Hearing Transcripts

1 Wednesday, 20th August 2003

2 (10.30 am)
3 LORD HUTTON: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
4 Yes, Mr Dingemans.
5 SIR KEVIN REGINALD TEBBIT (called)
6 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
7 MR DINGEMANS: Can you give his Lordship your full name?
8 A. Kevin Reginald Tebbit.
9 Q. What is your occupation?
10 A. I am the Permanent Undersecretary of State at the
11 Ministry of Defence.
12 Q. What does that involve as a role?
13 A. As a role, it means that I am in charge of all the civil
14 servants in the department. I am the principal adviser
15 to the Defence Secretary on all matters of policy of
16 administration and finance.
17 Q. How long have you been the Permanent Secretary?
18 A. Since July 1998.
19 Q. So you were the Permanent Secretary at the time that the
20 dossier was being produced?
21 A. I was indeed.
22 Q. Did you, yourself, have any direct role in the
23 production of the dossier?
24 A. Not personally. My staff obviously did. I had some
25 discussions with my policy director, who was a member of

1
1 the Joint Intelligence Committee. I am aware of its
2 role. I am a former member of the Joint Intelligence
3 Committee, both from my days as a diplomat, where I was
4 19 years in the Foreign Office and at the end of that
5 period was a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee,
6 and as a head of an intelligence agency, GCHQ. So
7 I have some knowledge of the operations of the system
8 but I was not personally involved in the dossier.
9 Q. Can you just help his Lordship with what is the role of
10 the JIC?
11 A. Well, the Joint Intelligence Committee is a group of
12 senior officials drawn from the Intelligence Services,
13 the heads of those Services and the Ministry of Defence
14 and the Foreign Office, whose job it is to make
15 judgments in respect of intelligence assessments, mainly
16 prepared by the assessment staff, based, themselves, on
17 a whole host of analysts and advisers, some in the
18 Defence Intelligence Services, some in the other three
19 intelligence agencies.
20 Q. At the time that the dossier was being produced were you
21 aware of any concerns being expressed by members of the
22 DIS? First of all, what is the DIS?
23 A. The Defence Intelligence Services.
24 Q. Were you aware of any concerns expressed by members of
25 the DIS about the way the dossier was put together?

2
1 A. I was not at the time.
2 LORD HUTTON: May I ask you: they are all civil servants in
3 the Ministry of Defence, are they?
4 A. Yes, they are.
5 MR DINGEMANS: Perhaps I could just ask you --
6 A. May I correct myself? Excuse me. There are also some
7 military officers seconded into that as well; we operate
8 in a joint environment.
9 Q. Can I ask you to look at a document at MoD/4/11, which
10 is a document we have seen before. This is a letter
11 dated 8th July 2003 and it was written to DCDI, who is
12 Mr Howard. It relates to concerns in paragraph 2:
13 "Your records will show that as probably the most
14 senior and experienced intelligence community official
15 working on WMD, I was so concerned about the manner in
16 which intelligence assessments for which I had some
17 responsibility were being presented in the dossier that
18 I was moved to write formally to your predecessor
19 Tony Cragg..."
20 Who was Tony Cragg? What was he doing at the time?
21 A. He was the predecessor of Martin Howard as Deputy Chief
22 of Defence Intelligence.
23 Q. He would have reported directly to you or through
24 someone else to you?
25 A. He would have reported to the Chief of Defence

3
1 Intelligence, who in this area would probably have
2 reported to me if he felt the need to do so.
3 Q. But you were not aware of this at the time?
4 A. Not at the time. I think they resolved that issue
5 within the intelligence community without the need to
6 bring it to my attention.
7 LORD HUTTON: On a very minor point, Sir Kevin, is it the
8 Defence Intelligence Service or the Defence Intelligence
9 Staff. I think we have had two versions of the DIS.
10 A. I think it is the Defence Intelligence Staff. It is not
11 a separate service. It is not equatable to the other
12 three.
13 LORD HUTTON: So Defence Intelligence Staff. Thank you very
14 much.
15 MR DINGEMANS: Can I just take you to a comment that
16 Dr Kelly is recorded as saying? This is SJW/1/59. This
17 is, so that you know where it is coming, an extract of
18 a tape recording made by Ms Watts of what Dr Kelly was
19 saying some time around May time. If we go to the
20 bottom of that, you can see Ms Watts says:
21 "So it wasn't as if there were lots of people saying
22 don't put it in don't put it in, it's just it was in
23 there and was seized upon -- rather than No.10
24 specifically going against?"
25 She is talking here about the 45 minutes claim.

4
1 Dr Kelly is recorded as saying this:
2 "There were lots of people saying that -- I mean it
3 was an interesting week before the dossier was put out
4 because there were so many things in there that people
5 were saying, well we're not so sure about that or in
6 fact they were happy with it being in but not expressed
7 the way that it was, because the wordsmithing is
8 actually quite important and the intelligence community
9 are a pretty cautious lot on the whole but once you get
10 people putting it/presenting it for public consumption
11 of course they use different words. I don't think
12 they're being wilfully dishonest I think they just think
13 that's the way the public will appreciate it best. I'm
14 sure you have the same problem as a journalist don't
15 you, sometimes you've got to put things into words that
16 the public will understand."
17 First of all, you have obviously had experience of
18 people who work within the intelligence agencies. The
19 concept of wordsmithing and precision with expression,
20 is that something you recognise from your own
21 experience?
22 A. Yes, I do. It is, of course, very unusual for
23 intelligence assessments to be put into the public
24 domain. This was a matter of vital national interest
25 which justified a different approach in the judgment of

5
1 the Government. But intelligence community officials
2 are very cautious over the language they use.
3 Q. And we have seen some of the comments or drafting
4 suggestions that I think Mr Campbell put to Mr Scarlett,
5 and some of which he accepted, some of which he
6 rejected. We saw that yesterday.
7 Can I just take you, very briefly, to some comments
8 that were made by DIS officers. That is CAB/3/79. This
9 is a letter of 19th September. If we scroll down a wee
10 bit you can see that the first change is:
11 "Suggest change to 'procured controlled materials
12 for potential use in the production of CBW programmes'.
13 "Rationale: language."
14 If one continues towards the penultimate entry:
15 "Delete the word 'partially'. It was operational.
16 Rationale: It was operational."
17 That is the level of wordsmithing, if I can adopt
18 Dr Kelly's phrase or reported phrase, that you might
19 expect from intelligence officers, is that right?
20 A. It is a very large community consisting of a very large
21 number of experts, often in very narrow fields. And it
22 is very normal, in the usual process of producing
23 refined intelligence assessments, for this sort of
24 dialogue to go on, all the time.
25 Q. Can I then take you to the broadcast on 29th May? First

6
1 of all, were you aware whether or not notice of the
2 broadcast was given to the Ministry of Defence?
3 A. I am aware of the issue.
4 Q. But you had no personal involvement with that?
5 A. No. My involvement, obviously, is simply in what was
6 reported to me by those involved at the time.
7 Q. Right. After the broadcast had been made, you produced
8 a request that the matter be looked into; is that right?
9 A. Yes, I see what you mean. Yes, it was not quite so
10 direct as that. I had a conversation with David Omand
11 in the Cabinet Office first.
12 Q. When was that?
13 A. Probably the day before I wrote my minute to
14 Martin Howard.
15 Q. Right. So can I take you to your minute, MoD/1/15?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. This is a document dated 4th June 2003. If we scroll
18 down to MoD/1/16, at the top you can see this is from
19 you. You say:
20 "As we discussed, DCDI may be the best person to
21 handle this..."
22 And, going back, who is this memo to?
23 A. The Chief of Defence Intelligence.
24 Q. Right. Going down the page, this is headed "WMD:
25 Leaks", is that right?

7
1 A. That is correct.
2 Q. You say:
3 "We spoke about this in the margins of the Chief of
4 Staff meeting this morning."
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. "There is clearly an intense level of high level concern
7 about leaks or unauthorised statements made to
8 journalists."
9 You say you discussed this with Sir David Omand last
10 night and you would be grateful if the following action
11 is taken. What action did you propose to be taken?
12 A. The action which is set out in the minute.
13 Q. Which is?
14 A. To remind staff of their obligations and to seek to
15 establish whether there are any suspicions of individual
16 members of the Defence Intelligence Staff being
17 responsible for leaks. I mean, I have to say, as I said
18 in the minute, that I had no specific reason to suspect
19 members of the Defence Intelligence Staff, but they had
20 come under suspicion because the broadcast was by
21 Andrew Gilligan, who was known to have contacts in the
22 Ministry of Defence, as a specialist; and therefore, as
23 it were, people were looking towards my department and
24 I wanted to make absolutely certain we did all that was
25 reasonable to manage that and establish whether there

8
1 were any concerns.
2 LORD HUTTON: Did you say that Mr Gilligan was known to have
3 contacts? Was that contacts who were authorised to
4 speak to him by the Ministry of Defence?
5 A. No, unauthorised.
6 LORD HUTTON: Unauthorised?
7 A. Yes.
8 MR DINGEMANS: How did you know he had unauthorised
9 contacts?
10 A. Because of the stories that had appeared in the past.
11 Q. Which were accurate?
12 A. Which were not always accurate.
13 Q. If an inaccurate story appears, he might not have had
14 any contacts.
15 A. He may or he may not have had.
16 Q. But this was the reason for your concern, as it were?
17 A. He was known to have contacts within the Ministry of
18 Defence.
19 Q. Can I take you to 5th June 2003, which is MoD/1/17?
20 Just before that, you say that very certainly, "He was
21 known to have contacts". It rather suggests you know
22 something else.
23 A. Well, many of these were authorised. We have a large
24 number of press staff in the three services, as well as
25 in the centre, who are regularly contacted by

9
1 Andrew Gilligan, but there may have been others who were
2 not formally authorised to speak, as we have seen.
3 Q. The note of 5th June 2003. What is this document, if
4 one scrolls down?
5 A. This is the response sent by Martin Howard to his heads
6 of department --
7 Q. Right.
8 A. -- his directors, as a result of my minute to his boss.
9 Q. And effectively identifying that your concerns should be
10 brought to everyone's attention; is that fair?
11 A. Yes. Yes.
12 Q. And he said this, in the second line:
13 "The fact remains, however, that Mr Gilligan is the
14 Defence Correspondent of the Today Programme and, as
15 I know to my own personal cost, he has a large number of
16 source in MoD and in the Armed Forces. This, combined
17 with the MoD reputation as a 'leaky' department means
18 that unfairly or not, the finger is being pointed at MoD
19 and DIS in particular."
20 Can you help us a little with the reputation of the
21 Ministry of Defence in this respect?
22 A. Yes. I do not enjoy this experience but it is a large
23 department with three armed forces, three armed
24 services, and there have from time to time been
25 suggestions of rivalry of putting information into the

10
1 public domain to support one particular interest against
2 another; something which I deplore, the Chief of Defence
3 Staff deplores and so does the Secretary of State.
4 Q. Right. That is the 4th and 5th June. Do you hear
5 anything further relating to this story until we come to
6 18th June?
7 A. Not, I think, until 18th June.
8 By the way, I should perhaps emphasise, as I did say
9 in my statement, that one of my duties is to ensure that
10 any breaches of security, leaks or unauthorised dealings
11 with journalists are indeed investigated and appropriate
12 action taken. I mean, this is a fundamental
13 responsibility of a head of a department.
14 Q. Yes.
15 A. Not exclusive to me but to any head of a Civil Service
16 department. I am sorry.
17 Q. What happens on 18th June? I think we have been told in
18 the evidence before that there is a conversation between
19 Mr Lamb and Mr Howard at a reception on 17th June.
20 A. Yes, and Mr Howard mentioned to me -- I think he simply
21 came into my office and did not --
22 Q. What date was this?
23 A. I think this was on the 18th -- and said that Dr Kelly
24 had spoken to Andrew Gilligan recently, according to the
25 Foreign Office.

11
1 Q. What did you do about that?
2 A. Well, I agreed with Mr Howard that there should be
3 a discussion with Dr Kelly to establish what contacts
4 indeed were going on.
5 Q. Was this the first time you had heard Dr Kelly's name?
6 A. Yes, I think it was. I have to say, at the time I did
7 not pay too much attention to it and I did not link it
8 to the particular issue of the dossier; and neither did
9 those who spoke to me about it.
10 Q. The dossier; you mean the broadcast --
11 A. The Andrew Gilligan story.
12 Q. Broadcast?
13 A. Broadcast.
14 Q. Did you know, at this time, that Dr Kelly had been
15 authorised to speak to journalists as part of his job
16 description? Can I take you to MoD/3/14? That is made
17 a little clearer. This is his assessment to March 2003.
18 This is the latest one we have. If we go down:
19 "Statement of your Roles and Responsibilities."
20 You can see at about the second paragraph in he is
21 an:
22 "Adviser to Proliferation Arms Control Secretariat,
23 MoD and Non-proliferation Department, FCO on Iraq's
24 chemical and biological weapons capabilities, UNMOVIC
25 [which is a UN role]."

12
1 It also says:
2 "Communicating Iraq issues to the media and
3 institutions."
4 This is headed "DSTL" and we have heard from
5 Mr Hatfield he was actually employed by DSTL, with
6 a line manager in the Ministry of Defence, that is
7 Dr Wells, paid for by the Foreign and Commonwealth
8 Office for reasons that have been given in evidence.
9 Did you know about his authorised media contacts?
10 A. No, not in detail at all, no. I mean I would not have
11 been aware of these personal details or anything like
12 that.
13 Q. And the DSTL's relationship with the Ministry of
14 Defence; perhaps you can explain it very shortly for us
15 all.
16 A. It is an agency of the Ministry of Defence.
17 Q. What does that mean?
18 A. The Defence Scientific and Technical Laboratory. That
19 means it has a large degree of devolved responsibility
20 for the management of its staff. It has a greater
21 degree of devolved responsibility than most parts of the
22 department. It was formed recently when the old Defence
23 Evaluation and Research Agency, which had been a trading
24 fund, that is to say it charged for its services, which
25 puts it at further arm's length from the main

13
1 department, was divided into two. One part, the major
2 part, was privatised and is now called QinetiQ, with
3 a Q, and the smaller part was kept within the department
4 but still, as it were, on a self-contained basis, called
5 DSTL.
6 Q. Did DSTL report either directly or indirectly to you?
7 A. No, it reported essentially to the Chief Scientific
8 Adviser.
9 Q. And that is another reporting route, is that right?
10 A. Yes. I mean, he is Permanent Secretary equivalent, but
11 I expect ultimately I am the head of department but
12 there are four high level people in the department of
13 that grade.
14 Q. So the Chief Scientific Officer would not report to you?
15 A. He is pretty well autonomous but he does have certain
16 responsibilities to me, yes.
17 Q. Can I just ask you a bit about the relationship of
18 contacts with the media and the Open Government Code,
19 which I think you have been warned you were going to be
20 asked some questions about?
21 A. I am not terribly familiar with it, but ...
22 Q. Perhaps I can just ask you this: you may know there was
23 a Code of Practice issued in May 1994 by the Government,
24 as part of the then Citizens Charter initiatives?
25 A. Yes.

14
1 Q. And that there was a second edition issued in 1997 of
2 the Open Government Code. Did you have any
3 consideration about the relationship between that Code
4 and the internal procedures relating to contact with
5 journalists that the Ministry of Defence had drawn up?
6 We have seen them with Mr Hatfield. Basically, they
7 suggest you cannot have any contact unless it has been
8 authorised first by the Government.
9 A. Yes, broadly speaking that is correct. Open Government
10 does mean that we are more open with information, but it
11 does not mean that people are free to have contacts with
12 journalists without authorisation. That obviously is
13 a rule which is flexible to a degree, depending on
14 whether people in their job descriptions are expected to
15 deal with the media on a regular basis; and clearly
16 there is a degree of flexibility allowed in terms of
17 what constitutes a follow up conversation authorised but
18 does not need a separate authorisation for each contact.
19 But, broadly speaking, civil servants still are
20 under an obligation to keep the confidences that they
21 become privy to in the course of their work as part of
22 the trust between Ministers and civil servants, and the
23 efficiency of administration which depends on that. And
24 there is still a duty not to disclose information which
25 breaches that obligation, unless authorised to do so.

15
1 Q. Can I just go a little bit further with that? If it is
2 part of your job description, and I have taken you to
3 Dr Kelly's job description which shows contact with the
4 media, part of the Code, it is part 5 of the guidance,
5 and the reason you were given notice of this was so you
6 should have a chance to read through it. It says this:
7 "Officials should not omit information merely
8 because disclosure could lead to political embarrassment
9 or administrative inconvenience."
10 If Dr Kelly's contacts with the media were
11 authorised, if he had unhelpful views, as they might be
12 considered, on weapons of mass destruction or mobile
13 trailers in Iraq, is it right that he was entitled to
14 communicate those views with the media?
15 A. He would still to need to be authorised to discuss those
16 issues. If he was challenging Government policy in any
17 area, that would be a completely different matter. In
18 terms of expert briefings Dr Kelly, I know, was given
19 quite a latitude in order to give them; and I became
20 aware, when his name had come forward, that he had
21 rather more dealings with the media than would be normal
22 for a civil servant and an official. I have to say,
23 I think that was taken into account in deciding what to
24 do when he had written his letter of 30th June.
25 Q. Just to finish off on that point, if he was entitled to

16
1 brief the media on an expert basis, his opinion, right
2 or wrong -- let us just keep with the mobile
3 laboratories if we may, that they did not have anything
4 to do with biological weapons, I think he thought they
5 were to do with hydrogen production. Whether he is
6 right or wrong on that, would he have been entitled, as
7 you understand it, to share that with the media?
8 A. Not without authorisation, no.
9 Q. And is this also fair: that you are unlikely to
10 authorise him to say something that you do not
11 necessarily agree with then?
12 A. (Pause). I would not have put it as an issue of that
13 kind. I would not have thought that there was a regime
14 that rigid because I would not be monitoring everything
15 an individual who had authority to talk to the press was
16 doing or saying. But clearly there is a distinction to
17 be drawn between briefings on technical issues, which we
18 encourage certain people to give, such as Dr Kelly, and
19 briefings on matters of sensitive issues, including
20 policy issues, which are in a different -- there is
21 obviously a grey area between these two. It may be that
22 Dr Kelly was operating, to some extent, in that grey
23 area.
24 Q. But just on the mobile laboratories, that is not
25 a policy issue, whether they were or were not related to

17
1 production of chemical weapons. It is not a policy
2 issue, is it?
3 A. It is not a policy issue but it was an issue on which
4 a judgment had not been made. A number of individuals
5 would be involved in making that judgment. And this was
6 a judgment of rather important consequence; and one does
7 not agree that that information can simply be disclosed
8 willy-nilly. As I say, there is an obligation of
9 confidentiality towards an employer, which is not
10 necessarily the same as Official Secrets Act or security
11 matters. That confidentiality is very strong; and the
12 legislation that you refer to does not override that
13 obligation of confidentiality towards an employer.
14 I think most people would understand that.
15 Q. Right. Can I then move on? We have had 18th June and
16 your conversation with Mr Howard. What happened as
17 a result of that conversation? You understood there was
18 going to be an interview with Dr Kelly, is that right?
19 A. Yes, a conversation with Dr Kelly about the nature of
20 his contacts with the press.
21 Q. To find that out. Do you know whether that conversation
22 took place?
23 A. I know it was due to take place and was then postponed
24 and then was overtaken by the interview that was
25 conducted in respect of his letter of 30th June.

18
1 Q. Can you tell us why it was postponed?
2 A. It was postponed because my Director General of Security
3 wondered, at one point, whether Mr Gilligan's testimony
4 to the Foreign Affairs Committee had raised a quite
5 separate issue of a leak of information from a top
6 secret document.
7 Q. We have heard this in evidence. Mr Gilligan reported in
8 about February that he had been shown a document on the
9 links between Al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein.
10 A. You have just given me the very example I was thinking
11 of when I said not all of his contacts were authorised.
12 Q. Are you suggesting Dr Kelly had anything to do with
13 that?
14 A. No, I am not. I am saying that question was resolved
15 and removed from my question of Dr Kelly.
16 Q. So it is now clear that Dr Kelly was not involved in
17 that?
18 A. Absolutely clear; but it did, I understand, cause
19 a delay in the process of that conversation.
20 Q. When you are talking about the fact that Mr Gilligan had
21 contacts within the Ministry of Defence, that is rather
22 proved by the document that was referred to in February.
23 A. If it was the Ministry of Defence, that is true.
24 Q. Sorry. If it was the Ministry of Defence.
25 A. I am not accepting that it was, but ... if it were, it

19
1 would have been an unauthorised contact.
2 Q. Right. That explains a postponement of the interview.
3 You then said it was overtaken by the interview which
4 did take place, is that right?
5 A. That is correct, I think.
6 Q. We know that Dr Kelly writes a letter on 30th June at
7 MoD/1/19. If we scroll down, it is addressed to his
8 line manager; and he talks about the controversy over
9 the past month and the other details. I am not going to
10 take you through the whole of that letter. When did you
11 become aware of that letter?
12 A. On, I think, the Thursday afternoon. That would be the
13 3rd.
14 Q. Thursday, 3rd July?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Right. Did you see the letter on Thursday, 3rd July?
17 A. It was shown to me, yes, on Thursday, 3rd July by
18 Mr Howard.
19 Q. And what was your discussion with Mr Howard?
20 A. My discussion was that this was an extremely unwelcome
21 and serious issue. I did not enjoy receiving the letter
22 or seeing the letter at all; and I realised that we
23 would have to take rapid action to deal with the
24 problem.
25 Q. Right. What action did you envisage being taken?
20
1 A. I envisaged, at the outset, that I would, first,
2 establish whether there was a disciplinary issue here to
3 be investigated, that would require the formal
4 initiation of disciplinary procedures. And, secondly,
5 whether and to what effect this had a bearing on, you
6 know, a major issue of the day, that is to say the
7 criticism of the Government that had been levelled of
8 interference in the intelligence judgments and the case
9 for going to war. So I realised there was a very major
10 issue to be dealt with.
11 Q. Right. So what did you suggest ought to be done?
12 A. Well, I felt that it was important for it to be dealt
13 with through our personnel management process, in the
14 first instance, and that it should be handled by my
15 personnel director, Mr Hatfield, partly because if there
16 was a disciplinary case to be raised I would be, myself,
17 part of that process, as an appeal authority. And
18 I also wanted to ensure that it was looked at and
19 appraised as coolly as possible, not by people who were
20 themselves caught up in the intense political issues of
21 the moment.
22 Q. So that is why we have the interview on 4th July with
23 Dr Wells but with Mr Hatfield as well; is that right?
24 A. Well, an interview essentially conducted by Mr Hatfield,
25 with Dr Wells present. And I had discussed this with

21
1 the Secretary of State, Geoff Hoon, before the interview
2 took place.
3 Q. Can you tell us what contact you had with the Secretary
4 of State, Mr Hoon?
5 A. Well, I saw him that evening, on the 3rd, because I felt
6 it sufficiently important for me to report it to him.
7 Q. In the Ministry of Defence?
8 A. In the Ministry of Defence.
9 Q. Tell us what was said?
10 A. Well, I did not use Dr Kelly's name at that stage.
11 Q. Right. Is there any reason why you did not?
12 A. Yes, there is. Because at that stage I was not quite
13 sure what we were dealing with, whether this was indeed
14 a very serious disciplinary offence or whether this was
15 an indiscretion from somebody who clearly did have much
16 greater latitude in dealing with the press, rightly or
17 wrongly, approved or not, than was normal. Either way,
18 it was clearly going to have a huge bearing on, as
19 I say, one of the biggest issues of the day, the
20 allegation that the Government in general, and
21 Alastair Campbell in particular, had interfered in the
22 presentation of intelligence information to strengthen
23 the case for war, one of the gravest charges that could
24 be raised.
25 But in discussing this with the Secretary of State,

22
1 I gave my view that it was first necessary to establish
2 whether there was a disciplinary case to be answered.
3 LORD HUTTON: At that stage, what did you consider might be
4 the line of demarcation between an indiscretion and
5 a serious disciplinary matter, Sir Kevin, in the light
6 of Dr Kelly's letter?
7 A. Well, firstly I did not know whether the letter was the
8 whole story.
9 LORD HUTTON: I appreciate that, yes.
10 A. So I did not know whether any security information
11 covered by the Official Secrets Act had, indeed, been
12 passed. On the face of it, it had not, but I needed to
13 have that established. I also needed to establish
14 whether there was a serious criticism of Government
15 policy here or whether, as I say, what Dr Kelly had said
16 was, as he had reported it, indiscretions but points
17 which did not damage the security of the state or breach
18 fundamental confidences with the Government.
19 On the face of it, the letter suggested that
20 Dr Kelly had done little more than he might have said at
21 a sort of conference that he would have been authorised
22 to participate in, in the International Institute for
23 Strategic Studies, in the Royal United Services
24 Institute, in Chatham House, in those sorts of
25 organisations. But it was clearly very important to

23
1 establish precisely what had happened.
2 LORD HUTTON: Thank you.
3 MR DINGEMANS: And what was Mr Hoon's view, at this stage?
4 A. I think Mr Hoon was very concerned about the
5 finalisation of the Foreign Affairs Committee report
6 into -- based really on Andrew Gilligan's allegations;
7 and he was very concerned that information should be
8 brought to light to correct, as it were, the public
9 record, and that we should not be seen to be covering it
10 up, since it was highly relevant to the Inquiry that the
11 Foreign Affairs Committee was conducting. My view was
12 this was absolutely right and proper but we did first
13 need to establish whether there was a disciplinary issue
14 here.
15 Q. Mr Campbell told us yesterday that he had had
16 a discussion, I think the next day, with Mr Hoon, who,
17 he said, his initial reaction was this was a very
18 serious disciplinary matter, but he mentioned something
19 that Mr Campbell recorded as a plea bargain, although
20 Mr Campbell said that might be misinterpreted. Did you
21 have any discussions with Mr Hoon that --
22 A. No, I was unaware of that.
23 Q. You were unaware of that. So effectively on the
24 Thursday night you leave Mr Hoon having said: this needs
25 to be pursued by way of disciplinary proceedings?

24
1 A. Yes, not necessarily by means of disciplinary
2 proceedings. We first needed to establish whether there
3 was a disciplinary case to be answered. Before I saw
4 the Secretary of State I had already alerted Mr Hatfield
5 to the need for him to do this. I confirmed to him
6 through my private secretary, after my discussion with
7 Mr Hoon.
8 Q. You have seen the letter of 30th June. There is nothing
9 in that letter, is there, which suggests that Dr Kelly,
10 at that stage, was happy for his name to be put into the
11 public domain?
12 A. The letter did not address that question.
13 Q. No, okay.
14 A. But it did say -- I am sorry, I correct myself. The
15 letter did touch on that issue, because Dr Kelly said
16 that the reason that he had written the letter, the
17 reason he had come forward was because a colleague of
18 his at RUSI, in fact I think he meant Chatham House, had
19 recognised that some of the things that Andrew Gilligan
20 had said to the Foreign Affairs Committee sounded like
21 Kelly's views and had told him so. So, it is the case
22 that, in that context, Dr Kelly expected the possibility
23 that he would be recognised to exist.
24 LORD HUTTON: I think perhaps you should just refer to --
25 MR DINGEMANS: Yes, MoD/1/21.

25
1 LORD HUTTON: -- the last page of the letter, Sir Kevin,
2 just in relation to the points you have been asked.
3 MR DINGEMANS: At the third paragraph where he says:
4 "I did not even consider that I was the 'source' ...
5 until a friend in RUSI ..."
6 You think that is in Chatham House; I am not sure
7 much turns on the distinction.
8 A. Nothing turns on the distinction.
9 Q. "... said that I should look at the 'Oral Evidence
10 provided to the Foreign Affairs Committee' on 19th June
11 because she recognised that some comments were the sort
12 that I would make about Iraq's chemical and biological
13 capacity".
14 That is what you refer to. Over the page at
15 MoD/1/22:
16 "I hope this letter helps unravel at least a small
17 part of the '45 minute story'. It was a difficult
18 decision to make to write to you because I realise that
19 suspicion falls on me because of my long association
20 with Iraq's WMD programme investigation and the
21 acknowledgment that I know Andrew Gilligan."
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Those are the two passages that might impact on that?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. But nothing express, and you point out that it is not

26
1 addressing this issue, about him consenting for his name
2 to be made public at this stage, a recognition that
3 others might have identified him in the past.
4 A. Yes, indeed.
5 Q. Can I then turn to the interview and take you to
6 MoD/1/24? This is the note of the interview with
7 Dr Kelly that took place, as we can see from the top, at
8 about 11.30 on Friday, 4th July, and it ends at about
9 1.15.
10 It begins, as we have heard, by explaining that the
11 letter had serious implications, and those were breaches
12 of normal standards of Civil Service behaviour. And his
13 unauthorised discussion appeared to be directly relevant
14 to the controversy surrounding the allegations made by
15 Mr Gilligan.
16 We can see the notes of the interview. I do not
17 propose to take you through that.
18 Can I then take you to MoD/1/32, which is at the
19 tail end of another set of notes made of the same
20 meeting, and just take you to the summing-up of the
21 meeting. At the bottom of the page, paragraph 17:
22 "Hatfield summed up. There appeared to be
23 consistencies between parts of Gilligan's testimony to
24 the Foreign Affairs Committee, and what Kelly says that
25 he said to Mr Gilligan. In particular, the meeting was

27
1 set up at Gilligan's initiative, and Kelly had
2 acknowledged ..."
3 And those particular consistencies were identified.
4 Then:
5 "But there were significant discrepancies
6 identified. In particular, Kelly denied having any
7 knowledge of the '45 minutes claim' until after the
8 Dossier was published, and denied having any knowledge
9 of the process by which that assessment was included; he
10 also denied giving any opinion that the evidence that
11 Uranium had been sought from Niger was based on
12 unreliable information. In addition, Kelly was not of
13 the view that Iraq had not been able to weaponise CBW.
14 There were other, minor inconsistencies..."
15 Over the page:
16 "Hatfield said that overall, his judgment was that
17 if there were a single source for Gilligan's
18 information, then it was not Kelly. Kelly's words may
19 have been part of the background to Gilligan's stories,
20 but on the basis of what he had testified, he was
21 satisfied that Kelly was not the source of the most
22 significant allegations."
23 I read that out just to put you back in the position
24 you were in on Friday, 4th July. You were not present
25 at the interview?

28
1 A. I was not present at the interview. Can you just
2 refresh my memory as to the date of that particular
3 record?
4 Q. If we go back to MoD/1/30 --
5 A. Right.
6 Q. -- that is 4th July; but it appears to be appended to
7 MoD/1/28, which is the 7th July, the Monday.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. But the earlier note, the one I started with, MoD/1/24,
10 appears to be dated 4th July. We have not worked out
11 its distribution yet.
12 So what I wanted to come to was, first of all, what
13 did you know on the evening of 4th July, after the
14 interview?
15 A. Yes -- the point I make is I am not sure I had seen that
16 particular document on the afternoon of the 4th July,
17 but I did see Mr Hatfield and had a conversation with
18 him about the results of these -- of his meeting.
19 The first point is that he divided his discussions
20 into two parts. The first part was to deal with any
21 disciplinary issues. He concluded that although
22 Dr Kelly had been extremely unwise in talking to
23 Andrew Gilligan without authorisation and covering the
24 ground and allowing himself to cover the ground that had
25 been covered, there nevertheless was not sufficient

29
1 cause for a formal disciplinary process to be initiated.
2 And essentially, by the end of that first half of the
3 interview, he told me that a line had been drawn under
4 the disciplinary aspect. That was his judgment. He was
5 entitled to make that judgment as the personnel
6 director, and I was prepared to accept that judgment.
7 Q. So --
8 A. That was the first conclusion from the meeting.
9 Q. Can I just, before you go on, establish: you did not see
10 that note that I have shown you on the evening of
11 4th July?
12 A. I do not think so.
13 Q. But does that accord generally --
14 A. Broadly speaking, yes.
15 Q. -- with what Mr Hatfield was telling you?
16 A. Broadly speaking, yes.
17 Q. He says: disciplinary side of it is finished,
18 effectively.
19 A. Correct.
20 Q. Then he turned to the second aspect of the interview?
21 A. Which was an attempt to establish whether this was
22 indeed the single anonymous source, where he felt that
23 there were similarities but sufficient discrepancies for
24 him not to feel that it could have been the source on
25 the basis that if Dr Kelly was indeed reporting

30
1 accurately what had happened, there are too many
2 differences between Kelly's account and Gilligan's
3 account for it to be the same event.
4 Q. What was your reaction to that proposition?
5 A. I confess that I was sceptical because it did seem to me
6 that a meeting that took place on 22nd May, at a central
7 London hotel, with somebody who clearly was very
8 familiar with a lot of the material covered in
9 Andrew Gilligan's broadcast, even though he was not
10 a member of the intelligence community, it did seem to
11 me unlikely that there was another separate source who
12 also met Andrew Gilligan at a central London hotel at
13 about the same time and was the real source for the
14 story. Otherwise it seemed to me, by and large, that
15 Andrew Gilligan would have had two sources for his story
16 rather than one; and since he claimed only one single
17 anonymous source, it seemed to me unlikely that this was
18 not the explanation for Andrew Gilligan's story, if
19 I can put it that way.
20 Nevertheless, on detail there were significant
21 discrepancies, not just about what Dr Kelly said he had
22 said and what Andrew Gilligan had reported his source as
23 having said, but also some sort of rather objective
24 circumstances which seemed to be different, like when
25 they first met each other, how long they had known each

31
1 other, the length of the meeting, the particular nature
2 of the source that Gilligan was quoting.
3 So, in detail, Mr Hatfield found it difficult to
4 reconcile these issues. I was more sceptical and
5 I thought this probably was indeed the explanation for
6 Gilligan's story.
7 Q. Because you were not necessarily prepared to accept that
8 all Dr Kelly had said in the interview was reported to
9 you?
10 A. That was not the fundamental point at the time. The
11 fundamental point at the time was it just seemed to be
12 implausible there would be several meetings of sources
13 of this kind in central London hotels shortly before the
14 broadcast.
15 Q. Did you discuss the report that was made to you by
16 Mr Hatfield with Mr Hoon?
17 A. I cannot recall when I next spoke to Mr Hoon precisely.
18 I thought it was probably not until the following Monday
19 morning. I may be wrong there. I would certainly have
20 informed his office. Whether I did it personally to
21 him, I really cannot recall, but I certainly would have
22 put it through his private secretary in the letter that
23 I wrote as a result of this interview, where I broadly
24 accepted that Mr Hatfield's doubts were ones which
25 I could not possibly ignore. I was not the man

32
1 conducting the interview; I had asked him to do this.
2 He doubted whether this was the source, as did Dr Wells,
3 and therefore I felt obliged to convey his concerns in
4 my minute.
5 Q. On 4th July, after that conversation, you write
6 a letter. Can I take you to that? That is MoD/1/34.
7 Who is this letter to?
8 A. This is to Sir David Omand.
9 Q. Right. Why do you write to Sir David Omand?
10 A. Because he is the Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet
11 Office who is responsible for security and intelligence
12 matters.
13 Q. Right. And you, if we scroll down, report that an
14 official in the MoD I think has volunteered he has had
15 a discussion with Andrew Gilligan on 22nd May. You say:
16 "He is an FCO official seconded to the MoD's
17 Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat, with a long
18 history of authorised dealing with the press in the
19 course of his duties, though not in this case."
20 You relate the interview --
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. -- and point out similarities. Over the page, to
23 page 35. Halfway down page 35 you identify three
24 possibilities. What were those?
25 A. These are the ones essentially, actually, that Dr Kelly

33
1 himself had volunteered in his letter, that Gilligan had
2 embellished this official's meeting with him but that he
3 is the single anonymous source; that Andrew Gilligan's
4 source is someone else; or thirdly, that there is no one
5 source and it is in fact a hotch-potch of comments from
6 numerous individuals and articles.
7 Q. I think you also had a conversation before you sent the
8 letter with Sir David Omand, is that right?
9 A. I warned him that it was coming, yes.
10 Q. Can I take you to CAB/1/10 because someone appears to
11 have written on your letter, in manuscript, just above
12 the text, that it was missing something. It says:
13 "This is missing one salient point. The official
14 confirmed that he had met Gilligan in a hotel, as
15 covered in The Mail on Sunday article by Gilligan."
16 Do you recognise whose handwriting that is?
17 A. No, I do not.
18 Q. I infer that must have been information you provided
19 orally before the letter had been sent over.
20 A. That is quite possible.
21 Q. Once you have sent the letter over on 4th July, do you
22 take any further action that day --
23 LORD HUTTON: Just before we proceed, may I ask you,
24 Sir Kevin, in that letter you say "an official in the
25 MoD", you do not name Dr Kelly. Was there any

34
1 particular reason for that?
2 A. I was still, at that stage, quite concerned to avoid
3 leaks. I did not want Dr Kelly's name to be bandied
4 around. It does not mean to say I suspected David Omand
5 to be the sort of person who would -- it was just
6 a general sort of discretion.
7 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Why did you not -- obvious reasons for
8 it -- perhaps you could just state why you did not want
9 Dr Kelly's name bandied around.
10 A. To be honest, my Lord, I thought this was such an
11 intense matter, as well as a very important matter, that
12 it seemed to me that it was necessary to try to control
13 the process to some degree, out of consideration for
14 Dr Kelly, frankly.
15 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
16 MR DINGEMANS: It seems, from the recollections we have from
17 Sir David Manning and Jonathan Powell that when they met
18 on the evening of 4th July, which we know is the Friday,
19 to discuss your letter coming in and then the letter
20 when it has arrived that they probably knew, I think
21 their evidence was, the name Dr Kelly. If they did know
22 that, do you know how they had got hold of the name?
23 A. I am not sure that they did know the name Dr Kelly.
24 I could have mentioned it to David Omand on the
25 telephone, it is possible that I may have mentioned it

35
1 to him privately.
2 Q. The next day, I think it was the weekend and you were
3 not proposing to come into work?
4 A. I do not usually come into work but it is not unknown.
5 Q. You read an article in The Times. Can I take you to
6 that, CAB/1/487?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. This is an article by Mr Baldwin in The Times. It
9 provides some further details of the source for the
10 bitterly contested allegations that Downing Street
11 "sexed up" its dossier.
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Said to have been provided by BBC insiders, namely that
14 he is a "military expert now based in Iraq". Did you
15 read that?
16 A. Yes, I did.
17 Q. On Saturday morning?
18 A. Indeed.
19 Q. What did you do, as a result of that?
20 A. I decided that it was necessary to update my assessment
21 over the weekend to suggest more strongly that this
22 probably was, indeed, the source. The reason for that
23 is, as I said before, one of the problems that
24 Mr Hatfield faced was the status of the individual
25 seemed to be so different from Andrew Gilligan's

36
1 reported source. Andrew Gilligan talked about an
2 intelligence officer or somebody closely involved in the
3 intelligence process. But here, essentially, was
4 a description about an inspector.
5 Q. Yes.
6 A. And that was a very different sort of person and it
7 pointed very, very clearly towards the sort of
8 individual that Dr Kelly was. It said "military", but
9 that is also Ministry of Defence, Defence Intelligence
10 sort of person. So it did seem to me to be very, very
11 significant as a report.
12 Also the timings, the idea that the person was
13 probably in Iraq at that moment. Dr Kelly expected to
14 be in Iraq at that moment and had actually been in Iraq,
15 although he had returned. That seemed to me very
16 significant, and the fact they had not been able to be
17 in contact with him for a while seemed also to be very
18 indicative.
19 I have to say, it also matched my concerns over
20 Friday night/Saturday morning that I had not been
21 sufficiently strong in my own judgments in my earlier
22 letter that this did seem to be quite likely the
23 explanation for Gilligan's story.
24 Q. You mentioned the timings of Dr Kelly's trips to Iraq,
25 the fact he was meant to be in Iraq and he had been in

37
1 Iraq. Did you know that on the Friday night, anything
2 about Dr Kelly's background? I imagine when this came
3 up to you, you thought, "Let us get his file out"; did
4 you do something like that?
5 A. I did not get his file out but I did take a close
6 interest in him and asked for more details about him.
7 I think I was told by Mr Howard that he had indeed been
8 in Iraq. It was also, if I may say so, relevant on that
9 Saturday morning that Mr Howard reported to me that
10 a member of his staff had said to him: they have all but
11 named him. In other words: this must be Dr Kelly.
12 Q. Did you, at that stage, know of Dr Kelly's involvement
13 with the dossier? Had Mr Howard shared that with you?
14 A. No, and I still do not believe his involvement with the
15 dossier was central.
16 Q. Did you know, for example, that he had sent an e-mail on
17 10th September talking about growth media? The
18 importance of the e-mail, not necessarily his views on
19 it, but it shows that he must have seen the dossier that
20 we know to have existed on 5th September. Did anyone
21 tell you about that at the time?
22 A. No, but that would not have changed my view as to
23 whether this was an official who was centrally involved
24 in the compilation of the final version of the dossier,
25 the essential intelligence judgments.

38
1 Q. But it would have enabled you to judge whether Dr Kelly
2 knew that the 45 minutes claim was not in the
3 5th September dossier. We also know he is involved in
4 a meeting on 19th September, looking at the dossier, and
5 I have shown you the drafting remarks produced after
6 that meeting, where the 45 minutes claim is in the
7 dossier. Did anyone share that information with you, at
8 the time?
9 A. Not at that time, no.
10 Q. When did you first become aware of that information?
11 A. The information that Dr Kelly had?
12 Q. At least seen the dossiers in the final stages and made
13 comments on matters within his area of expertise.
14 A. I think that was later. Remember, I was going, at that
15 stage, mainly on what Dr Kelly himself had said in his
16 letter about his involvement in the dossier.
17 Q. I appreciate that, but I think you have already shared
18 with us your concern that he was, in fact, the single
19 source identified by Mr Gilligan.
20 A. Yes, indeed. Well, let me put it this way: my concern
21 or my sense that his meeting with Mr Gilligan provides
22 the explanation to Mr Gilligan's story.
23 Q. So you write a letter on 5th July. Can I take you to
24 that? That is MoD/1/38. Who is this letter to?
25 A. The same person as before, David Omand.

39
1 Q. And you refer, if we scroll down, you can see there has
2 been a further development, today's Times carries an
3 article, you briefly summarise some points. You say
4 that although he was not in Iraq at present, he was
5 there recently and planning to visit again later this
6 month in relation to the Iraq Survey Group.
7 A. Correct.
8 Q. Continuing over the page, many discrepancies remain:
9 "We still cannot exclude the possibility that the
10 main source or other sources are elsewhere. But it may
11 be possible to explain and reconcile at least some of
12 the mismatches."
13 You explain why that might be.
14 A. That is correct. You will see from the letter that the
15 way I was looking at the mismatches over the 45 minute
16 intelligence was not so much about Dr Kelly's
17 involvement in the dossier, but was that as a weapons
18 expert his own views on the capability of Iraqi systems,
19 air delivered or ground launched, could have been taken
20 by someone else, Andrew Gilligan, to have implied
21 a criticism of the quality of the intelligence, even
22 though the actual intelligence about the 45 minutes
23 warning would not, as I understand it, have been shown
24 to Dr Kelly.
25 Q. That is because you get intelligence, and we have been
40
1 told in releases so far that the intelligence appears to
2 have come through an Iraqi military officer late
3 in August, that is what the Government itself released.
4 And Dr Kelly may have a view on whether or not that is
5 reliable intelligence, knowing what he knew about
6 weapons systems?
7 A. He may not have had a view about the reliability of the
8 intelligence but he may well have had a view about the
9 weapons systems themselves.
10 Q. And whether or not the intelligence provided was right
11 or wrong, as it were?
12 A. I think he himself said he was not in a position to
13 judge that.
14 Q. You write this letter on 5th July. Do you have any
15 further contacts?
16 A. With?
17 Q. Anyone over the weekend relating to Dr Kelly.
18 A. Yes, I spoke to Sir David Omand, I think, on two or
19 three occasions.
20 Q. Did you meet with him or speak on the telephone?
21 A. No, I spoke on the telephone.
22 Q. What was the gist of those conversations?
23 A. Well, first, to tell him I was sending a further
24 assessment in the light of my reflections overnight and
25 the article in The Times by Baldwin.

41
1 He told me of the interest that the Prime Minister
2 was showing in the information that was coming forward
3 from my letters. I also had conversations with my
4 private secretary; indeed, in order to prepare that
5 second minute I came into the office and had my private
6 secretary there as well. My private secretary had been
7 talking to the Defence Secretary's office and I knew
8 that the Defence Secretary had been considering whether
9 we should bring this to the attention of the BBC before
10 the board of governors meeting over the weekend.
11 Q. So your private secretary had spoken to Mr Hoon's
12 private secretary?
13 A. Yes, which is normal.
14 Q. And the private secretary had relayed to you that
15 Mr Hoon had considered whether or not the information
16 ought to be shared with the BBC board of governors?
17 A. Yes. I also had a conversation --
18 Q. Sorry to interrupt. Did you speak directly yourself
19 with Mr Hoon this weekend?
20 A. Not over that weekend, no.
21 Q. Did you get any other information about Mr Hoon's views
22 over the weekend?
23 A. No, I did not.
24 Q. No-one else reported he had said X or Y or Z?
25 A. No. I knew he was extremely concerned about us holding

42
1 on to this information with so much going on in both the
2 BBC and the Foreign Affairs Committee finalising their
3 report; but I knew no more than that, other than, as
4 I say, what was reported to me by my private secretary,
5 that he had been mulling over the question of: should
6 this be made known to the chairman of the board of
7 governors, not necessarily identifying Dr Kelly but the
8 idea that somebody had come forward and that it did not
9 correspond to Andrew Gilligan's report.
10 There was also a conversation I had with Mr Hatfield
11 where --
12 Q. This is on the Saturday or Sunday, or they all merge
13 into one, as it were?
14 A. They merge into one, but you asked me about my
15 activities over the weekend.
16 Q. Yes.
17 A. I told Mr Hatfield the way things were shaping up it
18 looked as if we would have to talk to Dr Kelly again, in
19 the light of the Baldwin article and in the light of the
20 need to try to pin down the facts even more clearly, if
21 we possibly could.
22 Q. Were you told by Sir David Omand anything of the
23 Prime Minister's views?
24 A. Yes, I was. I was told by David Omand that the
25 Prime Minister was following this very, very closely

43
1 indeed, that he was not minded to ask for any
2 precipitate action but he did want to consider this
3 carefully before taking further steps; but the
4 implication was that he wanted to do something about it.
5 Q. The implication?
6 A. That he did want something done about this individual
7 coming forward.
8 Q. Right. So, is that the reason for the second interview,
9 these discussions over the weekend?
10 A. The reason for the second interview was, I think,
11 a collective view, which I held, which I think was held
12 in No. 10, that in the light of the further information
13 we had had from the press, it was necessary to talk to
14 Dr Kelly again, yes. But I do not think there was any
15 one particular individual saying: this must happen. But
16 I think I put Mr Hatfield on notice that I suspected he
17 would have to -- he would need a follow up interview.
18 Q. Right. But at this stage does the situation still
19 remain that the disciplinary side of proceedings has
20 gone because of the judgment made by Mr Hatfield on
21 Friday?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. So this is really pursuing it, as it were, for the
24 purposes of correcting the record with the BBC?
25 A. No, not correcting the record with the BBC. I mean,

44
1 this was a massive issue. I do not think one can
2 underestimate the importance of the charge levelled
3 against the Government as perceived by Ministers, both
4 my Minister, Geoff Hoon, and No. 10. You cannot level
5 a more serious charge really than that the Government
6 has interfered in the intelligence community's work to
7 provide assessments on the case for war, particularly
8 the allegation that the Government knew it to be false
9 when it was put in and the idea that Alastair Campbell
10 had done it. As I explained to you before, not only did
11 I regard that as serious too, but as a former member of
12 the intelligence community, an institution which
13 I happen to believe the Joint Intelligence Committee is
14 one of the best elements of our machinery, the need to
15 clarify the truth was very, very strong.
16 It is very difficult for Government to proceed and
17 be judged by the public on the basis of allegations from
18 anonymous sources. If somebody comes forward and one
19 has reason to suspect that is indeed the source or the
20 explanation for the story, there is a very strong case
21 for correcting, clarifying, amplifying the public
22 record.
23 Q. Perhaps I put it --
24 A. So I did not regard this as just a matter of dealing
25 with the BBC.

45
1 Q. What I meant was this was no longer disciplinary but
2 this was correcting the BBC's story with the public
3 then, but it related to the BBC story and putting the
4 matter right?
5 A. Correct. But I think it had become a perception in the
6 public mind of the behaviour of Government.
7 Q. Can I take you to Sir David Omand's letter?
8 LORD HUTTON: Just before we proceed, I think it is evident
9 from what you have said, Sir Kevin, but so it is
10 absolutely clear: when you refer to it being difficult
11 for the public to decide the validity of a charge based
12 on an anonymous source, from what you have just said --
13 I make it clear I think it is quite apparent what you
14 did say, but just for the sake of the -- your point is
15 if the anonymous source ceases to be anonymous and is
16 known to the public and gives his account of what he
17 said, that is a much more effective way of countering
18 the charge based on the report which he had previously
19 given?
20 A. Indeed. And it is a matter of truth and credibility.
21 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
22 MR DINGEMANS: Sir David Omand wrote a letter to you over
23 the weekend. Can I take you to MoD/1/41? It is
24 a letter dated 5th July, which is the Saturday, but in
25 fact appears to be dated, because of references --

46
1 misdated. It should have been 6th July. Nothing turns
2 on that, you get it on 7th July.
3 A. Correct.
4 Q. Can we scroll down that? He says he has discussed the
5 contents with Jonathan Powell, David Manning and
6 John Scarlett. We have heard from Jonathan Powell and
7 Sir David Manning and:
8 "We recognised that at least part of the explanation
9 ... could rest on the discussion he had had with the
10 official who has now come forward."
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. "At the appropriate point it would incumbent upon us to
13 inform the FAC (and the ISC) so that they were not
14 placed in a false position. But we also noted your
15 caveat about ... the discrepancies.
16 "The Prime Minister asked for a deeper analysis of
17 what the official has actually said."
18 Towards the bottom of the page:
19 "Your follow-up letter on Saturday has also been
20 seen by the Prime Minister, who was grateful for the
21 further information in it. He discussed the options
22 with me on Sunday morning. I was able to pass on to him
23 the view of the Foreign Secretary ... against any
24 immediate action with the FAC in advance of the
25 publication of their report ... some member of the

47
1 Committee are now abroad."
2 In fact, it appears from other records they were in
3 Italy.
4 A. It was in this sense I was trying rather inadequately to
5 convey earlier, when I was trying to describe the
6 Prime Minister's wishes.
7 Q. "The Prime Minister concluded that notwithstanding the
8 further circumstantial details ... he agreed with your
9 recommendation that there were still too many unknowns
10 for us to approach the FAC now."
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. "But we may need to react quickly if the meeting of BBC
13 Governors tonight or comment on the FAC Report."
14 And the letter is copied.
15 There is reference there to the FAC and the ISC.
16 Were you party to any of the discussions about the FAC
17 or the ISC?
18 A. Not at that stage in any detail. I mean, I was aware of
19 the Foreign Affairs Committee report emerging, but not
20 as a central player. I mean this was not my
21 department's responsibility, so I was only coming up to
22 speed on the FAC/ISC issues over that weekend.
23 Q. Can I just take you, then, to something that we have
24 been provided from Sir David Omand, which is CAB/11/5.
25 This is a note he dated 21st July, so shortly after the

48
1 events but nearly contemporaneous with them.
2 He says on 7th July that he was:
3 "... pulled out of a lecture ... with a request to
4 go straight to No. 10."
5 At paragraph 3:
6 "There was also a review of the weekend decision not
7 to inform the FAC before the publication of their Report
8 that Dr Kelly had come forward to say that he had met
9 Mr Gilligan. Kevin Tebbit ran over the ground he had
10 covered in his two letters... There was some
11 questioning from the PM about what we knew about
12 Dr Kelly, and whether we could find out more about his
13 views. Kevin Tebbit agreed to report back.
14 Kevin Tebbit warned that Dr Kelly was an expert on Iraqi
15 WMD and if he was summoned to give evidence some of it
16 might be uncomfortable on specifics such as the
17 likelihood of there being weapons systems being ready
18 for use within 45 minutes. But he believed from what he
19 had said to Richard Hatfield that Dr Kelly had no doubts
20 that there were Iraqi WMD programmes ... Kevin Tebbit
21 also expressed the view that we would have to face up to
22 the fact that Dr Kelly's name was likely to become
23 public at some point soon, given the number of people he
24 would have talked to. MoD were preparing contingency
25 statements..."

49
1 Is that a fair reflection of discussions that took
2 place at the weekend?
3 A. I have not actually seen this account before, but it
4 corresponds pretty closely to my recollection. I mean,
5 this is actually what I said at the meeting in the Prime
6 Minister's Office on the Monday morning.
7 Q. Right. So this is when there was questioning from the
8 Prime Minister about what was known about Dr Kelly, is
9 that right?
10 A. Well, the meeting was primarily to discuss the Foreign
11 Affairs Committee report.
12 Q. Right.
13 A. And then it moved on to discuss the issue of Dr Kelly.
14 This is more or less what I said, I think, at that
15 meeting.
16 Q. At the meeting on the 7th July?
17 A. On the Monday morning.
18 LORD HUTTON: Just before we move on, Mr Dingemans, may
19 I ask you this, Sir Kevin: could we go back to that
20 please, CAB/11/5?
21 A. Yes, my Lord.
22 LORD HUTTON: The note states that you warned that if
23 Dr Kelly was summoned to give evidence, some of it might
24 be uncomfortable on specifics such as the likelihood of
25 there being weapons systems being ready for use within

50
1 45 minutes.
2 How did you know that Dr Kelly's evidence on that
3 point might be uncomfortable, on the 45 minutes point?
4 A. Because in his letter to us and in his first interview,
5 I think, with Mr Hatfield he had said that he was not
6 aware of any Iraqi systems that could be readied for use
7 in 45 minutes.
8 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
9 A. He was not aware, he said, of the intelligence report
10 that had been the basis for the JIC's view that this
11 should, nevertheless, be an important piece of
12 information put into the dossier. Actually, it was
13 quite an important piece of information for the Ministry
14 of Defence, I might say, because if you are organising
15 military operations you do not have to be 100 per cent
16 certain about intelligence to pay careful attention to
17 it, if it is that sort of thing. Anyway, I am sorry,
18 I digress.
19 The reason I mention this is in the context, which
20 is not here in this report, that we were increasingly in
21 danger, the Government were increasingly in danger of
22 being vulnerable to the charge that it was suppressing,
23 withholding, covering up very relevant information. The
24 reason I mentioned this was to say that I believed that
25 this information -- I recommended that this information

51
1 would need to come forward even though it was not
2 comfortable for the Government. This is why I refer to
3 it, because it was not all helpful. I was not
4 suggesting that Dr Kelly's account was some windfall
5 bonus for the Government. I felt it was just a very
6 awkward development but one where there was a public
7 interest for it to be brought forward.
8 If we had simply sat on the information with an
9 expert like Dr Kelly saying this about the 45 minutes,
10 we would be accused of a cover up.
11 LORD HUTTON: Yes. So therefore your knowledge that
12 Dr Kelly's evidence might be uncomfortable on this point
13 was derived really from his own letter of 30th June and
14 what he had said to Mr Hatfield?
15 A. It was indeed, my Lord. It was said in the context of
16 the need to come forward with this information, rather
17 than to suppress it.
18 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Yes. I see. Thank you.
19 MR DINGEMANS: At that meeting which we can see related
20 there, there appears to have been, at the bottom of the
21 page, an agreement that the inconsistencies needed to be
22 subject to a more forensic examination; is that right?
23 A. Yes, correct.
24 Q. Had you, at that stage, decided whether or not to
25 reinterview him?

52
1 A. I had decided that there should be a further interview.
2 Q. Right. Can I just --
3 LORD HUTTON: This might be a convenient time, I think, to
4 give the stenographers a break.
5 (11.45 am)
6 (Short Break)
7 (11.50 am)
8 MR DINGEMANS: We are on the Monday morning, at the meeting
9 in Downing Street. We have been told by other witnesses
10 who is there. Was there anything else said by you about
11 Dr Kelly's cooperation or role in relation to the
12 forthcoming aspects of it?
13 A. I may have said there that I believed it important that
14 Dr Kelly should say what he believed to be the case, if
15 we called him forward, which is why I mentioned his own
16 view about systems that could be readied in 45 minutes.
17 Q. Yes.
18 A. I said there were still discrepancies, so that we still
19 could not be 100 per cent certain that he was, indeed,
20 the source, which was the reason for the further
21 interview.
22 I think it was collectively agreed that we should
23 interview Dr Kelly again to seek to establish more
24 details about his dealings with Andrew Gilligan in the
25 hope of narrowing down the uncertainties that still

53
1 remained.
2 Q. So although you had provisionally thought of
3 reinterviewing him, that decision, as it were, was
4 approved at that stage?
5 A. Was confirmed. I think I had already put Mr Hatfield on
6 notice that I expected there to be a need for a follow
7 up interview during the weekend.
8 Q. Right. Can I take you to CAB/11/6, the next page,
9 because what that says, and I appreciate it is not your
10 note but it is obviously the closest we have to a note
11 of the meeting, at the top:
12 "[Sir] Kevin Tebbit said that MoD were considering
13 calling him back from a conference he was at in order to
14 talk to him again. He reiterated that Dr Kelly had come
15 forward of his own volition, and that as far as MoD was
16 concerned there was no question of any offence having
17 been committed under the Official Secrets Act."
18 That, I think, accorded with what you said about
19 Mr Hatfield. But there is this sentence, and perhaps
20 I could just underscore it and ask for your comment on
21 it:
22 "Dr Kelly's continued cooperation was therefore
23 essential."
24 Was that your understanding at the time?
25 A. No, I am slightly puzzled by that sentence actually; and

54
1 I am at some disadvantage by being shown a document
2 I have not seen before. I am glad the first part of the
3 paragraph coincided precisely with what I just said.
4 Q. It was not designed to be a memory test. We got this
5 over the course of this week. As I have made clear, it
6 is not your note, it is Sir David Omand's note, but
7 obviously it relates to what you are said to have said.
8 A. What I think I would have said, and what I did indeed
9 write subsequent to this meeting when I returned to the
10 Ministry of Defence, was that I believed it important
11 that whatever Dr Kelly did was of his own volition and
12 of his own free will, and that he was not being put
13 under duress to say or do anything that he did not
14 believe.
15 Q. So if Dr Kelly had been told, on Monday morning, "Would
16 you rather stay at RAF Honnington or come back for
17 another interview?", he would have been at liberty to
18 say, "I will stay here, thank you"?
19 A. I think I am entitled to give him a further degree of
20 encouragement than that open ended invitation, we are
21 his employer; but I would not have wanted to put views
22 in his mouth that he did not believe to be true.
23 LORD HUTTON: So your interpretation of that sentence:
24 "Dr Kelly's continued cooperation was therefore
25 essential", is that you had been saying that anything

55
1 that Dr Kelly did had to be with his consent and not
2 because he was being forced to do it?
3 A. I would not put it quite that strongly, my Lord.
4 I think I would have said -- my own version of that
5 thought would have been that it was important that
6 Dr Kelly continued to cooperate voluntarily rather than
7 have things thrust upon him.
8 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
9 MR DINGEMANS: Continued to cooperate voluntarily but with
10 a strong steer from his employer?
11 A. A strong steer from his employer; but if I may say so,
12 at this stage I also felt, at this point, that it would
13 possibly be in Dr Kelly's own interest for him to want
14 to correct the public record, because on the basis of
15 what he had written to us in his letter he was being
16 misrepresented, in terms of comments he would have made
17 on very much the political aspects of the issue rather
18 than the technical aspects of the issue, and that he had
19 an interest in clarifying the record himself.
20 Q. So Dr Kelly should have been made aware, when he was at
21 RAF Honnington, that the return to London was not, as it
22 were, a diktat from his employer but a strong
23 suggestion?
24 A. There was never any suggestion that reached me that
25 Dr Kelly felt he was being put under duress and that he

56
1 was not cooperating voluntarily with what was going on,
2 at any stage, I might say.
3 Q. Can I take you to a document I think you have referred
4 to. It is MoD/1/44. It is dated 8th July. We have
5 heard earlier in the evidence that it was dictated,
6 I think, on 7th July.
7 A. Correct.
8 Q. Is this the document that you were referring to?
9 A. Yes, it is.
10 Q. And you are grateful for the minute of 7th July. Now,
11 to put that in context, that enclosed the minutes of the
12 meeting of 4th July?
13 A. That is correct. And actually the analysis that
14 Mr Hatfield had produced of the differences and
15 discrepancies as well as the similarities of the two
16 accounts.
17 Q. You say:
18 "What is now needed is a more intensive interview
19 with Kelly. The objective would be to establish what
20 transpired between him and Gilligan, with a reliability
21 that will stand up to the intense glare of public
22 scrutiny. The core issue in this respect is whether it
23 was Kelly who alleged that the 45 minute intelligence
24 was inserted into the dossier against the wishes of the
25 intelligence community and at the behest of the

57
1 Government in general and Alastair Campbell in
2 particular."
3 Can I just ask why that was the core issue?
4 A. Because that was, I believe, the critical point.
5 Q. Right.
6 A. The rest of Dr Kelly's discussions with Andrew Gilligan
7 were, I think, the sort of discussions that he would
8 have had with any person who wanted a briefing on the
9 nature of the weapons programmes. That was the damaging
10 assertion.
11 Q. You then also say that you believe, in paragraph 4, that
12 the contacts must be pinned down as clearly as possible
13 because of the continuing problem with the BBC and the
14 FAC's recommendation that Gilligan's contacts should be
15 investigated.
16 A. Yes, it was only when I returned to the office after the
17 meeting with the Prime Minister that I read that part of
18 the Foreign Affairs Committee report which said that
19 Gilligan's contact should indeed be investigated
20 thoroughly, which was a further reason for us making
21 sure that we did not sit on the information that we had.
22 Q. That part of the Foreign Affairs Committee report which
23 said that Mr Gilligan's contacts should be investigated
24 thoroughly was also in the context of the earlier top
25 secret document that I think you have referred to. They

58
1 had heard all the evidence of the circumstances in which
2 that had come about.
3 In that respect, did you understand the Foreign
4 Affairs Committee to be intending that if you find the
5 person who had given Mr Gilligan the top secret report
6 in February 2003, he should be brought back before the
7 Foreign Affairs Committee?
8 A. Not particularly, not specifically, no. I just saw that
9 as a further exhortation on the Government by an
10 influential Committee of Parliament to ensure that it
11 acted.
12 Q. That you made sure that all --
13 A. I did not read anything specifically into it other than
14 the statement that the Foreign Affairs Committee had
15 made, but it was a very clear statement.
16 Q. That these should be investigated but not necessarily
17 brought back before the Foreign Affairs Committee?
18 A. Not necessarily by them, but it could have meant that.
19 After all, their hearing was essentially about
20 Andrew Gilligan's allegations based, as it came down to
21 it, on a single anonymous source. So the linkage was
22 pretty direct.
23 Q. Did you at this stage have any view about whether or not
24 Dr Kelly's name should be made public?
25 A. I started from the premise that it was inevitable that

59
1 his name would become public at some stage. He had
2 implied as much in his own letter.
3 Q. We have seen the passages where he says someone at
4 RUSI -- you think it may be Chatham House --
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. -- may have known him, and also that he thought that
7 some suspicion might fall on him.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Is there not a difference between those two passages and
10 actually giving the name out to the press?
11 A. There is indeed, but there are many other elements in
12 between the two points.
13 As I say, the comment from a member of staff who did
14 not know about this beforehand, having read The Times on
15 Saturday, saying: they have all but named him, was also
16 very significant. I have learnt subsequently actually,
17 I did not know at the time, that knowledge that Dr Kelly
18 had had meetings with Andrew Gilligan were becoming
19 discussed at cocktail parties that officials in the
20 Ministry of Defence were having. I only learnt that
21 subsequently but it gives, I think, a flavour of the
22 sort of environment.
23 Q. I think you knew that at the time, did you not? That is
24 how you got told on 18th June that --
25 A. Sorry, I was talking about a different event. 18th June
60
1 was Mr Lamb saying this.
2 Q. Right.
3 A. This was quite subsequently. I mean, after all of this
4 had happened, a member of my staff came to say farewell
5 to me, a commodore who was the director of operational
6 audit, and said to me, "Oh we knew all about this.
7 I was at a cocktail party on the Tattershall Castle and
8 it was talked about then". I said, "Really. What was
9 the date?" He said it was 4th July. He did not say it
10 straightaway, I asked him to check his diary. So
11 knowledge that this sort of issue was around --
12 I mention this. I was not aware of that fact. But the
13 point is once somebody had come forward with a letter,
14 once it was being discussed, the risk of it widening was
15 always going to grow.
16 Mr Hatfield told me that his discussions with
17 Dr Kelly were always on the basis that it was almost
18 certain that this would come up, that it was virtually
19 inevitable. He did not record it in those terms but
20 those were his words to me. And Dr Kelly seemed to
21 accept that.
22 Q. You, against that background, say that you considered
23 the following matters for the interview: key issues;
24 judgment of the probability that Dr Kelly is in
25 principle the source of the allegations; the willingness

61
1 of Dr Kelly to be associated with a public statement.
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. And your views about the robustness of the rest of his
4 position, including on Iraq's WMD programmes generally.
5 That is over the page to 45.
6 A. Hmm, hmm.
7 Q. Why was the latter part relevant?
8 A. Well, it was relevant. I mean, the Government had a --
9 there is a difference between telling Dr Kelly what to
10 say and knowing what it is that he is going to say. And
11 this was a question of being aware of what it was that
12 Dr Kelly would say about the rest of the issues.
13 Q. If his views were particularly unhelpful or likely to be
14 particularly unhelpful, perhaps not take the matter any
15 further forward?
16 A. No, not at all. We would have to live with it. But
17 I think there is a difference between views which may
18 criticise Government policy, which is something that no
19 civil servant would do, and views which simply happen to
20 be inconvenient but a specialist or expert may hold
21 them. It was really a question of establishing his
22 position on those things.
23 Q. Back to issue (a) on page 44 at the bottom, if there had
24 been a judgment that Dr Kelly was probably not the
25 principal source of Mr Gilligan's allegations, what

62
1 would have been done then? The matter would have been
2 taken no further forward, is that right?
3 A. I think it is highly unlikely. I have to be honest in
4 saying that I was not calculating that as having a high
5 probability. If it had become evident he was not the
6 source, then the issue would not have been taken
7 further.
8 LORD HUTTON: I beg your pardon, that the issue would not --
9 A. Have been taken further.
10 MR DINGEMANS: And Dr Kelly would have gone back to
11 RAF Honnington and matters would have continued.
12 A. Remember, this was not a disciplinary process, this was
13 a clarificatory process.
14 Q. On the face of your letters it was also a voluntary
15 process.
16 A. It was a process -- if you look overleaf again you will
17 see the sentence I wrote at the time.
18 Q. At the bottom, in paragraph 5, you say you remain
19 concerned to ensure Dr Kelly's rights are respected,
20 that can be employment rights et cetera. You go on to
21 say:
22 "... it is important that he understands he is
23 cooperating voluntarily."
24 A. That is what I said at the time.
25 Q. "There is also the different angle that in the event

63
1 that it becomes evident that he may have divulged
2 classified or privileged information contrary to the
3 position so far, proceedings would need to be stopped
4 immediately to avoid prejudicing any case..."
5 A. That is always the case. That was a generic statement
6 really. This was not a statement that was supposed to
7 hold anything further over Dr Kelly. I was always
8 conscious it would be wrong to put someone in a position
9 of coming forward with information and then that he
10 might find himself in a more serious situation in
11 a disciplinary context. As I say, that was a generic
12 statement rather than an expectation.
13 Q. Were you aware of any other views to the effect that
14 Dr Kelly ought to be given a security style interview?
15 A. No, I was not actually. I have heard about it since.
16 Q. Can I take you to the reference, it is CAB/1/46. It is
17 a memo dictated by John Scarlett on 7th July, so the
18 Monday. He says:
19 "I agree with your letter of Saturday that the
20 finger points strongly at David Kelly ... I have been
21 through the transcripts. I attach copies of [pages].
22 If he could have referred to any corroborating
23 information Mr Gilligan would have done so. If this is
24 true, Dr Kelly is not telling the whole story.
25 "Gilligan must have got the 45 minutes single

64
1 intelligence report item from somewhere, presumably
2 Dr Kelly. Conclusion: Dr Kelly needs a proper security
3 style interview in which all these inconsistencies are
4 thrashed out."
5 I mean, there is no term of art, is there, "security
6 style interview" it just means no doubt a fairly
7 intensive grilling, is that right?
8 A. I was not aware of this exchange. It would not have
9 affected the way I was handling the case.
10 Q. Did Dr Kelly get a proper security style interview, as
11 far as you know?
12 A. (Pause). That is rather an interesting question. It is
13 not one of the yes or no answers that I can provide.
14 I believe that Mr Hatfield was hugely experienced; he
15 had been the policy director of the Ministry of Defence
16 for four years before he became the personnel director.
17 It is a very, very large department of around 85 to
18 90,000 people and I trusted his judgment, integrity and
19 thoroughness entirely. He also, on the second
20 interview, was accompanied by two people, another one
21 was Martin Howard, again whose judgment and forensic
22 skills I respect. I do not know whether that is
23 a security style interview. I tend to believe that
24 people cooperate and say things better if they are able
25 to think and talk in a more relaxed environment.

65
1 Q. You see, the reason I asked the question is simply this:
2 if you are cooperating, as you were keen to stress that
3 Dr Kelly should be made aware that he was cooperating,
4 it is difficult to imagine someone volunteering to take
5 part in a security style interview.
6 A. As I say, that minute had no effect on the way I handled
7 the case.
8 Q. Which is why I asked whether you understood Dr Kelly to
9 have got a security style interview.
10 A. I think he got as thorough an examination as could have
11 been achieved. There were two interviews. I do not
12 think we would have got further with a third interview.
13 Q. Can I take you to 7th July and the meeting itself? This
14 is MoD/1/46. This is just the beginning of the note.
15 You have seen the note before, but I hope to orientate
16 you quickly through it:
17 "Hatfield started by saying that he wanted the
18 meeting to cover two issues. The first was to follow up
19 the discrepancies between Gilligan's account of the
20 meeting with his source, and Kelly's account of his
21 meeting with Gilligan. The second issue was that MoD
22 may wish to make a public statement, and he wished to
23 discuss that with Kelly. The meeting was structured to
24 follow Hatfield's comparative analysis circulated..."
25 That is an analysis where Dr Kelly's claim, what

66
1 Mr Gilligan had said, and directing it through there.
2 That is the beginning of the interview.
3 It is not clear from that, nor indeed anything
4 Dr Wells had told us about calling Dr Kelly back for
5 interview, that either Dr Wells understood or Dr Kelly
6 understood that Dr Kelly was here entirely voluntarily
7 and could, in fact, be at RAF Honnington. Do you agree
8 that it is not clear on the document that he, Dr Kelly,
9 is being told that?
10 A. No, I did not think that it needed to be clear on the
11 document. I mean, the understanding was that Dr Kelly
12 was content with the process.
13 Q. Whose understanding was that?
14 A. Well, I think if you will recall, Dr Kelly actually said
15 that at the Foreign Affairs Committee during his hearing
16 subsequently.
17 Q. We will come to some of his evidence.
18 A. I am not trying to be glib. There was never any sense
19 that I had throughout this whole process, from any of
20 the individuals who were conducting the direct
21 discussions with Dr Kelly, that he was feeling unhappy
22 about the arrangements and the procedures that were in
23 train.
24 Q. If I can continue on through pages 47, 48, 49 and on to
25 page 50. There is no way, obviously, you can have seen

67
1 that, but the gist of the procedure there is that
2 Mr Hatfield is taking him through a whole series of
3 questions about Dr Kelly's views, about Mr Gilligan as
4 the source.
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. You have seen that minute before?
7 A. Yes, indeed.
8 Q. Can I then take you to the bottom at page 50, which
9 appears to be the reference to the publicity. It says
10 this:
11 "Hatfield said that it was likely that the
12 department would need to make some public statement on
13 Kelly's involvement with Gilligan. He passed Kelly
14 a draft press release and Kelly confirmed that he was
15 content with its terms. Hatfield said that although
16 Kelly was not named in the press release his identity
17 may become known in due course. Kelly replied that he
18 acknowledge this: in his letter of 30th June he had said
19 that a friend at RUSI had alerted him to the possibility
20 of his being considered as Gilligan's source."
21 A. Correct.
22 Q. That does not appear to be the most unequivocal consent
23 to your name being put into the public arena, is that
24 fair?
25 A. I think it is relatively clear, an acknowledgment, it

68
1 seemed to me quite strong. I cannot comment on
2 precisely how the conversation went, but the report
3 I had from Mr Hatfield subsequently, and you may wish to
4 question Mr Hatfield about this yourself in more detail,
5 was that the whole conversation was on the understanding
6 that it was almost inevitable that this would be made
7 public and that there would need to be a statement. The
8 acknowledgment in that context, of course, was much --
9 would have been stronger.
10 Q. That is the meeting that takes place on 7th July. Did
11 you have any discussions with Mr Hoon about it?
12 LORD HUTTON: Just before you proceed. We have heard some
13 evidence that Dr Kelly had asked that his name not be
14 released immediately, so that he could alert his wife
15 and family to the prospect that his name would come into
16 the public arena. Had you heard anything to that
17 effect, Sir Kevin?
18 A. I was not specifically aware of that, my Lord.
19 LORD HUTTON: No.
20 A. I can understand why that may be so, but I was not aware
21 of that particular piece of information.
22 LORD HUTTON: Yes, thank you.
23 Mr Dingemans.
24 MR DINGEMANS: Did you have any discussions with Mr Hoon on
25 Monday, 7th July?

69
1 A. I did at the beginning of the day.
2 Q. Right. That was before you attended the meeting at the
3 Prime Minister's Office; is that right?
4 A. Indeed, indeed.
5 Q. What was the effect of those discussions?
6 A. I think it was very brief and it added nothing or
7 subtracted nothing from the discussion we have had so
8 far. It was about 15 minutes, I think. Simply that,
9 you know, I thought this was likely to be the source but
10 we still could not be sure. It provided, certainly, it
11 seemed to me, the explanation for Gilligan's story; that
12 disciplinary issues were now passed but there was
13 a question of how to clarify the public record, the
14 reasons for doing so. But it was all very briefly.
15 Q. The interview takes place, we know, in the afternoon.
16 You were briefed after the interview; is that right?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Was any decision then taken about press releases or
19 anything?
20 A. No, no decisions about press releases at that stage.
21 I mean, Mr Hatfield had told me that, as I say, he had
22 made it clear to Dr Kelly that a public statement on his
23 meeting would almost certainly be needed and that
24 Dr Kelly would need to be prepared to stand by his
25 account.

70
1 Q. Is that how it concludes on Monday, 7th July?
2 A. On the evening I reported the outcome of the interview
3 to Sir David Omand, and I think Jonathan Powell, that
4 while it seemed increasingly likely that Dr Kelly's
5 meeting provided the explanation for the Gilligan story,
6 I think there was a phrase that I thought that was quite
7 important coming from Mr Hatfield, that I think Dr Kelly
8 said, "I may have been led on", or something of that
9 kind. We still could not be absolutely certain because
10 Dr Kelly still argued that he did not think he could be
11 the source.
12 Q. Right.
13 A. Equally, I said that or we agreed that concern that we
14 would be accused of covering up the relevant information
15 was growing each day that time passed, if we held on to
16 it any longer. So we were sort of handling a problem of
17 timing. On the one hand, trying to be as clear as we
18 could about the nature of this information from
19 Dr Kelly; on the other hand, each day that passed,
20 greater risk that the Government would be accused of
21 covering up vital information. At that stage, No. 10
22 asked us to send over draft press releases. I did not
23 believe we were ready at that stage to make a press
24 statement but I think sent two draft statements across,
25 one short, one long, but designed essentially to keep

71
1 the discussion going but not to actually issue a press
2 release at that point.
3 LORD HUTTON: But if, on Dr Kelly's account, he had not told
4 Mr Gilligan that the Government had inserted the
5 45 minutes claim and that the Government knew that that
6 claim was probably false, so that in fact the gist of
7 what he was saying was to refute Mr Gilligan's report,
8 how could the Government be criticised for covering up
9 that matter? Because it was basically in favour of the
10 Government's viewpoint.
11 A. My Lord, perhaps I did not make myself clear earlier.
12 That part of Dr Kelly's account was obviously helpful in
13 clarifying the record.
14 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
15 A. Other parts of his account would be less helpful
16 because, as I say, I think he would not have been
17 impressed by the intelligence which suggested that
18 Iraqi -- CBW systems could be readied for operation for
19 use in 45 minutes because it did not correspond to any
20 systems of which he was aware. It was not that he was
21 challenging intelligence he had seen, but he was basing
22 that on his own experience of Iraqi systems until 1998.
23 LORD HUTTON: But there might be other officials in the
24 Government who also might have challenged the 45 minutes
25 claim. I appreciate Dr Kelly had very specialised

72
1 knowledge, but can you just elaborate a little more on
2 the point: why, if the Government were aware that there
3 was an official who had not been directly concerned in
4 drawing up the intelligence part of the dossier, if they
5 knew there was such an official, why would the
6 Government feel obliged to put his views into the public
7 arena?
8 A. The 45 minutes comment he would make, I think, was not
9 a central point here. The central point was that if we
10 were certain that Dr Kelly provided the explanation for
11 a story which had a fundamental influence on public
12 confidence and trust in the Government's policies, then
13 there was a strong case, one might almost say a duty, to
14 bring that information forward.
15 LORD HUTTON: Yes. So it was because he was the source of
16 that story, not just that he was an official who may
17 have held views that differed from the Government's
18 views?
19 A. Absolutely. I think it was almost a unique and
20 unprecedented case, my Lord. Here was a single
21 anonymous source, we had learnt from Mr Gilligan, who
22 was responsible for a judgment which had a major effect
23 on the confidence in the Government and on the
24 intelligence process. If we find that there is a single
25 identified source who says, effectively, "It was I, but

73
1 I did not say those things, they are" as Dr Kelly put it
2 "a considerable embellishment on what I said", then that
3 would be the only way of clarifying reliably the public
4 record. It would have been no good for the Government
5 to say: we have an anonymous source who we think might
6 be the same one that said something different. The
7 authenticity would have depended on the individual being
8 named.
9 LORD HUTTON: I appreciate that. I think my question to you
10 was a slightly different point, indeed correct me if
11 I am wrong.
12 I had understood you to say as part of your answer,
13 that because Dr Kelly might be critical of the
14 45 minutes claim, based on his own knowledge of the
15 weapons system, that you considered that it was
16 necessary that his view should be made public and that
17 the Government might be accused of a cover up if they
18 did not reveal that.
19 A. I am sorry, my Lord, I probably went too far. What
20 I meant there was simply not all of what he said, would
21 say, would be completely comfortable. But it was
22 a point which perhaps I placed too much emphasis on in
23 my earlier testimony; and I think that was true.
24 Having said that, I perhaps ought to make the
25 further point that he was not the world's authority on

74
1 this issue and other members of the intelligence
2 community in a senior position would still have argued,
3 correctly in my view, that it was still right to include
4 that information in the dossier. Nevertheless, as
5 I say, it would not have been a completely comfortable
6 experience.
7 MR DINGEMANS: So would the Government be accused of a cover
8 up if Dr Kelly does not believe he is the source, and
9 you may agree or disagree with him, and he has
10 uncomfortable views on some aspects of the 45 minutes
11 claim? Where is the cover up in that?
12 A. I think the cover up is: here we are, sitting on
13 information of great relevance to the Foreign Affairs
14 Committee, and indeed the Intelligence and Security
15 Committee, which arrives in a letter dated 30th June and
16 here we already are, 7th July, the Foreign Affairs
17 Committee have reported without any knowledge of this.
18 This was a critical adjunct to Andrew Gilligan's
19 testimony, which was the main reason for the Foreign
20 Affairs Committee's hearing and process. We had said
21 nothing about it. Here we were, a week later. It did
22 look as if we were withholding information of great
23 public interest.
24 Q. Can I just ask you this: I think we have established,
25 and tell me if I have this wrong, first of all that the

75
1 Government would not have pursued the matter if they did
2 not believe that Dr Kelly was the source of
3 Mr Gilligan's story; and we see that, I think, from your
4 proposition (a) in that letter, the note we looked at;
5 is that right?
6 A. I think that is probably correct. If the real source
7 was a different one, this would have been corroborative
8 information but not critical and decisive information.
9 Q. Right. So no need to make it public.
10 The second proposition is that all this has to be
11 done with Dr Kelly's cooperation, I think you have made
12 that clear; is that right?
13 A. That was my preference. I did not say it was an
14 absolute. That was my position and my view. I felt
15 that Dr Kelly had rights which I wished to respect.
16 I have to say that that is not necessarily the case,
17 although I wished to proceed in that way and I believe
18 we did proceed in that way. I could make an argument
19 for you for it to be even stronger than that, in terms
20 of responsibility to bring that information into the
21 public domain. As it happens I did not feel I needed
22 to, which was just as well.
23 Q. Thirdly, you have told us that after the second
24 interview Dr Kelly is still saying that he did not
25 believe, rightly or wrongly, that he was the source.

76
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. So how is he then still cooperating in this process
3 when, if his belief was right, the Government would have
4 dropped the matter?
5 A. Because my view, most of my colleagues' views, was that
6 we thought that he was wrong in that respect. Not that
7 he was not necessarily telling the truth, but that his
8 account was still the explanation for the Gilligan
9 story.
10 Q. Can I just ask you about this question of making sure
11 that you are not being accused of a cover up? Can
12 I take you to CAB/1/106? This is skipping ahead
13 slightly in the chronology to 14th July. It is a memo
14 from Colin Smith. Its subject is "Iraq WMD and
15 Parliamentary Business":
16 "DCDI [who we know to be Mr Howard] is to brief
17 David [Kelly] this afternoon for his appearances
18 tomorrow before the FAC and the ISC and will strongly
19 recommend that Kelly is not drawn on his assessment of
20 the dossier (but stick to what he told Gilligan). Kelly
21 is apparently feeling the pressure, and does not appear
22 to be handling it well."
23 On the face of that record, it may be inaccurate, it
24 rather looks like the Government wants out the good bit,
25 namely Mr Gilligan has got it wrong, and is quite happy

77
1 to try to avoid the bad bit coming out; is that fair?
2 A. Not fair at all. It certainly was not my own guidance.
3 I am placing a great deal on my own view here. I should
4 say that the concern about cover up, the concern about
5 holding up information was not just my view; it was the
6 view of Ministers, it was the view of No. 10. It was
7 a collective judgment. That is, as far as I am
8 concerned -- I have become aware of that minute, but
9 that certainly was not my instructions to those
10 conducting or preparing David Kelly for that appearance.
11 Q. And --
12 A. And I was not aware that he was not appearing to handle
13 pressure well. That did not correspond to anything else
14 I was hearing.
15 Q. You were not told that?
16 A. I was not told that. I was told other things which were
17 different to this.
18 Q. What were you told?
19 A. I was told that he was handling it pretty well.
20 Q. Can I take you to CAB/1/87 in this respect? I think you
21 are saying the great concern of the Ministry of Defence
22 at the moment is to avoid being accused of a cover up.
23 A. I am saying that was one of the concerns that existed.
24 I would not say it was necessarily the overriding
25 concern. What I said earlier was that concern had been

78
1 growing the longer we had not brought this information
2 forward.
3 Q. Can I just ask you to look at this e-mail? I appreciate
4 you were not party to this exchange, but it is from
5 Claire Sumner to Alastair Campbell, copied in to
6 Jonathan Powell, John Scarlett and David Omand amongst
7 others. She says this:
8 "I have confirmed that you [Mr Campbell] will
9 appear~... on 17th July ...
10 "I asked where they were with other interviews.
11 "The ISC clerk told me that the Committee were not
12 interested in interviewing Andrew G as he could not say
13 anything more to them than the FAC.
14 "He said that on the source they were waiting for
15 David O..."
16 I imagine that is David Omand?
17 A. Correct.
18 Q. "... to write to them with the correspondence. He
19 implied that he did not believe it was the source so
20 could not see the point of the ISC seeing him and said
21 they were not interested in the BBC/AC row. The fact he
22 rested this on was that AG said that he had known his
23 source for years whereas the MoD said months. I think
24 this point could be clarified in the letter from
25 David Omand to the ISC, I pointed out that the BBC had

79
1 not denied he was the source."
2 At the top, this is obviously a point I am going to
3 raise with Miss Taylor:
4 "I think one of us should speak to Ann on this."
5 It rather looks from that e-mail as if the ISC are
6 not accusing you of a cover up, indeed quote the
7 opposite, they are not in the slightest bit interested
8 in getting involved in the BBC/AC row and do not
9 desperately want to see Dr Kelly. Would that have
10 affected your thinking if you had know of that?
11 A. I am having some difficulty in understanding this
12 document, which is the first time I have seen it.
13 Q. It an e-mail that appears to be from Claire Sumner to
14 Alastair Campbell, confirming where he is going to give
15 evidence.
16 A. I am not sure who the "he" is, "he implied that he did
17 not believe it was the source".
18 Q. I think that is the ISC clerk.
19 A. Possibly. It is certainly not David Omand.
20 Q. No, it is not David Omand. They were waiting for
21 David Omand to write. He implied that the Clerk did not
22 believe it was the source so could not see the point in
23 seeing him and was not interested in the BBC row.
24 LORD HUTTON: Just take a minute to look at it.
25 A. I think my immediate reaction is I am not necessarily
80
1 sure that the ISC clerk would have had the monopoly of
2 wisdom in this issue.
3 Q. Let us ignore the ISC clerk and turn to the Foreign
4 Affairs Committee, MoD/1/89. I appreciate I have
5 skipped ahead a bit on my chronology. I hope you will
6 forgive me. They say this at paragraph 2:
7 "The Committee deliberated after hearing Dr Kelly's
8 evidence, and asked me to write to you, expressing their
9 view that it seems most unlikely that Dr Kelly was
10 Andrew Gilligan's prime source for his allegations about
11 the September dossier on Iraq. Colleagues have also
12 asked me to pass on their view that Dr Kelly has been
13 poorly treated by the Government since he wrote to his
14 line manager ... "
15 They heard him and they decided he was not the prime
16 source on the basis of the discrepancies. I suppose
17 they are not the monopoly of wisdom on this point
18 either?
19 A. Your words.
20 Q. Your response, MoD/1/90, the next document, the Ministry
21 of Defence statement to that:
22 "The Foreign Affairs Committee has said that it
23 seems most unlikely that Dr David Kelly was
24 Andrew Gilligan's 'prime' source ...
25 "As was made clear in our statement of 8th July, the

81
1 MoD does not know whether Dr Kelly is the 'single'
2 source ..."
3 A. Correct .
4 Q. "The FAC used the phrase 'prime' source. Does this mean
5 the FAC doubt Mr Gilligan's story? If Dr Kelly is not
6 the source, why does the BBC not say so now? The BBC
7 has the opportunity to clear up this issue. Their
8 silence is suspicious. Their appeal to the principle of
9 source protection is clearly bogus in this case, as
10 Dr Kelly came forward voluntarily.
11 "We also note the FAC's view that Dr Kelly has been
12 'poorly treated' by the Government. We do not accept
13 this. Dr Kelly came forward voluntarily with
14 information on a matter of public interest. He has been
15 poorly treated in accordance with Departmental
16 procedures. He has expressed no complaint to us or the
17 FAC, who took the initiative to call him as a witness."
18 But that is, as it were, just repeating your
19 judgment, which all the later evidence we heard last
20 week suggests is right, that he was, if anyone was, the
21 source for Mr Gilligan's story?
22 A. I think the language there is quite tough. I must say I
23 cannot claim credit for drafting it myself but I think
24 it does convey the point.
25 Q. Is this not the real point: whether Dr Kelly believed it

82
1 or not, and I believe after the second interview he was
2 still maintaining he did not believe he was the single
3 source, you and others in the Government took
4 a different view, and you and others decided that the
5 Committees should, having heard Dr Kelly, also take
6 a different view?
7 A. I think there was a feeling that even if he was not the
8 source, and most people felt that this almost certainly
9 was the explanation for Andrew Gilligan's article, that
10 this nevertheless was information of sufficient
11 importance to be brought into the public domain. The
12 question of how precisely it should be done and when
13 precisely it should be done was still unresolved at that
14 point.
15 Q. And if Dr Kelly, if he had been aware that it was all
16 a matter of consent, if he had ever expressed dissent
17 from that then you would necessarily have considered
18 whether you had to take further measures?
19 A. I think there would need to have been a further
20 discussion with Dr Kelly at that point, but that point
21 never arose.
22 Q. Can I go back -- I am sorry to go back -- in time now to
23 8th July. This is the drafting of the press release
24 that we see at MoD/1/56. This is the press statement
25 that comes to be released and you have obviously seen

83
1 that. That was read over the phone, we heard, to
2 Dr Kelly.
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Can I also take you to the defensive Q and A material
5 which is at MoD/1/62, which I think was prepared for the
6 reaction to the press release, which I think we have
7 been told went out at about quarter to 6 on Tuesday,
8 8th July.
9 Were you aware of this defensive Q and A material?
10 A. Yes, I was aware of it.
11 Q. Were you party to any of the drafting of this defensive
12 Q and A material?
13 A. No, I did not draft any of it. I did glance through it.
14 Q. Do you know whether or not Dr Kelly was aware, if this
15 was all a voluntary process, of the defensive Q and A
16 material?
17 A. No I do not think he would have -- I am sure he did not
18 see the Q and A.
19 Q. He did not see the Q and A?
20 A. I am pretty sure he did not.
21 Q. Perhaps you can tell me if this is right or wrong: if
22 you go through the Q and A material, we have been told
23 if they ask these questions, they get these answers;
24 this is to prepare all the press officers so they are
25 giving the same answers. That is right, is it not?

84
1 A. (Pause). Yes -- well, I assume so. I mean, I did not
2 spend time myself in going through the detailed Q and A.
3 I regarded that as the normal backgrounding that is
4 given on these sorts of issues. I spent more time over
5 the actual statement itself.
6 Q. I understand that. But now that you have had a chance
7 to look at the Q and A material, I mean if you look at,
8 for example, three answers down:
9 "How long has he been in the MoD?
10 "He has been in his current position for 3 to
11 4 years. Before that he was a member of UNSCOM."
12 We are probably down now to about 20 people:
13 "Did the official play any part in drawing up the
14 dossier?
15 "He was involved in providing historical details of
16 UNSCOM's activities prior to 1998."
17 He obviously has to have been with UNSCOM prior to
18 1998:
19 "Is a senior figure?
20 "He is not a member of the SCS -- he is a
21 middle-ranking official.
22 "Is he still working for the MoD?
23 "Yes.
24 "Is he in Iraq?
25 "No, though he visited Iraq recently for a week.

85
1 "Is he a member of the ISG?
2 "No.
3 "Do you believe he is the single source?
4 "It is not for us to say..."
5 It does seem, reading this, and certainly I think we
6 are likely to hear this from journalists, that once you
7 got these clues, if they can be so described, it is not
8 going to be very difficult to identify Dr Kelly?
9 A. These were not intended to be clues.
10 Q. Right. And to the extent that they may inadvertently
11 have ended up as being clues, do you think Dr Kelly, who
12 was consenting to this whole process, should have been
13 made aware of these Q and As?
14 A. Can I take you back to my note to Mr Hatfield, where you
15 will see that the bit you did not read out, my own view
16 was that we should, in fact, get to a situation where
17 Dr Kelly would put his name to a document, in other
18 words voluntarily say: this is me, this is my story.
19 LORD HUTTON: Just remind me what date that was.
20 A. That was on the 7th, my Lord, the minute from my private
21 secretary to Mr Hatfield.
22 So my own view was always that it would be
23 preferable for Dr Kelly to come forward with a clear
24 statement. We had not reached that stage on the Tuesday
25 evening, because the discussions with Dr Kelly had still

86
1 been concentrating on the discrepancies between his
2 account and Andrew Gilligan's. Nevertheless, it was
3 felt, not just in the Ministry of Defence but very
4 strongly in No. 10 and in the Cabinet Office, that it
5 was necessary for a statement to be made, that the
6 information could not be held on to. I was not, myself,
7 present during all the discussions on the Tuesday
8 because I was in Portsmouth handing out awards for
9 bravery for people who had managed to save the
10 "Nottingham" from sinking, so it was an event that
11 I could not really cancel. But I was aware of the
12 discussions that were going on at No. 10 and the Cabinet
13 Office and there was a very strong feeling that we
14 needed to come forward with the information. If --
15 MR DINGEMANS: Who did you understand that strong feeling to
16 come from?
17 A. Well, it was a collective view of Sir David Omand,
18 John Scarlett, the Prime Minister. It was one which
19 I did not disagree with at all, but I was not there.
20 And, as you recall, the first idea was that this should
21 be sent in the form of a letter to the Intelligence and
22 Security Committee for them to look at, and also that it
23 should be put to the BBC in the context of: we are not
24 asking you to say whether this is the source but only to
25 say if it is not, so that we could be clear on our

87
1 ground.
2 As it happened, Ann Taylor decided she did not wish
3 to receive this unless it was preceded by a public
4 statement.
5 Q. Is that the reason that the impetus came for the public
6 statement?
7 A. I think that was the reason, so that when I returned
8 from Portsmouth it was quite clear that the view in
9 Whitehall, which we shared in the Ministry of Defence,
10 we did not dissent, was that we should indeed issue
11 a public statement, and the sense was that that needed
12 to be done more or less then on that date, the Tuesday
13 or so.
14 So we needed to issue a statement before we had got
15 to a stage really where we could name Dr Kelly, because
16 the last conversation we had had with him had not
17 actually got to that point.
18 Q. He had not yet said: okay, give my name out?
19 A. He had not been asked that question.
20 Q. And so when the defence Q and A material is deployed and
21 the material not intended to be clues is used as clues
22 by journalists, and the journalists then come back with
23 the right name and the name is given out, was Dr Kelly,
24 at this stage, voluntarily cooperating with the process?
25 A. I think again this is not the context that I would put

88
1 it in. We needed to come up with the statement that was
2 sufficiently informative to justify its existence. That
3 is to say, it had to explain that the individual who had
4 come forward had a status which was different from that
5 alleged by Mr Gilligan and also that his views were not
6 exactly the same as those claimed by Mr Gilligan on this
7 critical issue of Government interference on the
8 dossier, in order to justify the statement and the
9 intention of it being discussed further in the
10 Intelligence and Security Committee.
11 The need for a question and answer brief in the
12 first instance was no more than that we had always
13 expected that Dr Kelly's name would come out, at any
14 moment, throughout this process from the receipt of his
15 letter onwards, growing over time. So there was always
16 a need to anticipate the prospect that journalists would
17 say, anyone would say: you know, we know it is Kelly.
18 And we could not deny that it was Dr Kelly if that
19 circumstance arose. We could not deny it partly because
20 this is not an issue on which to play games, it was an
21 issue of vast public importance, and partly because it
22 would have been wrong for other members of the Ministry
23 of Defence to come under suspicion and media scrutiny,
24 which indeed did happen.
25 I mean, this was not an abstract concern. This was

89
1 a real point. We had journalists tapping on the windows
2 of an individual's house trying to attract the attention
3 of their children in order to talk to their father, who
4 happened to be a member of the Ministry of Defence.
5 Nothing to do with this issue at all. But the idea that
6 we could not allow others to come under that sort of
7 scrutiny was real. It was not an abstract point. And
8 therefore we had to be prepared to say: no, it is not X
9 or it is not Y.
10 Therefore, to the extent there was a strategy, it
11 was simply that. The question and answers were guidance
12 for backgrounding, but there was no intention of, as it
13 were, volunteering the name or playing games with the
14 press trying to help them get the name. They certainly
15 worked hard enough to find it. In a way, I fear, the
16 statement we made showed the futility really of trying
17 to make a statement based on an anonymous source. If
18 the name is not there, the press is not that interested.
19 They spent huge efforts trying to find out who it was.
20 LORD HUTTON: Sir Kevin, just to go back a little: was the
21 decision to issue a statement which did not name
22 Dr Kelly made because he had not yet been asked whether
23 he was agreeable that his name would be publicly stated?
24 A. That was not the overriding reason, my Lord, although
25 that was a factor. The overriding reason is we could

90
1 still not be certain, at that point, that it was
2 Dr Kelly, that he was the single source. And we were
3 still trying at that time, as I say, through the
4 invitation to the ISC and through the correspondence
5 with the BBC, to pin that point down more clearly.
6 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
7 MR DINGEMANS: So one of the reasons, not the whole
8 reasoning, because you have explained that now, that the
9 press statement was made on 8th July was that the Clerk
10 to the ISC Committee had come back and said they wanted
11 a press statement rather than a --
12 A. That was one of the factors.
13 Q. So then we see the press statement being made and then
14 the e-mail I took you to on 9th July, they have looked
15 at the press statement: oh well, we are not going to
16 call him. It rather suggests that the concern about
17 ensuring the absence of cover up was more developed in
18 the level you were dealing with than with the ISC
19 Committee.
20 A. I think it really does show that unless the name is
21 there on an issue of that kind, we do not get to the
22 crux of the matter, because it was about an individual's
23 views and the reporting of the individual's view.
24 Q. Turning on to the 10th July, the name has come out. Can
25 I take you to MoD/1/75? This is a letter that you have

91
1 written. Who is this addressed to? It is 10th July.
2 It is about --
3 A. It is addressed to the Secretary of State, Geoff Hoon.
4 Q. Right. This deals, I think, with the proposed
5 attendance before the FAC and ISC. Requests have been
6 made to appear on 15th July; is that right?
7 A. Correct. Correct.
8 Q. You had noted that he had already been offered to the
9 ISC. You recommended you agreed to that, and because he
10 is relatively junior, and the exceptional nature of the
11 evidence, were trying to avoid setting a precedent; is
12 that right?
13 A. Yes. I confess I slightly overdid the "relatively
14 junior" point. As time went on I realised that Dr Kelly
15 was actually very eminent in his field. But I confess
16 there I was still having a certain feeling for the man;
17 I did not want to put him through more than I had to.
18 Q. "As regards the FAC, however, I recommend that you
19 resist, on grounds that the FAC inquiry is completed..."
20 And you note that the report was finalised; and
21 published, in fact, on 7th July:
22 "... and that a [second] separate session to
23 question Kelly would attach disproportionate importance
24 to him in relation to the subject of their Inquiry as
25 a whole."

92
1 Why was that your view?
2 A. I think it is self evident in the minute.
3 Q. Paragraph 3?
4 A. While I believed it was necessary to bring this
5 information into the public domain, it seemed to me that
6 it was not necessary to do it on a duplicate process.
7 Q. Right. I think you identify that in paragraph 3; is
8 that right?
9 A. Correct.
10 Q. Paragraph 4, you identify the fact that some of his
11 views may not represent Her Majesty's Government policy.
12 A. Yes, but that was not linked to the point about not
13 having two Committees take evidence from Dr Kelly
14 back-to-back. That was a separate point. The main
15 point about not having two Committees back-to-back was
16 as I said in paragraph 3, we should show some regard for
17 the man himself, he did come forward voluntarily.
18 Whilst I think he was quite robust, in the sense that he
19 had been an inspector, he had operated in a difficult
20 environment, he did deal with journalists very
21 regularly, nevertheless -- and I am not suggesting you
22 have to be robust to deal with journalists, but I mean
23 he was not naive in this area, I did not think.
24 Nevertheless, you know, he will be thrust in the public
25 eye. As I say, it was not a trial. Therefore, it

93
1 seemed reasonable to ask the FAC to show some restraint,
2 since their hearing had completed, and the ISC to take
3 it into account in their proceedings.
4 Q. Over the page at 76 I think you note it may not be
5 sustainable, for the reasons you gave there.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. FAC reports to Parliament, ISC reports to the
8 Prime Minister, but you thought it was worth a try?
9 A. Indeed.
10 Q. If you turn to MoD/1/77 we can see there the Defence
11 Secretary's views in relation to the FAC. Going down
12 the page, he identifies four reasons for resisting the
13 request, which appear really to have been taken from
14 your minute; is that right?
15 A. Yes, yes.
16 Q. And over the page he identifies two further reasons
17 against that:
18 "It is not unreasonable for the FAC to feel that
19 Dr Kelly's account may call into question the evidence
20 that they were given by Andrew Gilligan and that they
21 should therefore have an opportunity to see him
22 themselves."
23 "Presentationally, it would be difficult to defend",
24 because of the difference between the FAC and ISC.
25 The second point was a point you had identified in

94
1 your letter.
2 A. Indeed.
3 Q. Did you agree with the line that had then been taken by
4 Mr Hoon, at that stage?
5 A. I acquiesced. It is perfectly reasonable that it is for
6 Ministers to decide who appear before Committees, not
7 for officials, I mean, and that was the Secretary of
8 State's prerogative and I accepted it.
9 Q. So there were no further discussions between you and the
10 Secretary of State on that matter?
11 A. There was not.
12 Q. We know that Dr Kelly was briefed on 14th July. Can
13 I just take you to CAB/1/93? I think it is, from
14 recollection, towards the bottom of this. This is an
15 e-mail. Just at the bottom:
16 "Tried PM out on Kelly before FAC and ISC next
17 Tuesday. He thought he probably had to do both but need
18 to be properly prepared beforehand. I passed this on to
19 MoD."
20 Was anything in fact passed on to you about the
21 Prime Minister's views in relation to the preparation of
22 Dr Kelly?
23 A. I think it probably was but I was satisfied we were
24 doing it in any case; and in terms of preparation what
25 I took that to mean was that he should be briefed on

95
1 what it was going to be like to appear before
2 a Committee, the sort of questions they would ask and
3 the sort of areas that would be appropriate to cover,
4 not a process of telling him what he could say and what
5 he could not say. I always made it clear that he should
6 tell his own story.
7 Q. We have seen some notes of 14th July. I know you were
8 not there. We have seen the typewritten notes and some
9 handwritten notes. The handwritten notes refer to some
10 tricky areas of questioning. Are you able to help at
11 all in relation to the briefings that might have been
12 given to Dr Kelly or not?
13 A. I did not see that minute. It was prepared, I think,
14 considerably later. I was relying on the guidance which
15 I gave orally to those who would be conducting the
16 preparation process. I would not have used the phrase
17 "tricky areas" myself. I had already sort of covered
18 that sort of discussion earlier. I would have said:
19 some of the things Dr Kelly may say may be
20 uncomfortable. If so, if it was relevant to his meeting
21 with Gilligan he should still be prepared to say them
22 and explain his account of the meeting as it happened.
23 If he is asked on wider issues of Government policy,
24 like the case for going to war, he should remember what
25 Government policy is.

96
1 As it happened, I think Dr Kelly had already said
2 that he was supportive of the case in the first place
3 anyway.
4 So in other words, the point I am making is that the
5 preparation of Dr Kelly was not an indoctrination
6 process.
7 Q. One of the points the Foreign Affairs Committee was
8 looking at was the intelligence generally which had been
9 presented to justify the case, not whether it should
10 have been included in the dossier or not but whether in
11 fact it turned out to be vindicated. Would not
12 Dr Kelly's views, for example, on the absence of his
13 knowledge of a delivery system for the 45 minutes claim,
14 have been relevant to that?
15 A. Yes, it would, and I would not have suggested that he
16 should not say that that was what he said to
17 Andrew Gilligan.
18 Q. Right. In relation to his views on the mobile trailers,
19 would that also have been relevant?
20 A. Not to that particular hearing, no. I would have hoped
21 he would have said that he accepted that he was not
22 privy to some of the intelligence and was not involved
23 in making the ultimate judgment and accepted that. But
24 then that is what he had told us before, so I would have
25 expected him to have said that.

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1 Q. On 14th July I think you have a conversation with
2 Mr Howard about whether Dr Kelly felt under stress. Do
3 you --
4 A. Yes. I can remember -- I mean, it was not prompted by
5 anything other than a general concern that Dr Kelly
6 should be coping and so I asked Mr Howard to make sure
7 that he was okay.
8 Q. And I think your next involvement was in relation, after
9 his appearance, to the press statement that I have shown
10 you at MoD/1/90.
11 A. Yes, I think that is probably true.
12 Q. Did you discuss with Mr Howard on 17th July anything
13 about Dr Kelly's return to Iraq?
14 A. He looked into my office and asked me to confirm I was
15 happy about the date. I mean, in principle the decision
16 that he should return to Iraq had been taken long before
17 and I said: yes. In fact, I was slightly surprised to
18 be asked, because I regarded that issue as already
19 having been resolved some time before.
20 Q. Is there anything else that you know of the
21 circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly's death that you can
22 assist his Lordship with?
23 A. I do not think there is. I have thought long and hard
24 about this issue. As you can imagine, as Permanent
25 Secretary I have felt deep sense of responsibility, not

98
1 of culpability but of responsibility in this area, since
2 he was a member of my staff and my staff were talking to
3 him. So his death came as a terrible shock.
4 I have thought long and hard about the approach that
5 was taken, whether it was reasonable to ensure that
6 Dr Kelly came forward to tell his story. I still
7 believe that to have been the right course of action.
8 I believe that was correct on a number of grounds.
9 Firstly, on grounds of proportionality. I mean,
10 this was not a minor issue. This was a major issue, in
11 terms of Government reputation and in terms of the
12 integrity of the whole way in which we handle
13 intelligence. And in those circumstances one has to
14 weigh that against individual considerations.
15 The second issue was the problem of having a single
16 anonymous source, and then an individual comes forward
17 who we have reason to believe is that source, or at
18 least provides the explanation for what Andrew Gilligan
19 reported. In other words, these are very special
20 circumstances. So correcting the public record could
21 only be achieved by that single anonymous source being
22 named as the individual who can provide the explanation.
23 The third issue that I have thought about concerns
24 accountability. I mean normally, as the Permanent
25 Secretary, or indeed Ministers such as Geoff Hoon, if

99
1 officials in our departments are carrying out our
2 business, implementing Government policy, sometimes
3 controversially, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes issues
4 arising in the press, we still take responsibility for
5 their actions and do not expect to put them in front of
6 committees. I appear regularly in the Public Accounts
7 Committee to answer for the actions of my officials,
8 whether they are helpful or unhelpful, and I accept that
9 responsibility because they are doing their job.
10 This was a case where an individual had caused
11 a great deal to happen, operating, as it were, outside
12 his official responsibilities; and the only way, in
13 a sense, that he could deal with that was under his own
14 responsibility. So there was a different sense of
15 accountability here. The attendance at Parliamentary
16 Committees was something that Ministers had to decide.
17 The issues were always bound to come out anyway and that
18 was always underlying this point, that we expected the
19 name to emerge at any stage throughout the process, and
20 the concerns that despite your points that the
21 Government would be criticised heavily for not bringing
22 it forward, the problems of other members of the
23 department coming under suspicion if we were not
24 prepared to confirm that it was Dr Kelly once a public
25 statement had been made.
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1 But all these issues have gone round in my head, but
2 I am satisfied that we did the right things, balancing
3 very difficult issues.
4 Q. Is there anything further you wanted to add?
5 A. No.
6 LORD HUTTON: Yes. May I ask you, Sir Kevin, if you would
7 be good enough just to look at the report of the Foreign
8 Affairs Committee, which think was dated Monday,
9 7th July. That is FAC/3/1.
10 If we look at their conclusions and recommendations,
11 which are at FAC/3/0006.
12 A. Yes, my Lord.
13 LORD HUTTON: If we could look at paragraphs 11 to 15. 11
14 is:
15 "We conclude that Alastair Campbell did not play any
16 role in the inclusion of the 45 minutes claim in
17 the September dossier.
18 "12. We conclude that it was wrong for
19 Alastair Campbell or any Special Adviser to have chaired
20 a meeting on an intelligence matter, and we recommend
21 that this practice cease.
22 13. We conclude that on the basis of the evidence
23 available to us Alastair Campbell did not exert or seek
24 to exert improper influence on the drafting of
25 the September dossier.

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1 14. We conclude that the claims made in
2 the September dossier were in all probability well
3 founded on the basis of the intelligence then available,
4 although as we have already stated we have concerns
5 about the emphasis given to some of them. We further
6 conclude that, in the absence of reliable evidence that
7 intelligence personnel have either complained about or
8 sought to distance themselves from the content of the
9 dossier, allegations of politically inspired meddling
10 cannot credibly be established.
11 15. We conclude that without access to the
12 intelligence or to those who handled it, we cannot know
13 if it was in any respect faulty or misinterpreted.
14 Although without the Foreign Secretary's degree of
15 knowledge, we share his confidence in the men and women
16 who serve in the agencies."
17 Now, those conclusions of the FAC broadly supported
18 the Government's case, did they not?
19 A. Yes, I think the final report was a curious egg but it
20 was not entirely unhelpful, certainly.
21 LORD HUTTON: Certainly paragraph 14, in particular,
22 supported the Government's case, did it not, and in
23 essence refuted Mr Gilligan's allegation that the
24 Government knew that the 45 minutes claim was probably
25 false?

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1 A. I think that is broadly correct.
2 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Then, if we can look at the statement of
3 the BBC governors, which is in CAB/1/0376.
4 If you could look at it from the start. If you
5 would just like to read that -- it is quite a lengthy
6 statement, if you would be kind enough to read that,
7 Sir Kevin, just to remind yourself of its terms.
8 (Pause). If you go on to the second page, and read that
9 as well, 377.
10 A. Yes.
11 LORD HUTTON: Although on the first page which you looked at
12 the board of governors broadly defends the reporting on
13 the Today Programme, if we could go back to the second
14 page, 0377, and particularly the two paragraphs, the
15 penultimate paragraph and the paragraph before that:
16 "Finally, the board wishes to place on record that
17 the BBC has never accused the Prime Minister of lying,
18 or of seeking to take Britain into war under misleading
19 or false pretences.
20 "The BBC did not have an agenda in its war coverage,
21 nor does it now have any agenda which questions the
22 integrity of the Prime Minister."
23 Looking at those two paragraphs, which were issued
24 on the evening of Sunday 6th July, and the paragraphs in
25 the report of the FAC which you have also looked at, the

103
1 view could be taken that, broadly speaking, the
2 Government's position, in respect of Mr Gilligan's main
3 claim, had been established. In other words, the FAC
4 found that the Government did not put forward false
5 information about the 45 minutes claim, and the BBC
6 governors, whilst to some extent defending the Today
7 programme, were accepting and recognising and stating
8 that they were not accusing the Prime Minister of lying
9 or of seeking to take Britain to war under misleading or
10 false pretences.
11 Against that background, was any thought given to
12 the position that perhaps could have been taken that the
13 Government's position was now broadly vindicated and
14 therefore there was no need to put Dr Kelly's name into
15 the public domain? Because you have referred that one
16 of the considerations was that if you have an anonymous
17 source and he comes forward and is named, that enables
18 you to refute the allegation. But is it a possible view
19 that the allegation had already been effectively
20 refuted, and balancing that, on the one hand, with the
21 pressure and strain that would be placed on Dr Kelly,
22 his name might not have been put into the public arena?
23 I appreciate that obviously you have made the point
24 strongly that you considered his name would come out in
25 any event, I take that into account. I would be

104
1 grateful if you would give me your general comment on
2 that suggestion.
3 A. I think the pressure and strain issue was not one that
4 we were aware of in the sense that you are implying it.
5 As I say, Dr Kelly, as far as I was aware, accepted the
6 process that we were -- that he was involved in.
7 Secondly, I think these documents appear to
8 demonstrate these issues with a degree of clarity which
9 was not evident at the time in terms of public debate.
10 LORD HUTTON: Hmm.
11 A. Thirdly, I was not aware of anything within Whitehall,
12 any discussion in Whitehall, which suggested that this
13 was such a ringing clarification or vindication of the
14 position, certainly not the BBC press release, which
15 I have never seen before, or the full comments in the
16 Foreign Affairs Committee, that it was not necessary to
17 proceed with correcting the public record through
18 Dr Kelly's clarification.
19 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see. Thank you.
20 Now, you referred in your final reply to
21 Mr Dingemans that normally a minister or the permanent
22 undersecretary will speak, as it were, on behalf of an
23 official, but this was an exceptional case because of
24 what Dr Kelly had said and because he had gone outside
25 the ambit of his discretion in speaking to a journalist.

105
1 How strongly did that influence your view? Was it any
2 part of your thinking that whilst normally the Ministry
3 would not put the name of a civil servant into the
4 public arena and, as it were, would seek to protect him,
5 that because of Dr Kelly's indiscretion, as you saw it,
6 and maybe serious indiscretion, which had given rise to
7 very serious allegations against the Government, that
8 was a factor which would influence you in deciding
9 whether or not he should be asked by the Ministry to
10 appear before these Committees?
11 A. I would not put it like that at all, my Lord. I mean,
12 the main consideration here was it was difficult to see
13 how the record could be clarified without Dr Kelly
14 himself doing so.
15 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
16 A. And I have explained some of the considerations
17 affecting that.
18 LORD HUTTON: Quite.
19 A. Firstly, only the individual can counter an anonymous
20 source. Secondly, only he can be accountable for what
21 he said because he was not, as it were, implementing
22 policy that I or a Secretary of State could have done on
23 his behalf.
24 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
25 A. Of course, officials do appear before committees all the

106
1 time and it is not unusual for officials to appear
2 before committees of various levels of seniority.
3 I think Dr Kelly had himself appeared before the Foreign
4 Affairs Committee with the Foreign Secretary earlier.
5 In making my comments I think I was responding to
6 some of the criticisms that I have seen in the press,
7 which have been quite difficult to resist as one has had
8 to sit here waiting for this hearing.
9 LORD HUTTON: Quite, yes.
10 A. And I have seen comments that either I or the Cabinet
11 Secretary should have, as it were, gone to the Committee
12 and explained the position without Dr Kelly having to do
13 so. I simply could not see, in this very unique set of
14 circumstances, how that would be credible.
15 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see.
16 As regards Dr Kelly's own appearance before the
17 Foreign Affairs Committee, was any consideration
18 given -- I appreciate he was accompanied by his line
19 manager, Dr Wells, and I think perhaps by some other
20 member of Dr Wells' staff, but was any consideration
21 given to perhaps a more senior person accompanying him
22 to give him support?
23 A. That was considered and indeed it was offered; but when,
24 as I understood it, the meeting was completed, when
25 Dr Kelly realised and appreciated that we were not

107
1 trying to tell him what to say but he should simply give
2 his own account, he said he was quite content to appear
3 by himself.
4 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see. Yes.
5 As regards the second interview which Mr Hatfield
6 had with Dr Kelly when he had been brought back from the
7 RAF station, you said that the Ministry of Defence
8 statement which was issued was issued at a time when you
9 were still uncertain as to whether or not Dr Kelly was
10 the source.
11 A. We could not be absolutely certain, yes.
12 LORD HUTTON: But could the issuing of that statement not
13 have been held up until you had heard the results of
14 that second interview that was conducted by Mr Hatfield?
15 A. I am sorry, my Lord. We did -- I did have the results
16 of the second interview.
17 LORD HUTTON: Yes, but were you still uncertain at that
18 stage as to whether or not he was the source?
19 A. I think we had narrowed down the uncertainty as far as
20 we were going to.
21 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
22 A. I do not think we could have reasonably got much
23 further. We could have got a little further if the BBC
24 had said: it is not him.
25 LORD HUTTON: Yes.

108
1 A. And we could have got a little further if there had been
2 a chance for the ISC to take his evidence before his
3 name emerged. But I do not think we could have got
4 further in terms of our own departmental discussions
5 with him. Basically he had more or less remained
6 consistent, in the discussions we had had with him, with
7 the original letter he wrote of 30th June.
8 LORD HUTTON: Yes. I am not sure if I have entirely
9 understood your evidence about why he was not named in
10 the Ministry of Defence statement that was issued.
11 I had understood it was because you had said you were
12 still not absolutely certain he was the source; is that
13 correct?
14 A. Yes, we were still waiting to hear from the BBC and we
15 were still hoping -- the ISC, waiting to see what
16 happened there, but mainly it was the BBC. And
17 Mr Hatfield had not actually put it to Dr Kelly that we
18 should name him in the statement itself.
19 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
20 A. To an extent, the approach that was taken did give
21 Dr Kelly more time to prepare himself for the
22 inevitable, as it happened 24 hours. But, as I had
23 explained, interpreting some of the documents that
24 were -- that I wrote at the time or had cause to write
25 at the time, I -- the benefit of hindsight, even more

109
1 strongly, I would have preferred to have had a statement
2 which Dr Kelly had owned himself, as it were. We just
3 had not quite reached that point, my Lord.
4 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much.
5 Very well, we will rise now and sit again at
6 2 o'clock.
7 (1.15 pm)
8 (The short adjournment)
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