Hearing Transcripts

94
1 record. The official declined to comment when Mr Adams
2 put Dr David Kelly's name to that person.
3 Q. Does he speak to anyone else?
4 A. He spoke to a second Whitehall official on the same off
5 the record basis. The official did not confirm
6 Dr David Kelly as the individual and referred Mr Adams
7 to the MoD press office. Mr Adams then pursued his
8 inquiries around the name of Dr David Kelly. Asked
9 about Dr David Kelly's job and background, this official
10 replied that he was seconded to the MoD from the
11 Porton Down defence establishment and that his salary
12 was paid by the FCO.
13 MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, now might be a convenient moment.
14 LORD HUTTON: Very well. We will rise. I will sit again at
15 2 o'clock.
16 (1.00 pm)
17 (The short adjournment)
18 (2.00 pm)
19 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Blitz, I think we now have the computers
20 back up. Can I take you to FIN/1/57. Was that the note
21 Mr Adams had made? I think you just relayed to us what
22 had been said.
23 A. Yes. I understand that to be the case. He is in the
24 throes of a conversation with a Whitehall official. He
25 is asking that Whitehall official about Dr David Kelly.

95
1 The Whitehall official is telling Mr Adams that
2 Dr David Kelly is seconded from Porton Down.
3 Q. Then what did Mr Adams do with that information?
4 A. At this stage, once he had concluded --
5 Q. Paragraph 46 of your evidence.
6 A. Once he had concluded that, there was a moment of cross
7 checking between myself and Mr Adams. Just to recap on
8 where we were just before lunch: I had established from
9 a conversation with a Whitehall official that the
10 individual mentioned in the MoD statement was paid for
11 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Mr Adams had
12 just established in his conversation with the Whitehall
13 official that Dr David Kelly was paid for by the Foreign
14 Office. So there was therefore an important moment of
15 matching of information.
16 Q. What did Mr Adams do after that?
17 A. Mr Adams then tried to speak to Ms Pam Teare, the head
18 of the MoD press office, on the telephone but she was
19 engaged on another telephone call.
20 Q. Following that lack of success?
21 A. Mr Adams spoke to a third Whitehall official on an off
22 the record basis and pressed that person with
23 Dr David Kelly's name. At the end of this conversation
24 Mr Adams believed that Dr David Kelly was the individual
25 mentioned in the MoD press statement the night before.

96
1 Q. Do we see, at FIN/1/58, his redacted note of that
2 conversation?
3 A. I cannot yet see it on the screen.
4 Q. It will arrive.
5 A. As far as I am aware, that is the case. If you wish
6 to -- I would like to say at this point, if you wish to
7 press further on this point you must speak to Mr Adams
8 directly.
9 Q. Do you speak to anyone at this stage?
10 A. Yes. At this stage, I speak to John Williams at the
11 FCO. In his evidence to the Inquiry last week
12 Mr Williams made reference to that second conversation
13 he had with me that afternoon, which allows me identify.
14 I asked him whether the individual was Dr David Kelly.
15 Mr Williams said he was unable to help me and did not
16 make any other comment. The fact was I had put
17 a specific name to Mr Williams about somebody
18 I understood well now to be paid for by his department,
19 and I did not receive a flat denial of any kind. This
20 left me -- I could deduce from this, without him giving
21 any help to me, we were getting extremely close to
22 identifying the individual concerned.
23 Q. How was the individual actually identified?
24 A. It was only a few moments later that Mr Adams again
25 called Miss Teare.

97
1 Q. Was she still on the phone?
2 A. No. He put the name of Dr David Kelly to her and she
3 immediately confirmed he was the individual in the MoD
4 statement.
5 Q. Does Mr Adams have a time or estimated time for this?
6 A. Mr Adams does not recall the time of this conversation
7 but has told me that he does not dispute her evidence to
8 this Inquiry that the conversation took place at around
9 5.30 in the afternoon.
10 Q. Having confirmed the name, he obviously told you, did
11 he?
12 A. That is correct.
13 Q. And what did you do then?
14 A. I then proceeded to speak to other -- to continue with
15 the inquiries. Although I had confirmation of this, you
16 must understand this was a most unusual situation.
17 I telephoned another Whitehall official and spoke to
18 that official on an off the record basis. I indicated
19 to that person I had good grounds for believing that
20 Dr~David Kelly was the individual mentioned in the MoD
21 statement. This official did not expressly confirm my
22 belief, but the language used left me in no doubt that
23 Dr David Kelly was indeed the person in question.
24 Q. So what did you do as a result of that?
25 A. I relayed all the information I had to the main office

98
1 of the FT in London.
2 Q. Did you then start to produce any article on the basis
3 of this information?
4 A. I did not, at that point, do that. Before writing the
5 article I telephoned Ms Teare myself.
6 Q. What did she say?
7 A. I told Ms Teare I had gathered from Mr Adams that she
8 had confirmed to him that the individual was
9 Dr David Kelly. She told me this was correct.
10 I established with her what his job title was and this
11 appeared in the article which I had given the Inquiry
12 and which appeared that night.
13 During that conversation I told Ms Teare I was
14 planning to write in the FT the next day that
15 Dr David Kelly was the individual who had been mentioned
16 in the MoD statement. I told Ms Teare I wished to speak
17 to Dr Kelly directly about this matter to see if he
18 wished to make any comment. I asked Ms Teare if she
19 could put me in touch with him. Ms Teare told me the
20 MoD had a policy to confirm the name to any journalist
21 who offered it. Miss Teare also told me that a decision
22 had been taken by the MoD that in the event the name was
23 confirmed to a newspaper, that newspaper would be told
24 that he would not be available for interview.
25 LORD HUTTON: Mr Blitz, what was your purpose in telephoning

99
1 Ms Teare? Because Mr Adams had already told you that he
2 had received the name from her, she confirmed the name
3 to him. So why did you, yourself, speak to Ms Teare on
4 the telephone?
5 A. I was in the situation that afternoon, sir, in which
6 I was contemplating putting the name of a man whom I had
7 never met, whom I had never heard of and whose name, as
8 far as I was aware, was not in the public domain, into
9 the paper the next day in connection with a very serious
10 political story. I had no idea at that point of course
11 whether any other newspaper was going to do that. I
12 therefore wished to establish directly with Miss Teare,
13 as the leader of that team, that everything was the
14 case. I did not doubt what Mr Adams was telling me, but
15 I wished to go through this again. And I also felt that
16 I had to get in touch with Dr David Kelly to inform him
17 of what I was doing.
18 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much. So you wanted to get in
19 touch with Dr Kelly not just to ask him for his
20 observations but to tell him what you are about to
21 publish.
22 A. Yes.
23 LORD HUTTON: Yes. I see. Thank you.
24 MR DINGEMANS: You start to write the article. Does anyone
25 contact you?

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1 A. Yes. In the course of writing the article I was
2 contacted by a Whitehall official who wished to convey
3 to me some thoughts about Dr David Kelly. I regard this
4 conversation as having been off the record.
5 Q. Some thoughts about Dr Kelly?
6 A. Some thoughts, yes.
7 Q. Right. What were those thoughts?
8 A. The official expressed the belief that Dr David Kelly
9 was the BBC source. The official informed me
10 Dr David Kelly had appeared alongside the Foreign
11 Secretary, Jack Straw, at a Foreign Affairs Select
12 Committee meeting the previous year. The official
13 expressed the belief the BBC had interpreted the
14 appearance of Dr David Kelly at that meeting as
15 signifying that he was more important than he was. The
16 official indicated to me that Dr David Kelly had said
17 almost nothing at that meeting.
18 The official then indicated to me that
19 Richard Sambrook, the head of BBC News, had described
20 the source of the Gilligan report as a "senior
21 intelligence source". The official indicated to me this
22 was not a correct description of Dr David Kelly. The
23 official informed me Dr David Kelly had only been
24 responsible for the compilation of a historical part of
25 the dossier. I included elements of this briefing in

101
1 the article which I wrote that night. I have a
2 contemporaneous note of this conversation, a copy of
3 which I have redacted to ensure that the identity of the
4 person to whom I spoke is not revealed.
5 Q. If we look at FIN/1/61, is this the document to which
6 you refer?
7 A. Correct.
8 Q. And then did you become aware, later on, that other
9 journalists had identified --
10 A. Dr David Kelly?
11 Q. Yes.
12 A. Yes. By the time I had filed the article -- at the time
13 I filed the article I had had no contact of any
14 constructive kind with any other journalist about the
15 article I was writing. Around one hour after I filed
16 the story, I was informed by a journalist on another
17 newspaper that he understood that The Times and
18 The Guardian had also discovered the name of the
19 individual in the MoD press statement. This was the
20 first moment at which I was aware of this fact.
21 Q. You have mentioned some conversations which are off the
22 record. I entirely understand in relation to that. You
23 have seen some waivers the Inquiry managed to obtain
24 today and taken legal advice on that, and still feel at
25 the moment you are unable to share with us the identity

102
1 of those persons you spoke to off the record. That is
2 the position?
3 A. As a matter of principle, I would not reveal the
4 identity of any person with whom I had had an off the
5 record conversation, unless that person has first
6 approached me to discuss the matter.
7 Q. Right. I understand that. And if, at any stage, you
8 are in the position of being able to share more with his
9 Lordship, you will be in a position to let the Inquiry
10 know?
11 A. I would be in a position to let the Inquiry know.
12 Q. Thank you very much. Subject to that, is there anything
13 else that you know relating to the death of Dr Kelly
14 that you can assist his Lordship with?
15 A. There is not.
16 MR DINGEMANS: Thank you very much?
17 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much, Mr Blitz.
18 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Norton-Taylor, please.
19 MR RICHARD SEYMOUR NORTON-TAYLOR (called)
20 Examined by MR KNOX
21 LORD HUTTON: Just give me a moment, please. Yes, thank
22 you.
23 Yes, Mr Knox.
24 MR KNOX: Mr Norton-Taylor, could you tell the Inquiry your
25 full name and your occupation.

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1 A. Richard Seymour Norton-Taylor, the Security Affairs
2 Editor of The Guardian.
3 Q. How long have you worked in that capacity at
4 The Guardian?
5 A. About five years.
6 Q. Over the last year or so have you been dealing with Iraq
7 and related matters?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Did you, in the course of your reporting, hear any
10 reports from any sources about unease in the
11 Intelligence Services about the September dossier?
12 A. Many.
13 Q. I am not going to ask you about who the sources were,
14 but what was the nature of the unease that was expressed
15 to you?
16 A. Well, I think there was widespread unease throughout the
17 intelligence community, which was not happy about the
18 dossier in the first place, a published dossier in the
19 first place. That was early spring probably in 2002.
20 For various reasons. People were saying there was
21 nothing new to say, they felt under pressure probably
22 they would have to come up with something "new" that, by
23 definition, the nature of intelligence is made of
24 judgments and assessments and interpretation, rather
25 than hard evidence and gradually as the year went on

104
1 they knew that the Government was pressing for and
2 by September had decided to have a published dossier.
3 But in the end, I think they learnt to live with it.
4 They said their political masters wanted this and rather
5 through gritted teeth I think they accepted that. They
6 basically came, I think, almost to a constitutional
7 convention really that they will do the dossier and what
8 politicians make of it, they said, is their affair. And
9 they were pointing a bit here and there to
10 No. 10 Downing Street.
11 I think it came to a head really on the dodgy
12 dossier which came later, you know, in February this
13 year, and some people would mention Downing Street and
14 some people would mention Alastair Campbell. I was
15 told, for example, that John Scarlett was -- did not
16 have a bust up with Mr Campbell but I think the word was
17 a "debate" with Mr Campbell during the time of the
18 drafting of the dossier; and I think that is sort of the
19 tenor, really, of the -- I think I was probably told
20 that senior MI6 officers were nervous, I think is the
21 word I was told, about the whole process.
22 Q. Did you ever talk to Dr Kelly?
23 A. No.
24 Q. Did you even know of Dr Kelly's name before this whole
25 dispute arose?

105
1 A. I do not think so, no.
2 Q. We know that on 8th July the MoD made a press
3 announcement, which one can see at MoD/1/56. Did you
4 see this or hear of this press announcement when it came
5 out, which I think was about 5.45 or maybe 6 o'clock on
6 8th July, Tuesday?
7 A. I did.
8 Q. And what was your reaction when you saw it?
9 A. Well, I thought this was really giving some sort of
10 clues about -- firstly, it was news -- we did not know
11 before then -- I did not know before then anyway the
12 individual had -- any kind of individual had come
13 forward.
14 Q. So this was the first time you were aware any individual
15 had come forward?
16 A. Indeed.
17 Q. Continue, sorry.
18 A. And there were some clues, if you like, in there about
19 what the person -- I think probably later on in the
20 statement, is it not? Anyway, it certainly whetted my
21 appetite, put it that way, in trying to discover who
22 this person was.
23 Q. I think you have said at this time you did not even know
24 who Dr Kelly was, is that right?
25 A. Correct.

106
1 Q. Did you make any enquiries at all on the evening of
2 8th July which furthered your knowledge?
3 A. I did not make many that particular day, no, further in
4 that day.
5 Q. We know on Wednesday 9th July that there was a press
6 briefing at 11 o'clock in the morning at
7 No. 10 Downing Street, and again at 3.45 I think in the
8 afternoon. Did you attend either of those press
9 briefings?
10 A. No.
11 Q. What did you do on Wednesday 9th July to further your
12 enquiries as to who this man might be?
13 A. I was sort of bashing the phone around a bit, especially
14 on trying to get more information from the Ministry of
15 Defence and, in particular, the press office there.
16 Q. Can I just ask you what the Ministry of Defence press
17 office said to you when you asked?
18 A. I was asking various questions through the day really.
19 And as the day wore on, I was told -- I was asking about
20 the background of this individual, and at one moment
21 I was told this person had been a former -- I was asking
22 about their background, what kind of work he had done
23 and so on, that he was a former UNSCOM weapons
24 inspector.
25 Q. Right. That is one thing you are told?

107
1 A. A crucial thing I would say I was told.
2 Q. Was there anything else you were told that you can now
3 recall?
4 A. Not really, because I think this was such an important
5 clue, if I can put it that way, that for the moment it
6 was enough for me, as it were -- for me to go and make
7 some further enquiries very quickly.
8 Q. Can you recall what time of day it was you received this
9 piece of information?
10 A. Some time in the late afternoon maybe, I think.
11 Q. We know that --
12 A. Mid to late afternoon I would say.
13 Q. We know that one of the things that the press office was
14 told they were allowed to do was to say if the right
15 name was given to them then they would confirm it. Did
16 they pass that on to you or was that kept back from you?
17 A. They did not -- yes, at one point I think they did
18 actually, yes. I am not quite sure when. But I was, at
19 that point, really so sort of affected or impressed by
20 the clue about the UNSCOM thing reference that I was
21 concentrating on that, and I cannot actually remember
22 whether they described the confirmation policy or not,
23 at that stage.
24 Q. Can I just ask you this: why is it quite such a big
25 clue, this UNSCOM clue?

108
1 A. Because there are not many certainly British people who
2 were in the UNSCOM team.
3 Q. Could you give us a rough idea of how many there might
4 have been in that case?
5 A. Not sure -- I am not a great expert on this, I was not
6 writing about it at the time, maybe 10 or so. That is
7 slightly out of the air, but not a big number.
8 Q. So what did you then do once they had told you that?
9 A. I think the first thing, a colleague mentioned someone
10 who he remembered as an UNSCOM person, I am afraid I
11 cannot remember that name either and I do not have my
12 notes either. So I then, I think, just quickly passed
13 on that name to the MoD and they said: no. But at the
14 same time I was -- I went to the Internet and searched
15 through Google and I pressed a couple of words in,
16 I typed in the search engine something like "Britain"
17 plus "UNSCOM" plus maybe one other word. About the
18 first or second item on that list that came up on Google
19 was a lecture David Kelly had given, I think in America,
20 and it said that he was a former British UNSCOM
21 inspector. So that was one name I had very early on,
22 possibly by chance. It was by chance actually.
23 Q. Well, in one sense. Roughly what time of the day did
24 you come across this article, in very broad terms?
25 A. Between 5 and 6 I should think.

109
1 Q. What did you do next?
2 A. I looked for other names and references to UNSCOM.
3 I did know actually one or two former British UNSCOM
4 people but did not think that they were advising the
5 Government at all. So I dismissed the name, although
6 I think I mentioned another name to the MoD press office
7 at the same time as I mentioned Dr Kelly's name to them.
8 Q. How did you eventually come to realise that it might be
9 Dr Kelly?
10 A. Well, I simply put the name to the MoD press office.
11 Q. What time did you do that?
12 A. 6.30-ish, getting on for deadline time, 6.30-ish I would
13 say.
14 Q. Had you made any further investigations after getting
15 hold of that article by Dr Kelly?
16 A. I made a few more enquiries about UNSCOM and people and
17 so on. By then I had already got Kelly's name and no
18 further enquiries were helpful at all actually, no
19 additional information.
20 Q. You then ring up the MoD press office?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. That is about 6.30 you said?
23 A. 6.30/7 maybe.
24 Q. Who were you put through to, can you remember?
25 A. I noticed that Pam Teare said I spoke to the duty press

110
1 officer; it was either that person or the chief press
2 officer. The trouble is I talked to quite a few MoD
3 press people at that time. Anyway, the MoD press office
4 confirmed that name.
5 Q. How did the conversation go?
6 A. I have two names here, I said, and the second one was
7 Kelly and it was confirmed. Yes.
8 Q. So they said no to the first one, yes to the second?
9 A. Correct.
10 Q. And did they say anything else?
11 A. No.
12 Q. And after that conversation with the press office did
13 you make any further enquiries to find out something
14 about Dr Kelly's background?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. And what was the nature of those enquiries?
17 A. Again through the Internet search, talk to people, did
18 they know him and what kind of fellow he was. You do
19 not want a one sentence story: Dr Kelly was the fellow
20 who came up. You want to know a bit of his background.
21 Which by then, once you have the name, it is quite easy
22 because he is referred to in many articles and he gave
23 a lot of lectures and so on.
24 Q. I think we heard from Mr Blitz that shortly after he
25 identified the name he got calls from people in

111
1 Whitehall. Did you receive any calls from people in
2 Whitehall?
3 A. No.
4 Q. Did you, yourself, try to make any contact with anyone
5 in Whitehall?
6 A. No.
7 Q. I think you eventually wrote your article which appears
8 at CAB/1/521. This, I think, is the article that you
9 wrote with Matt Wells. This is correct, is this right?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. And you will see, in the third paragraph down, you refer
12 to:
13 " ... renowned microbiologist ... he spent seven
14 years as an UNSCOM inspector in the 1990's, visiting
15 Iraq on 37 occasions."
16 Where did you get that information from?
17 A. Secondary sources really, what had been said by various
18 people and I think Malcolm Dando, who phoned up that
19 night, talked a little bit about him, as you see.
20 Q. I assume the rest of this article you got from an
21 assortment of sources which were already in the public
22 domain?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. I see, right at the foot of the page:
25 "As this particular dispute continued to simmer,

112
1 Whitehall officials said the MI6 source behind the
2 claim..."
3 That was something that was not relayed to you on
4 the night before, that was totally separate?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Finally, Mr Norton-Taylor, is there anything else you
7 would like to add by way of evidence to this Inquiry
8 relating to the circumstances of Dr Kelly's death?
9 A. I do not think so. I think your first questions to me
10 about the general unease in the intelligence community
11 I thought was relevant, but you asked me those questions
12 at the beginning, otherwise I would have probably said
13 something along that line at the end.
14 MR KNOX: Thank you very much indeed.
15 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much.
16 MR KNOX: My Lord, the next witness is Mr Beaumont.
17 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
18 MR PETER STUART BEAUMONT (called)
19 Examined by MR KNOX
20 Q. Could you please tell his Lordship your full name and
21 occupation?
22 A. Peter Stuart Beaumont. I am the foreign affairs editor
23 of The Observer.
24 Q. How long have you held that post?
25 A. That post for about three and a half years now, I think.

113
1 Q. We know that on 2nd March I think an article appeared in
2 the press which one can see at BBC/4/130. I wonder if
3 we can just have that brought up.
4 I think I am right in saying that the article under
5 the heading "The Spies and the Spinner" is an article by
6 you and Gaby~Hinsliff which appeared on 9th March 2003;
7 do you see that?
8 A. I do see that. I am having difficulty identifying which
9 article -- I cannot actually read it.
10 Q. I am sorry about that. You probably recognise the
11 headline if nothing else.
12 A. It does sound very familiar, yes.
13 Q. I think in the second to last paragraph you talk about
14 tensions between the Government and Intelligence
15 Services.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Can you just tell us, briefly, what you knew from your
18 sources, you understood from your sources to be the
19 nature of the tension between the Government and
20 Intelligence Services?
21 A. Going back to about last October after the first dossier
22 came out, I was aware, from those sources, that there
23 were two different narratives. One which was the
24 account that was coming from the Government about the
25 threat posed by Iraq and what weapons of mass

114
1 destruction it might hold and what programmes it might
2 have. I was also aware that there was a different
3 version that was actually much, much less alarming, that
4 was described to me by one source as being more
5 theoretical in character, so the threat was not, you
6 know, as described in some places as imminent, but they
7 described a series of circumstances that might result in
8 there being a threat.
9 So I started looking into the tensions between what
10 was being said in the dossiers and what was being said
11 for public consumption, and perhaps what the alternative
12 and rather quieter narrative was saying, and that was
13 that -- that all these things could be interpreted in
14 a rather different way; that while there was
15 a perception of a threat, that it was not quite as it
16 was emerging, and that it was more theoretical.
17 And once -- you know, those conversations continued
18 right through to the war and to after the war, and it
19 was in the aftermath of the war that I began to detect
20 sort of a peak of unhappiness perhaps with, you know,
21 the way that things had been described before the war,
22 you know, by the Government and by the intelligence
23 community, and in particular there was some concern over
24 the second so-called dodgy dossier; and in conversations
25 about that with sources, there was really some quite

115
1 extreme unhappiness expressed about the way that piece
2 of material had been handled.
3 LORD HUTTON: Can I ask you, Mr Beaumont, you refer to two
4 different narratives; can you expand a little on what
5 you mean by "narratives"?
6 A. What I am trying to say is there were two
7 interpretations of the material.
8 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
9 A. There was the one that appeared in the -- you know, in
10 the first dossier that seemed to be being briefed that
11 actually Iraq was quite an imminent threat.
12 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
13 A. The second one was the one that seemed to be coming out
14 of the intelligence community, that suggested very
15 strongly that actually it was not that imminent but
16 there was a difficulty in telling the story; and, you
17 know, that story -- therefore, the story had been
18 dramatised because even though there was a potential
19 risk some way down the line, there was this kind of
20 presentational issue and that there was a kind of
21 a tension between these two accounts.
22 MR KNOX: In this article, Mr Beaumont, you say, I do not
23 know if you can read it yet:
24 "The September dossier went through two or three
25 final drafts, with Campbell writing it off each time,

116
1 and had already resulted in fairly serious rows between
2 Campbell, Omand and Stephen Lander, then head of MI5.
3 "The essence of the disagreement is said to have
4 been that intelligence material should be presented
5 'straight', rather than spiced up to make a political
6 argument."
7 Pausing there for a moment, that obviously bears
8 some similarity to some of the things Dr Kelly appears
9 to have said later to Mr Gilligan, Ms Watts and
10 Mr Hewitt.
11 Was Dr Kelly one of the sources for this --
12 A. No, he was not. In fact, not at all. It was -- it is
13 probably wrong to say it was commonplace at that time,
14 that kind of discussion, but what I understood was that
15 although there was not a problem with the material that
16 was in the dossier per se, it was the way in which the
17 material had not just been presented in the dossier in
18 terms of some of the language but also the way in which
19 that material had then been presented afterwards.
20 Q. We know that on 15th June 2003 an article appeared in
21 The Observer in which you quote a biological weapons
22 expert working for the Government who said that the
23 mobile facilities recently found in Iraq were not for
24 biological weapons but for hydrogen production. You
25 recall, presumably, that; I am not sure we are able to

117
1 bring it up, but you recall it?
2 A. Yes, I do recall it.
3 Q. Can you explain how you came to write that article,
4 briefly?
5 A. Towards the end of May there was -- the criticism over
6 the non-discovery of weapons of mass destruction had
7 been gaining pace and on both sides of the Atlantic this
8 had been countered by the assertion at the highest
9 levels that in fact weapons of mass destruction had been
10 found in these trailers. There had been some small
11 articles that had actually suggested that these were not
12 as described, and so the previous week to that article
13 myself and a colleague set out to interview scientists
14 and technicians who might know about this kind of thing,
15 to ask whether they believed, on the basis of
16 photographs that had been released, I think on the CIA
17 website, whether they felt that those facilities could
18 be as described.
19 Generally, we were being told by these people that
20 it looked wrong; I mean, they did not match up to the
21 germ labs described by the Secretary of State,
22 Colin Powell; there were a different number of pumps,
23 things missing from the facility.
24 Q. So you get information, is that right?
25 A. We get information.

118
1 Q. Are you eventually led to Dr Kelly?
2 A. No. What happens is I talk to a contact who has, you
3 know, some knowledge of these things and he tells me of
4 concern that they may not be -- and this is an official
5 contact, they may not be as described. Once we have --
6 you know, I am told that a team is going out to have
7 a look. I do not know who is on the team but pretty
8 soon we discover that someone associated with
9 Porton Down is going out. It is at that point we write
10 the first story.
11 Q. You write an article basically about this?
12 A. I write an article. I mean, I did try to make contact
13 with Dr Kelly at that point because I --
14 Q. Did you try to contact Dr Kelly before writing your
15 first article about those mobile trailers?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. What did you do, you contacted him by phone?
18 A. I had been told that Dr Kelly was unhappy with the
19 description of the trailers.
20 Q. So you received that information from one of your
21 contacts?
22 A. I had been told by a contact that Dr Kelly was one of
23 those unhappy with the description.
24 Q. How did you then try to contact Dr Kelly?
25 A. I found a phone number for Dr Kelly.

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1 Q. That was a home number or mobile number?
2 A. It was the home number, I believe.
3 Q. You rang that number?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. Did you get hold of Dr Kelly?
6 A. No. I think Dr Kelly was in Iraq looking at the
7 trailers at that stage.
8 Q. Did you leave a message?
9 A. I left a message asking him to call me on this issue.
10 Q. Then, as I understand it, the article was published,
11 that is the first article on mobile trailers was
12 published.
13 A. I should also point out that the day before we
14 published, the New York Times had published a very
15 similar investigation quoting a British source who had
16 doubts about it.
17 Q. Right. So the article is then published. Do you later
18 hear from Dr Kelly after the article is published?
19 A. Towards the end of the following week, which would be
20 the Sunday of June 15th, I came into the office and
21 found a message from him asking me to call him.
22 Q. You called him?
23 A. I called him, yes.
24 Q. Briefly, how did the conversation go?
25 A. He wanted to know what -- he had a vague idea what I was

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1 calling about but he wanted to know, and I pointed to
2 the article we had written the week before and he said:
3 I am sorry, I could not possibly have seen that. So
4 I told him the substance of what it was. He replied:
5 yes, yes, something like that. When I pressed him on,
6 you know, what he meant, he said: well, the facilities
7 are as the Iraqis describe them.
8 Q. When would this conversation have taken place? I think
9 the article comes out on 15th June.
10 A. I think on the Friday, my recollection is on the Friday.
11 Q. So that is the 13th June?
12 A. I think so. I am not 100 per cent certain but I have
13 a strong recollection it was a Friday.
14 Q. Did Dr Kelly appear to be forthcoming or not
15 particularly forthcoming in this conversation?
16 A. He was forthcoming in the way he had actually confirmed
17 that our story of the week before was correct.
18 Q. Did he do anything except confirm the correctness of
19 your previous story?
20 A. (Pause). No, I mean essentially he confirmed we had got
21 it right. Given we had been led to the concern in the
22 first place by a contact that I regarded as being
23 authorised, I was not surprised that he had called me
24 back because I was under the understanding that there
25 was some effort to try to calm down that story at that

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1 time.
2 Q. Did you get the impression that Dr Kelly was speaking
3 with or without authority, from this conversation?
4 A. I had the impression that it was a background briefing,
5 although having seen the subsequent evidence to this
6 Inquiry I was clearly wrong about that.
7 Q. When you say "background briefing", what is the evidence
8 of something being a background briefing?
9 A. I thought, you know, because I had already had
10 conversations about this and as far as I knew there was
11 no problem with me having this conversation and being
12 led to the fact that there was a British team going out
13 to investigate, that this was a continuation of that
14 contact and was in the same form as that contact; and
15 therefore, you know, that perhaps it had been suggested
16 to him that he should reply to this phone call.
17 Q. When you say "it had been suggested to him", suggested
18 to him by people in Government?
19 A. Yes, that would -- yes.
20 Q. You did not actually name Dr Kelly?
21 A. I did not name Dr Kelly, no.
22 Q. Why was that?
23 A. Because at the end of the conversation I was going
24 through the sort of list of things you do at the end of
25 an interview and said, "Can I just check your official

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1 title?", which would have signified to him that
2 I intended to quote him by name, and his response was,
3 you know: just keep -- yes, I am such and such but can
4 you just keep my name out of the article. So
5 I understood that to be, you know, he did not want his
6 name associated with it but he did not have a problem
7 with the information being in the public domain.
8 Q. It is apparent that this year you have been working on
9 the same underlying story as Mr Gilligan was working
10 on --
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. -- about the dissatisfaction in the intelligence
13 community. Did you suppose that Dr Kelly was
14 Mr Gilligan's source or might be Mr Gilligan's source?
15 A. Not at all, because the kind of work I have been doing
16 and the kind of contacts I had had, I had assumed that
17 as described by Mr Gilligan it was a source in the
18 intelligence community of some kind and therefore it
19 never occurred to me that it might be Dr Kelly.
20 Q. We know that Dr Kelly's name was finally put in the
21 press on 10th July as Gilligan's source. Did you begin
22 to have your suspicions as to this before 10th July?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. If so, could you explain when and why?
25 A. It first occurred to me that Dr Kelly could be the

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1 source about five days before he was named, and
2 I recall --
3 Q. That would be, what, Saturday 5th July?
4 A. It may have been the Friday then, because I recall --
5 I just recall it striking me that it could have been
6 Dr Kelly.
7 Q. Can you give --
8 A. There was so much detail about him, you know -- I was
9 aware of who Dr Kelly was before I had actually spoken
10 to him, and because of that it seemed patently obvious,
11 from a lot of the hints that were being dropped, that he
12 had to be a very strong candidate.
13 LORD HUTTON: There was so much detail about him, this was
14 on 4th and 5th July. Where was this detail?
15 A. I suppose -- yes, this is difficult. I would rather not
16 answer that question.
17 LORD HUTTON: I see. You said hints were being dropped
18 about him.
19 A. Yes.
20 MR KNOX: Was this hints you were receiving privately or
21 hints you were receiving by reading the press?
22 A. I think both. I am sorry, I do not want to be drawn on
23 this simply because of confidentiality of sources and
24 because -- yes.
25 Q. I am obviously not asking you about your sources now,

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1 but certainly so far as the press is concerned, the
2 first time that any major development appears to have
3 taken place is Saturday, 5th July when there is more
4 information put out?
5 A. It must have been the Saturday then. It must have been
6 the Saturday then because it struck me, I remember
7 having a conversation with a colleague saying: I have an
8 idea who this is. But I thought it was on the Friday,
9 not the Saturday.
10 Q. Did you try to contact Dr Kelly once you saw that?
11 A. No, because I think in the circumstances of my contact
12 with him, I thought it might make -- if it was him
13 I thought it might make life a lot more difficult for
14 him, and because he had been a contact and I was not --
15 I certainly was not so sure of what the status of that
16 contact was in the circumstances, that I thought it
17 might make his life more difficult for him, especially
18 if he was not actually Gilligan's source.
19 Q. Did you try to make your own enquiries to ascertain the
20 position?
21 A. Not at that point; but you know by the time -- I mean,
22 I think, if I recall rightly, the name came up pretty
23 quickly after that. I was involved in some other things
24 and by the time it came round to that issue again,
25 I mean, Dr Kelly's name had been released.

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1 MR KNOX: Is there anything else you would like to add about
2 the circumstances which led to Dr Kelly's death?
3 A. No, I think I have covered it all in the first question
4 that you asked me.
5 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much.
6 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Baldwin, please.
7 MR THOMAS DANIEL BALDWIN (called)
8 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
9 Q. Can you tell his Lordship your full name?
10 A. My name is Thomas Daniel Baldwin.
11 Q. Your occupation?
12 A. I am a journalist.
13 Q. Who do you write for?
14 A. The Times.
15 Q. How long have you been writing for The Times?
16 A. Four and a half years.
17 Q. Were you interested in the story disclosed on Today on
18 29th May?
19 A. I was on holiday on 29th May. When I returned this
20 story was still dominating the front pages. Even at
21 that stage I thought the nature of the allegations and
22 the degree of public interest meant it was a legitimate
23 line of newspaper enquiry for us to examine who the
24 source was. It was a single anonymous source,
25 Mr Gilligan was saying, and it seemed to me one of the

126
1 ways to get to the bottom of what was growing into
2 a major dispute between the Government and the BBC was
3 to examine the motivation, the credibility and indeed
4 the identity of the BBC's single source.
5 Q. I think you published an article on 4th June quoting
6 John Reid suggesting that rogue elements in the
7 Intelligence Services were trying to undermine the
8 Government.
9 A. That is correct.
10 Q. You wanted to say something about the origins of that
11 report.
12 A. Merely that it has been suggested that that was a story
13 which was encouraged by Downing Street, which it was
14 not, and I think we now know that, from
15 Alastair Campbell's testimony, he was away at the time
16 and came back on that day to a series of phone calls
17 from the Intelligence Services which probably displeased
18 him. I think it far more reflected the suspicions of
19 people like John~Reid and Hilary Armstrong, who are keen
20 students of Labour history, about the role the
21 intelligence services have played with previous Labour
22 Governments.
23 Q. On 28th June you did another related piece. Do you
24 recollect that?
25 A. Yes, that is right.

127
1 Q. What was that about?
2 A. It was a question and answer piece in which one of the
3 questions I asked was: who was Gilligan's source?
4 Q. Right. And the next article you appear to have written
5 related to this was 4th July. What does that say?
6 A. This was a story under the headline "BBC on edge of
7 defeat in Iraq dossier row".
8 There were two essential elements to it. One was
9 information coming to my colleague, David Charter, about
10 what had happened on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
11 David was, I think, given some information that
12 Mr Campbell was likely to be cleared of the most
13 significant charges against him, at the same time that
14 Mr Sambrook has confirmed to this Inquiry he had
15 attended a meeting at The Times offices with myself, the
16 deputy editor and others on July 3rd.
17 Q. On July 3rd. How did that meeting take place?
18 A. I think Mr Sambrook, at the time, was doing the rounds
19 of various national newspapers, and I was told in the
20 morning that he would be coming in; and we --
21 Q. Sorry to interrupt. What did "doing the rounds" relate
22 to? Was it the story of the BBC against the Government?
23 A. Yes. I think Mr Sambrook was keen to put the BBC's
24 point of view across and what other messages he wanted
25 to bring to us.

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1 Q. Was there any discussion about Mr Gilligan at that
2 meeting?
3 A. Yes, there was.
4 Q. And what was the nature of those discussions?
5 A. You will see from my story that a BBC executive is
6 quoted talking about whether Mr Gilligan should be
7 writing newspaper articles, for instance. I say in my
8 statement that I asked Mr Sambrook, at the end of the
9 meeting, if he was happy to be identified with an
10 apparent ban the BBC had put on Mr Gilligan writing
11 newspaper articles, and Mr Sambrook agreed to that.
12 Q. You wrote an article on 5th July, we have seen it
13 a number of times throughout the course of the Inquiry,
14 headed "BBC dossier source believed to be in Iraq". In
15 the article you said the source was believed to be
16 a military expert who is now based in Iraq and among the
17 100 British intelligence and weapons specialists
18 currently in Iraq. Where did you get the information
19 for that from?
20 A. Mr Sambrook has chosen to confirm to this Inquiry that
21 he provided some of the information, some of the quotes
22 attributed to a BBC executive in that story, including:
23 is he abroad? My question: is he abroad? Something
24 like that, including the quote relating to how the BBC
25 had tried to contact the source again to check some of

129
1 their facts but had been unable to do so because of the
2 nature of the position. The record will show
3 Mr Sambrook has already confirmed that he was the source
4 of that information.
5 There was also additional information provided to me
6 in the meantime by two other journalists at the BBC who
7 had come into contact with Kevin Marsh. I will not name
8 the two journalists I spoke to, but I have spoken to
9 them since and they are happy for me to say that their
10 information was that Mr Kevin Marsh, who is the editor
11 of the Today Programme, Mr Gilligan's line manager, had
12 given a very strong hint that he believed Mr Gilligan's
13 source was in Iraq.
14 Q. Right. And those people, without identifying them, were
15 BBC personnel?
16 A. They are BBC personnel, yes.
17 Q. The next story you appear to write is on 8th July, which
18 contained a passage: Who was the BBC's source? If I can
19 read it without bringing it up:
20 "Mr Gilligan says it was a credible and senior
21 official involved in drafting the dossier. The BBC says
22 it has been unable to contact him since May because of
23 the nature of his position. Some executives have hinted
24 that he may be in Iraq searching for WMD."
25 That repeats effectively the position you had got to

130
1 on Saturday:
2 "Such loose talk in the BBC has convinced
3 Downing Street that he is not a member of the
4 Intelligence Services and was not involved in drafting
5 the report but more likely is a WMD specialist at the
6 Foreign Office."
7 That discloses there was contact with people apart
8 from the BBC. What was the last sentence based on?
9 A. It was based on conversations I had with Whitehall
10 contacts.
11 Q. Whitehall contacts. I think you have seen the waivers
12 that have been obtained. I understand your position to
13 be that until the source has confirmed to you privately
14 that they are happy for their identity to be disclosed,
15 you are not going to take the matter further.
16 A. I think my position is that if somebody wants to release
17 themself from the anonymity which my duty of
18 confidentiality would normally protect them, that is
19 a matter for them; and if you want to ask them questions
20 about whether they told me something or not, that is
21 a matter for you but I am not going to do that.
22 Q. Thank you very much. If later on you are released from
23 that, you might be able to assist his Lordship?
24 A. I think you can talk to individuals yourself but I am
25 not going to talk at any stage about what somebody told

131
1 me off the record.
2 Q. That is 8th July. On 9th July there is a headline,
3 a news story "MoD man admits 'I spoke to the BBC'".
4 That obviously was part based on the MoD press statement
5 on 8th July; is that right?
6 A. Yes, that is correct.
7 Q. But you also included this statement:
8 "The adviser is understood to work for the
9 Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat and The Times
10 understands that the adviser has known Mr Gilligan for
11 some time ... said to have previously worked as a UN
12 weapons inspector."
13 Perhaps you can just identify what the position is
14 in relation to those sentences?
15 A. The same as the previous article.
16 Q. Thank you very much. That is 9th July. We know that
17 during the course of that day you come to prepare an
18 article in which the name Dr Kelly is identified. How
19 was the name actually identified?
20 A. I never got the name Dr David Kelly; my colleague,
21 Michael Evans, the Defence Editor of The Times, got the
22 name David Kelly.
23 Q. He got the name. I understand he is going to come after
24 you just to deal with that. So he gives you the name
25 and you then produced the article?

132
1 A. We wrote the article together. There was some churn
2 between different editions, in that a front page
3 article -- the front page article we produced for the
4 first edition then got squeezed down to a few
5 paragraphs. Then we extended the inside piece to try to
6 sort of tell our readers what this is all about, again
7 really because I think it had become rather sort of
8 anorak-ish. We had probably got so sort of caught up
9 with the minutiae of the story, some of even The Times
10 readers would have been sort of puzzled as to the finer
11 details of this.
12 Q. Was that a reflection amongst journalists as a whole
13 that this really was a dispute that had run its course
14 before this development?
15 A. I think by the time the name was actually disclosed
16 interest was waning. I think you have heard already
17 that there was some frustration within Government
18 that -- certain parts of the Government anyway, that the
19 name could not come out earlier; and a lot of journalism
20 is about timing; and this -- I think that in a sense --
21 this sense was that the heat was going out of this
22 issue.
23 Q. Right. Is there anything else that you know about the
24 circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly's death that you can
25 assist his Lordship with?

133
1 A. No, I am afraid there is not.
2 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much.
3 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Evans please.
4 MR MICHAEL STEPHEN JAMES EVANS (called)
5 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
6 MR DINGEMANS: Can you tell his Lordship your full name?
7 A. Michael Stephen James Evans.
8 Q. Occupation?
9 A. I am a journalist on The Times.
10 Q. How long have you worked for The Times?
11 A. Since 1986.
12 Q. We have heard from Mr Baldwin you were the man who
13 actually, as far as The Times were concerned, got
14 Dr Kelly's name. How did that come about?
15 A. If I may, I will go back just slightly --
16 Q. Yes.
17 A. Effectively, I had been trying to get the name of the
18 official for two days. I personally had never had any
19 interest in seeking the source for Andrew Gilligan's
20 story, although there was obviously tremendous interest
21 in finding the source. I was quite interested in
22 finding maybe the department where this information had
23 come from but I was not interested in the source.
24 However, when the Ministry of Defence statement was
25 made it transformed everything completely. By then it

134
1 was not a question of finding the BBC's source, it was a
2 question of trying to identify the Ministry of Defence
3 official who had come forward. In my view, that was two
4 separate things. Whether the man was the source or not
5 was neither here nor there. The point was an official
6 had come forward.
7 So on July 8th and July 9th I had been engaged in
8 trying to find out the name of this official; and I did
9 it through all kinds of very conventional methods, as
10 one of my colleagues earlier mentioned, checking the
11 Civil Service year book, looking at my contacts book,
12 ringing up contacts, speaking to various people I knew,
13 speaking to the Ministry of Defence and, as has been
14 published, I think in several newspapers, I came up with
15 quite a lot of names, in fact 20-odd names. Many of
16 them just came out of the Civil Service year book, which
17 I then passed to the Ministry of Defence and asked them
18 to confirm whether they could confirm if any of them
19 were correct.
20 Q. How many names did you put to the Ministry of Defence?
21 A. About 20 names I would guess.
22 Q. So question 1, no; question 2, no. Where was Dr Kelly
23 on that list?
24 A. Well, Dr Kelly was not on that particular list.
25 Q. So how do you get to his name?

135
1 A. He is name number 21.
2 Q. How many others did you have on that list?
3 A. Well, that is it. It is about 21 names.
4 Q. There were 21 names?
5 A. Clearly Dr Kelly was the last name.
6 Q. And that was a Ministry of Defence press official?
7 A. Absolutely, straightforward press department.
8 Q. Had you asked any other questions of the Ministry of
9 Defence press office at this stage?
10 A. Yes, I did. I asked whether there was any background
11 information on the official; and I was told quite a lot
12 of things, most of which have already come out in
13 the Inquiry. I do not think I learnt anything more than
14 anybody else did.
15 Q. But before you get to your 21 names you had already had
16 conversations during the day asking, you know, the
17 background, UNSCOM inspector, et cetera?
18 A. Absolutely. The day before, July 8th, and July 9th.
19 Q. So on July 8th you had conversations and were provided
20 with some material?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Again, we do not need to know who it was but from the
23 Ministry of Defence press office?
24 A. Just straightforward. Not special contacts, just
25 straightforward.

136
1 Q. We have seen the defensive Q and A material, you have
2 probably seen it a number of times on the screen --
3 A. Indeed.
4 Q. -- asking those sorts of questions and getting those
5 sorts of answers.
6 A. Absolutely.
7 Q. Do you know on 8th July, when you were getting those
8 sorts of responses back? I appreciate that time is very
9 difficult, even after a month.
10 A. I do remember that July 8th was a fantastically busy day
11 for me. I had a huge number of stories to write, in
12 fact I counted five this morning when I checked. So
13 I had a very, very busy day. So I was literally doing
14 it in between everything else. I cannot put a time on
15 it but I would have continued until probably about
16 7 o'clock at night, maybe later.
17 Q. Do you think any of these calls to the Ministry of
18 Defence press office, which at least resulted in some
19 information on 8th July, were made before lunchtime?
20 A. No.
21 Q. And before or after tea?
22 A. I think it really would have been in the latter part of
23 the day, because I had too much to do for most of the
24 day.
25 Q. So early evening?

137
1 A. It was not a major focus for my day. My focus was on
2 other things that day, until, of course, the statement
3 from the Ministry of Defence about the official, then of
4 course that became a priority.
5 Q. On 9th July you confirm the name in the circumstances
6 you have given us. Do you recall what time that was?
7 A. I recall between 6.30 and 7 o'clock. I know it was
8 quite late in the day and there was not actually much
9 time to write to it before I had to leave to go to
10 a very important official dinner engagement.
11 Q. Is there anything else that you know of relating to the
12 circumstances of Dr Kelly's death that you can assist
13 his Lordship with?
14 A. There is not at all. I wish there was, but there is
15 not.
16 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much.
17 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Broucher, please.
18 MR DAVID STUART BROUCHER (called)
19 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
20 LORD HUTTON: Forgive me just a moment.
21 MR DINGEMANS: Can you tell his Lordship your full name?
22 A. David Stuart Broucher.
23 Q. What is your occupation?
24 A. I am a member of the Diplomatic Service and I am
25 currently a Permanent Representative to the Conference

138
1 on Disarmament in Geneva.
2 Q. How long have you held that post for?
3 A. Since September 2001.
4 Q. Briefly, before that what was your previous role?
5 A. I was the British Ambassador in Prague for four years
6 before that.
7 Q. What do you do as the UK's Permanent Representative to
8 the Conference on Disarmament?
9 A. To keep it short, and the thing that is relevant to this
10 Inquiry is that I have been concerned with the
11 implementation of the biological weapons convention.
12 Q. Right. And in the course of that did you have any
13 contact with Dr Kelly?
14 A. Yes. I met Dr Kelly once in connection with my duties.
15 To the best of my knowledge this meeting took place on
16 27th September, but there has been some difficulty
17 confirming this because I was definitely in Geneva on
18 that day and according to the Foreign Office travel
19 records Dr Kelly was in New York. But we managed to
20 establish this morning that he did not attend a meeting
21 in Baltimore on 28th February that he was due to attend,
22 so my feeling is that he probably returned to Geneva --
23 to Europe early and that he came to Geneva, because
24 I did see him there.
25 Q. So the effect of all that is, doing the best you can,

139
1 you think you met him on what day?
2 A. On 27th February.
3 Q. Of this year?
4 A. Of this year.
5 Q. And why were you meeting Dr Kelly?
6 A. We had tried to meet before, I believe on 8th November,
7 but that had not proved possible. We wanted to talk
8 about the verification of compliance with the biological
9 weapons convention and I was keen to pick his brains
10 because I knew that he was a considerable expert on
11 these issues in relation to Iraq.
12 Q. So the meeting in February 2003, and doing the best you
13 can, you think in Geneva, is that minuted anywhere in
14 your diary?
15 A. No, I did not minute it and it is not recorded in my
16 diary because it took place at very short notice.
17 I remember that Dr Kelly rang to say that he was in
18 Geneva and he was going to pop in and see me.
19 Q. About what time do you think he turned up, during the
20 day?
21 A. Probably around noon.
22 Q. Right. Did you have a meeting with him?
23 A. I did.
24 Q. How long did the meeting last?
25 A. About an hour.

140
1 Q. You said you wanted to pick his brains. What were you
2 discussing?
3 A. We talked about the history of Iraq's biological weapons
4 capability, about his activities with UNSCOM, about what
5 he thought might be the current state of affairs, and we
6 talked a little about Iraq and the biological weapons
7 convention.
8 Q. What view did Dr Kelly express about the Iraqi position
9 in terms of preparedness?
10 A. As far as I can recall, he felt that if the Iraqis had
11 any biological weapons left it would not be very much.
12 He also said that the -- I believe it is called the fill
13 for the weapons would be kept separately from the
14 munitions and that this meant that the weapons could not
15 be used quickly.
16 Q. Your concern was, you have obviously the disarmament
17 conference and the BWC. What does the BWC mean?
18 A. It is the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, which
19 forbids the states parties to manufacture, store or
20 transfer biological weapons.
21 Q. And did you discuss that with Dr Kelly?
22 A. Yes, I did. The particular issue is whether it is
23 possible to verify compliance with the Convention by on
24 site inspection.
25 Q. And you discussed that with him?

141
1 A. Yes, I did.
2 Q. And what was his view?
3 A. I think from his experience in Iraq his judgment was
4 that you could gain quite a lot of certainty about
5 compliance with the Convention because, in the case of
6 Iraq, there were very precise written records about what
7 they had made and destroyed. This was something he said
8 that they had learned from the British.
9 Q. Was Iraq, at the time, a member of the BWC?
10 A. He told me that Iraq did not ratify the BWC until 19 --
11 if I may just refer to my notes.
12 Q. I think it is September 1991.
13 A. September 1991.
14 Q. Was there an issue about whether or not Iraq would be
15 chairing the Conference?
16 A. There was an issue about whether Iraq should chair the
17 Conference on Disarmament. It was their turn by
18 alphabetical rotation but we were trying to prevent
19 that, and I believe that we did.
20 Q. And at this stage, we know that Resolution 1441 has been
21 passed and there had been further subsequent
22 inspections; Dr Kelly was not part of that team.
23 I think the Iraqis had objected to any British or
24 American inspectors taking part.
25 A. That is my understanding.

142
1 Q. Did you discuss that with Dr Kelly?
2 A. I did not discuss the fact that the Iraqis had objected
3 to British inspectors, no.
4 Q. No. Did you discuss whether or not inspections were
5 going to be enough to deal with the situation?
6 A. My recollection is that Dr Kelly felt that inspections,
7 properly carried out, would give a degree of certainty
8 about compliance.
9 Q. In relation to this meeting, you have told us, I think,
10 that you did not have a note in your diary. Do you have
11 a clear recollection of this meeting?
12 A. Yes, I do.
13 Q. Did you then go on to discuss the possible use of force
14 in Iraq?
15 A. We did.
16 Q. Can you tell us, in your own words, what was said?
17 A. I said to Dr Kelly that I could not understand why the
18 Iraqis were courting disaster and why they did not
19 cooperate with the weapons inspectors and give up
20 whatever weapons might remain in their arsenal. He said
21 that he had personally urged -- he was still in contact
22 with senior Iraqis and he had urged this point on them.
23 Their response had been that if they revealed too much
24 about their state of readiness this might increase the
25 risk that they would be attacked.

143
1 Q. Did Dr Kelly say how he was in contact or not?
2 A. He did not give any details of names or places or times;
3 and I did not ask him that.
4 Q. Did he say what he had said to those persons that he had
5 contacted?
6 A. He said that he had tried to reassure them that if they
7 cooperated with the weapons inspectors then they had
8 nothing to fear.
9 Q. Which, as I understand it, was the position adopted by
10 the United Nations.
11 A. So I understand, yes.
12 Q. And did he disclose how he felt about the situation?
13 A. My impression was that he felt that he was in some
14 personal difficulty or embarrassment over this, because
15 he believed that the invasion might go ahead anyway and
16 that somehow this put him in a morally ambiguous
17 position.
18 Q. Did he say anything further to you?
19 A. I drew some inferences from what he said, but I cannot
20 recall the precise words that he used.
21 Q. What inferences did you draw?
22 A. Well, I drew the inference that he might be concerned
23 that he would be thought to have lied to some of his
24 contacts in Iraq.
25 Q. Did you discuss the dossier at all in this conversation?

144
1 A. We did discuss the dossier. I raised it because I had
2 had to -- it was part of my duties to sell the dossier,
3 if you like, within the United Nations to senior
4 United Nations officials; and I told Dr Kelly that this
5 had not been easy and that they did not find it
6 convincing. He said to me that there had been a lot of
7 pressure to make the dossier as robust as possible; that
8 every judgment in it had been closely fought over; and
9 that it was the best that the JIC could do. I believe
10 that it may have been in this connection that he then
11 went on to explain the point about the readiness of
12 Iraq's biological weapons, the fact they could not use
13 them quickly, and that this was relevant to the point
14 about 45 minutes.
15 Q. Did you discuss Dr Kelly's position in the Ministry of
16 Defence?
17 A. He gave me to understand that he -- it was only with
18 some reluctance that he was working in the Ministry of
19 Defence. He would have preferred to go back to
20 Porton Down. He felt that when he transferred into the
21 Ministry of Defence they had transferred him at the
22 wrong grade, and so he was concerned that he had been
23 downgraded.
24 Q. Right. Did you have any other conversation with
25 Dr Kelly that day?

145
1 A. As Dr Kelly was leaving I said to him: what will happen
2 if Iraq is invaded? And his reply was, which I took at
3 the time to be a throw away remark -- he said: I will
4 probably be found dead in the woods.
5 Q. You understood it to be a throw away remark. Did you
6 report that remark at the time to anyone?
7 A. I did not report it at the time to anyone because I did
8 not attribute any particular significance to it.
9 I thought he might have meant that he was at risk of
10 being attacked by the Iraqis in some way.
11 Q. And you, at the time, considered it to be a sort of
12 general comment one might make at the end of
13 a conversation?
14 A. Indeed.
15 Q. Where were you in July this year on about
16 17th/18th July?
17 A. I was on leave in Geneva.
18 Q. And did you hear of Dr Kelly's death at all?
19 A. I believe I heard about it on the television news.
20 Q. Right. And did you see a picture of Dr Kelly on the
21 news?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. What was your reaction to that?
24 A. I recognised him, I realised that I knew him.
25 Q. And as a result of that what happened?

146
1 A. Nothing happened immediately because I was aware that
2 I knew him but it was not until later that I became
3 aware of the circumstances of his death and realised the
4 significance of this remark that he had made to me,
5 seemingly as a throw away line, when we met in February.
6 Q. Did you contact anyone about your recollection?
7 A. Yes, I did, not immediately but when the Inquiry began
8 on 1st August it seemed to me that I needed to make
9 known this fact.
10 Q. Can I take you to CAB/10/9? How did you make this fact
11 known?
12 A. I sent an e-mail to my colleague, the press officer for
13 biological weapons in the Foreign Office, Patrick Lamb.
14 Q. And you say to Patrick Lamb:
15 "Is the FCO preparing evidence for the Hutton
16 Inquiry?"
17 We have heard from Mr Lamb:
18 "If so, I may have something relevant to contribute
19 that I have been straining to recover from a very deep
20 memory hole."
21 Is that right, that at the time your impression was
22 that it was a throw away remark, and is it also fair to
23 say that it was deeply buried within your memory?
24 A. Yes, that is fair to say, and the other facts of the
25 meeting took some time for me to remember; and it took

147
1 a long time to establish when the meeting took place
2 because it was not noted in my diary.
3 Q. And can you just read to us the middle three paragraphs?
4 A. Of that e-mail?
5 Q. Yes.
6 A. "In a conversation in Geneva which I think took place in
7 late February, he explained to me that he thought that
8 the Weapons Inspectors could have a good idea what the
9 Iraqis had built and destroyed, because they (Iraqis)
10 were inveterate keepers of written records, something
11 they had, he thought, learned from us. There was
12 a paper file on everything down to the smallest item.
13 "Kelly said that his Iraqi contacts had pointed to
14 out to him that revealing too much about their state of
15 readiness might well heighten the risk that they would
16 be attacked. To gain their trust he had been obliged to
17 assure them that if they complied with the Weapons
18 Inspectors' demands they would not be. The implication
19 was that if an invasion now went ahead, that would make
20 him a liar and he would have betrayed his contacts, some
21 of whom might be killed as a direct result of his
22 actions. I asked what would happen then, and he
23 replied, in a throw away line, that he would probably be
24 found dead in the woods.
25 "I did not think much of this at the time, taking it

148
1 to be a hint that the Iraqis might try to take revenge
2 against him, something that did not seem at all fanciful
3 then. I now see that he may have been thinking on
4 rather different lines."
5 That e-mail that you sent to Mr Lamb, I think
6 Mr Lamb brought to the attention of those within the
7 Foreign and Commonwealth Office and indeed has not yet
8 answered the question whether he knows of anything
9 surrounding the circumstances of Dr Kelly's death that
10 he might assist his Lordship with, so that you can give
11 this evidence.
12 Is there anything further that you can say or
13 recollect relating to the meeting?
14 A. No, I think we have covered everything.
15 Q. In terms of strength of recollection, you have suggested
16 that it was, as you thought at the time, a throw away
17 remark and you have shown on the e-mail a very deep
18 memory hole. Is that reasonable to characterise the way
19 in which you had approached it at the time?
20 A. I think what I meant by a deep memory hole was that
21 these were events that -- this was a conversation that
22 took place six months ago, and it had taken me some time
23 to recall all the details of it.
24 Q. Is there anything else that you know relating to the
25 circumstances of Dr Kelly's death that you can assist

149
1 his Lordship with?
2 A. No.
3 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Broucher.
4 I think this would be a convenient time to take a break.
5 (3.15 pm)
6 (Short Break)
7 (3.20 pm)
8 MR LEE TERENCE HUGHES (called)
9 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
10 MR DINGEMANS: Can you tell his Lordship your full name?
11 A. Lee Terence Hughes.
12 Q. What is your occupation?
13 A. I am a senior civil servant in the Department for
14 Constitutional Affairs currently acting as Secretary to
15 this Inquiry.
16 Q. And in that capacity have you made requests for
17 documents and received documents?
18 A. Yes, I have.
19 Q. And the documents that have been referred to on the
20 screen, have they been put on the web pages?
21 A. Yes, they have.
22 Q. Apart from?
23 A. Apart from those which are referenced ISC, which stands
24 for Intelligence and Security Committee.
25 Q. And why have they not gone on to the website?

150
1 A. We agreed with that Committee that we would not publish
2 those documents until such time as the Committee had
3 done so; and I understand that will be in the next few
4 weeks.
5 Q. We have referred to a considerable number of documents
6 so far. But are those all the documents that have been
7 supplied to you?
8 A. No.
9 Q. And is it intended, from today, to put the other
10 documents that have not yet been referred to on the
11 website?
12 A. For the most part, yes.
13 Q. And there are exceptions. What are those?
14 A. Of course the ISC, as I mentioned, documents will not be
15 put on. Also there are a few, I think about three
16 pages, that we will not place into the public domain for
17 national security reasons.
18 There are other documents that we will either not
19 place on the website or will redact, that is edit to
20 remove certain information on personal privacy grounds.
21 Q. What falls in that category?
22 A. There are witness statements provided to the Inquiry.
23 Q. Or notes?
24 A. Or notes.
25 Q. And those are not going to be put on the website?

151
1 A. No, because any information relevant to the Inquiry
2 would have been elicited by counsel during the course of
3 the Inquiry.
4 Q. Or we hope would have been elicited.
5 A. We hope.
6 Q. Chronologies that people have prepared?
7 A. They are covered by that same exception.
8 Q. And diaries that people have been requested to submit?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. That is covered by that as well?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Is everything else going to go on the website?
13 A. I should say also covered by that exception are other
14 items of personal information that are on documents,
15 home telephone numbers, that kind of thing we will edit
16 out.
17 Q. You will try to ensure those are removed?
18 A. Absolutely, yes.
19 Q. Subject to those exceptions, would all the other
20 documents be available?
21 A. There is one other exception, which is evidence received
22 from Thames Valley Police, which contains a very great
23 deal of personal information. We will be placing that
24 on a website but it will probably take another week or
25 so for us to get through the editing process, because

152
1 obviously we do not want highly personal information to
2 be published.
3 Q. That will also exclude witness statements as well?
4 A. Absolutely, yes.
5 Q. When is this process of putting the documents on the
6 website going to start?
7 A. Well, it is starting now, but the evidence will not be
8 available until some time on Saturday. That is the
9 intention. It simply takes that long for it to go
10 through the process. There are a vast number of
11 documents.
12 MR DINGEMANS: Right.
13 Does your Lordship have any questions?
14 LORD HUTTON: No.
15 Thank you very much, Mr Hughes.
16 MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, that is the evidence for this week.
17 LORD HUTTON: Very well. Thank you very much Mr Dingemans.
18 We are now halfway through the first stage of this
19 Inquiry. I will sit again next week on Tuesday
20 26th August; and on that day evidence will be given by
21 Mr Andrew Mackinlay MP, by Mr John Scarlett, the
22 Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, by
23 Sir David Omand, the Permanent Secretary for Cabinet
24 Office.
25 Then on Wednesday the 27th, evidence will be given

153
1 by Mr Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence.
2 Evidence will also be given by two officials in the
3 Ministry of Defence who knew Dr Kelly well; and evidence
4 will be given by Mrs Ann Taylor, the chairman of the
5 Intelligence and Security Committee.
6 On Thursday 28th August evidence will be given by
7 the Prime Minister and by Mr Gavyn Davies, the chairman
8 of the board of governors of the BBC, and by the
9 journalist, Mr Tom Mangold. I will then rise, as usual,
10 at the end of that Thursday afternoon.
11 I will sit again on Monday 1st September; and on
12 that day the Inquiry will hear evidence from members of
13 Dr Kelly's family and from some friends of Dr Kelly.
14 On Tuesday 2nd September evidence will be given by
15 a number of persons who were concerned in the search for
16 and the discovery of the body of Dr Kelly, by the
17 pathologist who carried out the post-mortem and by
18 Assistant Chief Constable Page of the Thames Valley
19 Police, who will describe all the actions or summarise
20 the actions taken by that police force. Evidence will
21 also be given by some individual police officers.
22 Also on Tuesday 2nd September evidence will be given
23 by a psychiatrist who is being called to assist
24 the Inquiry in its considerations.
25 Then on Wednesday 3rd September evidence will be

154
1 given by a member of the Baha'i faith.
2 After that evidence has been given, that will be the
3 end of the first stage of the Inquiry. I then, as
4 I have already indicated, propose to adjourn for a week;
5 and I will be giving then, and of course a little
6 earlier to that, consideration to what witnesses I wish
7 to recall for further examination in the second stage
8 and whether there are any additional witnesses whom
9 I would wish to call.
10 Then, the second stage of the Inquiry will commence
11 on Monday 15th September, when I will hear a statement
12 by counsel to the Inquiry and also statements by some
13 other counsel who represent interested parties. I will
14 then proceed to hear further evidence from the witnesses
15 that I decide to recall or to call to deal with any
16 further matters; and I will hope to hear closing
17 statements from counsel on or about Thursday
18 25th September. That will bring the second stage of
19 the Inquiry to an end and it will then take me some time
20 to prepare my report.
21 So, ladies and gentlemen, that is the timetable for
22 the next few weeks.
23 I will rise now and sit again at 10.30 on Tuesday
24 morning.
25 (3.35 pm)

155
1 (Hearing adjourned until 10.30 am
2 on Tuesday 26th August 2003)
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

156
1 INDEX
2 PAGE
3 MR DONALD ANDERSON (called) ...................... 1
4
5 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 1
6
7 MR NICHOLAS RUFFORD (called) ..................... 60
8
9 Examined by MR KNOX .......................... 60
10
11 MR JAMES SIMON BLITZ (called) .................... 87
12
13 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 87
14
15 MR RICHARD SEYMOUR NORTON-TAYLOR ................. 103
16 (called)
17
18 Examined by MR KNOX .......................... 103
19
20 MR PETER STUART BEAUMONT (called) ................ 113
21
22 Examined by MR KNOX .......................... 113
23
24 MR THOMAS DANIEL BALDWIN (called) ................ 126
25

157
1 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 126
2
3 MR MICHAEL STEPHEN JAMES EVANS ................... 134
4 (called)
5
6 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 134
7
8 MR DAVID STUART BROUCHER (called) ................ 138
9
10 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 138
11
12 MR LEE TERENCE HUGHES (called) ................... 150
13
14 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 150
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

158

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