Hearing Transcripts

90
1 impact rather than because it was true, but I mean again
2 that is not really an accurate reflection of the
3 conversation we had.
4 MR DINGEMANS: Right. After lunch I will take you through
5 what he said about your conversation to the FAC.
6 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much. We will rise now and sit
7 again at 2 o'clock.
8 (1.05 pm)
9 (The short adjournment)
10 (2.00 pm)
11 MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, can we turn to MoD/1/47?
12 Mr Gilligan, I am about to show you extracts from
13 David Kelly's second interview with the Ministry of
14 Defence, where he made comments about the meeting and
15 I will put to you some of those comments. Some of them
16 we have already covered because they are broadly similar
17 to the comments he made.
18 Can I first of all pick it up at paragraph 7 at the
19 bottom of page 47.
20 Before I do that, can I just ask you this,
21 Mr Gilligan: I have been asked to ask you to speak up
22 a little bit, if that is all right.
23 Paragraph 7, Mr Howard asked if Gilligan had taken
24 notes of the meeting:
25 "Kelly replied that Gilligan had produced a small

91
1 notebook and pencil and taken some notes but these were
2 not copious."
3 Did you produce anything that was or resembled
4 a small notebook and pencil?
5 A. No, I mean my organiser might resemble a notebook, it
6 looks a little bit like one opened up, but it was not
7 a notebook it was an organiser.
8 Q. Is it one of those organisers that has a pencil-type
9 instrument?
10 A. No, it was not. It has a keyboard.
11 Q. Then if we go to paragraph 8:
12 "Kelly had been clear that the May meeting with
13 Gilligan had lasted 45 minutes. Kelly replied that the
14 meeting had been fixed for 1700 hours."
15 There is nothing further you can really take us with
16 on that?
17 A. No, as I have already said.
18 Q. Page 48:
19 "Hatfield referred to the quotation from Gilligan's
20 source that the dossier was 'transformed the week before
21 it was published to make it sexier'. He asked Kelly if
22 he had said this or something similar. Kelly said that
23 he had not described the dossier as having being
24 transformed the week before publication, and could not
25 recall using the term 'sexier'. Hatfield probed: had

92
1 Kelly said anything that could be construed as being
2 that quotation? Kelly said that he could not recall;
3 his memory was that discussion of the dossier was
4 fleeting."
5 Does that accord with your recollection of the
6 meeting?
7 A. The discussion of the dossier, it was more than
8 fleeting. I mean, it was part of a longer meeting about
9 other subjects, as I have outlined. It was more than
10 fleeting.
11 Q. Then if I can turn to paragraph 10:
12 "Howard asked if Kelly had seen the intelligence
13 report relating to the '45 minutes claim'. Kelly
14 replied that he had not. Howard asked if Kelly was
15 aware that there was intelligence on the subject. Kelly
16 replied that he was not, until the issue was in the
17 public domain. Hatfield referred to the quote from
18 Gilligan's source which said that 'WMD were ready for us
19 in 45 minutes ... not in original draft ... included
20 against their wishes because it was not reliable'. Did
21 Kelly say this? Kelly replied that he could not believe
22 that he would have said this: he did not say that it was
23 not in the original draft; and he did not know the
24 wishes of the Intelligence Services."
25 Does that accord with your recollection?

93
1 A. No, it does not. David Kelly was fully aware that the
2 45 minutes came from a single source which has been
3 confirmed by the Government.
4 Q. Then if I can turn to page 49, at paragraph 11:
5 "Serial 14. Hatfield asked Kelly about his
6 discussion on uranium imports from Niger. Kelly said
7 that so far as he could recall it was not discussed in
8 depth. He would not have said anything other than to
9 note the [international agencies'] observations on the
10 issue."
11 A. I think that is essentially right. I asked for other
12 examples of how the dossier had been transformed and he
13 cited that as one possible example. But he did say he
14 was not a nuclear specialist, so our discussion on that
15 was not very long.
16 Q. Then at paragraph 12:
17 "Hatfield asked if Kelly had discussed with Gilligan
18 the role of Alastair Campbell in the dossier. Kelly
19 replied that, as he had said in his letter of 30th June,
20 Gilligan did raise the involvement of Campbell, and
21 Kelly said that he was unable to comment. Hatfield
22 asked in what context the role of Alastair Campbell had
23 been raised. Kelly replied that it was in the context
24 of the editing process of the dossier. Hatfield asked
25 what Kelly meant by being 'unable to comment'. Kelly

94
1 replied that it would have been a dismissive response.
2 Hatfield asked specifically if Kelly had himself
3 referred to 'Campbell'. Kelly replied that he had not."
4 Is that accurate?
5 A. No, again, it was David who brought up
6 Alastair Campbell.
7 Q. Finally, at paragraph 14 on this page:
8 "Hatfield asked if there had been any discussion of
9 the Iraqi source for the '45 minutes claim'. Kelly
10 replied he had no idea who the source was and did not
11 speculate on that source with Gilligan."
12 Is that right?
13 A. That is right as far as it goes because we did not
14 discuss the actual nature of the source, I do not
15 believe. But he did say that it was a single source and
16 that he believed that the source was wrong or "we
17 believed".
18 Q. Can I then turn to FAC/1/72? This is an extract of
19 Dr Kelly's evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee
20 which was in fact televised. You have seen the whole of
21 that broadcast yourself, have you not?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Can I take you to -- well, the top of the page; the
24 question which is off the bottom of the previous page
25 but I will read out, it was from a Mr Olner:

95
1 "Is there anything there that suggests Mr Gilligan
2 was perhaps being careful with the truth?
3 "Dr Kelly: It is not a factual record of my
4 interaction with him, the character of it, which is
5 actually difficult to discern from the account that is
6 presented there. It is not one that I recognise as
7 being conversations I had with him. There was one part
8 of it which alerted me to that, which was the comment
9 about the 30 per cent probability of Iraq actually
10 possessing chemical weapons, that is the sort of thing
11 I might have said to him."
12 That is asking him to comment on your evidence to
13 the Committee. And Mr Olner continued:
14 "Really, Mr Gilligan's story was basically about
15 drafts of dossiers being changed, being 'sexed up'. Did
16 you infer to Mr Gilligan in any way, shape or form that
17 he might have misrepresented what you said?
18 "Dr Kelly: My conversation with him was primarily
19 about Iraq, about his experiences in Iraq and the
20 consequences of the war, which was the failure to use
21 weapons of mass destruction during the war and the
22 failure by May 22nd to find such weapons. That was the
23 primary conversation that I had with him."
24 Was that accurate? Was that the primary
25 conversation you had with him?

96
1 A. It was a part of the conversation certainly, but it
2 could not be called -- it was just a part. I mean, it
3 was not the dominant part or the majority part. So to
4 call it the primary part would be wrong.
5 Q. Mr Olner continued:
6 "You certainly never mentioned the 'C' word that he
7 went on to explain in his column?"
8 Dr Kelly was not as up with Mr Olner as to the
9 meaning of that:
10 "Dr Kelly: The 'C' word?
11 "Mr Olner: The Campbell word.
12 "Dr Kelly: The Campbell word did come up, yes.
13 "Mr Olner: From you? You suggested it?
14 "Dr Kelly: No, it came up in the conversation. We
15 had a conversation about Iraq, its weapons and the
16 failure of them to be used."
17 And continuing on to FAC/1/73 Mr Olner asked:
18 "How did the word 'Campbell' come to be mixed up
19 with all of that? What led you to say that?
20 "Dr Kelly: I did not say that. What I had
21 a conversation about was the probability of
22 a requirement to use such weapons. The question was
23 then asked why, if weapons could be deployed at
24 45 minutes notice, were they not used, and I offered my
25 reasons why they may not have been used.

97
1 "The Chairman: Again, I am finding it very
2 difficult to hear. The fans have been turned off, could
3 you do your very best to raise your voice, please.
4 "Dr Kelly: It came in in in that sense and then the
5 significance of it was discussed and then why it might
6 have been in the dossier. That is how it came up.
7 "Mr Pope: Mr Gilligan said in his article in The
8 Mail on Sunday of 1 June, 'I asked him', the source,
9 'how this transformation happened. The answer was
10 a single word. 'Campbell.' In your conversation with
11 Mr Gilligan did you use the word 'Campbell' in that
12 context?"
13 Dr Kelly replied:
14 "I cannot recall using the name Campbell in that
15 context, it does not sound like a thing that I would
16 say."
17 Is that an accurate recollection from him?
18 A. No. Again, he did use the word "Campbell" in that
19 context and his words here are not quite a denial; and
20 indeed he goes on, a bit later, question 170 I think, to
21 discuss this in more detail.
22 Q. To --
23 A. The Campbell point, it is put to him again at
24 question 170.
25 Q. We will come to the final questioning on that aspect of

98
1 it. Then he was asked about where they met. And then,
2 at the top of page 74, he was asked how the conversation
3 began with Mr Gilligan:
4 "Did it begin discussing the poor state of Britain's
5 railways?"
6 Dr Kelly said "no", is that accurate?
7 A. No, we did -- I apologised for being late and that I had
8 been delayed and we had a little -- a ritual grumble
9 about the railways.
10 Q. Can I take you to the final passage at page 94, which
11 picks up, I think, the question that you were referring
12 to. Mr Hamilton as:
13 "Dr Kelly, I am sorry to go back to something that I
14 know you have already answered or partially answered,
15 but I just want to clarify. My colleague, Mr Ottaway,
16 did refer to this earlier. I just want to come back to
17 this question of Alastair Campbell and Mr Gilligan. The
18 Ministry of Defence statement states that when
19 Mr Gilligan asked about the role of Alastair Campbell
20 with regard to the 45 minute issue 'he made no comment
21 and explained that he was not involved in the process of
22 drawing up the intelligence parts of the dossier' --
23 that is you, of course. Just for the record, can you
24 tell me absolutely whether you named or otherwise
25 identified Alastair Campbell or did you say anything

99
1 which Mr Gilligan might reasonably have interpreted as
2 identifying Mr Alastair Campbell as wanting to change
3 the dossier or 'sex it up' in any way or make undue
4 reference to the 45 minute claim?
5 "I cannot recall that [says Dr Kelly]. I find it
6 very difficult to think back to a conversation I had six
7 weeks ago. I cannot recall but that does not mean to
8 say, of course, that such a statement was not made but I
9 really cannot recall it. It does not sound like the
10 sort of thing I would say."
11 A. Well, again, I noted that that was not a denial in some
12 respects. I mean, you know "I cannot recall but that
13 does not mean to say, of course, that such a statement
14 was not made".
15 Again, I think it was -- it certainly was made, is
16 all I would say.
17 Q. Can I then take you to Dr Kelly's evidence to the
18 Intelligence and Security Committee, which is ISC/1/10.
19 I am afraid because this evidence has not yet been
20 published, and I think I explained the circumstances in
21 which it would be published first by the Committee and
22 then here, you will not have seen it; but I hope I will
23 take you accurately to the references that concern you.
24 Dr Kelly at the top of the page said this:
25 "I have not acknowledged to anyone that I was

100
1 involved in the drafting of the dossier, I meant, that
2 essentially my component which was the non-intelligence
3 component which was done at the request of the Foreign
4 Office so not even Brian Wells' predecessor, as
5 the director of PAC, was aware that I wrote that part.
6 "Ann Taylor: And do you think that Andrew Gilligan
7 would see you as an intelligence officer in that broad
8 sense?
9 "Dr Kelly: I think people have difficulty
10 identifying my background. I have an odd pedigree so to
11 speak, so some will assume that I am from intelligence,
12 but I really do not know whether he made that assumption
13 or not."
14 What assumption did you make about Dr Kelly's
15 status?
16 A. Well, it was more than an assumption, it was based on
17 what he had told me at our previous meetings.
18 Q. So you knew that he was not a member of the Intelligence
19 Services?
20 A. Yes, that is right; but I knew also that he worked very
21 closely with them. What did he say? He said he drifted
22 between the FOC, the MoD and some other departments
23 which we were not to mention and then, in our second
24 meeting, he said that he interpreted the intelligence,
25 he told them what it means -- he told the DIS and MI6

101
1 what it meant on WMD. Indeed, in his Foreign Affairs
2 Committee evidence he said that he saw all the
3 intelligence: I always have access to secret
4 intelligence material. I see the intelligence which is
5 relevant to my expertise.
6 Q. Turning to the bottom of that page, Mr Arbuthnot asked:
7 "May I asked, the allegation that Andrew Gilligan
8 made that someone had said that the 45 minutes, that the
9 issue of 45 minutes was over-hyped in the document.
10 That is not something that you recognised as having come
11 from you?"
12 Dr Kelly responded:
13 "No, I think I may well have said that the
14 45 minutes mention was there for impact, yes, because it
15 came out of a conversation, not about the dossier, but
16 about Iraq, 'why weapons had not been used and why they
17 had not been found subsequently' and then the question
18 was 'well, if you have something that is available in
19 45 minutes surely it would have been used' and then, I
20 cannot identify such a system that you could use within
21 45 minutes and then the question was 'why would it be
22 included' and I cannot give an answer as to why it would
23 be included."
24 Was that evidence accurate?
25 A. No, I think -- I mean, this is not the context in which

102
1 the 45 minutes came up. It came up in the context of my
2 asking for examples of the transformation of the dossier
3 and he said the classic was the 45 minutes.
4 Q. Dr Kelly, at the bottom of the page, having been asked
5 if that was a statement that was there for impact, "was
6 it a statement you think should not have been made",
7 said:
8 "I think I would like to quote Hans Blix who at the
9 weekend said he thought it was unwise to have it there,
10 I think that is probably the correct statement to make.
11 I can't, I really can't say that I thought it should not
12 be there because I am actually no aware of the
13 intelligence behind it."
14 Did Dr Kelly make you aware of any of those matters?
15 A. Well, he certainly conveyed his view that he did not
16 believe that the 45 minutes claim was correct and he
17 seems to have repeated that to the ISC or at least that
18 it was unwise to have it in there. He clearly was,
19 however, aware of the intelligence behind it. I mean,
20 if -- because he knew that it was a single source and he
21 went into it in slightly more detail. He said he
22 thought it was -- let me get my notes. (Pause). He said
23 they -- let us have a look ... (Pause). He said he
24 believed the source was wrong. He said it took
25 45 minutes to construct a missile assembly and that was

103
1 misinterpreted to mean that WMD could be deployed in
2 45 minutes. That is what he said to me. So he may not
3 have been aware of the exact identity of the source, but
4 he certainly was aware of some of the broad issues
5 behind the intelligence.
6 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, he was certainly aware?
7 A. He may not have been aware of the exact identity of the
8 source but he was aware there was only one source and he
9 was aware, clearly, of some of the issues involved in
10 that piece of intelligence.
11 MR DINGEMANS: Then over the page to ISC/1/12, he was asked
12 again whether he thought it wise for it to be there
13 unanswered. Then the second question:
14 "Did you think when you were speaking to
15 Andrew Gilligan that you gave him the impression that
16 you felt it was unwise for it to have been there?
17 "Dr Kelly: That's a possibility, I can't, really
18 can't, because you are talking about a dynamic and
19 I really can't recall ... I have to admit it's
20 a possibility, yes."
21 So he did give you that impression that it was
22 unwise for it to be there?
23 A. Yes. He clearly said that it was included against "our
24 wishes" and he was clearly sceptical of the validity of
25 the claim.

104
1 Q. And he is asked about Alastair Campbell and his answer
2 is:
3 "Alastair Campbell came up -- because the question
4 was then 'well, why was it there?' And he asked that
5 question, now I was not involved in the process of
6 assembling the dossier, my contribution to the dossier
7 was in May/June of last year, after that I had no
8 involvement in the compilation of the dossier, the
9 drafting of it, the synthesis of it, so I was not in
10 a position to comment on that.
11 "James Arbuthnot: So when he said 'why was it
12 there?' what did you say, if you can remember?
13 "Dr Kelly: I can't recall accurately because, but,
14 I mean essentially it would be words to the effect that
15 I could not comment, I really cannot remember the exact
16 phrase that I used because I was not in a position to
17 comment."
18 Is that what he did?
19 A. No, I mean, as I say, he brought it up. He commented on
20 it. So he must have believed that he was in a position
21 to comment on it.
22 Q. Over the page, at the top of ISC/1/13, Dr Kelly says:
23 "I am having great difficulty to clearly remember
24 this, but my feeling is the question was asked by
25 Gilligan."

105
1 "James Arbuthnot: What question?
2 "Dr Kelly: When you asked 'why was it there' and
3 then the successive question was about Campbell.
4 "James Arbuthnot: So might Andrew Gilligan have
5 said, did Andrew Gilligan say, 'why was it there?' and
6 then did he say 'was it Campbell who put it in'?
7 Are you sure you are not mistaken about whether or
8 not you raised the issue of Alastair Campbell?
9 A. Absolutely. It is one of the things I remember most
10 clearly.
11 Q. Then, if I can take you to page 14, the penultimate
12 answer, he says this:
13 "We didn't really discuss the dossier, the
14 conversation I had was about Iraq and many aspects of
15 that, it came up in the context of weapons, why they had
16 not been used, why they had not been found; and in the
17 course of that discussion the question came up about why
18 the 45 minutes was there, when that came into the
19 dossier, and for me, I mean it is very difficult now to
20 know whether it was a fleeting moment, whether it was
21 2 minutes, 3 minutes, I really can't recall, it may be
22 he was focused on that issue, but I certainly wasn't.
23 I was more focused on acquiring information about Iraq
24 immediately post-conflict which would be useful to my
25 work in the future."

106
1 Is that a fair analysis of what happened, you were
2 more interested in an answer that might have use and he
3 was more interested in what you had discovered in Iraq?
4 A. I do not think that is necessarily unfair, I agree. But
5 I mean, I also want to make the point that we did agree
6 the quotes I would use at the end, so he must have been
7 conscious I was interested in this. We were -- I mean,
8 this passage here does not strike me as a denial that he
9 said what I report him as saying.
10 Q. And he says on page 15, third answer, or third intro,
11 that he was not aware that he was in breach of normal
12 practice:
13 "No, because essentially on this, I actually very
14 rarely meet journalists although I do talk to them on
15 the telephone and on this occasion, I must admit, I had
16 regarded it more as being more a private conversation
17 than I had a briefing or in any way a disclosure at
18 all."
19 Was that the nature of the meeting that you had with
20 Dr Kelly?
21 A. No, he was clearly aware that I wanted and intended to
22 report some of his remarks because, as I say, I ran them
23 past him afterwards.
24 Q. You told him that you were going to publish this
25 material?

107
1 A. I told him I wanted to be able to publish some of it and
2 I gave him two of the quotes "transformed to make it
3 sexier", and "most people in intelligence were not
4 happy". I told him I also wanted to be able to use what
5 he told me about Campbell and the 45 minutes claim being
6 the example. I told him that at the end. I said
7 a number of other things as well that I wanted to use.
8 I wanted to use the quote about defectors and I said
9 a couple of other things which he asked me not to use.
10 Q. What did he ask you not to use?
11 A. He asked me not to use a couple of the more detailed
12 technical quotes, the one about the glass apparatus that
13 we described earlier, because he thought that would have
14 given away technically too much as a technical expert.
15 And he asked me not to use the quote about the
16 proliferation because that was again -- again, he just
17 asked me not to use it.
18 Q. The proliferation quote, what quote was that?
19 A. It was a quote -- where are we? Let me see if I can
20 find it. (Pause). There has been proliferation not in
21 terms of people walking across the Iraqi border with
22 20 shells but supply chain knowledge and plans.
23 LORD HUTTON: I am sorry, tell me again, please. What was
24 his purpose or reason for asking you not to use those
25 quotes?

108
1 A. I did not question it. You know, I was glad he had
2 agreed to let me use the others.
3 LORD HUTTON: But he did not give you a reason, he simply
4 asked you not to put in those quotes?
5 A. Yes, I think that might have been potentially sensitive
6 information.
7 MR DINGEMANS: You do not appear to have made a note of his
8 request in that respect, is that right?
9 A. That is right, yes, because it was at the end, after
10 I had put my organiser away.
11 Q. Is that when you said: look, I am proposing to use this?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. You did not think that important to note?
14 A. I think in retrospect I certainly should have noted it,
15 yes.
16 Q. Can I take you to page 16, at the bottom? Joyce Quin
17 asked:
18 "Can I ask you how you respond to the letter that
19 the chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee has apparently
20 written to the Foreign Secretary expressing the view
21 that it seems most unlikely that you were
22 Andrew Gilligan's prime source for his allegations about
23 the September dossier on Iraq?
24 "Dr Kelly: Well, that's what I believe myself,
25 I mean I do not believe that I am the prime source,

109
1 regrettably I've discussed with him issues that are --
2 now controversial, but I did not do that, my instigation
3 that I raised, it was not something that I felt [and
4 continuing over the page] particularly strongly about,
5 and people who know me know that I feel quite strongly
6 that Iraq had weapons programmes ..."
7 That was your understanding of his belief?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. "... that they had such weapons and my whole background
10 working for both the Ministry of Defence and the
11 United Nations really supports the position of the
12 dossier, and one of the comments I made yesterday to the
13 Foreign Affairs Committee was that in essence you take a
14 report produced in 1999 by Richard Butler, which was
15 a status of verification achieved by UNSCOM and put that
16 alongside the dossier, they match quite well and the two
17 together essentially comprise quite a reasonable
18 definition of the problem, the threat presented by Iraq,
19 and I also hasten to add that it was not of course the
20 UN's job to do a threat assessment, it was very much a
21 status of verification, but you can read that in another
22 way, assess it as a threat."
23 Did you pick up those as being his views?
24 A. Well, I certainly recognised that his view was that Iraq
25 did have the weapons programme. In fact, that was one

110
1 of the points he asked me to make in my report, and
2 I did so. And on the question of weapons themselves, he
3 was not sure but he thought any weapons they did have
4 were few in number and crude, and obviously the dossier
5 is not -- is firmer than that.
6 On the question of the UNSCOM reports, that did not
7 really arise in this context. I mean, actually if you
8 can -- if you look at the UNSCOM and the UNMOVIC
9 reports, I mentioned this earlier, they do not say that
10 Iraq has weapons; they say that it had them and that
11 some parts -- and that many of them have been destroyed,
12 but the verification of the destruction of some of the
13 rest cannot be established. So the term they use is
14 things like "growth medium" and things like that for
15 biological weapons was unaccounted for. That does not
16 mean they have necessarily got them, it just meant they
17 are unaccounted for.
18 Q. Was that not for the point that Dr Kelly had made, which
19 was that UNSCOM was verifying everything disappearing
20 rather than what might be appearing in the future?
21 A. Yes, that is right. But I mean, we did not discuss this
22 particular aspect of the sort of evaluation of Iraqi WMD
23 in our May 22nd conversation.
24 Q. Can I then take you to page 19 where Dr Kelly says this:
25 "I may have been naive but I didn't feel as though

111
1 I was contributing anything that was corroborating
2 someone else's statement, I mean it may very well have
3 been the case, but I didn't get that feeling at the
4 time...
5 "Michael Mates: You didn't get ...
6 "Dr Kelly: ... but then I was not particularly
7 thinking about the dossier, I have to admit.
8 "Michael Mates: Nor were you thinking about the
9 Today Programme.
10 "Certainly not", says Dr Kelly.
11 Which rather suggests, if that evidence is right,
12 that he had no idea that you were proposing to broadcast
13 this?
14 A. Well, I mean, he agreed what I could broadcast and he
15 knew who I was and where I was from. I mean, that might
16 be a quote about not particularly thinking in the broad
17 context because clearly, you know, our interview was
18 only a short part of what was a very busy time for him.
19 He was preparing to go back to Iraq and he had a lot of
20 other things on his mind. I think that could be what he
21 meant here.
22 Q. Then just, I hope, to be fair and ensure that the
23 relevant parts of the evidence are before you, page 29
24 and page 30, Joyce Quin again asking questions towards
25 the bottom of the page:

112
1 "And in the transcript of Gilligan's -- in the final
2 segment he said the words of his source were that it was
3 transformed in a week before it was published to make it
4 'sexier', that did not come from you then?
5 "Dr Kelly: The word 'transformed' is not something
6 that would have occurred to me in terms of the document,
7 first of all I had not seen the earlier drafts of it, so
8 I wouldn't know whether it had been transformed or not,
9 the document itself is a very sober, well written, there
10 is no emotive language in it, it is factual, I don't see
11 it has being 'transformed'.
12 "Michael Mates: But you wouldn't describe it as
13 'sexy'?
14 "Dr Kelly: I think the '45 minutes' for impact is
15 the only, that's the only bit that that would be the
16 case.
17 "James Arbuthnot: But 'sexier' is that a word you
18 would use?
19 "Dr Kelly: It is a word I would use, I use it on
20 occasions."
21 You have already seen his earlier evidence to the
22 FAC that he probably would not use it. Your evidence,
23 as I understand it, is you were the person who first
24 used the word "sexier"?
25 A. Yes, and then he adopted it.

113
1 Q. That, I hope, is a reasonable summary of his evidence to
2 the ISC.
3 A. He said it as well.
4 Q. But essentially you can see from his reports to the
5 Ministry of Defence and his evidence to the Foreign
6 Affairs Committee and the ISC that he denies the
7 conversations that you say he had with you?
8 A. Well, he does not always deny them categorically; and
9 where he does, I understand the position he was in. He
10 was an employee of the Ministry of Defence, he had to
11 keep faith with them; but all I can say is that I and
12 other journalists have had conversations along these
13 lines with Dr Kelly.
14 Q. And to the extent that he was the person who wrote the
15 letter of 30th June to his line manager, saying: look,
16 I recognise some aspects of this as being words I would
17 use, in particular the 30 per cent probability; if he
18 was an employee who was, as you put it, in a difficult
19 position, it seems extraordinary to have volunteered the
20 letter.
21 A. Yes, I mean I still do not know the exact circumstances
22 under which Dr Kelly came forward; and as I say -- as
23 I said in my statement, when I heard that the Ministry
24 of Defence had issued a statement saying an unknown
25 official had volunteered his contact with me, I was

114
1 suspicious. I did not think that anyone would have
2 volunteered such contact with me, particularly in the
3 context of, you know, the Government's particular
4 campaign against my story. And I await with interest to
5 hear exactly how Dr Kelly, you know, came to write that
6 letter.
7 Q. I said that is his evidence to the Committees and the
8 Ministry of Defence as recorded.
9 Can I take you back to something I promised I would
10 return to, which was the September dossier. I am now
11 told if I say BBC/4/74 you should see a document which
12 I hope is your broadcast on 24th September 2002.
13 I think you have said you had a short time to read this
14 document?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. And this is the Government dossier. Can you just share
17 with us your conclusion about the Government dossier as
18 it then was?
19 A. Well, I cannot see the whole thing here, so I mean
20 essentially my belief was that this was, as somebody who
21 had studied the area and knew quite a lot about it, from
22 a lay perspective obviously, was that there was not very
23 much that was new in it but there were a couple of
24 points, two or three points. That was how I expressed
25 it. I singled out, particularly, the 45 minute point.

115
1 I singled out the claim that missiles could reach
2 Cyprus, which I described as not in fact new. It was
3 not in fact, it was a sort of extrapolation from the
4 range of a scud missile and the distance between Baghdad
5 and Cyprus, but it had never been expressed that way
6 before; and I singled out as well the uranium from
7 Africa claim.
8 Q. Can I take you to BBC/4/82, which I think shows you what
9 you said at that time. First of all, the first line of
10 that report. We have all phrases that we use, but you
11 say:
12 "A couple of sexy lines designed to make
13 headlines"~--
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. -- which rather suggests that you are the person who
16 uses "sexier" rather than Dr~Kelly.
17 A. That is perfectly true. As I said, it was I who
18 suggested it.
19 Q. "... and for the tabloids like the fact that he can
20 deploy within 45 minutes if the weapons were ready and
21 that he could reach the British bases on Cyprus, both of
22 which we actually knew."
23 Which is rather downplaying the effect of the
24 dossier because now, as I understand it, the great
25 complaint is that no-one knew about the 45 minutes.

116
1 A. Well, I was wrong about the 45 minutes on this occasion.
2 It was a new point. This is one of the perils of live
3 broadcasting, you have a pretty limited time to get to
4 grips with a dossier on a subject. You do not have time
5 to go and look up all the claims. You are speaking, you
6 know, ex tempore. I was wrong about that. 45 minutes
7 did make a very considerable impact indeed on that day;
8 and on the day that followed, as I say, it was a
9 headline in most of the papers.
10 Q. Can I take you on to your publication in The Mail on
11 Sunday which was BBC/1/27? That is quite a bold
12 headline, is it not?
13 A. Yes, I did not write that headline.
14 Q. Did you know that the headline was going to be used?
15 A. No, you are not consulted over the headlines.
16 Q. And if you were not consulted neither was Dr Kelly, is
17 that fair?
18 A. No, that is right.
19 Q. Did you have any contact after your Today broadcast with
20 Dr Kelly before you wrote this article?
21 A. No, I did not. I tried to speak to him but had not been
22 able to get through, although not specifically to talk
23 about this but just to see how the thing had gone down,
24 the broadcast.
25 LORD HUTTON: You say you had not got through. Did you try

117
1 his home number?
2 A. Yes.
3 LORD HUTTON: And what, there was no reply?
4 A. There was an answer machine.
5 LORD HUTTON: Did you also try his mobile?
6 A. I cannot remember if I tried his mobile or not, I am
7 afraid. I may have done.
8 MR DINGEMANS: When did you do this?
9 A. I am not precisely sure when, but not very long after
10 the broadcast.
11 Q. And did you leave a message on the answerphone?
12 A. No.
13 Q. Was there any reason why you did not leave a message?
14 A. No. I mean, I just -- you know, I wanted to speak to
15 him myself, and I mean I sometimes do not leave messages
16 on answerphones.
17 Q. Did you make any other attempt to contact Dr Kelly
18 before his death?
19 A. No. I mean, in the later stages I very badly wanted to
20 speak to him; but I knew -- you see, after the furore
21 blew up I knew that the risk might be that I would
22 compromise him by trying to phone him. In fact, I did
23 try to phone him once from a phone box and again I just
24 got the answerphone and I did not leave a message again.
25 Q. So your evidence is that you did try to contact him?

118
1 A. Yes, I tried to contact him twice. The -- as I say,
2 once before the main sort of fuss about my story blew up
3 and then once after.
4 Q. It would have been possible to speak to him on his
5 mobile, would it not?
6 A. I decided not to try to contact him on his mobile
7 because I was concerned, having -- the fuss having blown
8 up -- this is in the latter period, you know, this is in
9 early July this was. I was concerned, and this might be
10 paranoid but it might be sensible, that either my calls
11 or his were being monitored and any attempt by me to
12 call his number might have led people to him. You know,
13 it would have been a legitimate thing to do, for the
14 security services to have done that, because there was
15 a suspicion that a member of the security services might
16 have been leaking. So I thought they might have done
17 that.
18 Q. But you have already mentioned phoning from a public
19 phone box, you tried that once. Did you try it again?
20 A. No, I only tried it the once.
21 Q. And why, if, as you say, you were keen to talk to him,
22 did you not try it again?
23 A. Because I was worried that any attempt to contact him
24 might be -- you know, might compromise him.
25 Q. Can I take you, in that respect, to part of the evidence

119
1 you gave to the Foreign Affairs Committee? It is
2 FAC/5/35. This was the second time that you gave
3 evidence. So far this evidence has not been published,
4 but I understand that both the Foreign Affairs Committee
5 and you, as the person who contributed, are happy that
6 it should be published by this Inquiry?
7 A. Yes. I mean it is up to the Inquiry what it does with
8 the evidence.
9 Q. Can I take you to the middle answer:
10 "Let me just make this absolutely clear. The source
11 did not say either that Mr Campbell did not insert it or
12 that he did insert it, I have never claimed otherwise.
13 The claim was that the 45 minute claim was inserted
14 'against our wishes', against the wishes of the source,
15 and that the claim had been transformed in the week
16 before it was published at the behest of
17 Alastair Campbell [I imagine you meant the dossier
18 rather than the claim there]. That is entirely
19 consistent with everything I have said, it is entirely
20 consistent. There is no difference between what I said
21 to you before and what I have said now. It has been
22 interpreted in the media to say that we reported that Mr
23 Campbell inserted the 45 minute claim, that may be the
24 case but we reported it neither way. We said, or the
25 source said, that the transformation had occurred in the

120
1 week before it was published at the behest of
2 Alastair Campbell. That is the claim we have always
3 made and that is the claim that the source has always
4 made and that is the claim that the source continues to
5 make."
6 Had you contacted Dr Kelly?
7 A. No, and I think that was a mistake saying "continues".
8 I mean, it was a -- the atmosphere at that session was
9 extremely fraught and I -- you know, I -- I was not --
10 it was not the best performance I have ever given in
11 front of a committee. I mean, Dr Kelly, of course, had
12 all my numbers and he was free to contact me if he had
13 any problem with the story, and he had not done so.
14 Q. Can I take you to another document which has been
15 supplied to us by Thames Valley Police and it is
16 TVP/3/126. This appears to be an extract from
17 a notebook which the police recovered from Dr Kelly's
18 house. If you look at the top there are two notes, one
19 is "BBC defends Gilligan" and two, "Follow up Gilligan's
20 contacts". Do you know or can you assist Lord Hutton
21 with anything in relation to that?
22 A. No, I mean, one is a factual account of what the BBC did
23 when the Government started attacking me and the story.
24 Q. Yes.
25 A. "Follow up". I mean, there was a sentence in the FAC

121
1 report that said "Gilligan's contacts should be
2 thoroughly investigated".
3 Q. Yes.
4 A. Maybe that is a reference to that.
5 Q. I wonder if that related to any contact between you?
6 The only other document I would like you to look at that
7 was found in Dr Kelly's house is TVP/3/143. This is
8 a card for "Phillip Lawrence, Solicitor, Legal
9 Department, BBC" and various contact details are given.
10 Did you hand him that card?
11 A. No.
12 Q. Do you know where he might have got that card from?
13 A. No, I do not. I mean, I know Phillip Lawrence but, no,
14 I have no idea.
15 Q. There may be a short answer. I am told that
16 Phillip Lawrence gave it to the police himself, in which
17 case it gets on to their logs.
18 A. Right.
19 Q. In terms of their notebook, you cannot assist in any
20 other aspect of that?
21 A. The one you showed me before?
22 Q. Yes.
23 A. No, I cannot, I am sorry.
24 Q. When you talked about contact between you and the
25 source, claims the source "continues" to make, that was

122
1 just inexact use of language?
2 A. Yes, it was; yes.
3 Q. Before you wrote The Mail on Sunday report, did you have
4 to go through any BBC procedures?
5 A. I asked my editor, Kevin Marsh, if I could do so.
6 Q. Could I take you to BBC/6/272? This is page 3 of an
7 e-mail from Kevin Marsh to Stephen Mitchell it is
8 dated July 21st 2003. He says at the top:
9 "I read over AG's note of this conversation with his
10 source that evening and then again in the morning before
11 clearing his script for transmission. Alastair Campbell
12 was not named in that -- nor as far as I could tell --
13 any BBC report although he was named in AG's note of the
14 conversation. This was not the result of any conscious
15 decision-making process: I was content with AG's
16 formulation of 'Downing Street' in the Today reports and
17 did not consider asking him to change it.
18 "The Mail on Sunday.
19 "I did not read The Mail on Sunday article.
20 "AG approached me on, I think, the afternoon of the
21 original broadcast to say that he had been asked to
22 write a piece for The Mail on Sunday."
23 That is right, is it?
24 A. Yes, yes.
25 Q. "I told him straightaway that I would not be able to

123
1 read it and that he would have to find someone else to
2 vet it. I explained I was due to be in Lincolnshire at
3 [some event]. AG said the piece would go no further
4 than what he had already broadcast -- therefore I had no
5 reason to assume that he would name Alastair Campbell
6 (as he had not done on the BBC) nor give more details of
7 the meeting with his source. I said that if he was
8 simply rewriting what had already gone out on the BBC
9 then in principle I did not object to him writing a
10 piece -- but said again that he would have to make
11 arrangements for someone else to finally approve his
12 copy since I would not be able to."
13 Did someone else approve the copy?
14 A. No.
15 Q. No?
16 A. No.
17 Q. Why did you name Alastair Campbell in The Mail on Sunday
18 piece when you had not on the BBC piece?
19 A. I had had a difficult relationship with Mr Campbell
20 during the Iraq war. He complained about my coverage
21 several times; and I thought he had a particular issue
22 about some of my reporting. I did not want to be the
23 first to name him in this context, and I thought
24 Downing Street was just as good. But then other people
25 in the follow up, there was quite a lot of press follow

124
1 up to this story on the 30th, the Friday, the day after
2 my story. And some of that press follow up did name
3 Mr Campbell in this context, so I thought: well, I am
4 not the first and, you know, I decided to name him in
5 The Mail on Sunday.
6 Q. So at least part of the reason I think that you have
7 just given in evidence just goes to the difficult
8 personal relationship you had had with Mr Campbell?
9 A. We did not know each other personally, we had never met.
10 But I had reason to believe that he did not like me and
11 he did not like my reporting, and --
12 Q. Can I take you to BBC/4/132, which I think or hope will
13 illustrate the point, at paragraph 4. This is part way
14 through a letter of 19th March 2003, written by
15 Alastair Campbell to Richard Sambrook and he says this:
16 "Could you justify each of these three statements.
17 "4. Andrew Gilligan said on the Today Programme that
18 'innocent people [this was just before war took place]
19 will die here in the next few hours'. Could you justify
20 that statement to me."
21 Then at 139, at the top, this is -- you have no
22 doubt seen this exchange of correspondence?
23 A. Hmm.
24 Q. But it is Richard Sambrook's reply dated
25 21st March 2003:

125
1 "Andrew Gilligan's use of the phrase 'within a few
2 hours' was not precise and perhaps he may have suggested
3 he knew when air strikes would begin. But the more
4 important point concerns civilian casualties."
5 Then goes on to justify the rest of your
6 appointment.
7 At least in that respect part of Alastair Campbell's
8 complaint against you had been upheld, in the sense that
9 some of the use of the language was imprecise?
10 A. No, I am not sure about that. The context of this was
11 that if you remember at the beginning, just before the
12 war, the President had given the Iraqis, had given
13 Saddam and his sons, a 48-hour deadline to leave Iraq,
14 after which action would begin. And this broadcast was
15 done very literally a few hours before that deadline
16 expired. So that is why I said "a few hours". I am not
17 sure Richard Sambrook was aware of that when he sent the
18 reply. The prediction that innocent people will die in
19 a war is not, I would suggest, a particularly
20 controversial one.
21 Q. Can I take you to another complaint that Mr Campbell had
22 made about your reporting in the war that you have
23 referred to? BBC/4/146. This is a letter of
24 1st April 2003 that Mr Campbell writes to Mr Sambrook:
25 "Dear Richard,

126
1 "Andrew Gilligan claimed on Radio 5 that 'people
2 hear are saying the Republican Guard hasn't really been
3 damaged at all and they could be right'. Can you tell
4 me who told him the Republican Guard hasn't been
5 damaged -- the Iraqi Ministry of Information?
6 "On what evidence does he base this claim -- in
7 particular the assertion that 'they could be right'?
8 "Was this report monitored? Does Mr Gilligan have
9 a minder?
10 "Would you agree that Andrew Gilligan's report
11 yesterday broke several of the BBC's own guidelines,
12 including:
13 "'Reports should normally make it absolutely clear
14 where the information has come from, and be attributed
15 accordingly'.
16 "'Reporters and correspondents in the battle areas
17 will often be reporting what they have not themselves
18 seen. That should be made evident.'.
19 "'We will have a great deal of information from both
20 military and various Governments' briefings. That too
21 should be made evident and tested as to its
22 reliability.'"
23 Then there are a couple more. Can I take you to the
24 reply at 148? Sorry, at 148 there is another letter
25 from Mr Kaufman making a similar complaint effectively.

127
1 A. It is, in fact, identical language, the words are
2 identical.
3 Q. Yes. Then page 149:
4 "Dear Richard,
5 "On Radio 4 this morning, Andrew Gilligan said:
6 "'I've seen Saddam [another complaint about your
7 reporting] give two televised speeches ..."
8 Then you set out what is said. Then at the end of
9 it:
10 "'Lots of things were different, so I'm not quite
11 sure where these intelligence assessments come from. It
12 might just be more rubbish from Central Command.'
13 "Do you believe that final sentence was justified".
14 That, as I understand it, was a reference to
15 American central command, is that right?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Then page 150, the response by Mr Sambrook of 2nd April:
18 "Dear Alastair,
19 "Thank you for your letter. Gerald Kaufman has
20 written in strikingly similar terms.
21 "Andrew Gilligan was asked on Radio 5 Live..."
22 Then it sets it all out:
23 "'Can you tell me where you are whether the bombing
24 of the Republican Guard is effective?'.
25 "He began his answer -- 'We can't tell'. Your

128
1 letter does not mention this. Thereafter Andrew's
2 remarks were founded on legitimate professional
3 judgment."
4 And there is a reference to the Kosovo campaign and
5 replaying what Iraqis had told him:
6 "Further, Andrew's judgment was self evidently not
7 definitive. Later in the interview he said 'So far they
8 (those with doubts about the effectiveness of the
9 bombing of the Republican Guard) may be right'. He did
10 not say they were right.
11 "On your point about monitoring and minding -- I am
12 sure that you have watched and listened ..." et cetera.
13 He continues over the page, from the bottom of this
14 one:
15 "This particular Radio 5 interview with
16 Andrew Gilligan -- most unusually -- did not carry the
17 warning -- it should have done."
18 To the effect you were being carried around.
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. "But it would be unreasonable not to acknowledge that we
21 have been telling audiences time and again about these
22 restrictions. As for minders -- the BBC Baghdad team
23 does have a minder, although he does not accompany them
24 all the time. Having had conversations with members of
25 the team I am confident that Andrew's piece was not

129
1 influenced by him.
2 "You will not be surprised in the light of my
3 remarks above that I do not accept that we have breached
4 the guidelines ..."
5 Then he talks about your comments about Uday's
6 torture chamber?
7 A. We could perhaps go back to the original letter, that
8 also includes a complaint about Uday, if you -- but
9 sorry -- but please -- sorry~--
10 Q. The only purpose of taking you to that correspondence is
11 to show you what I think you have already disclosed,
12 that even if it was not a personal relationship with
13 Alastair Campbell as a professional relationship it was
14 pretty frosty?
15 A. Yes, I mean these letters are examples, and they are
16 only examples, of a tendency that the Government has had
17 is to seize on isolated phrases in reports and to quote
18 them, sometimes strikingly out of context. I mean, for
19 instance, Mr Campbell quotes the remark I made about the
20 Republican Guard whether, you know, it may not have been
21 damaged, and omits to say that at the beginning I say:
22 Well, I do not know whether it has been damaged or not.
23 Equally, the remark he made about Uday, I said something
24 like -- this is in his letter as well, the same letter.
25 I said something like: Uday had been reined in in recent

130
1 years by the regime; he complained about that, but that
2 happens to be the truth. Uday's newspaper was closed
3 down, he was deprived of some his party posts; and again
4 he omits to mention I was extremely critical of Uday and
5 extremely -- and, you know, I said in this: he has run
6 his own private torture chamber, a place that was
7 absolutely notorious as a place of real horror for the
8 Iraqis. He is thoroughly unpleasant character, hated by
9 all the Iraqis. He omitted all that in his complaint
10 that I was somehow whitewashing Uday.
11 So these are good examples of the kind of
12 relationship that Alastair Campbell has; and it is
13 a good example of the reason why I was reluctant to be
14 the first to name him in the context of transforming the
15 dossier.
16 Q. But once you had named him and once the dispute had
17 escalated -- you accept it had escalated between you,
18 the BBC, and Alastair Campbell and No. 10 on the other
19 side?
20 A. It had not at that stage. The initial Government
21 response to the story was relatively mooted. As I say,
22 in the days after the story most of the newspapers ran
23 similar stories. They had been to their intelligence
24 contacts; their intelligence contacts were telling them
25 the same things. I have quoted from some of those in my

131
1 witness statement. The Government's response was
2 actually relatively mooted for the first month and only
3 when Alastair Campbell gave evidence to the Foreign
4 Affairs Committee did this really, you know, become the
5 major sort of cause celebre that it has become. That
6 was on 25th June; that was nearly a month after the
7 story originally aired.
8 Q. What I am seeking to explore is not who is right and
9 wrong about the previous complaints but whether, when
10 the issue had escalated and Dr Kelly was somehow caught
11 in the middle, you and the BBC were not necessarily
12 prepared to back down and perhaps Alastair Campbell and
13 No. 10 were not necessarily prepared to back down
14 because of this background. Did it influence it in any
15 way, your response to the complaints being made against
16 you by No. 10 Downing Street?
17 A. No, I do not believe it did. What -- obviously my --
18 the response to the complaints made by Downing Street is
19 not my decision, it is a matter for the higher
20 management of BBC News. But our -- you know, if the
21 story had been wrong then we would have corrected it.
22 Q. Can I take you, in that respect, to CAB/1/352. This is
23 correspondence I am really going to deal with with
24 Mr Sambrook, for obvious reasons, the point you have
25 just made, the correspondence was with him. But this is

132
1 the letter dated 26th June 2003 from Alastair Campbell
2 to Mr Sambrook. He says, at the start:
3 "I have been engaged in private correspondence ..."
4 And he has heard the interview on the Today
5 Programme. He makes various other comments. Can I take
6 you to page 353, where he asked this question -- and
7 this is 26th June 2003. This is before Dr Kelly has
8 written his letter of 30th June. It is before anyone
9 has effectively been dragged or he has been dragged to
10 give evidence anyway:
11 "Does the BBC still stand by the allegation it made
12 on 29th May that No. 10 added in the 45 minute claim to
13 the dossier? Yes or no?
14 "Does it still stand by the allegation made on the
15 same day that we did so against the wishes of the
16 intelligence agencies? Yes or no?
17 "Does it still stand by the allegation made on that
18 day that both we and the intelligence agencies knew the
19 45 minute claim to be wrong and inserted it despite
20 knowing that? Yes or no?
21 "Does it still stand by the allegation, again on the
22 same day, that we ordered the September dossier to be
23 'sexed up' ...
24 "Does it still stand by the statement made on
25 6th June by Gilligan that the JIC is not part of the

133
1 intelligence community ...
2 "Does it stand by the claim on 3rd June that the
3 chairman of the JIC only 'kind of bureaucratically
4 signed off his report'? Yes or no?"
5 Can I just concentrate on one allegation, the third
6 bullet point:
7 "Does it still stand by the allegation made on that
8 day that both we and the intelligence agencies knew the
9 45 minute claim to be wrong and inserted it despite
10 knowing that? Yes or no?"
11 I think you accepted this morning that your
12 appearance at 6.07 was unscripted, that the language
13 was, I am afraid I do not have the transcript in front
14 of me but not exact?
15 A. Was not perfect, I think I said.
16 Q. Was not perfect. And you were unable to take me to
17 anything which showed that Dr Kelly had, for example,
18 expressly said to you that Downing Street and the
19 intelligence agencies knew the claim to be wrong, as
20 opposed to there were concerns about its reliability.
21 Why was there not a correction made of, for example,
22 just this particular part of the story?
23 A. I think that is probably something that you would have
24 to ask Richard Sambrook.
25 Q. In which case --

134
1 A. But I mean, I think that probably is a question for him.
2 LORD HUTTON: What was your attitude? What would have been
3 your attitude? Were you aware of this letter that was
4 sent to Mr Sambrook?
5 A. Yes, I was aware of it.
6 LORD HUTTON: Did you have a view on it? It may have been
7 for Mr Sambrook to reply to it, but did you have a view
8 on that particular question? "Does it still stand by
9 the allegation made ..."
10 A. My views, as a rather lowly member of the BBC hierarchy,
11 are not really of much account, to be honest, when
12 answering this kind of letter. This is a very high
13 level letter.
14 LORD HUTTON: But you had made the allegation, it was you
15 who had said this on the programme.
16 A. As I said this morning, the wording in that first
17 two-way was not a fair reflection of how the whole story
18 was covered either by me or by the BBC; and I had
19 repeatedly said, in subsequent broadcasts, that nobody
20 was accusing Downing Street of lying, nobody was
21 accusing Downing Street of making the intelligence -- of
22 making the 45 minutes claim up. We made it clear on
23 repeated occasions that it was real intelligence. So if
24 a misleading impression was given and it was given
25 unintentionally, it already had been corrected.

135
1 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
2 MR DINGEMANS: You know that The Times produced an article
3 on 5th July or 6th July disclosing that BBC sources had
4 given some details of the person who was making the
5 claims or had made the claims to you. Did you have any
6 contact with The Times?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. So if it was given by BBC sources, it was not through
9 you?
10 A. No.
11 Q. Can I ask you just a couple of short questions? You
12 have mentioned your manuscript note that you looked for
13 and could not locate. I am not sure that I elicited
14 from you the date on which you produced that manuscript
15 note.
16 A. It was the day after.
17 Q. The day after?
18 A. The day after the meeting with Dr Kelly.
19 Q. Secondly, going back to the question of contact with the
20 Government before the report was broadcast, did you tell
21 the Government that one of the allegations was going to
22 be the Government knew that the claim was wrong or that
23 the intelligence was questionable?
24 A. As I have said, I cannot remember exactly what I said to
25 Kate Wilson, but there were several other calls made to

136
1 the MoD by the programme as well, by other people on the
2 programme; and I cannot remember what I said to --
3 exactly what I said to Kate Wilson during the seven and
4 a half minute call that I made.
5 Q. At BBC/1/4 -- and this is your 6 o'clock or 6.07
6 piece -- six lines down you say:
7 "What we have been told by one of the senior
8 officials in charge of drawing up that dossier..."
9 Did Dr Kelly ever tell you that he was in charge of
10 drawing up the dossier?
11 A. At the end of the meeting I agreed, as part of the quote
12 agreement process, how I would describe him in any
13 report that I did and I offered him two alternatives:
14 one of the senior officials involved in drawing up the
15 dossier or the senior official in charge of drawing up
16 the dossier; and he said "both fine". He just said
17 either was fine.
18 Q. Can I ask you what you thought was going to become of
19 the story, whether it was the big story that it has
20 become or whether it was to be described as something
21 else? It was not even the lead piece, we see, for the
22 29th May.
23 A. That is right. I mean, I think we were probably guilty
24 of underestimating the impact of this story. It was not
25 the lead on the programme. The lead was that item about

137
1 cluster bombs which I have already discussed, another
2 reporter's story. We really saw this not in terms as --
3 you know -- I mean, you know, this was one item of
4 journalism, no less and no more. It was not intended to
5 be a sort of definitive view of the dossier, it was
6 intended as a contribution to the debate. And that is
7 how we saw it. And I think in hindsight again -- and
8 hindsight is a very wonderful thing in these things --
9 I think we were wrong because clearly it was a bigger
10 story than we thought.
11 Q. But if you -- and you are an experienced defence
12 reporter -- did not think it was a big story when you
13 were proposing to put it on air, did you think that
14 Dr Kelly would have had the faintest idea what he was
15 letting himself in for?
16 A. I mean, I think he was pretty experienced at dealing
17 with journalists; and I think -- I mean, my problem --
18 it was not a, you know, kind of -- my problem was
19 sometimes in a specialist field you sometimes get that,
20 you know, you cannot see the wood for the trees. You
21 think: we know this already, sort of thing. I did have
22 suspicions that the dossier was not accurate because
23 simply of the fact that 45 -- that weapons had not yet
24 been found in Iraq, and so it did not come as of much as
25 a surprise to me, what he was saying, as it came maybe

138
1 to a lay audience. Equally, maybe Dr Kelly has that --
2 I do not know, I cannot speculate on what Dr Kelly may
3 have felt but he was experienced with journalists.
4 LORD HUTTON: I think this will be a convenient time just to
5 give the stenographers a short break.
6 (3.10 pm)
7 (Short Break)
8 (3.15 pm)
9 MR DINGEMANS: I had been asking you about your perception
10 of the story. Can I take you to BBC/6/106? Just so
11 that you and everyone knows, this is part way through
12 the minutes of the board of governors meeting. Can
13 I just ask for your comments on paragraph 2:
14 "Stephen Whittle ..."
15 Can you tell us all who Stephen Whittle is?
16 A. He is the controller of editorial policy.
17 Q. "... said the BBC's weakness in this area was the lack
18 of solid and reliable notes about what was said to the
19 MoD about the allegations made by Andrew Gilligan's
20 source."
21 He is talking there about the contact with the
22 Ministry of Defence:
23 "At that time, the Today Programme was not planning
24 to run the WMD story as a scoop, but more as a 'chatter
25 in the air' issue."

139
1 Is that a fair characterisation of the understanding
2 of the importance of the story at the time?
3 A. Well, I mean, it was a reasonably good story and I had
4 always said it was, but it was not the lead item on the
5 programme that day; and it was a contribution to the
6 debate, as I say.
7 Q. Can I just take you down towards the bottom of the page:
8 "During discussion, Governors made the following
9 points:
10 "The culture Today had become one of creating rather
11 than reporting news. It had moved in line with tabloid
12 and Sunday newspaper journalism where contacting people
13 who might deny a story were avoided. This should be
14 examined in due course to determine if the BBC should
15 operate in this fashion. That said this general view
16 did not diminish the opinion that the BBC was right to
17 broadcast the story."
18 Is that what Dr Kelly's conversation to you had
19 become, namely a way of creating news?
20 A. No. I mean, it was news, that somebody in his position
21 said that; and you know, we did not create that. He
22 said it. I mean, as for the practice, that is not the
23 general practice; and -- but, you know, for the -- for
24 discussions on the sort of practice of the Today
25 Programme, then you need to talk to higher level people

140
1 than me, I am only a reporter on the programme.
2 Q. Mr Campbell had made one complaint against you that
3 appeared to have been part accepted by Mr Sambrook. Can
4 I take you to BBC/4/158?
5 Do you remember we were looking at the central
6 command question and whether or not you were being
7 unduly dismissive of them:
8 "Dear Alastair,
9 "Thank you for your letter and the transcript on
10 News 24. I agree his final phrase is unacceptable. In
11 mitigation I would only say it was live and at the end
12 of the interview, the rest of which seems to me [to] be
13 appropriate. Gilligan has also been adept at
14 highlighting from Baghdad weaknesses in the Iraqi regime
15 - for example, this morning's interview when he pressed
16 the Foreign Minister on Saddam Hussein's whereabouts
17 which the Minister was unable to deal with.
18 "Nevertheless the particular phrase was
19 unacceptable, which I regret, and will take it up with
20 Andrew Gilligan."
21 Did he take that up with you?
22 A. I think he did after -- yes, he did. I mean, I -- you
23 know, and I agree that to use the word "rubbish" was
24 unacceptable. But it has to be seen in the context of
25 several hundred live broadcasts from Baghdad during the

141
1 coverage of the war. I was working to all the BBC News
2 outlets and there are something like 40 of those. We
3 were -- one or other of us was on the air more or less
4 continuously. So, you know, in the whole context of our
5 whole output, which is literally hundreds of pieces from
6 me alone, hundreds from Raggi(?), hundreds from
7 Paul Wood, and at the end of a long two-way, which on
8 this occasion was on News 24, you know, I made
9 a mistake.
10 Q. As you indicate, others might have been charitable about
11 it. Did this affect your decision to bring Mr Campbell
12 into The Mail on Sunday article?
13 A. No, not at all. I was concerned not to have a row with
14 Alastair Campbell, that is why I did not name him in
15 Today. I was concerned not to be the first to name him
16 and I was not. The Guardian named him first in this
17 context.
18 Q. You mentioned I think on the first day you did
19 19 bulletins relating to the Dr Kelly story, as you know
20 now we say it is. Were those all live interviews or was
21 it one just repeated 1 times?
22 A. No, that was over the period between 29th May and
23 5th June. And I would say five or six of those were
24 recorded; but the rest were not. But the rest were
25 live, I think, either scripted live or just unscripted

142
1 live.
2 Q. Can I then just turn, finally, to aspects of your
3 evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee. Effectively
4 most of this is a matter of record. Can I take you to
5 FAC/2/142? This is part way through your first
6 evidence.
7 This is a document that is already in the public
8 domain. Can I take you towards the bottom of this,
9 where you were asked by Sir John Stanley:
10 "Mr Gilligan, can I go back to what you describe as
11 the 45-minute story and to what you said on the Today
12 programme on May 29? We are referring here not to the
13 so-called 'dodgy dossier' but to the assessment
14 of September 2002. You said this: 'I have spoken to
15 a British official who was involved in the preparation
16 of the dossier and he told me that until the week before
17 it was published the draft dossier produced by the
18 intelligence services adds little to what was already
19 publicly known.' He said, 'It was transformed the week
20 before it was published to make it sexier."
21 And then you carry on putting what he said; and
22 I think you have explained how, in fact, that got to be
23 put together.
24 "Mr Gilligan, we have specifically put that issue to
25 the Foreign Secretary and we have received the Foreign

143
1 Secretary's response. The question we put to the
2 Foreign Secretary was this: 'Was the wording of the
3 45-minute claim given on page 19 of the document Iraq's
4 Weapons of Mass Destruction exactly the same as it was
5 in the intelligence assessments applied to the
6 Government? If not, was it accompanied in the
7 intelligence assessment by qualifications not included
8 in the public document?' The answer we have received
9 from the Foreign Secretary is this: 'The same report was
10 reflected in almost identical terms in the JIC's
11 classified work. There were no further caveats used.'
12 The question I put to you is this: against what has been
13 clearly stated now by the Foreign Secretary, are you
14 saying that the Foreign Secretary is lying to this
15 Committee? Or will you now acknowledge that your source
16 was incorrect in saying that the 45-minutes claim was
17 not based on a genuine assessment of the JIC, fully
18 approved through the JIC process?"
19 And your answer is this:
20 "I note the words 'almost identical' in the Foreign
21 Secretary's response. I would simply say that it is not
22 my business to say whether the Foreign Secretary is
23 lying or not. All I would say is that I invested strong
24 credibility in my source, who is a person of impeccable
25 standing on this issue, and whose complaints have been

144
1 reflected in something like seven or eight newspapers
2 and other media outlets, including other BBC outlets,
3 since my original story and his complaints have also
4 been reflected by named, on the record, former
5 intelligence officers from Australia, from the
6 United States, and also, to some extent, by other
7 Members of the House."
8 Can I just ask you about that: Dr Kelly had never
9 told you, had he, that it was not a genuine assessment
10 of the JIC, fully approved through the JIC process?
11 A. No, he had not. We never mentioned the JIC. And he
12 made it clear that it was real intelligence.
13 Q. So would it have been too much to have made that clear
14 to the Foreign Affairs Committee?
15 A. No, but, you know, you are in front of people --
16 I remember thinking I should have said that. But
17 sometimes you do not always come up with the -- you
18 know, I mean this was a good answer but sometimes you do
19 not always come up with all the points you think you
20 could have made at the time you answer it. You always
21 think of something else you could have said, after you
22 finish the answer.
23 Q. Well, that may be so first time round, we all miss
24 questions we should ask. But turning to the bottom of
25 the page:

145
1 "Sir John Stanley: I am sorry, may I just go on.
2 You are making, in my view, a very serious allegation
3 against the integrity of the JIC, all the members of the
4 JIC and, most importantly, against the integrity of the
5 JIC Chairman. You are saying that the JIC Committee and
6 its Chairman, under pressure, where you are implying is
7 political pressure from, presumably, 10 Downing Street,
8 'sexed up' their original assessment at the last moment
9 and introduced material which according to your source
10 was unreliable. You are effectively saying that the
11 whole of the JIC system, including the Chairman,
12 connived in a political embellishing of a JIC assessment
13 for political purposes. I cannot think of anything more
14 damaging by way of an accusation to make against the
15 professional integrity of those who serve on the JIC".
16 And your answer:
17 "Mr Gilligan: I would repeat, as I have said
18 throughout, I am not making any allegations. My source
19 made the allegations. We were reporting the charge of
20 my source, who is a figure sufficiently senior and
21 credible to be worth reporting."
22 It is quite true that Dr Kelly appears to have been
23 sufficiently senior and credible; but did he make these
24 allegations?
25 A. No, and the JIC never appears. I notice at the answer

146
1 to question 452 I do make that point:
2 "As I have said, the JIC did not enter into my
3 report. I reported the source as saying there was
4 unhappiness with the intelligence services, disquiet
5 within the intelligence services."
6 So I have made that point in fact. That was my
7 answer to the Committee.
8 LORD HUTTON: I think I asked you earlier: did you realise
9 that the way in which intelligence information reaches
10 the Government from the Intelligence Services is through
11 the JIC?
12 A. Yes, and -- but, I mean, the dossier had made it
13 explicitly clear that it was a production of the JIC.
14 MR DINGEMANS: Can I then just take you, very shortly, to
15 your later evidence, which is FAC/5 and I have already
16 asked you about some passages so I am not going to take
17 you back to those. Can I take you to FAC/5/19?
18 I think you wanted to say something about the
19 atmosphere you felt you were subjected to. I know that
20 you made a public announcement on this.
21 A. I think the atmosphere was largely hostile and I was
22 thrown off balance by it.
23 Q. You were asked, at the top of the page, by Mr Chidgey:
24 "Does the transcript you watched from Newsnight more
25 or less match up with the information I read out to

147
1 Dr Kelly?"
2 That is a reference to Susan Watts' broadcast, who
3 is going to give evidence after you. You say:
4 "Yes, it pretty much does. That was described by
5 her as a senior figure intimately involved drawing up
6 the dossier."
7 From the evidence we heard yesterday that seems to
8 be a description to be applied to Dr Kelly.
9 But Ms Watts' report on Newsnight did not attract
10 the heat that your report did on Today, did it?
11 A. No, in fact although it made in substance very similar
12 allegations, they have not had any complaint at all from
13 Downing Street.
14 Q. Well, does that not part prove the point that what you
15 say was a less than perfect, if I use your expression,
16 use of language in the Today radio broadcast in fact
17 transformed what Dr Kelly had said from something that
18 was chatter in the air to something which was very much
19 more substantial?
20 A. No, I do not, because I do not think that first two-way,
21 which I have described as not perfect, was
22 representative of the whole output. And I do not think
23 the differences between my report and Susan's are
24 sufficiently great to account for the level of vitriol
25 which has been directed at my reports and which has been

148
1 entirely absent from Susan's.
2 Q. At FAC/5/26 you were being questioned about the evidence
3 that Dr Kelly had given at 267. Mr Pope said:
4 "You said you have a single source.
5 "Mr Gilligan: Based on a comparison of my evidence
6 to the Committee and Dr Kelly's evidence to the
7 Committee, the Committee has already come to the
8 judgment that Dr Kelly was not the source. He met me in
9 an hotel, okay that is the same; he said he did not have
10 access to intelligence information about the 45 minutes;
11 he said he did not bring up Alastair Campbell's role in
12 the dossier; he said he was not a member of the
13 intelligence community; he said he was not in charge of
14 drawing up the dossier; he said we did not start off by
15 talking about the railways. I really do have nothing to
16 add to my evidence or the evidence of Dr Kelly."
17 And I think you wanted to explain why you gave the
18 answer in that format?
19 A. Well, I have explained in my witness statement that
20 I had an absolute duty of confidentiality to Dr Kelly.
21 I did not want to expose the fact that he was my source;
22 and I did everything I could to further that duty of
23 confidentiality to Dr Kelly without lying to the
24 Committee, which I did not.
25 Q. Once Dr Kelly's name had come into the public arena, and

149
1 we are going to hear evidence about how that happened,
2 and once it was being suggested that he was your source,
3 and once he was being subjected to the situation of
4 giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee, what
5 were you protecting him from?
6 A. Well, I considered that had we identified him as the
7 source he would surely have been under even greater
8 pressure than he actually was; and, you know, the
9 principle of source protection is this: that a source
10 may say -- may reveal what details he wishes to reveal
11 at our meetings but the journalist cannot. I mean, you
12 know, a sort of doctor/patient relationship a little
13 bit. Even if the patient wants to talk about what he
14 has discussed in -- you know, he can but it is not for
15 the doctor to reveal. It is a sort of -- or
16 a lawyer/client relationship. That as well. If
17 Dr Kelly wanted to reveal details of his meetings that
18 was for him to do, not for me.
19 Q. Can I then take you to page 31, question 283. I will
20 give a bit of the context because I know you consider
21 that the atmosphere was oppressive. Mr Pope has, at
22 question 282, read an earlier answer to you and you say:
23 "That is exactly what my source said. The specific
24 mention of 'Campbell' was in the transformation of the
25 dossier.

150
1 "Question 283 Mr Pope: Do you think it is a bit
2 risky for the Foreign Secretary to say that was not the
3 case.
4 "Mr Gilligan: There has been a great deal of
5 misinformation about what we reported in this story.
6 Any fair reading of what we reported would not support
7 some of the more extravagant claims made by the
8 Government about what we actually reported. It is very
9 important that you base any analysis of what I said on
10 what I said rather than what the Government said I said.
11 "Mr Pope: I am quoting what you said.
12 "Mr Gilligan: I need to make this point again,
13 Mr Pope, I did not quote the source as saying Campbell
14 inserted the 45 minute claim in the dossier. The
15 source's only mention of Campbell was in the context of
16 the transformation in the broader process of the
17 dossier.
18 "Mr Pope: You went on to say in your quote 'this is
19 the 45 minute claim', that is the transformation,
20 page 19 of your evidence, question 457. [they are
21 referring to your earlier evidence].
22 "Mr Illsley: The hub of this lot is basically you
23 are suggesting that Campbell inserted the 45 minute
24 claim? Are you saying that is not the case?
25 "It is not something that the source ever

151
1 suggested."
2 That is right, is it not?
3 A. No, I mean, in that particular passage I was making
4 a pedantic distinction which in the atmosphere of the
5 Committee that afternoon was unwise. I said that Kelly
6 had said that Campbell was responsible for the
7 transformation. Now the key example, he gave the
8 classic example when I asked for examples, was the
9 inclusion against our wishes of the 45 minutes claim.
10 So although David Kelly had not put Alastair Campbell
11 and the 45 minutes claim in the same sentence, he was
12 quite clearly linking them. That is what he said, that
13 is what my notes said, that is what I was trying to tell
14 the Committee. That is what I made clear to the
15 Committee on perhaps six or seven occasions after they
16 got the wrong of end of the stick in that particular
17 exchange you have quoted. I must have said it six or
18 seven times.
19 Q. And Ms Stuart said:
20 "Not the source. You, you.
21 "Mr Gilligan: I have never suggested anything,
22 I merely report the words of my source, as I repeatedly
23 made clear in my evidence.
24 "Ms Stuart: You said the source did not say it and
25 yet you say it.

152
1 "Mr Gilligan: I say nothing, I report the words of
2 my source, I am a reporter.
3 "Mr Pope: The 45 minutes claim is not in the quotes
4 from your source. I do not know if the members of the
5 Committee have [your earlier evidence, which was
6 page 19] of 19th June."
7 You say this:
8 "The only context in which my source mentioned
9 Campbell was the context of the transformation of the
10 dossier. The allegation was made that the 45 minutes
11 claim was inserted against our wishes -- this is from
12 memory -- but it has not a specific name with a specific
13 person tied to it."
14 And then you are taken back to an earlier question
15 and Mr Mackinlay asks for a slice of the action, at the
16 bottom of the page so that one can see the context of
17 the proceedings. At the top of page 33:
18 "Sorry, Andrew [says Mr Pope]."
19 You say:
20 "This is consistent with what I said..."
21 Sir John Stanley then says -- and if I can pick it
22 halfway through his question:
23 "You are now today making a dramatically, totally,
24 totally different allegation which is that
25 Mr Campbell -- I am not suggesting it has any substance

153
1 but you are now saying something utterly different --
2 with some slightly different wording changes to the
3 draft of the 45 minutes made it sound just slightly more
4 dramatic. That is a totally allegation."
5 And you deny that.
6 Then at the bottom of the page you repeat the words
7 of your source.
8 Page 34, if I may, question 292, Sir John Stanley:
9 "Reading that quote [and he is talking about the
10 quotes that had been set out earlier] every Member of
11 this Committee, and the wider public, concluded that you
12 were saying that it was Mr Campbell who was responsible
13 for inserting the 45 minute claim."
14 You say:
15 "Mr Campbell was responsible for the transformation
16 of the document, that is the source's claim.
17 Sir John Stanley points out:
18 "That is utterly different."
19 Do you accept that that is utterly different?
20 A. No, it is not, because David Kelly said that the prime
21 example, the classic example of the transformation was
22 the inclusion against our wishes of the 45 minute claim.
23 In that short passage, which lasted about 5 to 8 minutes
24 in the Committee out of two hours, I had been
25 disconcerted by the hostility of the questioning and

154
1 I was simply wrong. But I quite swiftly corrected
2 myself; and I say, you know, at question 331 that I am
3 "quite clearly making Campbell responsible for the
4 transformation, which included the insertion"; question
5 333: the transformation included the insertion of the 45
6 minute claim; question 336 I say the same thing.
7 Question 350:
8 "He said that this dossier was transformed at
9 Alastair Campbell's behest and the transformation
10 included the [insertion] of the 45 minute claim."
11 I must have said it six or seven times. So
12 I really -- you know, I really wanted to make that
13 clear. I made a mistake in the middle.
14 Q. In fact, I was going to come to page 48 which is in fact
15 332. As you have given your evidence in relation to
16 that, what you are saying then is that you made
17 a mistake in the middle of your evidence to the Foreign
18 Affairs Committee?
19 A. I was thrown off balance by the extreme hostility of the
20 questioning which had started. They had said he had
21 brought me to talk about the source; and indeed that is
22 what the chairman said at the beginning. But they
23 started off talking about a whole slough of stories,
24 some completely unrelated to Iraq, that I -- you know,
25 unlike these proceedings here they did not give me any

155
1 transcripts or anything to read, and they started
2 talking about a story I had done several months before
3 about port security at Dover and saying: the Government
4 made this, this and this criticism. I was not in
5 a position to answer that and it threw me off balance.
6 Q. Did you, when you reported what Dr Kelly had said to
7 you, exaggerate and embellish what he reported to you?
8 A. No.
9 MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, I have nothing further.
10 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you.
11 Thank you very much, Mr Gilligan.
12 A. Thank you.
13 MR DINGEMANS: Ms Watts.
14 MS SUSAN JANET Watts (called)
15 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
16 Q. Can you tell his Lordship your full name?
17 A. Yes. My full name is Susan Janet Watts and I am a BBC
18 reporter.
19 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you.
20 MR DINGEMANS: What programme do you work with?
21 A. I work with BBC Newsnight.
22 Q. And how long have you been a journalist?
23 A. Well, I have been a journalist since 1984 and I worked
24 on Newsnight since 1995.
25 Q. And before 1995, in very short summary?

156
1 A. Yes. Well, I worked -- my first job was with
2 a publication called Computer Weekly for about three
3 years or so, and then on The Independent newspaper for
4 four and a half years -- sorry, the New Scientist in
5 between the two. The Independent newspaper for four
6 years and then Newsnight for eight years.
7 Q. What is your role on Newsnight?
8 A. I am the science editor.
9 Q. And what does that mean you cover?
10 A. A very wide range of subjects from fertility, genetics,
11 environmental sciences, nuclear technology and most
12 recently on subjects related to weapons of mass
13 destruction, bio-weapons, biological protocol and those
14 subjects.
15 Q. So biological and chemical warfare was something you
16 covered?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. And in the course of that, on a professional basis, did
19 you come across Dr David Kelly?
20 A. Yes, I did.
21 Q. When did you first meet him?
22 A. Well, I first met him in November 2002; but I first
23 became aware of him about two years ago, in the spring
24 of 2001.
25 Q. How had you got in contact with him?

157
1 A. Well, at that time, which is roughly two years ago,
2 I was covering the American attitude to the biological
3 weapons protocol and there -- I was preparing various
4 reports on whether the Americans were likely to walk
5 away from that. I had actually requested a briefing
6 from the Foreign Office on that subject; and
7 Mr John Walker was suggested to me and we had
8 a telephone conversation. I believe Dr Kelly's name was
9 on the BBC internal contacts database, certainly at that
10 time, possibly before. But I have a note in my
11 notebooks that John Walker mentioned his name to me at
12 that time. So that is around spring of 2001.
13 Q. I think you have helped us. John Walker was?
14 A. He was leading the British delegation to the bio-weapons
15 protocol negotiations at that time. So he was giving me
16 a background briefing on Britain's attitude, America's
17 attitude.
18 Q. Who did John Walker work for?
19 A. Foreign Office.
20 Q. He was the one who gave you Dr Kelly's details?
21 A. Well, Dr Kelly's name appears at the beginning of my
22 notes of the conversation, of that telephone briefing,
23 yes.
24 Q. How did you get hold of his telephone number then to
25 speak to him?

158
1 A. Well, I have got a printout of the BBC database, it is
2 on there. And I also was given his name by a Foreign
3 Office official.
4 Q. Right. For the purposes of contacting him?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Did you tell the Foreign Office official what you were
7 going to talk about?
8 A. Well, it was on the bio-weapons protocol.
9 Q. And then you had a discussion with him about the
10 bio-weapons protocol?
11 A. Yes, a very brief background conversation,
12 non-attributable.
13 Q. Right. What was your next contact with him?
14 A. We next spoke actually in March 2002; and that was on
15 the subject of the anthrax deaths in the States
16 in October 2001.
17 Q. Right. Did he say anything that you used in a report?
18 A. I do not think so, not on that occasion.
19 Q. Had you used anything he had said in your first contact
20 in a report?
21 A. Really only as guidance; nothing directly, no.
22 Q. No. Did you have any further contact before you met
23 him?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. When was that?

159
1 A. Quite a few. Well, we met in November 2002. We had
2 a number of telephone conversations in between times.
3 So we spoke in -- at some point in April --
4 Q. Yes.
5 A. -- 2002.
6 Q. What were you talking about then?
7 A. We were talking then more broadly about leading on from
8 the bio-weapons protocol and America's attitude to it,
9 more generally about America's attitude to multinational
10 agreements, and that was in preparation for a specific
11 report that looked at America's approach to those
12 multinational agreements and how it was changing.
13 Q. What was the change that he reported on to you?
14 A. Well, we were talking again in very much a background
15 basis about America's attitude to Hans Blix, the
16 bio-weapons.
17 Q. Did he say anything particularly controversial in that
18 respect?
19 A. No, not particularly.
20 Q. And did --
21 LORD HUTTON: May I just ask you, Ms Watts.
22 A. Yes.
23 LORD HUTTON: You say that the Foreign Office gave you
24 Dr Kelly's telephone number.
25 A. Yes.

160
1 LORD HUTTON: Was that in the Ministry of Defence? Was it
2 an official telephone number, do you know?
3 A. Well, I have a note of both an MoD number and a home
4 number.
5 LORD HUTTON: Do you think he perhaps gave you his home
6 number himself?
7 A. He did on a later occasion.
8 LORD HUTTON: I see. That was some time in 2002, was it?
9 A. Yes. In fact, I had two home numbers for him and
10 a mobile number.
11 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you.
12 MR DINGEMANS: Did your contact in April 2002 lead to any
13 use of his material?
14 A. Only as background really, fitting it together with
15 other pieces of information I was getting from other
16 people.
17 Q. Right. That is April 2002. You were going to meet him
18 face to face in November 2002. Were there any other
19 discussions before November?
20 A. Yes, we talked about -- again on the issue of the
21 anthrax killings --
22 Q. When was this?
23 A. In around mid August 2002. The Americans had identified
24 a person of interest for those killings who had been
25 named; and there had been a very significant report in

161
1 the newspapers. I rang Dr Kelly to talk about that. He
2 said that he had actually been a tutor of this person of
3 interest at one of the UNMOVIC training courses at
4 Porton Down. He also talked about the fact that he had
5 known the reporting journalist in that instance,
6 Nick Rufford from the Sunday Times. I was very
7 interested by this story and looking to do a follow up
8 to the film that I had put out in March 2002, and really
9 was ringing for more information on that. I came away
10 from that conversation with the view that he was
11 probably the source for that story.
12 Q. The source of the story for Nick Rufford?
13 A. In the Sunday Times, yes.
14 Q. Did you have any other conversations with him before you
15 contacted him in November 2002?
16 A. Yes. This was during the run up to the Iraqi
17 declaration of December 2002; and I have a note in my
18 notebooks that we spoke on 9th September 2002,
19 relatively briefly, about the possibility -- I was
20 preparing, at that time, for a film on who the weapons
21 inspectors were and what their role was. This was in
22 anticipation of their returning to Iraq. I was looking
23 for some filming of training courses and spoke to him
24 then about whether there were any training courses
25 coming up, because I had understood from him that he was

162
1 involved in those. This is as all the various
2 diplomatic processes are also playing out; and at that
3 time I was also contacting the Foreign Office to talk
4 about that.
5 Q. Did you discuss with him either in September or August?
6 Not that you recall?
7 A. No.
8 Q. Your conversations with him, were they all on the same
9 basis, attributable or non-attributable?
10 A. They were all non-attributable, so he was -- the
11 information was to be used but not identified as having
12 come from him.
13 Q. Can you tell me this: it is something that came up this
14 morning and of course I know nothing about the media,
15 but is there a difference between "attributable",
16 "non-attributable" and "off the record"?
17 A. Yes. "Attributable" would be you could identify that
18 information as having come from a particular named
19 person; "non-attributable" is slightly further back from
20 that, in that the information could be used in its
21 fullest extent but not identified as having come from
22 a particular known source; and "off the record" I would
23 understand to be even further back, i.e. to inform
24 a news report but with no indication of where that
25 material had come from.

163
1 Q. Right, and so it might be used if it is off the record?
2 A. It might be used but I would -- that information should
3 be used in the context of a lot of other information
4 pulled together to inform an item.
5 Q. So if someone has a conversation that is off the record,
6 then you should not use that as a single source; is that
7 right? Is that your understanding?
8 A. If it was off the record I would be cautious of using
9 that.
10 LORD HUTTON: I mean, is the meaning "off the record" is it
11 provides the report with background information?
12 A. Context.
13 LORD HUTTON: Context. But it is not to be attributed
14 directly or indirectly to another person.
15 A. No.
16 MR DINGEMANS: And your conversations with Dr Kelly that you
17 had, were they attributable, non-attributable or off the
18 record?
19 A. Non-attributable.
20 Q. Did you clarify that at the beginning of each
21 conversation?
22 A. No, I did not. That was always my understanding from
23 the beginning of our contacts.
24 Q. Right.
25 A. But I had no express contract with him.

164
1 Q. So it was something that you assumed but you never
2 discussed with him. You did not discuss this was
3 attributable or non-attributable or off the record?
4 A. No, not specifically.
5 Q. You had got his number through the Foreign Office,
6 anyway, I think you told us.
7 A. Yes, and there was no -- that was not confidential in
8 any way, that was entirely accepted.
9 Q. And do you recall when you got Dr Kelly's mobile
10 telephone number?
11 A. From him, I think.
12 Q. When abouts? Was that before you had met face to face?
13 A. (Pause). It was on an occasion before he was due to go
14 to America. I know that he gave it to me to contact him
15 there but I did not need to.
16 Q. We have heard about the publication of the September
17 dossier by the Government, 24th September 2002.
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Did you speak with Dr Kelly after the publication of the
20 dossier?
21 A. I did speak to him afterwards, but not on that day or
22 immediately around that day, although we had been
23 speaking relatively recently in the lead-up to it. And
24 in fact I believe he gave me his mobile number to talk
25 to him on that subject.

165
1 Q. Do you know where he was when you spoke to him or first
2 spoke to him about the dossier?
3 A. (Pause). I think that was some time whizzing forward
4 in May of this year.
5 Q. Right.
6 A. And I believe he was at home.
7 Q. You think he was at home when you spoke to him about the
8 dossier?
9 A. On the first occasion, yes.
10 Q. Did he comment to you about the 45 minutes claim?
11 A. So this is a conversation of 7th May 2003 or earlier?
12 Q. Well, I had --
13 A. I am going back through my notes now.
14 Q. I think looking at paragraph 21 may help you.
15 A. (Pause). This is Dr Kay, not Dr Kelly.
16 Q. Right, and that is who you had spoken to about the
17 publication?
18 A. Shall I clarify the difference between them?
19 Q. Yes.
20 A. Dr Kay, Dr David Kay, which is where the confusion may
21 arise, is again a former weapons inspector. His
22 specialist area is nuclear capabilities. He had very
23 similar experience to Dr Kelly in terms of his
24 experience of the inspection process but he was
25 different in that he was a nuclear person and Dr Kelly

166
1 was more specifically chemical and biological.
2 Q. And then you speak with Dr Kelly. I think you tell us
3 you had your conversation in May 2003.
4 A. Yes, I spoke to him in between those two occasions on
5 smallpox and the likelihood of Iraq possessing smallpox
6 for a film I was preparing, which actually went out
7 in April 2003.
8 Q. Before that you had met him face to face, when was that?
9 A. In November 2002 at a Foreign Office open day.
10 Q. So he was one of the speakers there?
11 A. He was a speaker there and it was a packed -- there was
12 a packed room and we briefly exchanged pleasantries
13 outside while I was waiting for him to deliver his
14 speech.
15 Q. I imagine he did not recognise you because he had not
16 met you before.
17 A. I think he did probably from seeing me on television,
18 but we had not met before and we did not meet. That was
19 the only occasion on which we met.
20 Q. What was the nature of your discussion on that occasion?
21 A. We were just exchanging pleasantries, as I say, and
22 chatting, in fact, about the anthrax killing again and
23 the person of interest. There had been some detail
24 about this person's biography; and we were talking about
25 whether all of the claims in that biograph were true or

167
1 not, on the basis of him having some knowledge of this
2 person having trained him for UNMOVIC.
3 Q. Did you speak about the dossier then, because that was
4 after the publication of the dossier, was it not? That
5 is November.
6 A. No, we did not. It was a very brief conversation. He
7 was with Patrick Lamb from the Foreign Office, it did
8 not seem like the right occasion really to get into any
9 of those discussions.
10 Q. Then I think you had some further discussions with him
11 on 21st November 2002?
12 A. Yes. This was about the Iraqi declaration, as it was
13 anticipated. And it was in that conversation he told me
14 that he was acting as an adviser to Britain's
15 Commissioner to UNMOVIC, of which they are 16 national
16 commissioners who form a secretariat to Hans Blix.
17 Q. Then, in December 2002, you had a further conversation.
18 What was that about?
19 A. That was, again, about the Iraqi declaration. It had
20 been published by that time; and he told me that he had
21 spent 18 hours a day for the last 10 days reading it.
22 And we talked about the interviewing process that was
23 taking place.
24 Q. Right.
25 A. And whether that should happen in Iraq or outside in

168
1 Cyprus. It was at a time when there was a lot of
2 speculation about whether scientists should be pulled
3 out of Iraq for interviews or not.
4 Q. So that they could give full and frank exchange of
5 views?
6 A. Yes; and he was expressing the view he thought it was
7 better to interview people in situ.
8 Q. And explaining why, no doubt.
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Any other conversations before we come to May?
11 A. Yes, quite a few. In January 2003 we spoke about the
12 numbers of Iraqi scientists who had already come
13 forward, how that compared with the numbers he made of
14 the -- the total number that had been involved in
15 various programmes. I used those numbers directly in
16 a Newsnight broadcast on 17th January this year.
17 Q. When he spoke to you after you had used them in
18 a broadcast, did he say: oh, I saw you used my piece in
19 the broadcast, or anything like that or was he aware of
20 any publication?
21 A. I did not get the impression that he was an avid
22 television viewer, that he was watching everything that
23 went out. So I cannot be certain whether he saw those
24 broadcasts or not.
25 Q. But you did not discuss the publications or use that you

169
1 had made of his material?
2 A. No.
3 Q. What did you speak about next?
4 A. On 16th January, which was the day of the empty warheads
5 find, we talked about those; and it was quite late in
6 the day, but we exchanged some of the technical details
7 about those -- how one would distinguish between
8 conventional warheads and those that were designed to
9 carry chemical weapons. This was all directly to inform
10 that night's broadcast on what they might mean.
11 Q. Did you have a conversation in April 2003?
12 A. Yes, we did. In mid April 2003 we had quite a long
13 telephone conversation. During that conversation he
14 mentioned having had lunch with Geoff Hoon, the Defence
15 Secretary.
16 Q. When did he say he had had lunch with Mr Hoon?
17 A. That day.
18 Q. So some time in mid April 2003?
19 A. Mid April, yes.
20 Q. Did he say what he had talked about at lunch?
21 A. Well, yes. He talked about -- he and I were talking
22 about the process of the search for WMD and Whitehall's
23 attitude to the fact that nothing of significance had
24 been found by then; and Dr Kelly said that Mr Hoon had
25 said to him, rather cryptically Dr Kelly implied, and

170
1 I quote -- Geoff Hoon said to Dr Kelly, "One sees the
2 mosaic of evidence being built up".
3 Q. What did you understand Dr Kelly to understand by that
4 rather cryptic comment?
5 A. Very little in fact. He chuckled about the fact that it
6 was fairly meaningless.
7 Q. What else did Dr Kelly say on that occasion?
8 A. He expressed a firm wish to return to Iraq and some
9 frustration at not having been asked to go back yet. He
10 talked about the fact that he felt perhaps the
11 security -- there was not sufficient security for him to
12 return. During the same conversation we discussed the
13 uranium Niger intelligence issue and my shorthand notes
14 show that he said, and I am quoting, "that obviously was
15 an improper analysis".
16 Q. What do you think he meant by that?
17 A. That there was some doubt over its veracity, but I think
18 it has to be borne in mind that he was not -- he is
19 talking there about a nuclear issue, he is not
20 a nuclear -- so I -- my impression was that he was
21 relaying information to me that might have popped up in
22 conversations. But I was cautious in my approach to
23 that because it is not his sphere of expertise.
24 Q. Right. And did you use any of the material for any
25 broadcasts from your discussion in April 2003?

171
1 A. Not directly, no. Again, that was one of many
2 conversations which I would characterise as forming
3 background information. It was informing my general
4 attitude to the pieces I produced but I did not quote
5 anything directly or use anything directly from that.
6 Q. Right. Were you building up any sort of relationship
7 with Dr Kelly over the phone at this stage of trust or
8 confidence or --
9 A. We had had a number of contacts, obviously. I think
10 both of us began to trust each other more and I feel
11 that he trusted the way that I was using the
12 information, so my methodology in expressing his
13 comments.
14 Q. Did you form any view about, for example, his access to
15 Government information?
16 A. Well, from the variety and breadth of it, I formed the
17 view very definitely he had extraordinary access to
18 Government information across the board.
19 Q. But that was no doubt limited to his specific subject,
20 is that right?
21 A. Well, I would -- I think he had extraordinary access in
22 many areas but I -- obviously his area of expertise was
23 biological and chemical weapons but he was --
24 Q. So if he had extraordinary access to biological and
25 chemical weapons, was there any other area that you

172
1 noted he had access to such information?
2 A. Well, the uranium Niger reference would indicate he was
3 talking to people and had a view on those issues.
4 Q. Did he tell you in terms what access he had?
5 A. Not specifically, no. Again, I would say that he was
6 passing information to me that was not sensitive in any
7 way, not operational information.
8 Q. It was not anything that was going to compromise
9 anyone's safety?
10 A. No, and not whistle blowing in any sense.
11 Q. Do you know whether you made any other contacts with
12 Dr Kelly? Do you have any notes of any other contacts
13 to him?
14 A. There are quite a few references to him in my notebook;
15 and many of those, I think, are just prompters to me to
16 ring him, reminders really. If there were any other
17 conversations during that time, they were insignificant.
18 Q. Until we come to May 2003.
19 A. Yes, so in May I had three significant conversations
20 with Dr Kelly.
21 Q. Can you first of all give us the dates of those
22 conversations?
23 A. Yes, 7th, 12th and 30th of May. Then there was
24 a brief -- yes, that is right, the three.
25 Q. And your notes for the 7th May 2003, where were they

173
1 made?
2 A. In a notebook, which I have attached as attachment B.
3 Q. Yes, we will come to that. For the 12th May, did you
4 make notes?
5 A. Yes, that is another notebook attached.
6 Q. And did you make notes on 30th May?
7 A. That is the conversation that I taped, and I started to
8 make notes but only for a few moments. I was relying on
9 the tape.
10 Q. So effectively the gist of that conversation we can hear
11 from the tape?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Can we go back to the 7th May?
14 A. Hmm, hmm.
15 Q. Can you, first of all, tell us who initiated the
16 contact?
17 A. I did.
18 Q. Right. And where did you call him?
19 A. I rang him at home, I think, and probably from my home.
20 Q. Right. Why did you call him that day?
21 A. I rang him because that evening, the 7th, Newsnight had
22 secured an interview with Robin Cook and I had been
23 asked to prepare a short sort of 4 minute-ish item to
24 precede that item with Jeremy Paxman and Robin Cook.
25 Q. What was the interview with Robin Cook going to be

174
1 about?
2 A. Weapons of mass destruction.
3 Q. Did you discuss anything in particular, any developments
4 in Iraq?
5 A. Well, we talked about the most recent developments; so
6 we talked about the recent apprehension of Dr Huda
7 Ammash who had become known as Chemical Sally, and the
8 whereabouts of the Dr Riab Taha, who had become known as
9 Dr Germ, she is the East Anglian microbiologist. We
10 talked about the likely value of information that they
11 might reveal under interview or not.
12 Q. Yes.
13 A. And Dr Kelly's view that the process of looking for
14 weapons of mass destruction would likely be a lengthy
15 one unless the teams were to "strike it lucky".
16 Q. What was your understanding of Dr Kelly's views about
17 the prospects of finding weapons of mass destruction, he
18 thought that they were there but they were well hidden?
19 A. My impression is that he felt very definitely thought
20 that there were weapons programmes. That if there were
21 to be any evidence of those, it might well be a lengthy
22 search to find that evidence and it would be a process
23 of pulling together many, many bits of information and
24 that that process is really only beginning.
25 Q. How long did that conversation last?

175
1 A. 15, 20 minutes.
2 Q. Where was he at the time of the conversation?
3 A. I think he was at home.
4 Q. So you were at home and --
5 A. I cannot be certain he was at home. I was, I think, at
6 home but I cannot be certain that he was at home.
7 Q. Did you discuss the 45 minutes claim in the Government
8 dossier?
9 A. Towards the end of the conversation we did, yes.
10 Q. And what did he say about that?
11 A. So my shorthand notes show that regarding the 45 minutes
12 issue Dr Kelly said to me that it was, and I quote,
13 "a mistake to put in Alastair Campbell seeing something
14 in there, single source but not corroborated, sounded
15 good."
16 Q. Right. And what was the nature of the way in which he
17 imparted this information? Was it as if this was
18 a revelation or this was a chatty aside?
19 A. Certainly not a revelation at all, I would characterise
20 it as a gossipy aside comment.
21 Q. Did you make use of that comment?
22 A. No, I did not.
23 Q. Is there any reason you did not make use of that
24 comment?
25 A. Well, because I did not consider it particularly

176
1 controversial. I felt it to be a glib statement. I was
2 somewhat surprised that he would use a name and he
3 appeared to be speculating in a way that he did not
4 generally.
5 Q. So he had moved from the scientific nature of your
6 discussion to, you said, the slightly glib comment?
7 A. Sometimes he would talk about, small P, political
8 aspects of what was going on, but he would very -- it
9 was unlike him to speculate on that in, as I would
10 characterise, a glib way.
11 Q. And you say that you considered it to be a more
12 speculative comment.
13 A. Hmm.
14 Q. What gave you that impression?
15 A. Well, really that it was -- he gave no particular
16 detail, I had no reason to believe that he had
17 particular access that would make that a comment that
18 I would want to use with confidence in a Newsnight
19 report.
20 Q. Right. And did you discuss anything else? For example,
21 any recent finds.
22 A. (Pause). Recent finds --
23 Q. Was there any discussion about mobile laboratories or
24 anything?
25 A. (Pause). Yes. At the beginning of the conversation we

177
1 were talking about the mobile laboratory finds. There
2 had been various articles in the Washington Post
3 suggesting that they had been found. It was not
4 confirmed at that point.
5 Q. Right.
6 A. So we talked about those in general terms; yes.
7 Q. And did Dr Kelly talk about going out to Iraq himself?
8 A. Yes. Again, we talked about being surprised he was not
9 out there in Iraq. Again, he said it was not yet secure
10 enough. You know, we talked specifically about, as
11 I have said, Dr Huda Ammash and the likelihood she was
12 going to reveal anything. And he said there had been
13 a number of assumptions they had been involved in the
14 weapons programme but he did not believe he had any
15 valuable information. He was more interested in some of
16 the lower level scientists because he felt we might get
17 more information from them.
18 Q. When Dr Kelly discussed with you the 45 minutes claim,
19 did he discuss any weapons that might have been used to
20 launch chemical and biological weapons?
21 A. Yes. We talked a bit about why such a precise timing
22 might be used, 45 minutes rather than 43 or 40. He said
23 that he was -- he made clear that he, in his word, was
24 guessing; but he said that in 1991 the Iraqis were, and
25 I quote, "playing around with multibarrel launches and

178
1 that these take 45 minutes to fill". So that was his
2 best guess, if you like, as to where that figure had
3 come from.
4 Q. He did not know what weapons system might be able to
5 deliver it?
6 A. In that short time, no.
7 Q. He was speculating that it might be multibarreled
8 launchers?
9 A. Yes, and that might be the origin of that figure.
10 Q. Was he then suggesting that the 45 minutes claim was
11 false?
12 A. He was not suggesting it was necessarily false. But
13 I think he was suggesting to me it might not necessarily
14 only have one interpretation.
15 Q. You were interviewing with him or talking to him because
16 you were going to help preparation for an interview with
17 Robin Cook. Did you discuss that at all?
18 A. Only briefly towards the end of the conversation. This
19 was for an item I was putting together, a 4 minute item.
20 I asked him what he would like to ask Robin Cook.
21 Q. What would he have liked to ask Robin Cook?
22 A. He just suggested that he should be asked why he was
23 adamant in his position, Robin Cook's position.
24 Q. So adamant about his political position?
25 A. Yes, that there were no weapons to be found.

179
1 Q. From that, did you draw any inference about Dr Kelly's
2 views in relation to weapons of mass destruction?
3 A. Not particularly. As I said, I think he felt certain
4 there were weapons programmes.
5 Q. Right.
6 A. I should say, one important point on the 45 minute issue
7 is that his telling me there that this information was
8 single source and not corroborated, I did note as
9 interesting and worth following up, though I did not
10 follow it up for that evening's programme because of the
11 pragmatic issue of getting something on air to run
12 before Robin Cook. I did think that was interesting and
13 worth following up. And with hindsight, that
14 information -- he was passing that information to me
15 three weeks before it became public, which I think
16 demonstrates that he did have extraordinary access to
17 much of the information that went into forming that
18 dossier.
19 Q. Right. Sorry, you have rather lost me there. He was
20 passing you --
21 A. In his reference on the 45 minute issue he said single
22 source but not corroborated, and that did not become
23 publicly known until Adam Ingram conceded that point
24 on May 29th, which is some three weeks later.
25 Q. So that supported your view that he was a man with

180
1 extraordinary access?
2 A. Absolutely.
3 MR DINGEMANS: Right.
4 Well, my Lord, I am about to turn to the --
5 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I think this would be a convenient time
6 at which to rise.
7 Thank you very much, Ms Watts. We will resume again
8 tomorrow at 10.30.
9 (4.15 pm)
10 (Hearing adjourned until 10.30 am the following day)
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

181
1 INDEX
2 PAGE
3 MR ANDREW GILLIGAN (called) ...................... 1
4
5 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 1
6
7 MS SUSAN JANET Watts (called) .................... 156
8
9 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 156
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

182

<< Back