Hearing Transcripts

1 Thursday, 21st August 2003 2 (10.30 am)
3 MR DONALD ANDERSON (called)
4 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
5 LORD HUTTON: Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
6 I understand that there is a problem with the evidence
7 screens which hitherto have worked very well. The
8 technicians are working on the problem. The LiveNote
9 screens are working, therefore I intend to proceed with
10 the evidence. Just as soon as the evidence screens are
11 working, they will be brought back into operation.
12 MR DINGEMANS: Can you give his Lordship your full name?
13 A. Donald Anderson.
14 Q. What is your occupation?
15 A. A Member of Parliament.
16 Q. How long have you been a Member of Parliament for?
17 A. A very long time. I began 1966 to 1970. I then lost
18 that constituency. I returned in October 1974. I have
19 had the honour to be a member for the Swansea East
20 constituency since that time.
21 Q. Are you the Chairman of a Committee at the House --
22 A. I am Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and have
23 been since 1977.
24 Q. Can you tell us a bit about that Committee?
25 A. Yes. Like all Committees of the House, Select

1
1 Committees, it was set up in about 1979. Its job is to
2 scrutinise a particular department, in our case of
3 course the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We do so
4 formally by means of particular inquiries into aspects
5 of policy and we hope that we, by so doing, perform
6 a public service in that, in our case, the relevant
7 department, the officials within the Foreign and
8 Commonwealth Office know that their errors of commission
9 or omission, their conduct may be subject to scrutiny on
10 behalf of the representatives of the people in
11 Parliament.
12 Q. How many members does the Foreign Affairs Committee
13 have?
14 A. We have 11 members, my Lord, and we reflect the
15 composition of the House. So the current position is
16 that there are seven Government members, three
17 Conservative members and one member of the
18 Liberal Democrat Party.
19 Q. Do you make use of advisers in those Committees?
20 A. We are able to do so and we frequently do so. We have,
21 of course, the Clerks who are members -- they are, in
22 some ways, equivalent to civil servants but they would
23 emphatically say they are not civil servants, they are
24 servants of the House and they advise us in many ways.
25 In addition to that, there are short-term advisers,

2
1 two years renewable for another two years, who assist
2 the Committee on the research side; and of course we
3 can, for particular inquiries, either because of the
4 importance or because of the expertise which is needed
5 in our judgment, we can ask senior outside advisers.
6 Q. How do you take evidence to the Committee, is that in
7 public or private?
8 A. The presumption always is that we hold our inquiries in
9 public, because we are performing a public service. Our
10 job is to be representatives of the public, hopefully
11 standing in the shoes of the public and doing the job
12 which the public would like us to do in respect of the
13 Executive as Parliamentarians.
14 Q. And those proceedings, are they, when they are in
15 public, always televised?
16 A. That depends wholly on the television authorities. We,
17 as members of the Committee, have no control over
18 whether or not a particular session is televised.
19 I assume that the judgment of the television authorities
20 will be whether or not it is of sort of interest to the
21 broader public.
22 Q. On 3rd June 2003 you announced an inquiry. What was
23 that inquiry?
24 A. This was an inquiry -- the terms of reference are set
25 out in the submission which has been made by the Clerk.

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1 May I, my Lord, refer to that?
2 LORD HUTTON: Yes, please do.
3 A. And the terms of reference adopted were:
4 "To inquire into whether the Foreign and
5 Commonwealth Office within the Government as a whole
6 presented accurate and complete information to
7 Parliament in the period leading up to military action
8 in Iraq, particularly in respect of weapons of mass
9 destruction."
10 MR DINGEMANS: What was the rationale behind setting up the
11 inquiry at that time? It has been suggested, from some
12 of the witnesses, that that was to investigate the
13 claims that had been made on the Today broadcast. Did
14 that influence your decision?
15 A. My Lord, the background was that the Committee already
16 had a very crowded programme. There was some reluctance
17 to embark on this inquiry. Nevertheless, we felt that
18 because of the extent of public interest in the events
19 leading up to the war in Iraq, we would be subject to
20 criticism if we were not to do so. It is fair to say
21 that among the areas of press interest had been the
22 Today Programme revelations of Mr Gilligan, and
23 I suppose Susan Watts on Newsnight, but I may say that
24 I personally, until very much later in the day, was
25 unaware of the Newsnight interview. I think that

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1 Mr Gilligan's Today revelations were only part of the
2 context within which that decision was taken.
3 Q. And once you have set up an inquiry, what do you do in
4 terms of getting the evidence?
5 A. Well, we, having set it up, decide on the terms of
6 reference. We then decide roughly how long we want to
7 take over an inquiry, we decide which witnesses are
8 likely to assist us in coming to conclusions, and we
9 advertise on the Internet the fact that we are holding
10 such an inquiry; and we ask anyone who has any material
11 evidence that they would like to give to send in that
12 evidence.
13 In this case, my Lord, for example, we were
14 extremely aware of the constraint of time, because
15 I cannot recall whether I had told my colleagues on the
16 Committee at this stage, but the Liaison Committee,
17 which meets with the Prime Minister every six months,
18 I knew that the next meeting of that Committee was on
19 8th July.
20 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see.
21 A. And it made some sense for us to use our report to
22 inform the work of that Committee. I was also aware
23 that Parliament was going into recess -- oh gosh, a week
24 or two weeks after the Liaison Committee. Therefore,
25 there was a question of time. Therefore, my practice is

5
1 always to seek to make the work of the Committee as
2 nonpartisan as possible.
3 I count it as a badge of pride that all the reports
4 in the last Parliament, 1997 to 2001, were unanimous
5 with one slight exception, part of the Sierra Leone
6 report, and all our reports until this report in this
7 Parliament were indeed unanimous.
8 So what I did, I met initially, as soon as the
9 Committee had decided on the terms of reference.
10 I asked the senior opposition figure Sir John Stanley to
11 meet with me and the Clerk, and we discussed together
12 the questions such as the timing, such as the witnesses,
13 and whether or not we would need to have specialist
14 advisers for the inquiry.
15 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
16 MR DINGEMANS: And I think on Thursday 5th June you have
17 suggested there was a conversation between the Clerk of
18 the Committee and Patrick Lamb who we have heard
19 evidence from. Do you know what the gist of that
20 conversation was?
21 A. I attended the particular meeting which I think was
22 trying to inform middle ranking civil servants in the
23 FCO of the work of Parliament. I attended that, but
24 I was not party to any conversation. My Lord, all
25 I know about the conversation is what I have seen in the

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1 note which the Clerk has prepared for your Inquiry.
2 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you.
3 MR DINGEMANS: What does that tell us?
4 A. I am afraid since I was not -- I would have to refer to
5 the Clerk's note.
6 LORD HUTTON: It refers to that a workshop was held?
7 A. It was a workshop. May I then -- in the chronology of
8 events provided to the Inquiry by the Clerk, he says
9 this, under Thursday 5th June:
10 "The Clerk of the Committee and Patrick Lamb of the
11 FCO had a private conversation in the margins of the
12 workshop about Iraq and WMD with particular reference to
13 the September 2002 and February 2003 dossier."
14 MR DINGEMANS: Now, turning on to 12th June, did you get
15 a response from the Foreign Secretary to a request that
16 you had made about hearing oral evidence?
17 A. Yes. My Lord, again referring to the note, the Foreign
18 Secretary wrote to me on that day refusing the request
19 of the Committee to hear oral evidence from certain
20 named individuals and declining to provide documents
21 sought by the Committee.
22 Q. Right. And do you have any powers in those
23 circumstances to take the matter further forward?
24 A. My Lord, there is a difference between the formal powers
25 and the actual powers, the text book powers if you will;

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1 that Parliament has the ability, the Committees, to call
2 for papers and persons. If we are denied access to such
3 documents or such individuals, the Committee can, by
4 special report to the House, indicate that they are
5 being blocked and that, therefore, there can be a debate
6 in the House, and I believe that the Government or the
7 Executive generally has given an undertaking that time
8 will be found for such a debate when a special report --
9 if the special report recommends that that be the case.
10 That being said, my Lord, the convention was
11 probably evolved prior to the development of party
12 politics, the strength of parties in our system and
13 clearly the likely effect of such a referral to
14 Parliament is any government would use its majority and
15 would find therefore for the Executive rather than for
16 the Legislature.
17 Therefore my experience, and I did chair another
18 Committee before the Foreign Affairs Committee, is that
19 it is often better to work informally and by negotiation
20 to obtain what one can.
21 LORD HUTTON: Quite. Yes. Yes.
22 MR DINGEMANS: You then hear evidence from a number of
23 witnesses, and we have heard from Mr Campbell about the
24 requests that were made for him to attend, the initial
25 refusal and the circumstances in which he came to give

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1 evidence.
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. On 19th June you heard evidence from Mr Gilligan for the
4 first time?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. And I think on 25th June you heard evidence from
7 Mr Campbell?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. And when did you start to draft the report?
10 A. Well, the practice, my Lord, is this: that much of the
11 conclusions, recommendations, are likely to emerge from
12 the course of the questioning, but the Clerks, and these
13 are -- it is a name which is much more than the -- the
14 Clerks are very senior officials, the Clerks prepare an
15 initial draft.
16 Sorry, first of all, there is the heads of the
17 report. The Clerks wish to obtain a steer from the
18 Committee as to the nature of that report. Therefore,
19 the Clerks would prepare a heads of report, which is, as
20 its name suggests, no more than headings.
21 LORD HUTTON: Quite.
22 A. And that is endorsed after amendment by the Committee.
23 The Clerks then go off and will prepare the report.
24 That is then put to the Chairman of the Committee who is
25 able, himself, or herself, to make any necessary

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1 amendments. It is then put to the Committee as a whole
2 as the chairman's draft; and the Committee will examine
3 the report first informally, at which time it is clear
4 where the areas of friction -- of difference may well
5 be.
6 LORD HUTTON: Quite. Yes.
7 A. And that informal consideration was, I believe,
8 certainly in a very long session on a Tuesday, I recall,
9 which, if I recall, my Lord, went on for eight or nine
10 hours. Certainly we went on to roughly 8 o'clock in the
11 evening.
12 MR DINGEMANS: That was Tuesday 1st July, was that?
13 A. That sounds possible. Then we knew where the areas of
14 difference were. The Committee then met on the Thursday
15 morning and I think it is fair to say that unfortunately
16 I had come to the conclusion, as Chairman, by that time
17 that we were going to break our habit of having
18 unanimous reports; that there were only certain areas of
19 the report which would not be unanimous, and therefore,
20 however much I would strive to get unanimity, I would
21 fail. Therefore we went ahead to set out those areas
22 where there were honest differences.
23 Q. The report I think was printed on Friday 4th July --
24 A. It was printed but it would not have been available to
25 the public at that time.

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1 Q. No, and distributed on Monday 7th July; is that right?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. It was actually formally released at 10 o'clock. Do you
4 release any copies beforehand?
5 A. No. I am subject to correction from the Clerks, but my
6 understanding my Lord is that it is released both --
7 a matter totally in the hands of the Committee. We can,
8 for example -- we not infrequently would release
9 a report at, say, midnight, for the press conference at,
10 say, 11 o'clock the following morning. On this occasion
11 it was the Monday. One of the parameters was the fact,
12 my Lord, of the Liaison Committee on the Tuesday, and
13 therefore we released it an hour or so before the press
14 conference.
15 Q. Right.
16 A. I think that is right. Was it 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock
17 the press conference?
18 Q. It seems to suggest it was released under embargo at
19 9 o'clock in the morning then published at 10 o'clock.
20 A. Yes. I believe it is sent probably to those witnesses
21 who gave evidence, oral evidence to the Committee --
22 Q. At 9 o'clock?
23 A. Probably at the same time as the press.
24 Q. Right. And so when it is released under embargo, that
25 is also released to the press as well; is that right?

11
1 A. Oh, indeed.
2 Q. And the report was then published. I am not able to
3 take you to any parts of it, but we have seen the
4 conclusions which were set out over the last few days;
5 and the gist of it was that the Foreign Affairs
6 Committee rejected the claims that Alastair Campbell had
7 inserted the 45 minute claim against the wishes of the
8 Intelligence Committee; is that a fair analysis of it?
9 A. Not the Intelligence Committee, the intelligence
10 community.
11 Q. The intelligence community, sorry, yes.
12 A. Yes, it will be seen, my Lord, from the minutes that
13 that was one of the split votes, as there was
14 a difference of view. The majority of colleagues felt
15 that the evidence was sufficiently cogent to exonerate
16 Mr Campbell on the basis, in my judgment, that if it
17 were a conflict of credibility between Mr Gilligan and
18 Mr Campbell, there was Mr Gilligan and an unknown source
19 about whom we knew nothing.
20 On the other hand, Mr Campbell had in support of him
21 a number of witnesses, most especially Mr John Scarlett,
22 the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who
23 had endorsed specifically the letter which Mr Campbell
24 had sent to us. So I would imagine that for most of us,
25 on the balance of probabilities, the evidence was

12
1 therefore on the side of Mr Campbell.
2 May I say that those who did not support that were
3 not saying that Mr Campbell was, in any way, guilty,
4 they were agnostic because their judgment was that the
5 evidence was not strong enough on either side.
6 Q. Can I just bring you to a part of the report where you
7 commented on the cooperation or absence of cooperation,
8 as you perceived it, from the judgment. What did you
9 say in that respect?
10 A. I would have to refer to the report itself. I will try
11 to dredge my memory on this, my Lord.
12 Q. I am sorry I cannot show it on the screen. It is not to
13 be a memory test.
14 A. I will do my best. My Lord, essentially if I might
15 summarise that our political system, particularly in
16 respect of foreign affairs, is very Executive dominated.
17 Select Committees are relatively new creations.
18 Therefore we are seeking to build up the role of
19 Parliament as against the Executive and we have made
20 certain advances. I believe since 1997 we have one key
21 area is intelligence, and following the establishment of
22 the Intelligence and Security Committee, that is used by
23 the Executive as a device for our not divulging what we
24 believe they should to us.
25 Q. To you?

13
1 A. To us. We make the point that the Intelligence and
2 Security Committee is a different creature from
3 ourselves, that we meet in public, we are responsible to
4 Parliament, not to the Prime Minister. And therefore,
5 if we are to do our job properly, we should be given the
6 tools to do that job; and those tools include much
7 greater access to intelligence material and, if
8 I recall, we wished, for example, to meet the Chairman
9 of the Joint Intelligence Committee, that he was one of
10 the individuals who we could not see. We asked
11 initially to meet Mr Alastair Campbell; that was denied
12 us, but there was a change of mind on the part of the
13 Executive in that respect. And there were various other
14 requests as well.
15 May I say that in a way to make up for the refusal
16 in respect of those named individuals, the Foreign
17 Secretary did appear, I believe on a Tuesday, in public
18 session and did give probably historically a greater
19 time to the Committee than any other Foreign Secretary
20 in an inquiry by agreeing to meet the Committee in
21 private session on the Friday. I believe we met for
22 over three hours with the Foreign Secretary where he
23 did, to some extent, in private session, open the chest
24 of intelligence and allowed us to see -- not to see the
25 documents, my Lord, but he did read over some of those

14
1 documents to us.
2 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
3 A. So although we were denied witnesses who we thought were
4 relevant to our work, the Foreign Secretary did seek to
5 make up for that by giving an unprecedented amount of
6 time to the Committee.
7 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
8 MR DINGEMANS: At FAC/3/10 this is what you said in your
9 report:
10 "We are strongly of the view that we were entitled
11 to greater degree of cooperation from the Government on
12 access to witnesses and to intelligence material",
13 before going on to list those aspects and also pointing
14 out the fact that the Foreign Secretary had given
15 evidence to you on a private basis.
16 A. I believe that fundamentally to be correct; and I said
17 so, my Lord, in the debate in Parliament I think on the
18 Tuesday or the Wednesday of the final week.
19 LORD HUTTON: I think the paragraph Mr Dingemans has
20 referred to you ended by saying:
21 "Yet it is fair to state that within the
22 Government's self-imposed constraints the Foreign
23 Secretary sought to be forthcoming, spending more than
24 five hours before the Committee, and reading to us in
25 private session limited extracts from a JIC assessment

15
1 dated 9th September 2002."
2 A. My Lord, yes.
3 MR DINGEMANS: So the report is then published and we have
4 seen the report, the press statements released by the
5 Government and the press statements released by the BBC.
6 Do the Committee remain in this country or do they
7 go somewhere else?
8 A. No, my Lord. May I refer to the chronology?
9 Essentially, we were reaching the end -- the period just
10 before Parliament went into recess in July. There was
11 a certain demob spirit around in Parliament generally.
12 On the Monday, as learned counsel has said, we published
13 the report on the morning. The majority of the
14 Committee then went to Rome as part of Committee
15 business in respect of the EU.
16 Unusually, as Chairman of the Committee, I stayed
17 back because the Liaison Committee was meeting the
18 Prime Minister the following morning; and I knew that
19 I was their opening batsman on that morning because the
20 majority of the Liaison Committee work was to be on
21 Iraq, questioning the Prime Minister then. So I stayed
22 behind and I joined the Committee only late on the --
23 sorry the Tuesday evening. I arrived, I think because
24 of a late flight I arrived at 11.30 or midnight in Rome.
25 Q. On Tuesday 8th July?

16
1 A. Indeed.
2 Q. And the morning of Wednesday 9th July. Did you hear
3 anything on 9th July about a press statement we know to
4 have been released by the Ministry of Defence at about
5 5.45 pm on the Tuesday?
6 A. Yes, my Lord, personally by chance in the lounge in
7 Heathrow I saw Sky News. I then on my mobile had two
8 calls from very enterprising journalists, one I think
9 Channel 4, another one asking what my comments were and
10 I was, I recall, saying something like: raised
11 intriguing new questions.
12 I then caught my flight, met two colleagues who were
13 late in the hotel who told me it was already known to
14 colleagues. We discussed the next full day on the
15 Wednesday, the --
16 Q. That is Wednesday 9th July.
17 A. Wednesday the 9th, how the Committee might respond. It
18 was clear to me that the Committee was not of one mind,
19 and that therefore, since we did not have a formally
20 constituted meeting, the only way that the differences
21 within the Committee could be resolved would be to hold
22 a formal meeting of the Committee although time was
23 short.
24 So I then asked the second Clerk of the Committee
25 who was with us to contact our senior Clerk to convene

17
1 a meeting of the Committee. Obviously all those --
2 I believe I am correct in saying about eight of the 11
3 members were with us in Rome, so those members obviously
4 knew of the meeting. It was a matter, my Lord, of
5 contacting the three or so other members.
6 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
7 A. That we would convene a meeting at the earliest possible
8 opportunity on our return, that is the Thursday morning.
9 It was put very generally, to discuss developments.
10 Obviously developments really meant how the Committee
11 would respond to the revelation that a civil servant had
12 volunteered that he might have been the source.
13 MR DINGEMANS: Did anyone contact you informally in this
14 respect? Anyone from the Executive?
15 A. No. My Lord, may I say that if I had been so contacted,
16 I would not have been happy. I am a House of Commons
17 man and I am very happy to tell your Inquiry the
18 contacts I personally had with the Executive, but they
19 were minimal.
20 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you very much.
21 A. And I had no contact at all with the Executive and
22 I would have been -- unless it were deemed to be
23 helpful, I would have made clear that I was acting as
24 a Committee person, as a House of Commons man.
25 MR DINGEMANS: I imagine your views on the Executive

18
1 interfering with your Committee are reasonably well
2 known.
3 A. Clearly. May I say, my Lord, as an aside that I would
4 not be Chairman -- the events of July 2001 are a matter
5 of record, that the Executive tried to depose me in
6 favour of someone else; and therefore I, along with my
7 colleague Gwyneth Dunwoody, are unique in being the
8 choice of Parliament rather than the parties.
9 Q. Do you know whether or not any other members of your
10 Committee who may have differing views on the strength
11 of the Committee were contacted by the Executive, or you
12 would not ever get to find that out?
13 A. Well, my views are known. To the best of my knowledge
14 I was not informed by any other members of the Committee
15 that they had been approached and save in an attempt to
16 be helpful -- to give an example, my Lord.
17 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
18 A. When the Government changed their mind about the
19 Committee being allowed to see Alastair Campbell, I had
20 learnt that, as Chairman, because the Foreign Secretary
21 telephoned me on the Sunday evening, and I remember it
22 well. I was in a car on the way from Wales, my home.
23 And it was followed up by a letter the following day.
24 Now it is that sort of contact which is fine, but
25 I would certainly not be willing to be subject to

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1 lobbying.
2 LORD HUTTON: As I understand your evidence, there was no
3 contact even of that very minor nature between the 8th
4 and 10th July.
5 A. I ...(Pause). I certainly cannot recall any my Lord.
6 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
7 A. I mean, my contacts with Ministers I can recall every
8 one from over the period since July of last year in
9 respect of the Committee.
10 LORD HUTTON: Yes, thank you.
11 MR DINGEMANS: So we come back to Thursday 10th July. You
12 must have got back from Rome. When did you fly back
13 from Rome?
14 A. On the Wednesday evening.
15 Q. So Wednesday 9th July. We are on Thursday morning,
16 10th July?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Do you have a meeting of the Committee?
19 A. Indeed.
20 Q. What do you discuss then?
21 A. Well, the meeting had been convened specifically to
22 examine developments since we published our report on
23 the Monday and to make any conclusions for follow-up
24 action. I believe, my Lord, the chairman's note which
25 the excellent Clerk of the Committee provided for me is

20
1 available to the Inquiry.
2 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
3 A. And --
4 MR DINGEMANS: Can I, if it is helpful, read that out?
5 Sorry it is not going to come up on the screen. It is
6 FAC/1/43. It says:
7 "The decision to go to war in Iraq", this is item 1
8 on your agenda:
9 "To consider developments since publication of the
10 Committee's Report."
11 We are on the 10th, you published your report on the
12 7th. You put in brackets:
13 "If I understand correctly what this is about, I am
14 quite concerned that the Committee risks (a) getting
15 dragged deep into the Campbell-Gilligan dispute, which
16 it has very wisely avoided so far, and/or (b) exceeding
17 its brief, by taking too close an interest in the
18 Ministry of Defence."
19 Then you go on to deal with other matters.
20 Does that assist in your recollection?
21 A. Indeed. My Lord, I can perhaps explain the dynamics of
22 a Committee and the role of a Chairman.
23 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
24 A. I am not a general leading an army.
25 LORD HUTTON: Yes.

21
1 A. I, at best, am first among equals. The honourable
2 members are proud of being honourable members.
3 Therefore I cannot impose my will. I am certainly not
4 a general and sometimes not more than a secretary.
5 I made clear my own views to the Committee. There was
6 a well humoured debate; and these were genuine matters
7 of judgment between colleagues as to whether we should
8 pursue or, in effect, reopen the inquiry or not. We had
9 a good tempered debate. It was a matter of honest
10 judgment. We held a vote and the majority felt that we
11 should call Dr Kelly to give evidence.
12 MR DINGEMANS: His name by then had been published in the
13 morning papers?
14 A. Yes. I believe that when we took the decision on the
15 Wednesday the name had not been disclosed but the fact
16 that a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence had
17 volunteered that he might be the source was known to us
18 and that was the reason for convening the special
19 meeting on the Thursday morning.
20 Q. Right. Now, you will understand that his Lordship is
21 conscious of Article 9 of the Bill of Rights and does
22 not want to infringe Parliamentary privilege and get
23 into any details, but what was your own view about
24 calling Dr Kelly?
25 A. Well, I am really speaking on behalf of the Committee as

22
1 a whole but I can say my own view was that the Committee
2 had worked extremely hard in respect of our report.
3 I recall saying to the Committee that we had put our
4 report to bed on the Monday. I feared that if we went
5 down the track of reopening that report we would soon
6 find ourselves in a cul-de-sac. I recall using that
7 word because we would hit shortly against the buffers of
8 the people being not prepared to disclose things to us,
9 particularly perhaps in respect of journalists, and that
10 in my own judgment it would have been unproductive to
11 continue with the view. But my Lord I am reluctant to
12 say my own position, because I speak on behalf of the
13 Committee.
14 LORD HUTTON: I appreciate that, yes.
15 A. But I made clear my own view to the Committee. There
16 were a number of colleagues who agreed with me. In
17 a good tempered way other colleagues said: no, this
18 really needs to be clarified, because fundamental to our
19 report had been this question whether the politicians
20 had overborne the intelligence community in respect of
21 the information, and that we had come to certain views,
22 and those views might well be fundamentally overturned
23 as a result of meeting the person who may have been the
24 source, and therefore it would look odd if we did not
25 seek to clarify the position.

23
1 In my own judgment, my Lord, if we had known, for
2 example, prior to concluding the report that the civil
3 servant had volunteered himself, probably members of the
4 Committee, because of the importance of that, would have
5 deferred publishing the report and would have sought to
6 clarify matters as best we could. But we had concluded
7 our report, we had published it, and this was the
8 difference of view; and those who thought that we would
9 be open to criticism if we did not seek to clarify these
10 matters were in the majority.
11 LORD HUTTON: Yes. So if you had known on the Friday,
12 4th July, when the report was in the process of being
13 printed, that this civil servant had come forward, you
14 might have delayed publication of your report?
15 A. I can only give my own opinion on this my Lord.
16 LORD HUTTON: Yes, quite.
17 A. That the Committee works in a wonderful way and I cannot
18 always anticipate what my --
19 LORD HUTTON: But your own personal view would have been?
20 A. My own judgment would have been that it was such an
21 important new development that it could well have
22 persuaded the Committee to hear further witnesses
23 because our conclusions could well have been
24 fundamentally altered.
25 LORD HUTTON: Yes.

24
1 MR DINGEMANS: It was for those reasons that you had already
2 asked for the -- because one way was hearing from
3 Dr Kelly. I suppose another way would have been to look
4 at the intelligence assessments you had already asked
5 for; is that right?
6 A. Well, one of the areas of the documents which we had
7 sought to obtain, my Lord, when Mr Campbell appeared
8 before the Committee and claimed that he had not "sexed
9 up" the original draft, was we had asked to see each of
10 the drafts as they appeared, both the drafts of the
11 September 24th document -- both the very initial
12 embryonic draft of March of 2002 and then the draft
13 which had been put to Mr Campbell by Mr John Scarlett on
14 behalf of the Joint Intelligence Committee on or about
15 9th July, and we had asked to see every draft thereafter
16 to see whether or not it was true that there had been
17 political interference in the intelligence process.
18 Q. And you were given those drafts?
19 A. Well, if I recall, and it is a matter of record,
20 my Lord, that Mr Campbell, during the course of his
21 evidence, indicated that he hoped he would be able to do
22 that. We were not in fact allowed it, but I suppose he
23 would say the next best thing was that he sent a letter,
24 after his evidence to the Committee, in which he set out
25 those areas in which he had sought to amend the original

25
1 dossier document draft put forward by the Joint
2 Intelligence Committee and that he said his conclusion
3 was that it was neutral, in that some of his suggestions
4 had been sexed up -- sorry, had resulted in the document
5 being sexed up, others in it being sexed down.
6 What certainly impressed me was that he said, at the
7 end of his letter, if I recall -- I do not have the
8 letter before me.
9 Q. It is in fact going to be FAC/3/132.
10 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, I missed the reference.
11 MR DINGEMANS: FAC/3/132, my Lord.
12 If I have the wrong passage, tell me Mr Anderson.
13 He says:
14 "Finally, concerning the most serious allegation
15 against me..."
16 Is this the passage you think is --
17 A. No, I am referring to the letter which he wrote which,
18 if I recall, set out individually those changes which he
19 had made; and what impressed me certainly was this was
20 not an individual seeking to set out his own stall in
21 the most attractive way possible, because what impressed
22 me at the end of that, he said: this letter has been --
23 was it -- endorsed by the Chairman of the Joint
24 Intelligence Committee.
25 Clearly, if there had been anything there which had

26
1 been an exaggeration, which had been an omission or
2 which had been put in improperly, my own view was that
3 this very impressive civil servant John Scarlett would
4 certainly not have endorsed it. This is memory, I am
5 afraid, on my part. Was it the last paragraph of the
6 letter which he wrote?
7 Q. Yes. We have two memoranda that he submitted to the
8 Committee rather than letters. But I think I have the
9 right bit where he says this, paragraph 10:
10 "Finally, concerning the most serious allegation
11 against me, that I inserted the 45 minute intelligence
12 whilst knowing it to be untrue, the Chairman of the JIC
13 has confirmed that this was already included in the
14 first draft that he sent me (10th September). It was
15 not inserted at my request. The Chairman of the JIC has
16 also confirmed, and authorised me to say, that it
17 reflected recent intelligence incorporated already in
18 the JIC's classified assessment and that I played no
19 part in the decision to include the intelligence in the
20 dossier. The full text of the dossier, including the
21 executive summary, was signed off by the Chairman with
22 the full agreement of the JIC."
23 A. In which case, my Lord, I regret my memory was failing.
24 I had assumed that the Chairman of the Joint
25 Intelligence Committee had endorsed the whole of the

27
1 letter in saying that those amendments proposed by
2 Mr Campbell, some of which were accepted, some not, that
3 that version of events had been endorsed by the Chairman
4 of the Joint Intelligence Committee. My memory may be
5 incorrect on that.
6 LORD HUTTON: Yes. But you are quite right that certainly
7 the statement Mr Dingemans has read out in paragraph 10,
8 indeed it is signed at the end by Alastair Campbell so
9 it is very understandable you regard it as a letter.
10 Whether it is a memorandum or a letter could be
11 debatable.
12 MR DINGEMANS: So you, at that meeting on 10th July, going
13 back, decide to call Dr Kelly?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. In what circumstances do you normally call civil
16 servants?
17 A. When they have something which we believe to be relevant
18 to the Committee, when they have a particular expertise.
19 It is unusual, because clearly under the doctrine of
20 Ministerial accountability, in most cases it is
21 Ministers who appear on behalf of their departments.
22 Cases where civil servants have appeared would be, if
23 I can think of two examples, one where the Committee was
24 dealing with Yugoslavia and we had the Ambassador to
25 Serbia Montenegro before us. On another occasion when

28
1 we were dealing with other Biological and Toxin Weapons
2 Convention and it would have been unfair to expect
3 a Minister to be on top of this highly, highly
4 specialised area, and we had the relevant experts from
5 the Foreign Office.
6 Q. Right. You very kindly supplied to us a document
7 relating to the rules governing the appearance of
8 officials before Select Committees. It is FAC/8/1.
9 I cannot bring it up on the screen. Shall I read out
10 the relevant passage?
11 A. Please.
12 Q. "The rules governing the appearance of officials before
13 Select Committees are less clear. The Government has
14 issued guidance to civil servants giving evidence to
15 committees, often referred as to the Osmotherly Rules.
16 This states that civil servants give evidence on behalf
17 of their Ministers and under their direction. In
18 general the guidance states Ministers will agree to the
19 request of a committee to take evidence from a named
20 official, but they retain the right to suggest an
21 alternative official whom they feel is better placed to
22 represent them. In the case of disagreement about which
23 official should appear, it is suggested the Minister
24 appears personally.
25 "The Government has also promised time to allow for

29
1 a debate on the floor of the House in such cases. This
2 way of operating has generally worked well in the past
3 with the majority of Committees receiving satisfactory
4 evidence from the officials whom they wish to see.
5 However, as Erskine May observed, the guidance has not
6 been approved by Parliament and has no Parliamentary
7 status and there have been a number of notable occasions
8 where committees have disagreed strongly with
9 departments over the appearance of named civil
10 servants..." and those are listed.
11 A. I think it is fair to say the Osmotherly Rules are
12 a statement on behalf of the Executive. Parliament have
13 never endorsed that. The two sides set out their stall.
14 It is also fair to say in no case which we have been
15 able to find where a Select Committee has sought the
16 authority of Parliament to overrule the refusal of
17 a minister to allow a civil servant to appear has
18 Parliament in fact overruled the Minister.
19 Q. So Parliament has always gone with the Minister?
20 A. Those are the precedents, yes.
21 Q. Right. And the decision to call Dr Kelly was a 4/3
22 split. I think you mentioned there was a division
23 amongst yourselves?
24 A. My Lord, I can only -- within the Select Committee
25 system a person who chairs only has a casting vote and

30
1 therefore I was not involved in that vote.
2 Q. If it had been 3 all, you might have had a say?
3 A. Yes. I would have had a say.
4 Q. A document we have as MoD/1/73, sorry I cannot show it
5 to you, you wrote a letter to Mr Hoon saying:
6 "Dear Geoff,
7 "The Foreign Affairs Committee wishes to receive an
8 answer to the following question [this is 10th July].
9 "At what date, and at what time, did the meeting
10 take place between Dr David Kelly and Mr Andrew Gilligan
11 at which the conversation referred to in the MoD
12 statement of 9th July took place?
13 "You will wish to know that the Clerk is writing to
14 Dr Kelly today, inviting him, to appear before the
15 Committee to give oral evidence ... on 15th July..."
16 You copy the letter to Jack Straw and Bruce George.
17 There is a reply we have at MoD/1/74, also dated
18 10th July -- sorry, another letter from Steve Priestely,
19 who is your Clerk, is that right?
20 A. Yes, the senior Clerk, the Clerk of the Committee.
21 Q. To Dr Kelly saying effectively:
22 "We wish to hear oral evidence from you in public at
23 3 o'clock on Tuesday, 15th July, to answer questions
24 directly relevant to the Committee's Report published
25 earlier this week..." and asking for a reply."

31
1 Q. At MoD/1/82 on 11th July you get a letter from Mr Hoon:
2 "Dear Mr Anderson,
3 "Thank you for your letter of 10th July about Dr
4 David Kelly.
5 "I understand that Dr Kelly met Mr Gilligan on
6 22nd May at about 1700 at the Charing Cross Hotel.
7 "You also ask that Dr Kelly appears before the FAC
8 on Tuesday, 15th July at 1500. As you know, the
9 Government has already suggested that the ISC might wish
10 to interview Dr Kelly as part of their continuing
11 inquiry. (A copy of the MoD's press statement ... is
12 attached). The Chairman of the ISC has now asked that
13 Dr Kelly appears before them... I am writing to
14 Ann Taylor today agreeing to this request.
15 "Although the FAC has now completed its own inquiry,
16 I can understand why you also wish to see Dr Kelly.
17 I am prepared to agree to this on the clear
18 understanding that Dr Kelly will be questioned only on
19 those matters which are directly relevant to the
20 evidence that you were given by Andrew Gilligan, and not
21 on the wider issue of Iraqi WMD and the preparation of
22 the Dossier. Dr Kelly was not involved in the process
23 of drawing up the intelligence parts of the Dossier.
24 "As I noted above, Dr Kelly will have appeared
25 earlier the same day before the ISC. I hope that you

32
1 will bear this in mind and not detain him for longer
2 than about the same period of time indicated by the ISC
3 [45 minutes]. As he is not used to this degree of
4 public exposure, Dr Kelly has asked if he could be
5 accompanied by a colleague. MoD officials will discuss
6 this further with the Clerk."
7 That was the letter you got, effectively restricting
8 your time, is that right, to 45 minutes?
9 A. Making a request to restrict the time.
10 Q. And also making a request to restrict the ambit of your
11 inquiry to avoid asking Dr Kelly about Iraqi weapons of
12 mass destruction and the preparation of the dossier?
13 A. Yes. May I just say, my Lord, the relevance of putting
14 that first question about the time and the place was
15 that the Committee had written in similar terms to
16 Mr Gilligan and therefore it would have been helpful if
17 it would have obviously proved the source, if
18 Mr Gilligan had said I met my source at such a place in
19 time.
20 Q. In fact, 10th July, 2003, FAC/1/6. Again I am afraid
21 I will have to read it. This is to Mr Gilligan from
22 you:
23 "The Foreign Affairs Committee wishes to receive
24 answers to the following questions.
25 "On what date, and at what time, did you meet the

33
1 single source...?
2 "Are you satisfied that the evidence you gave before
3 the Committee on 19th June was in every particular
4 truthful and accurate? Is there anything you wish to
5 add...?"
6 And his reply was at FAC/1/10. It is a reply dated
7 11th July. He says this:
8 "Dear Mr Anderson,
9 "I regret that, as I said to the Committee when
10 I gave evidence, I can provide no further information
11 about my source, or the circumstances surrounding my
12 contact with him, because I have a professional and
13 legal duty of confidence to him. Committee members
14 appeared to accept and even support this stance when
15 I came before you last month."
16 And he makes other comments about this being general
17 practice, journalistic practice. He says this:
18 "The Ministry of Defence has suggested that someone
19 it describes as a middle-ranking official, tangentially
20 involved in the dossier, may be my source, though it
21 does not know he is. Can I remind the Committee of two
22 of my source's claims which your proceedings confirmed
23 to be true -- that the 45 minute point derived from one,
24 uncorroborated informant; and that it arrived late in
25 the process. Such facts could only have been known to

34
1 someone closely involved in compiling the dossier until
2 a late stage."
3 He goes on to confirm that his evidence was truthful
4 and accurate. I think that is a fair gist of that
5 letter.
6 So you now, effectively, set the scene for both
7 Mr Gilligan and Dr Kelly to give evidence to you?
8 A. No, to respond to those letters. We had not made
9 a request to Mr Gilligan at that stage.
10 Q. Right. So Dr Kelly to give evidence, and you have
11 further information now from Mr Gilligan?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. And turning then to the 11th July, I think you recall
14 that the Clerk received a call from Mr Watkins who is
15 Mr Hoon's private secretary. Can you help us with that?
16 A. Well, I was unaware -- I am sorry, I did not have direct
17 contact.
18 Q. No.
19 A. Obviously the Clerk was relaying to me, from time to
20 time, certain things that he had learned. For example,
21 I had been asked whether I would agree to Dr Kelly being
22 accompanied by another individual, an amicus or --
23 I readily agreed to that. It seemed totally fair that
24 he should be. And I was therefore a little surprised --
25 sorry, let me again try to remember. When Dr Kelly

35
1 eventually arrived before the Committee, he came without
2 such a person. I cannot remember, my Lord, whether
3 I had already been told by the Clerk that he was not to
4 be, but clearly he had been given the opportunity to be
5 so accompanied and I believe that somewhere on file
6 is -- I believe he spoke to the --
7 Q. Can I take you to 14th July?
8 A. Please.
9 Q. Perhaps you can just assist his Lordship by referring to
10 what happens on 14th July.
11 A. Hmm.
12 Q. This is, I think, a response that you and the Clerk put
13 together. In the morning is there contact from
14 Dr Wells, who we have heard from, who is Dr Kelly's line
15 manager to the Clerk?
16 A. My Lord, this is in the chronology. It is not something
17 that I personally was involved with. Is it proper to
18 read out what the Clerk has put in his own --
19 LORD HUTTON: If you have no objection to that it would be
20 helpful, I think.
21 A. Not at all. It says as follows:
22 "Monday 14th July in the morning. In the late
23 morning the Clerk received a call from Dr Kelly's line
24 manager, Bryan Wells. The practicalities of Kelly's
25 appearance were discussed, which room, how to get there,

36
1 whether passes were required, whether Kelly would be
2 accompanied by another witness sitting alongside him.
3 The Chairman had agreed that Dr Kelly could be
4 accompanied if he wished. The possibility of providing
5 a private area where Kelly and his colleagues could wait
6 until called."
7 Then in the afternoon it states as follows:
8 "At a time before 12.45 the Clerk received
9 a telephone call from Dr Kelly who wished to know more
10 about the process. The matters already discussed with
11 Dr Wells were gone through again. Dr Kelly also stated
12 his preferences not to make an opening statement and
13 said that he would not be accompanied by another
14 witness."
15 Then my letter to the Secretary of State for Defence
16 assenting to the conditions relating to Kelly's
17 appearance proposed by the letter was drafted, signed,
18 faxed and sent.
19 MR DINGEMANS: As at 14th July you then accepted the
20 proposed time limit of about 45 minutes?
21 A. I think it would be helpful to read my actual reply.
22 Q. Right. MoD/1/84. I am afraid we are not all going to
23 see it. Can I read it out?
24 A. Please.
25 Q. It is you to Mr Hoon. You write on 14th July:

37
1 "Dear Geoff,
2 "Thank you for your letter of Friday, confirming the
3 attendance of Dr David Kelly before the Committee
4 tomorrow and answering the Committee's questions about
5 the meeting between Dr Kelly and Andrew Gilligan.
6 "I share your clear understanding of the scope and
7 duration of the questioning to which Dr Kelly will be
8 subject, and will draw it to the attention of my
9 colleagues on the Committee."
10 A. My Lord, I have mentioned the dynamics of the Committee
11 before. All I could say was: I share your
12 understanding. I drew that to the attention of the
13 Committee. I said those in my view were proper ground
14 rules and certainly had I sought to negotiate, the
15 danger was that we would lose all prospect of that
16 meeting. Clearly, also, very much in my mind was that
17 on Thursday of that week, this was the meeting -- the
18 meeting was to be on the Tuesday, Parliament was to go
19 into recess and therefore there was a very important
20 time constraint.
21 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
22 MR DINGEMANS: So, effectively, the Secretary of State has
23 managed, informally, knowing the power he has over
24 witnesses, to suggest some conditions over which
25 Dr Kelly should appear: namely restrict his time to

38
1 45 minutes for the reasons he has given and also, so far
2 as you can control the Committee, trying to avoid
3 questioning on weapons of mass destruction and dossier.
4 A. Yes. My Lord I thought that was reasonable, for this
5 reason: that the Committee had called a number of
6 witnesses on the general point of weapons of mass
7 destruction that had we so wished we could have called
8 Dr Kelly during that time. And the new matters which
9 had arisen since the Committee had concluded its report
10 related specifically to the meeting with Mr Gilligan.
11 Therefore, in this postscript, if one will, after -- my
12 own view was that that was reasonable, although clearly
13 there would be a temptation by colleagues to ask this
14 expert, a very distinguished expert, for his expert
15 opinion on things.
16 Q. We then come on to 15th July. If you can turn to the
17 afternoon?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. What happens at about 2.20?
20 A. Again, my Lord, on hearsay the Clerk received a call
21 from the Ministry of Defence, either Peter Watkins or
22 Bryan Wells, informing him that because of a disturbance
23 in Parliament Square Dr Kelly and the accompanying
24 officials were unable to get through to the pass office.
25 It was agreed they should present -- perhaps it is not

39
1 relevant the first paragraph of that. Then the second
2 paragraph begins:
3 "The Committee deliberated in private. Discussions
4 centred on whether questioning of the witness should be
5 restricted to 45 minutes. The scope of questioning was
6 also raised. A substantial minority of members was
7 unhappy about the conditions agreed between the
8 Secretary of State and the Chairman. They had already
9 received the exchanged of letters between the Chairman
10 and Geoff Hoon and the Chairman had reminded them of his
11 agreement."
12 It is his agreement in respect of using my best
13 endeavours.
14 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
15 MR DINGEMANS: Did Dr Kelly then arrive?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And how long did the session last for?
18 A. My Lord, it is a matter of record, but I would guess
19 about an hour and a half was it, or --
20 Q. I think the Clerk suggests it is about 50 minutes.
21 A. I am sorry, this is Dr Kelly. I recall just 50 minutes,
22 I am sorry, apologies.
23 Q. And when Dr Kelly gave evidence to you, how did he
24 appear to you?
25 A. (Pause). I have had the opportunity, on Tuesday of this

40
1 week, to see a video of that appearance, and it was
2 clearly important for me to refresh my memory on that;
3 that certainly no question of health was mentioned in
4 Mr Hoon's letter. The question of the pressure was that
5 there were to be two meetings that day, I think,
6 a meeting both of the Intelligence and Security
7 Committee and of our own Committee, and I like to think
8 that I personally always treat witnesses with respect,
9 and particularly a witness as distinguished a public
10 servant as Dr Kelly. Had he shown any evident signs of
11 distress I would hope that I would have responded
12 accordingly.
13 May I also say, my Lord, that on my left would have
14 been my Clerk, who is extremely good at pulling my elbow
15 if, for example -- and saying things like: we are not
16 getting anywhere with this line of questioning.
17 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
18 A. And I know that if there had been any signs of distress
19 my Clerk would have informed me as well.
20 LORD HUTTON: Now, if you had observed that a witness was
21 showing signs of distress, what is the likely course of
22 conduct that you will follow? I appreciate it depends
23 obviously on the degree of distress.
24 A. My Lord it is rather like in a court I would imagine.
25 I would have been in my discretion to say that the

41
1 Committee will adjourn.
2 LORD HUTTON: Yes, quite. Yes.
3 A. And I imagine, although I have never had to do this,
4 that I would have responded in a humane way if I had
5 seen any signs of distress.
6 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
7 A. Indeed. Again, I hope I am not being influenced now by
8 having seen the video recently, but there were times
9 when Dr Kelly was laughing and certainly he was clearly
10 a man of considerable intellect and he could see which
11 questions were coming.
12 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
13 A. And, when he did not want to answer directly, he clearly
14 was on top of the subject and did so. The only problem
15 we had was he was speaking extremely softly and we had
16 a -- it was a very sultry, hot afternoon, and the fans
17 were on and I had to ask the Clerk to turn the fans off
18 I recall at one point. I do recall, my Lord, that
19 I personally could not hear some of what Dr Kelly was
20 saying, and I had the problem as: look I do not want to
21 intervene too often but let me say, from time to time,
22 please speak up.
23 LORD HUTTON: Quite. Yes.
24 MR DINGEMANS: Was it getting hot once the fans were
25 switched off?

42
1 A. I think we all took our jackets off and it was certainly
2 quite a hot day, yes. I do not remember personally
3 feeling inconvenienced by the heat.
4 Q. Occasionally counsel pick up that a witness may have
5 been prepared, and I wondered did you pick up whether or
6 not Dr Kelly appeared to have been prepared? You must
7 have seen many people appear in front of you.
8 A. I honestly, my Lord, did not think about that at the
9 time although I have subsequently learnt that there was
10 an extensive briefing provided for Dr Kelly by the
11 Ministry of Defence and a briefing which went well
12 beyond the parameters which the Secretary of State had
13 provided for me in his letter.
14 Q. But you did not at the time, and it is only your
15 impression at the time that I am interested in.
16 A. No, we are talking about a late gentleman who had
17 been -- I think he had told us, on two or three
18 occasions, was used to dealing with the press.
19 A distinguished scientist. And he appeared to me to be
20 in control of things; and it was clearly a man of great
21 competence, and who was not overborne because he was
22 perhaps one -- I was not aware at the time, I confess,
23 that he had been dealing with journalists much during
24 the UNSCOM days, but certainly someone who was very
25 able.

43
1 Q. You have also, very kindly, provided to the Inquiry at
2 FAC/1/19 to 23, which I am afraid I cannot bring up,
3 something called "Contents of the Brief". They appear
4 to be suggested questions to Dr Kelly. Is what happens
5 beforehand that you get some suggested questioning?
6 A. My Lord, invariably before any Committee meeting, the
7 Clerk would provide a background brief which does
8 include suggested questioning. The Committee, of
9 course, can accept or reject that but it is a very
10 useful guide. There was such a list of questions and
11 background on this occasion.
12 Q. Did you discuss with any other members of the Committee
13 any questions that had been suggested to them?
14 A. No. All I can recall, my Lord, is this, and this has
15 come to light I understand in the Inquiry a day or so
16 ago, that I recall fairly vividly that I was, of course,
17 in the chair. To my immediate left was the Clerk, to my
18 immediate right was Mr Chidgey. Just as the witness,
19 Dr Kelly, was about to come in -- therefore, my thoughts
20 were partly on my first question and greeting him, and
21 I may have been sort of partly turning to the Clerk as
22 well -- my colleague turned to me and said something
23 like: I would like to be called early because I have to
24 leave early; something like: I have had some briefing
25 from Mr Gilligan. May I say that he said: this is in

44
1 confidence and I like to keep confidences.
2 So what I had decided to do prior to this coming to
3 the notice of the Inquiry was, I believe I told the
4 Clerk over the telephone on Monday, certainly I raised
5 it on Tuesday before this was raised in the Inquiry,
6 that I had this dilemma: I had been told something in
7 confidence by a colleague, and I wanted to know from the
8 counsel to Parliament whether my duty -- my public duty
9 overrode that. Happily that problem was resolved in
10 that I did not have -- I had already raised it with the
11 Clerk and indeed with -- and it came up in the afternoon
12 discussion with the counsel.
13 Q. Were you surprised to hear what Mr Chidgey said to you?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Do you consider it appropriate that someone who has
16 previously appeared before you should be suggesting
17 questions to one of your members?
18 A. I know of no precedent for someone who is a witness and
19 therefore it is very unusual -- well, it is
20 unprecedented in my view.
21 Q. And in fact if we had the screens, I could show you at
22 FAC/1/65 to 66 Mr Chidgey's questions which relate to
23 Susan Watts' broadcast on Newsnight; and I could show
24 you at FAC/6/2 to 3 the full transcript of the e-mail
25 from Mr Gilligan to a researcher, I think assisting

45
1 Mr Chidgey.
2 A. I did not know, at least I was not -- again this is
3 a long time ago, my Lord. I believe the statement was:
4 I have been told -- I have been given briefing, in
5 confidence. I certainly -- the word "e-mail" did not
6 occur.
7 Q. Right.
8 A. It may well be that that same e-mail was passed not just
9 to Mr Chidgey, Mr Chidgey certainly told me.
10 Q. We have seen, I think we have all seen, the video of
11 Dr Kelly giving evidence and some of the questions being
12 put to him. Did you consider the questions that were
13 being asked of Dr Kelly to be fair?
14 A. (Pause). My Lord, can I answer in general in this way,
15 and this was reinforced by my seeing of the video on
16 Tuesday afternoon, that I think that the tenor of the
17 Committee hearing taken as a whole was reasonable and
18 fair and that there was a degree of respect. Indeed, if
19 I recall, one of my colleagues said specifically to
20 Dr Kelly that he had acted in an entirely honourable
21 way; and in my summing-up I wholly endorsed that view of
22 the colleague who had said it.
23 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, what summing-up was this?
24 A. Sorry, what I mean, sorry, my Lord, my last -- at the
25 end, the final flourish.

46
1 LORD HUTTON: Your concluding remarks.
2 MR DINGEMANS: Could I reread them. It is FAC/1/96:
3 "Dr Kelly,
4 "Sir John [Stanley] has properly said that you acted
5 honourably. When you thought that you might have been
6 the source you wrote a letter volunteering the fact of
7 your meeting. Given what has subsequently happened, do
8 you feel used in any way?"
9 I think that is what you are referring to?
10 A. Yes. I certainly thought of Dr Kelly as a distinguished
11 scientist, which he was, a man who had given major
12 public service, both in the domestic and international
13 field; and hopefully sought to treat him in that way.
14 LORD HUTTON: Mr Dingemans, I think that we should give the
15 stenographers a break now. I will rise for five
16 minutes.
17 (11.45 am)
18 (Short Break)
19 (11.55 am)
20 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Anderson, we have nearly been through the
21 appearance on 5th July. Towards the end at FAC/1/91
22 Sir John Stanley said this to Dr Kelly:
23 "Who made the proposition to you, Dr Kelly, that you
24 should be treated absolutely uniquely, in a way which
25 I do not believe any civil servant has ever been treated

47
1 before, in being made a public figure before being
2 served up before the Intelligence and Security
3 Committee?
4 "Answer: I cannot answer that question. I do not
5 know who made that decision. I think that is a question
6 you have to ask the Ministry of Defence."
7 Does Sir John Stanley's question accord with your
8 own experience of how civil servants are treated?
9 A. This was a fairly unique occasion. I think certainly
10 I can say that when I heard that the Ministry had
11 acceded to our request I was somewhat surprised at that,
12 and you will note that after the hearing I was asked by
13 the Committee to write a letter to the Foreign Secretary
14 stating, in terms, that we thought that Dr Kelly was
15 probably not the source, but also expressing the concern
16 which the Executive had asked me to convey at the manner
17 at which he had been treated; and it is difficult to
18 take the lid off heads of members of the Committee and
19 define the motives. I think that was related to the
20 manner in which his name had been disclosed.
21 Q. The letter you wrote was 15th July. It is at MoD/1/89.
22 I am still not able to show it to you, I do not think.
23 You said this:
24 "The Committee deliberated after hearing Dr Kelly's
25 evidence, and asked me to write to you, expressing their

48
1 view that it seems most unlikely that Dr Kelly was
2 Andrew Gilligan's prime source for his allegations about
3 the September dossier on Iraq. Colleagues have also
4 asked me to pass on their view that Dr Kelly has been
5 poorly treated by the Government since he wrote to his
6 line manager admitting that he had met Gilligan."
7 Was that because, having heard Dr Kelly, without any
8 admission from the BBC that he was their source, all you
9 had was Dr Kelly's admissions that he had said some
10 things which appeared similar to what Mr Gilligan had
11 reported but not others?
12 A. Yes, my Lord, I think it is fair to say that when the
13 hearing began most of my colleagues believed that
14 Dr Kelly was the prime source; and he had, in the course
15 of his evidence, convinced a number but not all of my
16 colleagues that he was probably not the source and
17 therefore that letter conveyed the majority view of the
18 Committee.
19 LORD HUTTON: Could you just expand on this a little for me,
20 please, Mr Anderson? The suggestion or the comment that
21 he had been poorly treated, do I understand that that
22 was made on the basis that the MoD statement had at any
23 rate implied that Dr Kelly was the source but that at
24 the end of the hearing before your Committee the
25 majority of the members had come to the view that he was

49
1 not? Was that the --
2 A. I think that is fair, my Lord, yes. The MoD statement
3 points in a certain direction stating, if I recall, that
4 Mr Gilligan had spoken to four individuals with whom
5 only one had -- of whom -- with only one had he spoken
6 in respect of Mr Campbell.
7 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
8 A. Now, since Dr Kelly admitted that he had spoken to
9 Mr Gilligan about Mr Campbell, it did point fairly
10 clearly in that direction.
11 LORD HUTTON: Quite. Yes.
12 A. But there were answers given by Dr Kelly suggesting that
13 he could not have been the source; but it was fairly
14 ambivalent, as the hearing continued. And at one point
15 he appeared to be seeking almost to put us back on track
16 in saying he may have been the source. It was really --
17 as far as I can recall, it was the way in which his name
18 had come to the surface from the Ministry which
19 persuaded the Committee to make that comment.
20 LORD HUTTON: Those are, as it were, perhaps two separate
21 aspects of the same matter. I just want to be quite
22 clear about this. Is it correct to say, then, that the
23 comment or the observation that he had been poorly
24 treated really arose from two matters, although they are
25 obviously closely related? One is that the MoD

50
1 statement indicated or implied that he was the source,
2 and do I take it from that that viewing it in that way
3 he could be regarded as having been poorly treated if he
4 was put into the spotlight with all the attendant
5 publicity as being the source; but secondly that the
6 Committee took the view he had been poorly treated in
7 the way in which his name had, as it were, leaked out to
8 the press? Was that part of the thinking?
9 A. Well, my Lord, this was a conclusion --
10 LORD HUTTON: I know you are a group of people.
11 A. A group of colleagues.
12 LORD HUTTON: Absolutely, yes.
13 A. One would need to ask each one what was his motive.
14 LORD HUTTON: I fully recognise you are seeking to state the
15 views of others. Yes.
16 A. That was the consensus view of the Committee. My Lord,
17 with respect, you are absolutely correct in that there
18 were two elements to this conclusion, one that having
19 come to the view -- it is the view which personally
20 I was more doubtful about -- having come to the view
21 that he was probably not the source, that led to the
22 second leg, the second conclusion. Equally, it was the
23 manner in which his name had come to the surface, was
24 another factor --
25 LORD HUTTON: Yes.

51
1 A. -- which probably induced the Committee to draft it in
2 that way.
3 LORD HUTTON: Are you able to comment at all, and you may
4 feel that you are unable, but are you able to comment on
5 how you think the name should have been put into the
6 public domain if that was going to happen? I mean, one
7 possibility was that the Ministry of Defence would
8 simply have stated: a civil servant, Dr David Kelly, has
9 informed the Ministry that he met Mr Gilligan on
10 22nd May. Was it, do you think, the view of the
11 Committee that rather than the leaking out and the
12 method that was adopted, it would have been better for
13 the Ministry just to have made a clear statement?
14 A. My Lord, it is very difficult --
15 LORD HUTTON: You may not be able to comment on that.
16 I would just like to explore that insofar as you are
17 able.
18 A. Clearly it was a process and it was a decision which
19 I hope was taken rationally, that this process approach
20 rather than --
21 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
22 A. Obviously the Ministry at that stage did not know for
23 certain although they suspected that that was the case.
24 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
25 A. It may also -- again I am seeking to divine the motives

52
1 of the Ministry -- it may also have been by having it as
2 a process to seek to protect Dr Kelly and to give him
3 time to prepare his own comment. I honestly do not --
4 find it difficult to comment.
5 MR DINGEMANS: On 16th July Mr Priestely writes a letter to
6 Mr Watkins asking for questions that had been I think
7 put by Mr Mackinlay for details of the press contacts.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. You also decided to recall Mr Gilligan to give evidence,
10 is that right?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. When was that?
13 A. May I see? We saw Mr Gilligan on the Thursday, indeed
14 the hearing straddled the time when Parliament was
15 sitting and when Parliament was not sitting.
16 Q. I appreciate that.
17 A. And we made the decision -- may I refer to the notes,
18 my Lord? It would have been --
19 Q. If you look on 15th July, in the afternoon.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Three paragraphs up from the bottom.
22 A. "After the evidence session the room was cleared,
23 Dr Kelly and his colleagues first being escorted. The
24 Committee then deliberated in private on its next steps.
25 It was proposed that the Chairman should write to the

53
1 Government giving the opinion" -- this was the letter
2 referred to by learned counsel.
3 Q. I see that. Could you drop down to the next paragraph?
4 A. "The Committee also discussed whether Andrew Gilligan
5 should be invited to give further oral evidence.
6 Gilligan had replied to the Chairman refusing to answer
7 the question put to him in writing about when he had met
8 his source. A member moved formally that
9 Andrew Gilligan be invited to give further evidence in
10 private at 3 o'clock on the Thursday 17th July. The
11 Committee divided 3/2 and the motion was passed. One
12 member who was present declined to vote, so by a narrow
13 majority the Committee decided to invite Mr Gilligan to
14 give evidence."
15 Q. We know he comes to give evidence on 17th July. I just
16 wanted to ask you one question, if I may, about some of
17 the questions that were put to him. We have now seen
18 the private or the private session that has now been,
19 I think, released.
20 LORD HUTTON: Why was that session in private?
21 A. My Lord, trying to recall the reasoning, there were some
22 who wanted to call him, some who did not want to call
23 him; and perhaps the private came as part of
24 a compromise. I think the better reason, and probably
25 the prevailing reason was that there was a better chance

54
1 of his being frank with the Committee if the matter were
2 heard in private; and that therefore greater clarity
3 could be obtained by that route rather than by having
4 a public session. We had already of course heard him in
5 public.
6 LORD HUTTON: Yes, thank you.
7 MR DINGEMANS: In that private session, if one is looking at
8 FAC/5/5 -- I will have to read it out.
9 A. Please.
10 Q. Ms Stuart asked him a question:
11 "If you were to look back at the last 12 months and
12 the reporting in relation to you as the Defence
13 Correspondent and the Today Programme, would there be
14 occasions when with hindsight you would now say that
15 actually you were wrong?
16 "Mr Gilligan: I cannot think of any. Again, this
17 is not a question I prepared for by looking back through
18 all the stories I have ever done. Nobody in any form of
19 life, I think, would ever say that they were entirely
20 infallible.
21 "Ms Stuart: May I just talk about one particular
22 story which you may recall? It was reported on the
23 Today Programme on Wednesday, 24th February..." and she
24 goes on to relate it.
25 Did you know whether anyone had given Ms Stuart any

55
1 assistance in formulating the questions to be put to
2 Mr Gilligan?
3 A. No. May I, my Lord -- prior to Mr Gilligan's appearance
4 on a second occasion, I recall saying in private to the
5 Committee that: this is going to be a very short
6 session, we are going to ask him the question about his
7 source, he is going to say no and that is the end of the
8 story, where actually it will be a pretty non-productive
9 session. But saying: let us at least see, by skirting
10 around the issue, what progress if any we can make,
11 I recall Ms Stuart and Sir John said they had questions
12 that were not directly related to source.
13 All I can recall about Ms Stuart's question is
14 thinking to myself: she has got a good researcher. But
15 I am not aware that anyone had briefed any member of the
16 Committee in respect of that. Certainly no-one told me.
17 Q. No-one had told you about that?
18 A. No, and I had received no briefing of any sort
19 personally.
20 Q. Finally, are you aware of anything else relating to the
21 circumstances of Dr Kelly's death that you can assist
22 his Lordship with?
23 A. No, my Lord, save this: that I personally found the
24 viewing of the video very valuable, to obtain a view of
25 the spirit within which that hearing was conducted; and

56
1 I fear that the public may have had a somewhat distorted
2 view because one very small part of that was relayed
3 again and again and again, which was not
4 a representative part, and that therefore I would hope
5 that as many people as possible will be able to view the
6 video to obtain a fair view of that hearing.
7 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
8 Mr Anderson, you said in your evidence that when
9 your Committee were considering whether to call
10 Dr Kelly, once his name had been released, that there
11 were differing views, and your view was that it might
12 simply lead into a cul-de-sac, I think was the term that
13 you used, but that some other members of the Committee
14 thought he should be called because it went to the
15 fundamental question which had been before the
16 Committee. I hope that is a reasonably accurate summary
17 of your evidence.
18 A. Exactly.
19 LORD HUTTON: Now, evidence has been given to the Inquiry
20 that over the weekend before the Ministry of Defence
21 statement was released there was very considerable
22 concern in Downing Street, once they had learnt of
23 Dr Kelly coming forward, that if his name were not put
24 into the public domain and also, of course, put within
25 the knowledge of your Committee, that the Government,

57
1 Downing Street, might be accused of a cover-up. Now,
2 have you any comment on that attitude on the part of
3 senior officials?
4 A. My Lord, I was not aware, of course, of any such
5 discussions over the weekend.
6 LORD HUTTON: I appreciate that. I am just asking you to
7 comment on the thought that officials who knew of him
8 coming forward and knew his name had the concern that if
9 his name were not revealed, they could be accused of
10 a cover-up.
11 A. I think that the press would be very liable to raise
12 that. The Government clearly was sensitive to the
13 charge that on one interpretation, my Lord, this whole
14 superstructure was based on one meeting between one
15 journalist --
16 LORD HUTTON: Yes, quite.
17 A. -- and an official source --
18 LORD HUTTON: Hmm.
19 A. -- in which the source said the word "Campbell".
20 LORD HUTTON: Hmm.
21 A. If, at the point when one individual, one official who
22 had met Mr Gilligan had volunteered -- had come forward,
23 and if the Government had done nothing about it in terms
24 of the public, clearly that would have come out.
25 LORD HUTTON: Hmm.

58
1 A. And they would have been subject to very intensive
2 criticism, in my judgment, had they not in some way --
3 maybe the manner in which they did it is open to
4 criticism, but I suspect that whatever way they did it
5 would be open to criticism.
6 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see.
7 Now, Mr Anderson, reading the record of the sessions
8 when Mr Gilligan and Mr Campbell and Dr Kelly appeared
9 before you, the procedure is that the different members
10 of the Committee take part in the questioning. Now, if
11 I may, I would like to ask you: has consideration ever
12 been given by your Committee to instructing counsel to
13 put the questions on the Committee's behalf? Because in
14 a sense when various members of the Committee come in
15 one member may have been following a particular line of
16 questioning, which might be interesting to pursue, but
17 then another member comes in on a quite different line.
18 I quite appreciate this is a Committee of Parliament
19 and the members of it may have differing views and are
20 fully entitled to explore the points that are of
21 interest to them, but has consideration ever been given
22 to that procedure, perhaps followed by members of the
23 Committee putting individual questions if there are
24 further points they want to put? I thought I would just
25 raise it with you.

59
1 A. My Lord, I know of no such consideration. It would be
2 a matter not for the Foreign Affairs Committee but for
3 the House as a whole.
4 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see, yes.
5 A. And I think Members of Parliament would be very jealous
6 of their own ability as Members of Parliament to put
7 questions that were to be taken over, professionalised.
8 LORD HUTTON: I was not suggesting professionalised. I must
9 make it clear I was not suggesting more work for the
10 Bar.
11 A. I think the real answer is this would be a matter for
12 the House as a whole. Certainly my own view is that for
13 the vast majority of such inquiries it would not be
14 relevant and would not be of assistance. That is very
15 much a personal opinion. This would be a matter for the
16 House.
17 LORD HUTTON: I fully understand that. Thank you very much
18 indeed Mr Anderson.
19 MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, Mr Rufford.
20 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
21 MR NICHOLAS RUFFORD (called)
22 Examined by MR KNOX
23 MR KNOX: My Lord, the next witness is Mr Rufford.
24 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
25 Q. Mr Rufford could you tell the Inquiry your full name and

60
1 occupation?
2 A. Yes, it is Nicholas Rufford and I am a journalist.
3 Q. And for which paper do you write?
4 A. The Sunday Times.
5 Q. Since when have you written for the Sunday Times?
6 A. Since 1987.
7 Q. When did you first meet Dr Kelly?
8 A. I first met Dr Kelly in 1997.
9 Q. And how did you first come to contact him?
10 A. One of his colleagues, I believe it was Terence Taylor,
11 gave me his telephone number and I called him.
12 Q. What was the subject you were calling him about?
13 A. It was the subject of the Russian bio-weapons programme,
14 about which we were preparing an article at the time.
15 Q. And roughly how many times have you met him or did you
16 meet him after that?
17 A. I called him and met him about 40 or 50 times.
18 Q. 40 or 50 times called and met. Would you be able to say
19 roughly how many times you actually met him?
20 A. Possibly 20 occasions.
21 Q. And where did you usually meet?
22 A. We met in the Wagon and Horses pub in Southmore village.
23 We also met in his house, and we also met in London,
24 often at a restaurant.
25 Q. What did you generally speak to Dr Kelly about?

61
1 A. Work related subjects. We generally spoke about
2 bio-weapons which was his area of expertise; we also
3 spoke about social issues, about science, and
4 philosophy, a whole range of issues.
5 Q. Dr Kelly wears many different hats in a way. He was
6 a Porton Down scientist, he worked for the Ministry of
7 Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and he was
8 also a UN weapons inspector. When you spoke to him,
9 what aspect of his work did you generally talk about?
10 A. He was generally comfortable talking about his work as
11 a UN weapons inspector or as a former weapons inspector,
12 after 1998. He was less comfortable talking about his
13 work for the Ministry of Defence or for the Foreign
14 Office.
15 Q. And if you did raise aspects which related to his work
16 at the Ministry of Defence or Foreign and Commonwealth
17 Office, what would he usually say?
18 A. He would discuss things occasionally in broad brush. He
19 would often -- if I wanted to do a formal interview on
20 a matter related to his work for the Foreign Office for
21 the Ministry of Defence, he would refer me to the
22 Foreign Office press office, which usually refused.
23 Q. Did Dr Kelly ever hand over any documents to you?
24 A. He did not.
25 Q. Or did he impart any secrets to you?

62
1 A. To my knowledge, he never imparted any secrets. He was
2 a man of discretion and he usually guarded confidences.
3 He talked to me about subjects which were generally
4 factual, related to his area of interest; and I always
5 got the impression that he thought that it was important
6 that the public had a wider understanding of his field.
7 Q. Did he ever tell you that before he could speak to you
8 he needed to obtain clearance from anyone?
9 A. He never said that, no, and I would be surprised if he
10 did, because he would speak to me spontaneously. For
11 example, if I called him on the telephone he would not
12 say: I need to get permission from my line manager or
13 from the Ministry of Defence or the Foreign Office. He
14 would usually chat to me in a straightforward way.
15 Q. Did he ever explain why not, why he did not need to get
16 any prior clearance?
17 A. He once said to me that "they", by which I believe he
18 mean the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office,
19 were used to his unorthodox ways.
20 Q. How many articles did you write in the Sunday Times
21 which mentioned him by name?
22 A. I believe we published six articles before his death
23 which quoted him.
24 LORD HUTTON: And also which mentioned him by name?
25 A. Six articles which quoted him. I believe there may have

63
1 been more than that which mentioned him by name.
2 MR KNOX: So the name Dr Kelly?
3 A. The name Dr Kelly might have cropped up. For example,
4 if he was to lead a weapons inspection team into Iraq we
5 might have mentioned him by name but not quoted him
6 because he was in Iraq and we were unable to contact
7 him.
8 LORD HUTTON: I think this is probably self-evident, but
9 I want to be absolutely clear. When you say an article
10 would quote him, would you attribute the quotation to
11 him? Would he be named as the source of the quotation?
12 A. Yes, as I say, on about half a dozen occasions since
13 1998 we quoted him and attributed those quotes to
14 Dr Kelly.
15 MR KNOX: What were those articles which attributed quotes
16 about?
17 A. A variety of subjects but usually about bio-weapons.
18 I wrote and researched an article about an Iraqi
19 bio-weapons scientist who had trained in the UK. He was
20 very helpful. I believe we quoted him on that subject.
21 We also quoted him in connection with Iraq's attempts to
22 restart a foot and mouth vaccine plant at Al-Dora which
23 he felt very strongly about. He thought it had the
24 potential to become a bio-weapons plant if Iraq had been
25 allowed by the United Nations to restart it. On that

64
1 subject he felt very strongly, as I say. We quoted him
2 by name.
3 Q. Did Dr Kelly ever complain to you about any of the
4 articles which mentioned him by name?
5 A. He never complained.
6 Q. You never received any direct complaint yourself or any
7 complaint to your editor or anything?
8 A. Not at all and because he was always happy to speak,
9 I assumed that he was happy for his name to appear.
10 Q. We know that you wrote an article on 13th April 2003,
11 where he says, in effect, that he knows where the bodies
12 are buried or --
13 A. Not he, Dr Kelly, but he is talking about an Iraqi
14 general.
15 Q. Who would know where the bodies were buried?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. There has been some indication that he was disturbed to
18 find his name was actually quoted in that article. Did
19 he come back to you and make any complaint about that?
20 A. He did not, no.
21 Q. Roughly, apart from the articles where you mentioned him
22 by name, how many other articles did you write for the
23 Sunday Times which directly used information or indeed
24 opinions that he had provided?
25 A. I would rather not say how many because when I did not

65
1 quote him or use his name it was because there was an
2 issue of confidentiality.
3 Q. Did Dr Kelly ever communicate with you by e-mail?
4 A. Yes, he did.
5 Q. And roughly how frequently?
6 A. Perhaps once a month.
7 Q. Since when?
8 A. I think that in all he probably sent me about 20
9 e-mails, between the periods of 1998 and 2002.
10 Q. And would these be in reply to e-mails or questions you
11 had asked or would they sometimes be unsolicited?
12 A. They were almost always in reply to questions which
13 I had asked him, but occasionally they were about
14 subjects which he knew I was interested in.
15 Q. What type of subjects would these e-mails be about?
16 A. Again usually about bio-weapons. He had some interest
17 in the hunt in the United States for the person who had
18 sent the letters containing anthrax. I believe he had
19 been consulted about that by the Americans because he
20 was an expert on that particular subject. And he
21 occasionally sent me e-mails regarding that, but they
22 would usually be a copy of an article that had appeared
23 in the New York Times or the Washington Post, so it was
24 information already in the public domain that he was
25 simply drawing to my attention.

66
1 Q. Do you know if Dr Kelly spoke to other journalists?
2 A. I saw his name in other newspaper articles, particularly
3 in the New York Times. His name was in a book called
4 "Germs" written or co-authored by somebody called
5 Judith Miller. I believe Tom Mangold used him as
6 a source for a book also on bio-weapons. He spoke to
7 a number of journalists.
8 Q. From your acquaintance with him what was your general
9 impression of his character? There have been some
10 suggestions he was some gossipy, other people say
11 precise or factual. How would you describe him?
12 A. On the whole I would say he was a committed scientist.
13 He had a very good grasp of his subject. But he
14 certainly enjoyed talking about it and conveying it to
15 a wider readership. I think he felt a mission to
16 explain.
17 Q. Did he ever ask you for information?
18 A. Yes, he did, yes.
19 Q. And on what type of subjects?
20 A. When he assisted me in the preparation of an article
21 about an Iraqi bio-weapons scientist who had trained in
22 Britain, he was very interested in the comments of
23 various academics at various British universities who
24 I had spoken to and who had worked with these Iraqi
25 scientists. For example, there was an Iraqi scientist

67
1 who trained at Newcastle University and I spoke to quite
2 a few of the academic staff there and Dr Kelly was very
3 interested in the comments and recollections of those
4 staff. When I discussed it with him, he took careful
5 notes of what I was telling him.
6 Q. After publication of the dossier in September 2002 but
7 before the Andrew Gilligan story at the end of May 2003,
8 did you talk to Dr Kelly about the September dossier at
9 all?
10 A. Can you repeat the dates that you are interested in?
11 Q. Between September 2002 and the end of May 2003.
12 A. I believe I had a number of conversations with Dr Kelly
13 about the Government dossier.
14 Q. And I think it is fair to say you do not appear to have
15 reported any of those conversations?
16 A. The Sunday Times published a number of articles about
17 the Government's dossier, but Dr Kelly's name did not
18 appear in any of those articles.
19 Q. Did he express any views about the dossier in those
20 conversations to you?
21 A. Again I would rather not talk about that because there
22 is an issue of confidentiality.
23 Q. We know the Andrew Gilligan article or report appeared
24 on the Today Programme on 29th May 2003. After that
25 story broke, did you speak to Dr Kelly in June 2003?

68
1 A. Yes, I did. Yes.
2 Q. And what was the first occasion you spoke to Dr Kelly
3 on? When did you first talk to him after that?
4 A. Which date?
5 Q. In June 2003.
6 A. Yes, it was in June 2003. And I telephoned him and
7 I believe, at the time, that he was in Qatar and
8 I believe that he was preparing to go to Iraq to join
9 the Iraq survey team.
10 Q. Can you remember what the date of that conversation was?
11 A. I have a note of it, but I do not have it here.
12 Q. And what did you talk about on that occasion?
13 A. We began by talking about the fact that our positions
14 had been reversed because when I had had the
15 conversation with him on 13th April I had been in Qatar
16 and he had been in Britain and now he was in Qatar. We
17 talked about the hunt for weapons of mass destruction
18 and I believe the subject of the dossier came up at that
19 time, and also the row between the BBC and the
20 Government.
21 Q. Did he say anything on that subject?
22 A. He was anxious, it seemed to me at the time, not to talk
23 about that subject.
24 Q. Was there anything he was prepared to talk about?
25 A. He did talk about the hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass

69
1 destruction and he talked about how they were probably
2 fairly well hidden and they were going to be difficult
3 to find. And I recall that he mentioned that it was
4 very easy to hide weapons of mass destruction because
5 you simply had to dig a hole in the desert, put them
6 inside, cover them with a tarpaulin, cover them with
7 sand and then they would be almost impossible to
8 discover.
9 Q. Did you get any impression of his state of mind from
10 that occasion when you spoke to him? Did he seem to be
11 anxious or not anxious?
12 A. Yes, he seemed to be -- he certainly was anxious not to
13 talk about the row between the Government and the BBC;
14 and he did not seem as enthusiastic to talk as perhaps
15 he had been on previous occasions.
16 Q. In June 2003, not July for a moment, did you speak to
17 Dr Kelly again?
18 A. Yes, I seem to recall that I spoke to him when he came
19 back from Iraq.
20 Q. Did you initiate that contact?
21 A. Yes, I did.
22 Q. And what was the conversation about?
23 A. That was again to find out -- I think -- how his mission
24 had gone, and if he had discovered any information that
25 might be useful or interesting; and I think again on

70
1 that occasion he was reluctant to talk.
2 Q. Was the subject of the Gilligan article raised at all
3 during this conversation?
4 A. No, it was not.
5 Q. Now, moving to July, did you talk to Dr Kelly in July,
6 that is to say last month?
7 A. Yes, I did. Yes.
8 Q. And can you recall the first occasion when you spoke to
9 him? How did that come about?
10 A. The first occasion was in early July when I phoned him
11 and it was in fact to ask him out to lunch. The subject
12 of the row between the Government and the BBC did come
13 up and I did put to him that he might be the source of
14 the Andrew Gilligan report.
15 Q. This was on the telephone, was it?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. What did he say to that?
18 A. He said that he not know and he had not spoken to
19 Andrew Gilligan.
20 Q. It seems a slightly curious answer because he would know
21 in one sense if he had spoken to Andrew Gilligan that he
22 could not be the source. Did you press him at all?
23 A. I did not press him, no.
24 Q. Was there any reason why you asked him if people thought
25 he might be Mr Gilligan's source?

71
1 A. Yes, because the evidence that Andrew Gilligan had given
2 to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which I believe was in
3 June, had talked about a source with some of the
4 attributes that Dr Kelly had, so there were some
5 similarities there.
6 Q. I think that was 19th June that Andrew Gilligan gave his
7 evidence, maybe 17th June. You had obviously seen or
8 heard that evidence or got hold of a transcript of it
9 fairly shortly afterwards, is that right?
10 A. That is right.
11 Q. You having read that transcript, this is what one
12 infers, you thought: well, this might be Dr Kelly that
13 Mr Gilligan is talking about?
14 A. Exactly.
15 Q. Do you know if any other journalists had been making the
16 same connection as a result of Mr Gilligan's evidence?
17 A. I do not know whether they had or not.
18 Q. I think you suggested in this telephone conversation
19 meeting up with Dr Kelly for lunch?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. What did he say to that?
22 A. He said he could not meet for lunch because he was going
23 to Iraq very shortly. So we agreed to postpone any
24 meeting until after he returned.
25 Q. We know on the evening of 8th July the Ministry of

72
1 Defence put out a press announcement, saying that an
2 official had come forward saying that he had spoken to
3 Mr Gilligan, but effectively he could not have said what
4 Mr Gilligan said he had said. Were you aware of that
5 press announcement?
6 A. Yes I was.
7 Q. When did you first become aware of it?
8 A. On Tuesday evening when it was put out, on 8th July.
9 Q. What did you make of it?
10 A. It was a very interesting development.
11 Q. Did you draw any inferences from that announcement?
12 A. Well, it was very interesting because it said that the
13 individual was an expert on weapons of mass destruction,
14 he advised Ministers; and I think more significantly it
15 said that he was not a member of the Intelligence
16 Services, which we had all assumed he was.
17 Q. So what did you think as a result of that?
18 A. I thought again it reinforced the possibility that
19 Dr Kelly may be the source. I should add that in the
20 interim my colleague, Tom Baldwin, had published an
21 article in The Times which mentioned that the
22 Andrew Gilligan source had been in Iraq recently and
23 I was aware that Dr Kelly had been in Iraq.
24 Q. That was the article printed on Saturday 5th July?
25 A. Correct.

73
1 Q. Did you then try to call Dr Kelly?
2 A. The next morning I did, yes.
3 Q. So that would be on Wednesday 9th July?
4 A. Correct.
5 Q. And what happened?
6 A. He was not there but I spoke to Janice Kelly.
7 Q. What was said in that conversation?
8 A. I asked Janice Kelly whether Dr Kelly had gone to Iraq
9 and she said that he had not, that he had postponed his
10 departure and that in fact he had gone to London.
11 Q. Did you decide to do anything after this conversation?
12 A. In the afternoon, I decided to drive down and see
13 Dr Kelly.
14 Q. And at what time did you start driving down -- I should
15 ask you from where were you going to be driving down?
16 A. From London.
17 Q. At what time did you begin driving down?
18 A. Late afternoon, I believe.
19 Q. Would you be able to put a time to it, an approximate
20 time to it?
21 A. Probably about 4-ish, 4 or 5.
22 Q. The reason I am asking is this: it appears that
23 Dr Kelly's name was confirmed certainly to
24 a Financial Times journalist late in the afternoon.
25 I was wondering whether at the point you began driving

74
1 down you yourself were aware that Dr Kelly had been
2 named or his name had been confirmed by the Ministry of
3 Defence?
4 A. I was not aware that his name had been confirmed and
5 I did not know at that stage that Dr Kelly was or was
6 the person that had spoken to Andrew Gilligan.
7 LORD HUTTON: Why were you going down then on that
8 afternoon, Mr Rufford?
9 A. Because I thought the accumulation of clues pointed to
10 Dr Kelly quite strongly and I thought that I would go
11 down and see if I could persuade him to talk to me about
12 it.
13 MR KNOX: You did not yourself try to talk to the Ministry
14 of Defence press office that day, that is to say
15 9th July?
16 A. Not at that stage. I spoke to the Ministry of Defence
17 in the evening of 9th July after I had spoken to
18 Dr Kelly.
19 Q. But on the day itself you did not try to get them to
20 confirm the name to you?
21 A. No I did not.
22 Q. Were you aware that in fact the way they were fielding
23 the press calls was they were going to confirm the right
24 name if it was given to them?
25 A. I was not aware at that stage.

75
1 Q. Because that would have given you a bit of a head start
2 if you had been aware of that?
3 A. It would have done.
4 Q. What was the point of your visit to Dr Kelly? You leave
5 at about let us say 4 o'clock in the afternoon. You are
6 not aware he has yet been named. What was the purpose
7 of your visit?
8 A. It was not unusual. I would quite often, particularly
9 on a Tuesday, drive down to see Dr Kelly. It was the
10 beginning of the week for us which is a good day for
11 a Sunday newspaper. He was always a good source of
12 information. He had been in Iraq already so he was
13 bound to have something to talk about. Added to this
14 was this row between the Government and the BBC which
15 I thought he may be able to shed some light on.
16 Q. When did you arrive at his house or in the village?
17 A. I believe it was about 7.30.
18 Q. When you arrived who was there?
19 A. Dr Kelly was there in the drive or garden of his house;
20 and I believe Janice Kelly was in the garden but some
21 distance away.
22 Q. I take it that even at this point, at the point you
23 arrived, you were still unaware his name had been
24 confirmed by the Ministry of Defence?
25 A. I was still unaware.

76
1 Q. How did Dr Kelly seem to be?
2 A. In appearance?
3 Q. Well, in appearance and generally.
4 A. In appearance he looked thinner than I remember. He
5 looked pale and he looked tired.
6 Q. And how did the conversation go when you arrived? What
7 did they say to you and what did you say to them, that
8 is Dr Kelly and his wife?
9 A. Well his wife was some distance away and across the
10 other side of the garden. I believe she was doing some
11 gardening. But she was not privy to the conversation.
12 So the conversation was a one-to-one between me and
13 Dr Kelly.
14 Q. What happened in that conversation? If you would like
15 to recall how the conversation went.
16 A. He said to me to begin with he had just had a telephone
17 call from the Ministry of Defence press office telling
18 him that his name was going to appear in national
19 newspapers the following day.
20 Q. Did he explain -- or perhaps I should ask you this: did
21 you ask him how the Ministry of Defence knew that his
22 name was going to appear in the papers?
23 A. Yes, I did. I asked him that and he said he did not
24 know. He did not know how the Ministry of Defence knew
25 that his name was going to appear.

77
1 Q. Did you ask him about whether he had received any advice
2 or counselling from the Ministry of Defence?
3 A. Yes, I said that -- I asked him whether they advised him
4 on how to field telephone calls or visits from the
5 press. I asked him whether they had volunteered to send
6 anybody down to be with him or whether they advised him
7 to leave home and to go and stay with friends or in
8 a hotel.
9 Q. Did you raise the question of whether or not the
10 Ministry of Defence had offered a safe house?
11 A. I do not think I used the word "safe house" but I think
12 I said: have they advised you to leave home to go and
13 stay with friends or at a hotel?
14 Q. What did he say?
15 A. He said they had not given him any such advice.
16 Q. I mean, did he ask you anything?
17 A. He said to me what I thought would happen next. And
18 I said that I believed, in view of the considerable
19 amount of interest, that he was likely to be besieged at
20 his home.
21 Q. And how did he react to that?
22 A. He looked perplexed at the prospect.
23 Q. Did you, in this conversation, touch on the Gilligan
24 story?
25 A. Yes, I did. I asked him about the Gilligan story and

78
1 his reaction to that was -- well, first of all, I said:
2 did you meet Andrew Gilligan? He said that he had.
3 I said had he met him at the Charing Cross Hotel. He
4 said he had. And I said: has the account of the
5 conversation been accurately reported? His response to
6 that was: I talked to him about factual stuff, the rest
7 is bullshit.
8 Q. Was that the sort of language he would normally use?
9 A. No, it was very strong language for Dr Kelly to use.
10 Q. We know you wrote an article in the newspapers which
11 appeared on 13th July in the Sunday Times. Did you take
12 a note of this conversation as it was taking place?
13 A. Not as it was taking place but immediately afterwards.
14 Q. When you say immediately afterwards, in other words as
15 soon as you had left the house?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Or when you got back to the office, or as soon as you
18 left the house?
19 A. No, as soon as I left the house.
20 Q. Did you ask Dr Kelly his view about the September
21 dossier?
22 A. Yes, I did.
23 Q. What did he say?
24 A. He said it was factual and credible, were the words that
25 he used.

79
1 Q. Did you ask him generally about the Ministry of Defence,
2 whether he had any views about how the Ministry of
3 Defence had conducted themselves?
4 A. He said that -- well, he then split his comments. He
5 said: for the record he said he had been pretty good
6 about it. He said he had not been reprimanded. Then he
7 said: off the record, I have been through the wringer.
8 I asked him whether he knew his name was going to come
9 out and he said: I am a bit shocked. I was told it
10 would all be confidential.
11 Q. And on what basis was this conversation taking place?
12 Did you tell him this was going to be off the record or
13 on the record? Was there any understanding about the
14 basis on which this conversation was taking place?
15 A. He made clear certain parts of it, the comments about
16 going through the wringer and the comments about the
17 fact that he believed -- he contacted his line
18 manager -- that his name would be kept confidential, he
19 asked for those not to be reported. By implication,
20 therefore, the rest of the conversation was on the
21 record.
22 LORD HUTTON: So when he said the MoD had been pretty good,
23 he did not say: that is for the record. It was because
24 he said that certain comments were off the record that
25 you took his other comments to be on the record?

80
1 A. No, he used the words: for the record, they have been
2 pretty good about it.
3 LORD HUTTON: I see.
4 MR KNOX: So he draws a distinction in one sense between
5 what is for the record and what is not for the record?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Did he say anything about the pressure he had been
8 under?
9 A. Yes, he did. He said to me: it has been a pretty
10 difficult time for me, as you can imagine. He was
11 talking about the last few weeks.
12 Q. We know that there was certainly plans for Dr Kelly to
13 go back to Iraq in late July. Did he say anything to
14 you about going back to Iraq?
15 A. Yes. He said he was looking forward to going back to
16 Iraq and he said he hoped he would not be grounded.
17 Q. He hoped he would not be grounded?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. What did you take him to mean by that?
20 A. I took that to mean that he hoped that he would not be
21 prevented from going back.
22 Q. Obviously no doubt some people might speculate that
23 before you went down to see Dr Kelly, you yourself had
24 received some sort of tip-off that in fact he was
25 definitely the man and you wanted so to speak to get to

81
1 him first to get the story. Would there be any truth in
2 that?
3 A. I was keen to find out whether he might be Gilligan's
4 source; but obviously working for a Sunday paper and it
5 being Tuesday, it was unlikely we were going to get the
6 story first.
7 Q. So in other words you had not received any informal
8 indication: this is the man?
9 A. No.
10 Q. When you spoke to Dr Kelly, did you say that anyone
11 would be in a position to offer hotel accommodation or
12 other assistance to Dr Kelly and his family if they
13 wanted it?
14 A. Yes, I did. I mentioned to him that if he needed to, we
15 would help. If he needed to stay in a hotel, the
16 newspaper would help.
17 Q. The newspaper would help?
18 LORD HUTTON: Had you discussed that with anyone in your
19 newspaper before you went down?
20 A. No, I had not. Bearing in mind that before I went down
21 I did not know that he was going to be besieged by --
22 LORD HUTTON: But you had authority, then, on behalf of the
23 Sunday Times to offer him accommodation in a hotel?
24 A. Yes, but bearing in mind it was not a formal offer.
25 I was not saying to him, you know, go and stay at this

82
1 hotel and we will pick up the bill. I was simply saying
2 if he needed to we would help, as a newspaper.
3 MR KNOX: I suppose another thing which you, as
4 a journalist, would no doubt want if you could get it
5 would be some form of interview on the record with
6 Dr Kelly. Was that subject raised by you with him at
7 all?
8 A. Yes, I asked him whether he would be prepared to write
9 a piece for the Sunday Times, either anonymously or
10 under his name, putting his side of the story.
11 Q. You may have answered this but if you did I apologise
12 for asking again. What did he say in response to your
13 offer of hotel accommodation or other assistance?
14 A. He shook his head and he said: no thank you.
15 Q. What did he say in response to your suggestion that he
16 might like to provide an on the record or off the record
17 interview?
18 A. He said he would be happy to write a piece for the
19 Sunday Times but we would need the permission of the
20 Ministry of Defence press office.
21 Q. We know that on 13th July an article appeared in the
22 Sunday Times, which is at CAB/1/526.
23 LORD HUTTON: Sorry CAB/1?
24 MR KNOX: At page 526.
25 I do not know if you have a copy of it there or not,

83
1 Mr Rufford. There is no reason why you should have come
2 with it.
3 In your article you put certain things in quotation
4 marks. One of the first things you say is:
5 "In his first public comments since the row blew up,
6 Dr David Kelly said the Government's position on Iraq
7 was 'credible and factual'."
8 Did you note that particular quote down in your
9 notebook after leaving the house?
10 A. Yes, I did.
11 Q. Then another comment which is put in quotations is:
12 "Kelly said, 'I met Gilligan at the Charing Cross
13 Hotel. I did talk to him about purely factual stuff.
14 The rest is bullshit'."
15 Again is that what you have noted down in your
16 notebook?
17 A. It is, yes.
18 Q. Then another thing you say is:
19 "Looking pale and tired, Kelly admitted the affair
20 had played heavily on his mind since it broke six weeks
21 ago."
22 I take it you can confirm that is correct?
23 A. Those were my observations about his appearance, yes.
24 Q. Then his quotations begin:
25 "I have been told by the MoD not to talk".

84
1 Is that what he said?
2 A. That is correct.
3 Q. Again that is what you noted down, is it?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. He continues:
6 "It has been a very difficult time, as you can
7 imagine."
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Then another thing which is put in quotes is this:
10 "'I've been speaking to the press for 10 years,' he
11 said. 'They (the Foreign Office and MoD) were used to
12 my unorthodox approach'."
13 Then in the next paragraph the article again says in
14 quotations that Dr Kelly had said "The MoD has been
15 quite good about it" when talking about how he had been
16 treated. Then:
17 "I know Gilligan. But I did not talk to him about
18 (Alastair) Campbell's role because I didn't know
19 anything about it."
20 Can I take it that all those quotations are things
21 which you recall him as having said?
22 A. Yes, you can.
23 Q. And were they all noted down by you immediately after
24 you left the house?
25 A. Yes, they were. I wrote that piece using the notes from

85
1 my notebook.
2 Q. Then in your final paragraph you say this:
3 "Kelly was approached by the Sunday Times earlier
4 this month about whether he was the mole in the BBC
5 row."
6 Pausing there for a moment, I take it that is the
7 conversation you in fact had had with him earlier in the
8 month?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Then the next sentence is:
11 "He denied it, but later went to his bosses and told
12 them he had met Gilligan. His action might have been
13 prompted by concern that he was going to be unmasked."
14 I wanted to ask you about that. Were those last
15 comments the result of something that he had told you or
16 the result of your own speculation?
17 A. That was my speculation.
18 Q. Was it pure speculation in the sense of your own
19 speculation unaided by any other information or was it
20 based on other information you had received?
21 A. No, it was not based on any other information, it was my
22 speculation.
23 Q. Is there anything else you would like to add about the
24 circumstances that led to Dr Kelly's death?
25 A. No.

86
1 MR KNOX: Thank you very much.
2 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much, Mr Rufford. Is it worth
3 beginning Mr Dingemans? Would you like to begin
4 Mr Dingemans?
5 MR DINGEMANS: I would like to, my Lord.
6 LORD HUTTON: Certainly.
7 MR DINGEMANS: Mr James Blitz, please.
8 MR JAMES SIMON BLITZ (called)
9 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
10 Q. Can you tell his Lordship your full name?
11 A. My full name is James Simon Blitz.
12 Q. What is your occupation?
13 A. The political editor of the Financial Times newspaper.
14 Q. How long have you been doing that?
15 A. I have been doing that job since July 2002.
16 Q. On 10th July 2003 you wrote an article in the
17 Financial Times which named Dr Kelly as the individual
18 who had come forward to the Ministry of Defence?
19 A. That is correct.
20 Q. Can you tell us the circumstances which led to you
21 obtaining the name?
22 A. Yes. Do you want me to go back to my general interest
23 in the story or what happened particularly on the day?
24 Q. Well, briefly your general interest.
25 A. Well, in the period between mid June and 10th July I had

87
1 developed a strong interest in the conflict between
2 Downing Street and the BBC over the Gilligan report.
3 I took the view that the conflict was of legitimate
4 interest to our readers. I felt this had become an
5 issue of huge importance to Downing Street. So that was
6 the -- which believed the Gilligan report to be
7 inaccurate and was therefore seeking a retraction.
8 On the afternoon of Tuesday 8th July the MoD press
9 release was published which suggested that an individual
10 had come forward.
11 Q. We have seen that press release. You may have seen some
12 of the evidence. You saw that, did you?
13 A. I did indeed.
14 Q. So what did you do when you got that press release?
15 A. I wrote a story for the 9th July edition of the FT.
16 Q. Did that relate to Dr Kelly or not?
17 A. The name of Dr Kelly was not in the story that appeared
18 on the 9th July.
19 Q. Right. And that was produced. Did you then carry on
20 trying to find out who this anonymous person was?
21 A. Yes. The following morning I did not actually actively
22 pursue that story in any way. The reason for that was
23 that on a Wednesday morning I have to produce a column
24 for Thursday's paper. The subject was on the conflict
25 between the BBC and Downing Street, but I was not

88
1 actively pursuing for the purposes of that article in
2 the morning the question of who the individual was who
3 had come forward in the MoD press release.
4 Q. Did you change your attitude during the course of
5 Wednesday 9th July?
6 A. Yes, I did.
7 Q. Why was that?
8 A. Because I attended the Lobby briefing at 3.45 for Lobby
9 journalists that was given by Mr Tom Kelly.
10 Q. And we have an extract from that. It is at FIN/1/46.
11 I am very sorry, it is not going to come on the screen.
12 Can I read a short extract:
13 "Asked if the person who had come forward was a man,
14 the PMOS said that journalists had a 50 per cent chance
15 of being right. Asked whether he had been suspended
16 from his job, he declined to get into personnel matters.
17 Put to him that the person did not work for the MoD, the
18 PMOS said the person was a technical expert who had
19 worked for a variety of Government departments including
20 the MoD with whom he was currently working, salary paid
21 by another department."
22 Then some further questions. Was that the matter
23 which had triggered your further interest?
24 A. That is precisely the matter that triggered my further
25 interest and in the course of the Lobby briefing I asked

89
1 a question specifically as to whether the name of the
2 individual would in any way be publicised at some stage.
3 Q. What was the answer you got?
4 A. The answer which was recorded in the official transcript
5 put up on the Downing Street website was that the
6 Prime Minister's official spokesman did not know of any
7 plan to publicise that name.
8 Q. What struck you about that briefing?
9 A. There were two aspects of the briefing that struck me.
10 The first aspect of the briefing was precisely the
11 details you have gone into, namely that details about
12 this individual were coming forward; the fact that he
13 worked for the MoD but was paid for by another
14 department; the fact that he was a technical expert in
15 the area of chemical and biological weapons. I took the
16 view that there could be very few people who could fit
17 such a description and that it would be possible,
18 through a process of journalistic investigation, to
19 relatively quickly come to that person's name.
20 Q. How did you go about trying to find the actual identity?
21 A. I went back to my office which is in the Parliamentary
22 press gallery and I began to make inquiries.
23 Q. What inquiries did you make?
24 A. Would you like me to go through this in detail at this
25 point?

90
1 Q. Yes, you tell me.
2 A. My first reaction was to open the Civil Service Handbook
3 which lists the names of most key civil servants. The
4 thought on my mind was that since the individual was
5 paid for by another Government department he might be
6 listed under such a department. I discovered the name
7 of somebody called Rudduck working at the Department of
8 Trade & Industry, working in a field linked to chemical
9 and biological work. I was curious to know whether it
10 might be this person.
11 I called my colleague Mark Huband, the FT security
12 correspondent, in the paper's main office. I told him
13 that I was determined to try and get the name of the
14 individual and asked him if he would help. Mr Huband
15 said he would call Mr Rudduck, which he duly did.
16 Q. Did he make that call?
17 A. He did indeed.
18 Q. Did you speak to anyone else?
19 A. Yes. In the course of Mr Huband making that inquiry,
20 I called a Whitehall official and asked whether the
21 individual worked in the DTI.
22 Q. Were you given any information?
23 A. The only thing I wish to say about this conversation,
24 because it was an off the record conversation, is that
25 at the end of it I came to the conclusion that the

91
1 individual was paid for by the Foreign and Commonwealth
2 Office. I gained no other information whatsoever from
3 that conversation.
4 Q. Right. Then Mr Huband calls back and says: Mr Rudduck
5 is not the right man. What do you do to continue?
6 A. I telephoned John Williams, the head of information at
7 the FCO.
8 Q. We have heard from Mr Williams. What did he say to you?
9 A. I told Mr Williams that I believed the individual was
10 paid by the FCO. Mr Williams told me he was unwilling
11 to help me in any way at all.
12 Q. Right. Did anyone come and assist you?
13 A. Yes, at this stage my colleague Christopher Adams, who
14 is one of the four members of the team which I lead at
15 Westminster, came into the room.
16 Q. You tell him what is going on. How does he help you?
17 A. Mr Adams, like myself, does not specialise in defence or
18 intelligence work, so with very little information with
19 which to establish the identity of the individual, he
20 chose to conduct a search on the Internet.
21 Q. Right, and he puts some key words in. Does he recall
22 those key words?
23 A. He was not recall the specific key words he put in on
24 that day.
25 Q. They were no doubt derived from what you had already

92
1 been able to find out; is that right?
2 A. Yes. After the convening of this Inquiry, Mr Adams was
3 able to recreate a document which was of importance to
4 us by putting in the key words. Would you like me to
5 read them?
6 Q. Yes.
7 A. "Ministry", "defence", "consultant", "chemical" and
8 "weapons".
9 Q. And who popped up on the search?
10 A. The first search produced a list of references where the
11 key words appeared. Mr Adams reviewed the results of
12 that search and told me of one individual. I looked at
13 the name of the individual and I took the view that this
14 was not somebody who matched the description that had
15 been given out at the 3.45 briefing.
16 Q. Right.
17 A. Mr Adams cannot recall whether he conducted the second
18 search using a different combination of key words or
19 returned to his original list of references but he
20 continued his research and selected from the list the
21 reference to www.Sussex.ac.uk which produced a document.
22 Q. Was Dr Kelly's name on that document?
23 A. It was on that document, yes.
24 Q. Had you ever heard of Dr Kelly before that?
25 A. No, I had not.

93
1 Q. Right. So now that you have got the name, what did you
2 do next?
3 A. I think the first thing to say is we looked at the name
4 and we looked at the description of Dr Kelly on that
5 document, and the description of Dr Kelly on that
6 document to my mind very closely matched indeed the
7 description of the person who had been discussed at the
8 3.45 briefing.
9 Q. So what did you do to take the matter further forward?
10 A. Mr Adams and I concentrated our attention on that name.
11 We proceeded to have a series of conversations with
12 Whitehall officials at the start of which we put the
13 name of Dr David Kelly as the possible individual.
14 Q. Right. And what was the first response that Mr Adams
15 got?
16 A. One moment, please.
17 Q. 44.
18 A. Yes, I wish to be very faithful to the witness statement
19 I have given you, if I may.
20 Q. Right. I hope -- this is based on your recollection?
21 A. This is based on a very firm recollection and Mr Adams'
22 firm recollection of what happened that afternoon.
23 Q. Right.
24 A. Mr Adams spoke with the first Whitehall official that he
25 contacted. He understood the conversation to be off the

94
1 record. The official declined to comment when Mr Adams
2 put Dr David Kelly's name to that person.
3 Q. Does he speak to anyone else?
4 A. He spoke to a second Whitehall official on the same off
5 the record basis. The official did not confirm
6 Dr David Kelly as the individual and referred Mr Adams
7 to the MoD press office. Mr Adams then pursued his
8 inquiries around the name of Dr David Kelly. Asked
9 about Dr David Kelly's job and background, this official