is going to tell the chairman of the
18 Joint Intelligence Committee that his conclusions of his
19 Committee are inconvenient and they must be changed for
20 the political convenience of the Prime Minister of the
21 day. And I think that was a charge that went beyond the
22 usual, if I can put it like this, sparring that goes on
23 and was seen as a very fundamental attack on the
24 processes of Government and trust therein.
25 Q. One of the reasons I ask you about the atmosphere, such

181
1 as it was at No. 10, at the time, was -- and I think you
2 were present when I showed this to Jonathan Powell; can
3 you be shown CAB/1/93? This is an e-mail to which you
4 are not a party. I am really just putting it to you to
5 ask you to comment on it, where Tom Kelly appears to
6 write to Jonathan Powell saying:
7 "This is now a game of chicken with the Beeb -- the
8 only way they will shift is they see the screw
9 tightening."
10 It is colourful language; sometimes people, in
11 e-mails, use colourful language. It might be thought to
12 indicate a state of mind amongst those who are
13 responding to these allegations. What do you say about
14 that?
15 A. Well, I think inevitably you will want to ask Tom
16 himself about this. I think, on the whole, Tom is
17 pretty well balanced. So I do not think he had got
18 himself -- anyway, when I have known him -- into
19 a particular state, if I can put it like that, about
20 relations with the BBC.
21 My reading of this, and it may not be correct, would
22 be that what he wanted to do was to impress upon the BBC
23 that we thought that the evidence put forward by
24 Dr Kelly was a direct challenge to their account of
25 events, and that they had been unwilling to give any

182
1 apology, any qualification of that broadcast, and that
2 this was now something that might affect that. But I am
3 speculating. I do not know.
4 Q. And I appreciate I am asking you to comment on other
5 people's e-mails, so I will only put one further
6 question or suggestion to you. Because you see, looking
7 at the two e-mails at the bottom, you have
8 Jonathan Powell saying:
9 "I tried PM out on Kelly before the FAC and ISC next
10 Tuesday. He thought he probably had to do both but need
11 to be properly prepared beforehand."
12 You then have Tom Kelly commenting, having been told
13 that Dr Kelly is going before both Committees, that this
14 is a game of chicken with the Beeb. So you have the
15 Government on one side, a player, no doubt, the BBC on
16 the other, another player, and in between Dr Kelly's
17 appearances before the FAC and ISC. I mean, can you
18 comment on that?
19 A. As I must repeat, I cannot put myself in Tom Kelly's
20 shoes here but I certainly never saw, myself, as an
21 issue Mr Gilligan's report being about some kind of war
22 between the BBC and 10 Downing Street. It seemed to me
23 there were very fundamental principles involved in the
24 allegations he made; and therefore that is what seemed
25 to me to be important.

183
1 Q. Do you have any view on the fact that Dr Kelly's name
2 was made public on 8th July, the process starts through
3 the press statement -- first of all Mr Baldwin's
4 article. Then you have the 8th July press statement.
5 Then you have the defensive Q and A material. I mean,
6 with each question asked on the defensive Q and A
7 material: was he member of the United Nations?
8 Et cetera, et cetera. Well, he was an UNSCOM team
9 member. You are eliminating people all the way until
10 really naming him becomes an inevitability. Do you have
11 any view on the circumstances in which his name came to
12 be known to the press and public?
13 A. The only view I would have had about it is that
14 I believed from the time he came forward it was almost
15 inevitable, given the processes in which we work, that
16 his name would become known.
17 Q. A process no doubt assisted by the defensive Q and A
18 material, or you cannot really comment on that?
19 A. Well, I do not feel that I can comment on that really.
20 Q. You then, I think, go off on other business at this
21 time; is that right?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. When did you leave?
24 A. Well, I was hoping to leave 10 Downing Street on
25 24th July, which was when the Prime Minister returned

184
1 from his week's trip to the United States and the
2 Far East. But later in the week that we have been
3 discussing I was away on Friday discussing European
4 defence issues.
5 Q. Which would have been the 11th?
6 A. Which would have been the 11th, I think.
7 Q. Did you have any further involvement?
8 A. No, I did not at that stage.
9 Q. So 9th, 10th, 11th?
10 A. No.
11 Q. You know obviously, from reading your newspapers, that
12 on the 10th his name is in the newspapers, but you do
13 not take part in any further meetings?
14 A. No.
15 Q. Then on 11th July you are off on other business?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And then were you in this jurisdiction when he gave
18 evidence before the FAC and the ISC?
19 A. Yes, I must have been in the country, yes.
20 Q. But you did not, again, have any involvement in relation
21 to that?
22 A. No, I did not have -- I was not involved in any way and
23 I only have, I am afraid, a fairly hazy memory of when
24 he gave that evidence, but I am assuming it is the week
25 after we have been discussing.

185
1 Q. Is there anything else surrounding the circumstances of
2 the death of Dr Kelly that you can assist his Lordship
3 with?
4 A. I do not think there is, no.
5 Q. Is there anything else that I have not asked you from
6 your notes that you want to say to his Lordship?
7 A. No, thank you.
8 MR DINGEMANS: Thank you.
9 LORD HUTTON: Mr Manning, you have said in your report that
10 Mr Gilligan's report of 29th May was a very grave and
11 unjustified attack on the integrity of Government. As
12 you took that view, when you learned that Dr Kelly had
13 come forward to the Ministry of Defence -- this is the
14 same question I put to Mr Powell -- and said he had had
15 the discussion with Mr Gilligan but that he had not made
16 the sort of criticisms that Mr Gilligan reported, and
17 when you also realised that it appeared that Mr Gilligan
18 had only had one source for that report, and it appeared
19 increasingly probable that Dr Kelly was that source, did
20 it occur to you that because of the gravity of the
21 attack, which was obviously important that the
22 Government should refute, that in Dr Kelly the
23 Government now had a person who could refute that
24 criticism? More directly, perhaps, than giving his name
25 to the Foreign Affairs Committee and to the Intelligence

186
1 and Security Committee but perhaps by asking him: would
2 he make a public statement?
3 Now Mr Powell has already given two reasons,
4 I think, why that view did not come immediately to his
5 mind. One was that it became apparent and into the
6 public arena that Dr Kelly was not an intelligence
7 source; and secondly that he had not been concerned in
8 the preparation of the intelligence section of the
9 dossier. But did you think that perhaps the Government
10 might quite justifiably make more use of Dr Kelly to
11 refute Mr Gilligan's report?
12 A. I think, my Lord, I can only say that my view was that
13 Dr Kelly should be available as a witness to
14 the Inquiries that were then going on into this episode.
15 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
16 A. I did not think he was somebody that we should put up,
17 if you like, as a counter blast to Andrew Gilligan.
18 I do not think that would have been correct.
19 LORD HUTTON: Why would that not have been correct?
20 A. Because I do not think we were involved in the business
21 of trying to, if you like, exchange blows with
22 Andrew Gilligan. I did not see this as being a battle
23 about Andrew Gilligan himself. It seemed to me what was
24 very important was if there had been a public
25 Parliamentary Inquiry into this issue and there was

187
1 about to be, or perhaps it had already begun, a secret
2 Inquiry by the Intelligence and Security Committee, that
3 his evidence should be available to them. It seemed to
4 me this was an issue of major public concern. It was
5 about, ultimately, the integrity and credibility of the
6 Prime Minister. And I felt that his evidence should be
7 available to both those Inquiries.
8 LORD HUTTON: Yes. If the ISC, having heard Dr Kelly, had
9 come to the view that Mr Gilligan's criticisms were
10 unfounded, would that have become public?
11 A. I do not know, my Lord. As I understand the proceedings
12 of the ISC, they remain private.
13 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
14 A. And I think they have to remain private because they are
15 very often based on intelligence.
16 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
17 A. And therefore it is very difficult; perhaps they can be
18 redacted, I do not know.
19 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
20 A. But I would expect that report, in the first instance
21 anyway, to have gone to the Prime Minister. It might
22 then be possible for him and the chair of that Committee
23 to discuss what to do next, but I am afraid I do not
24 know.
25 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Now, you also said, in reply to

188
1 Mr Dingemans, that you considered it inconceivable that
2 Sir John Scarlett and the other members of the JIC would
3 have altered their conclusions or would have in some way
4 adapted or massaged their conclusions because of
5 political pressure. Now, would you be good enough to
6 look -- I am not sure if we can give a copy to Sir David
7 or put up on the screen the September dossier of
8 24th September 2002.
9 MR DINGEMANS: DOS/1/55.
10 LORD HUTTON: If you could look, first of all, please, at
11 the foreword.
12 Now, in the first two paragraphs, Sir David, the
13 Prime Minister says this:
14 "The document published today is based, in large
15 part, on the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee
16 (JIC). The JIC is at the heart of the British
17 intelligence machinery. It is chaired by the Cabinet
18 Office and made up of the heads of the UK's three
19 intelligence and security agencies, the chief of Defence
20 Intelligence, and senior officials from key Government
21 departments. For over 60 years the JIC has provided
22 regular assessments to successive Prime Ministers and
23 senior colleagues on a wide range of foreign policy and
24 international security issues.
25 "Its work, like the material it analyses, is largely

189
1 secret. It is unprecedented for the Government to
2 publish this kind of document. But in light of the
3 debate about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
4 I wanted to share with the British public the reasons
5 why I believe this issue to be a current and serious
6 threat to the UK national interest."
7 If you could look, please, just at the very first
8 page, the cover page, title page of the dossier.
9 That states:
10 "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
11 "The assessment of the British Government."
12 Looking at the foreword again, Sir David, the
13 Prime Minister is saying that he wishes to share with
14 the British public the reasons why he believes this
15 issue to be a current and serious threat; and the
16 assessment is the assessment of the Government.
17 If the Government is provided with detailed
18 intelligence information or detailed intelligence
19 assessment, and it wishes to present that assessment to
20 the public for it to realise the import of it, in your
21 opinion is it proper or is it in any way improper for
22 the Government to place particular emphasis on certain
23 parts of the intelligence report? In other words, is
24 the ordering of the material a matter which it is proper
25 for the Government to be concerned with or does the

190
1 Government or should the Government simply accept the
2 material in the order which is placed before it by the
3 JIC? Of course I appreciate this dossier, one
4 understands, was in fact fully approved by Sir John
5 Scarlett himself, so there is not that demarcation.
6 I would be grateful for your opinion on that matter.
7 A. I think my view, my Lord, is that the dossier itself
8 should be the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee
9 on the basis of the best analyses, assessments,
10 judgments and recommendations they can make. I think
11 when it comes to the foreword by the Prime Minister that
12 it is essentially the Prime Minister's words to the
13 country on why he believes what he believes. Therefore
14 I think there is a distinction to be drawn between what
15 is drafted and approved by the JIC and the foreword
16 written by the Prime Minister. Having said that,
17 my Lord, I know, because John Scarlett told me at the
18 time, that the Prime Minister consulted him on the
19 foreword because he was keen that it should not in any
20 way undermine, conflict with or give a different sense
21 than the report itself; and although I think it is
22 important that this is checked with John Scarlett,
23 I believe John may have made one or two comments which
24 were accepted by the Prime Minister.
25 LORD HUTTON: Yes.

191
1 A. But I think that my basic point would be that the
2 material that is approved by the Joint Intelligence
3 Committee should stay in the form in which the Joint
4 Intelligence Committee has finally agreed it. If, over
5 the top, the Prime Minister wishes to put his own
6 comments that seems to me to be something that
7 inevitably will have to be done by him personally.
8 LORD HUTTON: If, as we know there were, there were a number
9 of drafts of the dossier, would you consider that -- if
10 it happened -- there would be anything improper in the
11 Government referring to two pieces of intelligence and
12 saying: well, the intelligence which comes second in
13 order in the dossier we think would have a greater
14 impact on the public and, therefore, would you consider
15 stating it first rather than second? Would there be any
16 impropriety in that?
17 A. I think it depends, my Lord, how this issue is addressed
18 in the discussion. The intention of the dossier was to
19 lay out, as fully as possible, the intelligence base on
20 which the Prime Minister and his senior Ministers were
21 making their decisions. And I think there is always, in
22 any draft, an element of: how are you going to present
23 this?
24 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
25 A. One of the discussions that took place was: should this

192
1 be simply about weapons of mass destruction? Should we
2 try to put it into the context of Saddam Hussein's human
3 rights record? Should we try to explain what the
4 pattern of inspections had been until Saddam Hussein
5 expelled the inspectors in late 1998? I think it is, of
6 course, then open for debate about what is the ordering
7 of this, what -- how do you wish to present this. But
8 I think if the sense of your question is: we like this
9 bit, we do not like that bit~--
10 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
11 A. -- then I think it would be incorrect.
12 LORD HUTTON: I was not suggesting that. I was more
13 considering the order of two pieces of intelligence
14 which are valid pieces of intelligence, and it is simply
15 a matter of presentation and the order in which they are
16 presented.
17 A. I think, my Lord, if they are both valid it seems to me
18 that there may be a difference of view over which order
19 they should come in, but as long as they are both valid
20 then personally it would be acceptable to me whichever
21 order they were in.
22 LORD HUTTON: But that would be on the basis that the JIC
23 would have to be satisfied that it was not giving an
24 undue balance to a particular point?
25 A. Yes, certainly.

193
1 LORD HUTTON: The JIC would have to be quite satisfied that
2 it was a fair presentation.
3 A. Yes. Absolutely my Lord, yes.
4 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much indeed.
5 MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, that concludes the evidence.
6 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much, Mr Dingemans. We will
7 rise now and sit again at 10.30 tomorrow morning.
8 (4.05 pm)
9 (Hearing adjourned until 10.30 am the following day)
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

194
1 INDEX
2 PAGE
3 MISS PAMELA TEARE (called) ....................... 1
4
5 Examined by MR KNOX .......................... 1
6
7 MR JONATHAN POWELL (called) ...................... 69
8
9 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 69
10
11 MR DAVID MANNING (called) ........................ 147
12
13 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 147
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

195