Hearing Transcripts

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1 he said was that one of the reasons he had written was
2 that a colleague from RUSI had linked words used by
3 Andrew Gilligan in his evidence to the Foreign Affairs
4 Committee on 19th June with things that he, Dr Kelly,
5 may have said in the past. I took that to mean that,
6 you know, people outside MoD were already beginning to
7 think that he was the one. So in a sense he was
8 reinforcing the point that Mr Hatfield said to him.
9 LORD HUTTON: Mr Lloyd-Jones, is there anything you would
10 like to ask by way of re-examination?
11 MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, I have no re-examination.
12 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much, Mr Howard.
13 In that case, ladies and gentlemen, I apologise for
14 the slightly shorter lunch break, but we will sit again
15 at 2 o'clock.
16 (1.15 pm)
17 (The short adjournment)
18 (2.00 pm)
19 DR SHUTTLEWORTH (called)
20 Examined by MR KNOX
21 LORD HUTTON: Dr Shuttleworth, I hope that you can hear
22 Mr Knox and me clearly.
23 A. Yes. Thank you, Lord Hutton.
24 LORD HUTTON: Thank you.
25 MR KNOX: Good afternoon, Dr Shuttleworth. Your name is

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1 Dr Shuttleworth and you were Dr Kelly's resource manager
2 at DSTL Porton Down, is that right?
3 A. That is correct.
4 Q. I understand you would like to comment on three areas to
5 this Inquiry: first of all, Dr Kelly's pay and grading
6 concerns; secondly, his secondment to PACS and issues
7 relating to UNSCOM; and thirdly, Dr Kelly's dealings
8 with the press?
9 A. That is correct.
10 Q. Can I deal first, by way of background, with your
11 knowledge of Dr Kelly. When did you come to know
12 Dr Kelly?
13 A. I first met David in 1985 when I went for an interview
14 for a post at the chemical defence establishment.
15 Q. And did you work with Dr Kelly after that?
16 A. I worked for Dr Kelly for a number of years.
17 Q. And when did you become his resource manager?
18 A. Some time in 1995.
19 Q. And at what point was that?
20 A. This was after the creation of DERA, and CBD moving into
21 DERA, between October 1995 and April 1996 David's line
22 management changed from a previous structure into the
23 new structure.
24 Q. And as resource manager, what were your
25 responsibilities?

115
1 A. My responsibilities normally would have been to set his
2 annual targets, to review those targets at the end of
3 the year and to make the initial determination of
4 possible pay rises; but in David's case the situation
5 was somewhat more complicated.
6 Q. Who was Dr Kelly's personnel manager?
7 A. As I say, the situation was fairly complicated. I was
8 responsible, as his first reporting officer and resource
9 manager, but the pay elements for David were handled by
10 a gentleman by the name of Ted Payne, based at
11 Farnborough.
12 Q. We have heard that Dr Kelly did have some concerns about
13 pay and grading. Can you tell us when you first became
14 aware of his concerns about pay and grading within the
15 Civil Service?
16 A. Probably in April 1999, when David came to me concerned
17 that his pay had not increased over a three year period.
18 That seems rather strange, but you have to bear in mind
19 that David had been working overseas in Iraq and
20 New York for some time, rarely returning to Porton. It
21 was on one of these occasions that I think he finally
22 noticed that his pay had not increased.
23 Q. Did he show you any correspondence?
24 A. Yes. He showed me a letter, which appeared to have come
25 from either the MoD personnel department or possibly

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1 within DERA, which indicated that he was going to be
2 offered a regrading from his current position as an
3 individual merit grade 5 to a substantive grade 5, and
4 that he was going to be considered for a membership of
5 the Senior Civil Service which, at that point, was going
6 to be reorganised.
7 Q. You, I understand, have had the opportunity of seeing
8 some of the correspondence from the MoD exhibited on the
9 web. Have you been able to see that letter at all
10 exhibited on the web in relation to this Inquiry?
11 A. I saw a letter which appeared in evidence, I think as
12 letter 'A'.
13 Q. Was that the letter you are referring to?
14 A. No, it is not the letter I was referring to. David's
15 letter was somewhat different in style and also
16 different in content. Letter 'A' suggests that
17 individual merit grade 5s would be made substantive
18 grade 5s but makes no mention that they are going to be
19 made members of the Senior Civil Service. In fact, it
20 says specifically that they will not be.
21 Q. Can we call up MoD/3/95? Dr Shuttleworth, do you have
22 a copy of that letter before you? This is the
23 letterhead letter 'A'.
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Is this the letter that you are talking about?

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1 A. This is not the letter I am talking about in respect of
2 David Kelly. I had seen this letter in the context of
3 other individual merit scientists, I think in 1996,
4 I cannot be certain.
5 Q. So this is not the letter you think you saw Dr Kelly
6 show you. He showed you a different letter altogether?
7 A. He showed me a different letter altogether.
8 Q. Had Dr Kelly raised the issue of his pay and grading
9 with personnel, do you know?
10 A. Yes, he told me that he had sent that letter to
11 Farnborough with a question regarding both his pay and
12 his grading.
13 Q. Did you agree to help him at all?
14 A. Yes. Because he was going to travel back to Iraq very
15 shortly afterwards, I agreed I would chase the enquiry
16 on his behalf.
17 Q. What did you do?
18 A. I initiated a series of telephone calls with the
19 personnel people in Farnborough to try to find out
20 exactly what the situation was. That went on for some
21 time, probably through the March, April and May of 1999.
22 Q. What was the upshot?
23 A. The upshot was I was finally told that Farnborough
24 regarded David not to be a substantive grade 5 and also
25 that he was not eligible to join the Senior Civil

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1 Service.
2 Q. Was any contrary view taken at any time in your
3 enquiries?
4 A. I am sorry, I do not understand your question.
5 Q. Sorry. Was anyone expressing any contrary view to that
6 before the final decision was made?
7 A. There seemed to be some confusion in terms of
8 Farnborough itself. I was being told, on the one hand,
9 his pay could not be dealt with because he was a member
10 of the Senior Civil Service and the pay was dealt with
11 by a separate part of the system; and when I spoke to
12 the officer who dealt with that, I was told David was
13 not a part of the Senior Civil Service. So there seemed
14 to by quite a bit of confusion within the element in
15 Farnborough.
16 Q. We know eventually you wrote a letter we can see at
17 MoD/3/150. Do you have that before you?
18 A. Yes, I do.
19 Q. This is a letter which you wrote to Heather Skelton, is
20 that correct?
21 A. That is correct, yes.
22 Q. This letter sets out your understanding of the position
23 as it was eventually resolved, is that correct?
24 A. It is my understanding of the position as it was in 1999
25 at the point I wrote the letter. I was not very happy

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1 with the information I had had from Farnborough; and
2 I passed the whole business over to my then line
3 manager.
4 Q. Is there any particular part of this letter you would
5 like to draw the Inquiry's attention to?
6 A. I think essentially the paragraph 2, I think, is rather
7 important.
8 Q. That is the paragraph saying:
9 "The situation seems to be as follows..."
10 A. That is correct.
11 Q. Why do you take the view this was important or so
12 important?
13 A. It lays out a number of different things. First of all,
14 it indicates the point at which David was seconded or at
15 least transferred to PACS. That is something I think
16 you will be asking me about later. It also says that
17 the transfer was essentially a financial fix to deal
18 with the new financial structures in DERA.
19 Q. In paragraph 3 you mention:
20 "... Dr Kelly's status might have caused his pay
21 awards to fall into a black hole ..."
22 That presumably is the view you took about the
23 matter?
24 A. Yes, indeed.
25 Q. How did Dr Kelly take all this? Did he seem to be

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1 unconcerned or was he concerned by it?
2 A. He was concerned but not bitter. In 1999 he was already
3 thinking about retirement, and also because of the
4 collapse of UNSCOM in 1998 he was thinking of
5 alternative employment.
6 Q. Did you say he was not bitter or he was?
7 A. He was not bitter, he was frustrated.
8 Q. Did you have any further involvement, after writing this
9 letter, with Dr Kelly's pay matters?
10 A. Very little. At some point between 1999 and 2000,
11 I think in July 1999, shortly after the letter was
12 written, my duties changed and responsibility for line
13 management passed to Dr Rick Hall, the technical
14 director at Porton.
15 Q. Can I move on to questions relating to Dr Kelly's
16 secondment to PACS?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Dr Kelly was an UNSCOM weapons inspector. Who was
19 responsible for identifying Dr Kelly as an UNSCOM
20 weapons inspector?
21 A. I do not know who initially identified him as an
22 inspector. That was before my time. That happened some
23 time in 1991. But there were structures in place. For
24 instance, PACS, which has now become CPAC, were
25 responsible for identifying MoD scientists, on behalf of

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1 the Foreign Office, who could be deployed to Iraq on
2 behalf of UNSCOM.
3 Q. And who paid for Dr Kelly while he worked as an UNSCOM
4 weapons inspector?
5 A. My understanding is that UNSCOM had some financial
6 involvement in this, but largely, certainly between 1991
7 and 1995, the funding came from the Porton end. Porton
8 was still paying his salary. Of course, when CBD moved
9 into DERA the situation changed.
10 Q. In what respect did the situation change?
11 A. DERA began to hard charge customers. So essentially
12 items like overhead charging, overhead costs, which had
13 previously been covered in the same way they are covered
14 for all Civil Service activity, would be passed directly
15 on to the customer. In this case UNSCOM complained the
16 costs were becoming too great to employ David, and
17 indeed others.
18 Q. So what solution was arrived at?
19 A. Initially thoughts were given to transferring David
20 permanently to the Foreign Office, as they were the
21 final point of contact, if you like, between the UK and
22 UNSCOM.
23 Q. Pausing there for a moment: would that have reduced the
24 cost to UNSCOM?
25 A. That should have reduced the cost to UNSCOM, yes,

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1 because the Foreign Office would have charged at cost
2 rather than cost plus overhead plus profit element.
3 Q. So that was one idea that was put forward. What were
4 the other ideas that were considered?
5 A. The other idea that was considered was transferring him
6 permanently to PACS; and that also was not possible.
7 There were no vacancies in PACS and no funding,
8 essentially, from the Foreign Office to do that.
9 Q. So what was it eventually decided to do?
10 A. A very loose secondment to PACS. That had the benefits
11 of getting rid of the overhead charge. I am not
12 a financier, so I do not really understand the ins and
13 outs of this, but it lowered the cost to DERA's bottom
14 line, essentially.
15 Q. So Dr Kelly becomes seconded to PACS and therefore
16 becomes seconded to the Ministry of Defence. Was this
17 arrangement ever formalised in any way?
18 A. Certainly not in my time. It may have been formalised
19 since then.
20 Q. When people such as Dr Kelly are seconded to PACS or to
21 the Ministry of Defence, what is the usual length of
22 time for which the secondment will last?
23 A. It is normally about three years. After that the
24 individual would either return to his parent department
25 or would transfer permanently to the employing

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1 department.
2 Q. In the case of Dr Kelly, for how long was he seconded to
3 the MoD?
4 A. I suppose you could start off in 1991 and certainly go
5 through to 1998, if not to 2003.
6 Q. Would it be fair to say the secondment, therefore, was
7 rather notional?
8 A. It was very notional, certainly in the early days.
9 Q. Can I move on to Dr Kelly's dealings with the press?
10 When Dr Kelly visited Iraq, in what capacity did he
11 visit? Did he visit, for instance, as an MoD employee
12 or a United Nations weapons inspector or in some other
13 capacity?
14 A. He visited as a United Nations weapons inspector on
15 a United Nations passport.
16 Q. Do you know if he had a particular contract with UNSCOM?
17 A. Yes. Inspectors signed a contract of confidentiality
18 before they were allowed to travel as part of a team.
19 Q. Do you know what the broad terms of that contract
20 involved?
21 A. The broad terms were that any information gained as
22 a result of UNSCOM activity were the property of the
23 United Nations.
24 Q. So effectively information Dr Kelly obtained in that
25 capacity belonged to the United Nations rather than to

124
1 the Government; is that correct?
2 A. Certainly under the terms of the contract that would be
3 true.
4 Q. Do you know if Dr Kelly was encouraged to talk to the
5 press at all?
6 A. He was actively encouraged to talk to the press. He had
7 been doing it since 1991; and in 1995/1996, with the new
8 change to DERA, we decided or I decided to formalise
9 that and it became one of his annual key results,
10 a target, if you like.
11 Q. And what specifically did this mean he had to do?
12 A. To provide briefings to the press and to Government
13 bodies, learned societies, as and when required by
14 the -- essentially the people employing him. This would
15 be the United Nations, the Foreign Office and PACS.
16 Q. Dr Kelly, it would seem, therefore had three masters,
17 you might say; one was UNSCOM, one was the MoD and the
18 final master was DSTL. What were the consequences of
19 having three masters when it came to his dealings with
20 the press?
21 A. It meant that in clearing his dealings, either his
22 publications, his presentations or contacts, he would
23 have to consider which piece of information he was
24 likely to be asked about and to, ideally, seek clearance
25 from the appropriate --

125
1 Q. I am sorry. Did you ever discuss this position with
2 Dr Kelly?
3 A. We discussed it informally several times.
4 Q. What did Dr Kelly say to you was his view of what he
5 should be doing?
6 A. His view was -- and it was a very pragmatic view -- that
7 he should be targeting his requests for clearance to the
8 most appropriate authority. For instance, if it was UN
9 work, he would try to clear this with the UN. If it was
10 treaty related work, he would clear it with the Foreign
11 Office. If it related to his other areas of expertise
12 which had been gained whilst employed with the MoD, he
13 would go to the MoD.
14 LORD HUTTON: Dr Shuttleworth when you say that Dr Kelly was
15 encouraged to provide briefings, can you elaborate
16 a little on what subjects the briefings would be? Would
17 it be of a technical nature relating to WMD?
18 A. During my time most of the interest was related to Iraq;
19 and he was asked to give briefings on the work of
20 UNSCOM, which covered not only technical issues but also
21 issues relating to the personalities who had been
22 involved on the Iraqi side, the scale of activity;
23 essentially assessing and assessments of the Iraqi
24 programme.
25 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you.

126
1 MR KNOX: Do you know if Dr Kelly sought advice from the MoD
2 or from the Foreign Office as to how to handle requests
3 made to him by the press?
4 A. Yes, he did seek advice, initially on a regular basis.
5 Obviously many of the requests for Iraq related material
6 were essentially for the same information over and over
7 again. So him seeking advice for those issues gradually
8 fell off.
9 Q. Who would he seek that advice from?
10 A. If he was talking to the Foreign Office he would be
11 talking to NPD, now CPD. If it was MoD he would talk to
12 PACS.
13 Q. Did you know what advice he was given, did he ever tell
14 you?
15 A. Occasionally he was given rather conflicting advice. He
16 also sought advice internally within Porton and was also
17 offered advice. It was usually if confusion arose as to
18 who was the owner of the information. There were
19 situations that could arise, for instance dealing with
20 Iraq, which might bring in some of his more general
21 knowledge.
22 Q. Can you think of any particular instances of which you
23 are aware when there was a conflict as to the advice he
24 was getting?
25 A. Yes, I can. On one occasion, I guess this would be in

127
1 1997, as a general review of security at Porton, David's
2 involvement with the press came up, in general terms.
3 It was suggested that David perhaps ought to broaden the
4 requests he made for permission to talk to journalists
5 or permission to publish. It was suggested that perhaps
6 MoD ought to be brought in more often. David tried to
7 comply with that. The very first occasion he did so,
8 the reaction from the security office was: well, this is
9 really UNSCOM business, none of ours.
10 Q. So they passed it on back to: well, you had better go
11 and talk to UNSCOM?
12 A. They passed it back to the pragmatic approach that had
13 been adopted several years before that.
14 Q. You say "the pragmatic approach"; that is the pragmatic
15 approach adopted by Dr Kelly?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. What, in summary, was that pragmatic approach that he
18 adopted?
19 A. To try to target the requests for permission to the
20 appropriate part of Government or to the United Nations.
21 Q. What was the greatest press interest, or rather what was
22 the field where the greatest press interest was shown in
23 Dr Kelly's work?
24 A. For all the time I was his resource manager it was Iraq.
25 Q. Any particular aspect of Iraq?

128
1 A. Well, the work of UNSCOM and the achievements UNSCOM
2 were making.
3 Q. And on what type of occasions did the press make
4 approaches to Dr Kelly in that connection?
5 A. Frequently in the margins of briefing sessions that he
6 was giving on behalf of UNSCOM. These were frequently
7 held in New York and occasionally in Europe.
8 Q. Do you know if the Foreign Office made any objections to
9 Dr Kelly's talking to the press on receipt of such
10 approaches?
11 A. I have never heard of any objections at all to him
12 talking to the press. Inevitably, because of time
13 delays, he was not able to seek permission in advance of
14 speaking to the press. But he was very, very reliable
15 in seeking permission afterwards or at least informing
16 that he had had those contacts.
17 Q. Were you aware, at any stage, of Dr Kelly having got
18 into trouble with the Foreign Office or with the
19 Ministry of Defence for having spoken to the press?
20 A. No; and as his first reporting officer I would have
21 expected to have heard of any indication that that was
22 the case.
23 Q. Do you have any general observations that you would like
24 to make about Dr Kelly and the circumstances leading to
25 his death?

129
1 A. No, I do not.
2 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much indeed, Dr Shuttleworth.
3 A. Thank you very much.
4 MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, I am afraid you will need
5 two minutes just to allow the disconnection.
6 LORD HUTTON: Of course. I will rise very briefly.
7 (2.22 pm)
8 (Short Break)
9 (2.24 pm)
10 MS KATE WILSON (called)
11 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
12 Q. Can you tell his Lordship your full name?
13 A. It is Katherine Elizabeth Wilson.
14 Q. What is your occupation?
15 A. I am the chief press officer at the Ministry of Defence.
16 Q. You are in the slightly unusual position of coming to
17 give evidence for the first time. I am going to examine
18 you neutrally. There will then be cross-examination by
19 the family and the BBC, and you are aware of that?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. How long have you been at the Ministry of Defence?
22 A. Since July of last year, 2002. Although I did work
23 there previously, between 1996 and 2000.
24 Q. What was your employment before that?
25 A. In the time in the middle I was at the Home Office press

130
1 office.
2 Q. So how long have you been a press officer?
3 A. Since 1996.
4 Q. As a result of that, do you have regular dealings with
5 the media?
6 A. Daily, yes.
7 Q. Were you on duty on 28th May?
8 A. No, I do not do duties because I am the chief press
9 officer but I was in the office until about 20 to 8.
10 Q. Did you have any contact with Mr Gilligan on that day?
11 A. Yes. I spoke to him at about 7.30.
12 Q. Did you know Mr Gilligan beforehand?
13 A. Yes. I have known him since I first started doing press
14 office work in 1996.
15 Q. At 7.30 what was said?
16 A. He called me to say that they were looking for an
17 interview with Adam Ingram the next morning which was
18 about cluster bombs, which was quite a topical issue.
19 We talked through various issues around the subject of
20 cluster bombs, things like the detonation rates of
21 different weapon systems and things like that.
22 At the end of the conversation I asked him whether
23 there was anything else running on the programme and he
24 said he had something he was working on on WMD and a
25 dodgy dossier. He said that was not a matter for the

131
1 MoD, so I did not pursue it.
2 Q. How long do you think this conversation lasted?
3 A. I have heard since that it was about 7 minutes. That
4 sounds about right.
5 Q. It accords with your recollection?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. How many minutes, estimating, do you think you were
8 talking about the cluster bombs for?
9 A. At a guess -- it was most of the conversation, 6 minutes
10 or so. It was only when I asked him at the end of the
11 conversation whether he was working on anything else,
12 which is standard practice, so that I could brief the
13 Minister if there was anything else he needed to know
14 about, he mentioned the WMD story.
15 Q. So far as you can recollect, what exactly did he say
16 about the WMD story?
17 A. He said he had -- he was working on a story about WMD
18 and the dodgy dossier, which I took at the time to be
19 the February dossier.
20 Q. Did you make any notes of that conversation?
21 A. I did not make any notes of the conversation. The
22 reason I did not is because I was working from a Q and A
23 document on cluster bombs. I tend to make notes if
24 I have something new or different that I need to go away
25 and look into or research. There was not anything new

132
1 or different in what he was talking about so I did not
2 make any notes.
3 Q. If we look at MoD/18/15, we can see part of a log.
4 Perhaps you can just help me with this: what is this
5 document?
6 A. Yes. That is the duty officer's log from the 28th which
7 was written by Richard Whalley, who is the duty press
8 officer.
9 Q. We can see at the top an entry timed at 8 o'clock.
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. And the caller is Ian Watson.
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Was this his note or someone else's note?
14 A. No, all of this was written by the duty press officer.
15 These were all calls he took.
16 Q. Who was the duty press officer that night?
17 A. It was Richard Whalley.
18 Q. After the discussion that Mr Gilligan had with you, it
19 looks as if someone else has called in; is that right?
20 A. Yes, that is standard practice though. You often find
21 that Andrew Gilligan is working on something, perhaps
22 not from the office, and somebody else who is actually
23 putting the programme together will give you a call to
24 confirm what time they want the Minister, how long they
25 want him for. So that was Ian Watson's call.

133
1 Q. If we look at the enquiry in the middle:
2 "Bid for Minister to talk about clearance op for
3 cluster bombs etc."
4 Is that the extent of the note on that aspect of it?
5 A. Yes, that is what he was talking about. I think it was
6 Ian who was putting the package together.
7 Q. If we look at MoD/31/3, there is another log here, which
8 is dated 29th May at the top.
9 A. I cannot see it at the moment.
10 Q. Sorry, MoD/31/3. You can see at the top it is 29th May.
11 But if you go down to the bottom, you can see 28th May.
12 Is that the continuation of that log, is it?
13 A. Yes, all it is is a rolling database.
14 Q. Is there any relevant entry here in relation to the
15 programme the next day?
16 A. I mean, what it reflects is that Chris Howard rang us
17 later on to say did we want -- or be prepared, rather,
18 for the Minister to do a couple of minutes on WMD at the
19 end of his interview on cluster bombs, and then
20 Martin Sheahan calling back to say: here are the WMD
21 lines, which I think you have.
22 Q. The first entry is three up from the bottom. There is
23 Chris Howard -- he works for the Today Programme, does
24 he?
25 A. Yes.

134
1 Q. -- calling Mr Whalley:
2 "Discussed programme for morning. Be prepared to
3 answer some questions (2 mins at end) on WMD."
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. Then the response was:
6 "Thank you. Will arrive at Millbank at 0800 ready
7 for live at 0810-0815."
8 That is for the Minister; is that right?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Going up, Downing Street press office appear to have
11 called?
12 A. Yes, that is right.
13 Q. He says:
14 "Discussion over WMD lines for tomorrow's [Radio 4]
15 interview. He will send fax. Are we happy? If Rumsfeld
16 issue arises remember to ensure that the full context is
17 used. Confident that we will uncover evidence of the
18 WMD programme. Stick with the jigsaw argument [whatever
19 that may be]."
20 But it appears, from that, that there had been
21 contact with the Downing Street press office. Who had
22 initiated that contact?
23 A. I think it was probably me, because if Richard had
24 called them he would have logged it. I cannot remember.
25 It is unusual but not sort of remarkable if the

135
1 machinery of just putting together the briefing, you
2 would not necessarily log everything. The purpose of
3 the log is so that various people around the department
4 can see what was happening overnight. So press officers
5 do not always put every single call on if it does not
6 give them anything particularly new.
7 Either Richard or I would have called Martin. It is
8 standard practice, if we are doing an interview on the
9 Today Programme, to let No. 10 know and to double-check
10 there is not another Minister going on, because we would
11 not put two Ministers on the same programme. So when
12 I -- I think it was me, I cannot remember -- spoke to
13 Martin I would have said that Adam Ingram was going on
14 on cluster bombs and they are doing something on WMD,
15 just so that you are aware.
16 Q. Right. When would you have made that call?
17 A. It would probably have been just after I spoke to
18 Andrew Gilligan.
19 Q. Right. Do you know what you said, so far as you can
20 recall, to Downing Street about the WMD issue?
21 A. I mean, all I could have said is that Andrew Gilligan is
22 working on something on WMD and the dodgy dossier,
23 because I did not know any more than that.
24 Q. Can we turn to MoD/32/22? You said you were working
25 from some Q and A material or material in relation to

136
1 cluster bombs.
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Is this the material?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. Was this something you had already prepared anyway?
6 A. Yes. We already had a briefing pack on cluster bombs
7 because it was an issue that had come up several times
8 during Operation TELEC.
9 Q. So when Mr Gilligan calls, you pull out your briefing
10 pack on cluster bombs and you run through it?
11 A. You do not run through it, you draw from it depending on
12 what he is asking you.
13 Q. Whose notes are these on this document?
14 A. I think they are the notes Adam Ingram made just before
15 he gave the interview.
16 Q. If you go down to the bottom of the page, for example,
17 you can see:
18 "GH [which I take to be Mr Hoon] not indiscriminate
19 targeted on [something] area."
20 This Q and A material was handed to the Minister
21 then?
22 A. Yes. What happened was before I left the office, and
23 again this is standard practice, I asked Richard Whalley
24 to pull together all the information that we had on
25 cluster bombs. He will then have gone through and

137
1 highlighted the bits he wanted the Minister to flag up,
2 plus the material that we had on WMD.
3 Q. So if we go to 23, we can see:
4 "UXO clearance in Iraq."
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. And Q and A. And 24, the document continues through and
7 concludes on 25 with the issue of children playing with
8 UXO.
9 If we then go to 26 there is another document which
10 is headed "Current Issues":
11 "Rumsfeld: Iraq may have destroyed WMD prior to
12 invasion?"
13 What document was this?
14 A. This was an existing piece of information that we had
15 had. I think the day previously Donald Rumsfeld had
16 been quoted as saying: we may never find WMD. That was
17 the story that I thought Andrew Gilligan was talking
18 about because it was a huge story and lots of media were
19 pursuing that story.
20 Q. Rather like you had the briefing pack on cluster bombs,
21 you had already put together a briefing pack on this
22 issue on WMD?
23 A. That is all we had because it was not really MoD that
24 were in the lead on that issue, it was more a Foreign
25 Office issue. I think that is a line that came from the

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1 Foreign Office. But again, it would be routine for them
2 to circulate that round to all the relevant Government
3 departments.
4 Q. If one goes to 27, there is another document with some
5 handwriting on it. Do you know what this is?
6 A. That is also notes that Adam Ingram made just before he
7 went on to the programme.
8 Q. Do you know who supplied Mr Ingram with the Q and A
9 material on cluster bombs? Your press office?
10 A. Richard Whalley supplied the whole pack which he pulled
11 together during the course of the evening before. He
12 then went over and briefed the Minister at about 7.30.
13 Q. So he pulled together the Q and A material on cluster
14 bombs?
15 A. Correct.
16 Q. The current issues on Rumsfeld and WMD?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. And then this little extract, is that right, looks like
19 from Hansard?
20 A. Yes, it was faxed over from the No. 10 press office.
21 I think it was from one of the Prime Minister's press
22 conferences.
23 Q. We can see some notes in the bottom right-hand corner.
24 Do you know who made those notes?
25 A. Yes, they are Adam Ingram's notes.

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1 Q. If we go to 28, what is this? This is continuing the
2 point, is it? It is continuing the briefing note, is
3 it?
4 A. I think it must be. I am not sure if I have seen this
5 before or not. It does not look familiar. Yes, sorry,
6 yes, that is the continuation of the press conference,
7 I think.
8 Q. It certainly relates to weapons of mass destruction and
9 uncovering their weapons programmes et cetera.
10 Then if we go to 29, we come to some handwriting
11 with "Ian Watson -- Cluster bombs" at the top. Whose is
12 this document?
13 A. That is a document that Richard Whalley wrote in the
14 morning once he had heard the first piece on cluster
15 bombs. That was so he could tell the Minister, in
16 addition to the briefing he had already given him,
17 exactly what the allegations were.
18 Q. What time had Mr Watson started work? Was he on duty
19 that night then?
20 A. I do not know if he was on duty or not. It was him who
21 was putting the package together, so he would have been
22 in the studio working on it.
23 Q. The studio?
24 A. Presumably, yes.
25 Q. At the Today Programme?

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1 A. Yes.
2 Q. Accompanying the Minister?
3 A. No, sorry. Ian Watson is from the Today Programme.
4 This is -- sorry, this is Richard Whalley's note of
5 exactly what Ian Watson had put in his package that went
6 out -- was broadcast on the Today Programme the next
7 morning.
8 Q. Whose handwriting is this? This is Richard Whalley?
9 A. This is Richard's, yes.
10 Q. When did he make this note?
11 A. I have spoken to him. This is to the best of his
12 recollection, he is in Iraq at the moment so he could
13 not look at it, he made these notes once he heard the
14 first piece on cluster bombs in the morning. It is
15 possible he made it the night before when he spoke to
16 Ian Watson, but he does not think so because he would
17 have put that in the log.
18 Q. So Richard Whalley was on duty all night then?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. What time does the Today Programme start?
21 A. 6 o'clock.
22 Q. If you scroll down we can see there is a bit about
23 cluster bombs, mine action, tragedies of war, et cetera.
24 "WMD.
25 "None found: difficult task, 12 years".

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1 "Extensive searching...", reference to the jigsaw
2 again, "PM ... why Rumsfeld?"
3 A. Hmm, hmm.
4 Q. Then we can see this halfway down:
5 "Unnamed sources.
6 "Single source (corroborative) -- no expose.
7 "45 minutes.
8 "TB. Under threat.
9 "Went 2 war. Evidence ...", et cetera.
10 Do you know what that relates to?
11 A. Yes. This one is certainly -- Richard wrote the note
12 after he had heard the first two pieces on WMD that had
13 gone out on the programme the next morning. Also he has
14 got in there the denial that No. 10 put out as soon as
15 the piece had been broadcast.
16 Q. Where can we see the denial?
17 A. "No pressure [from] No. 10".
18 Q. No pressure; that is the No. 10 report?
19 A. Yes, I mean --
20 Q. This is Richard Whalley's handwriting again, is that?
21 A. Just to clarify, these are the notes he will have taken
22 over to the Minister -- this one certainly is -- in
23 order to brief him before he went on to the programme.
24 Q. Then finally at 31 we can see another document headed
25 "Directorate of news, Ministry of Defence.

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1 "WMD.
2 "No. 10.
3 "Allegation untrue.
4 "Not one word of dossier rewritten by No. 10.
5 "No pressure applied."
6 Whose note is that?
7 A. The note was actually written by Richard, which was when
8 No. 10 called him having heard the allegation in the
9 morning, to say that this is what they had already said
10 to the Today Programme so that Adam Ingram could
11 reiterate what No. 10 had said. The capital letter bit
12 in the middle is again Adam Ingram's notes before he
13 went onto the programme.
14 Q. If we scroll down a wee bit, you can see "Security
15 Services doc" appeared, certainly on the photocopy, to
16 be different handwriting, is that right?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. At the bottom it says "A Gilligan single source"; whose
19 handwriting is that again?
20 A. It is Adam Ingram's.
21 Q. That was made in the morning?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Did you have any other dealings, apart from your
24 telephone call with Mr Gilligan, you think at about
25 7.30, and you say you think you contacted Downing Street

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1 afterwards?
2 A. Well, either Richard or I did. I think it was probably
3 me, as I say, because Richard would have logged the
4 call.
5 Q. Did you have any other dealing in relation to the
6 broadcast that went out on the 29th May?
7 A. No. I left at about 7.45 and Richard followed it
8 through because he was on duty.
9 Q. So what was the next dealing that you had in relation to
10 this particular story?
11 A. I mean, I heard the piece, the Adam Ingram interview, at
12 8.10 the next morning. I rang No. 10 shortly
13 afterwards, I think, to say I thought the interview had
14 been quite hostile, but they were already putting in
15 a letter of complaint so we did not bother to write one
16 ourselves.
17 Q. Right. You would have complained that the questioning
18 was hostile?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Right. After hearing the piece and hearing the
21 Minister's performance and the questioning, did you have
22 anything further to do with this particular broadcast?
23 A. No, not until the next month when the Ben Bradshaw
24 interview was broadcast.
25 Q. We have heard and seen a copy of the transcript. That

144
1 appears to have been on Saturday 28th June; is that
2 right?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Were you contacted about that?
5 A. Yes. I did not hear the interview myself but I was
6 called by No. 10 press office and then our own press
7 office shortly afterwards.
8 Q. What did the No. 10 press office ask you or say to you?
9 A. They said: did you hear the piece? I said no. So they
10 explained what it was all about and the fact that
11 Andrew Gilligan said he had checked the story with me.
12 Q. Checked the?
13 A. The WMD story with me before it went out.
14 Q. What did you say to the No. 10 press office.
15 A. I was confused to start with because I had not heard the
16 piece, so I was not sure what they were all talking
17 about. I said I would double-check but he certainly did
18 not check it with me, but I wanted to be clear that he
19 had not checked it with Richard at some point later on
20 in the evening.
21 Our press office then rang me about five minutes
22 later I think, again on the Saturday morning. There
23 were two press officers there because it was a handover
24 period, as the Saturday person arrives and the Friday
25 person leaves on Saturday morning.

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1 Q. What time do you hand over at the press office?
2 A. Between 9 and 9.30. And it was Howard, I think -- there
3 were two people there who said that the other press
4 officer there had just had a call from Andrew, which was
5 quite bizarre.
6 Q. So what had happened on the Saturday morning?
7 A. The Ben Bradshaw interview had run. Andrew Gilligan had
8 called our press officer immediately after the interview
9 had run to say he wanted to put on record that he had
10 spoken to me and that is what he said. But he hung up
11 at that point and Liane did not know what he was talking
12 about.
13 Q. So what was your reaction to all this?
14 A. Well, initially I was quite confused. I asked the duty
15 press officer, which by this stage was Howard because he
16 had taken over.
17 Q. Howard?
18 A. Howard Rhodes. I asked him if he could go back and
19 double-check the logs, again to check that Andrew had
20 not spoken to anyone else. He checked the logs. I
21 spoke to Richard, who had been on duty, to make sure
22 that he had not spoken to him about it and then I went
23 back to No. 10 and said it was not right. Then
24 I discussed with No. 10 whether we should put out
25 a statement; my view was that we should. Then I spoke

146
1 to the Secretary of State's office and also to
2 Pam Teare --
3 Q. Yes.
4 A. -- and put together a statement from home.
5 Q. And what was the gist of that statement?
6 A. I mean, it was as I have said: I did speak to
7 Andrew Gilligan but the conversation was about cluster
8 bombs. He mentioned WMD when I asked him if there was
9 anything else running on the programme the next morning
10 but he did not, you know, put the specific allegations
11 to me. It was Andrew who said several times that it was
12 not a story for MoD, so to me that is not checking the
13 story with MoD.
14 Q. Right. We have seen some correspondence that then
15 ensued between the BBC and Mr Bradshaw and others. Were
16 you involved at all in that correspondence?
17 A. I was aware that Ben Bradshaw was going to write
18 a letter.
19 Q. Who told you that?
20 A. I think No. 10 told me that. Then some time on Saturday
21 afternoon there was a conference call between No. 10,
22 Ben Bradshaw and me. I cannot remember exactly who from
23 No. 10 was involved.
24 Q. Would that have been Mr Kelly or Mr Smith?
25 A. It may well have been, I cannot remember. It would be

147
1 unusual if neither of them were involved in the
2 conversation. And they basically read through what they
3 thought Ben Bradshaw should say in his letter to make
4 sure that it was actually correct in terms of what
5 I recalled the situation to be. I said it was and the
6 letter went.
7 Q. So Mr Bradshaw wrote. There was a response to that
8 letter?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. And were you involved at all in dealing with the
11 response?
12 A. I got a copy of the response from No. 10; and because
13 the times that the Today Programme said they had called
14 were all wrong so far as our log showed, our Secretary
15 of State, Geoff Hoon, wrote back to point out that the
16 calls did not sort of tally up, really.
17 Q. We have heard that there was, in fact, a meeting between
18 Mr Hoon and Mr Sambrook on 8th July. Were you a party
19 to that meeting?
20 A. Yes, I attended the meeting.
21 Q. What was said in relation to the giving of notice point?
22 A. I mean, I attended so I could tell Richard Sambrook
23 myself exactly what I had said. As I remember,
24 Richard Sambrook said he thought it was unusual that
25 Andrew Gilligan would call on somebody else's story

148
1 because it was Ian Watson who was putting the package
2 together. What I said was I did not know whether it was
3 unusual or not, but cluster bombs was a story that
4 Andrew Gilligan had certainly followed in the past and
5 when he was on the Sunday Telegraph he did a lot of
6 stuff on land mines and the Ottawa treaty. It would not
7 seem odd to me that we had a conversation about it
8 because we had so many conversations about it in the
9 past.
10 Q. You must have numerous conversations with journalists.
11 How many conversations a day do you have with
12 journalists?
13 A. It depends on what I am doing really, you know, or how
14 busy it is.
15 Q. On a busy day?
16 A. On a busy day, 20/30.
17 Q. You have not, for the reasons you have given, kept
18 a note of the conversation you had with Mr Gilligan.
19 How clear is your recollection of the conversation with
20 Mr Gilligan?
21 A. It is very clear. I mean, I went back and checked all
22 of my records, and the thing that reassured me about it
23 the most is if I had known at the time what the
24 allegation was when Richard spoke to No. 10, we would
25 have flagged it up to them but we did not do that. The

149
1 only reason we cannot have done that is because we did
2 not know about it.
3 Q. What had you flagged up to No. 10?
4 A. The main reason for ringing them was to let them know
5 that Adam Ingram was going on to the programme and to
6 tell them what he was talking about, but I also
7 mentioned that Andrew Gilligan was working on something
8 on WMD and the dodgy dossier because that was a story
9 for them, not for MoD.
10 Q. Can I then turn to your dealings with Dr Kelly? When
11 did you first become aware of Dr Kelly's name?
12 A. On Friday 4th July I was called over to a meeting at the
13 Permanent Secretary's office and shown a copy of the
14 letter that Dr Kelly had written to Bryan Wells.
15 Q. I think if we look at MoD/1/19 that is it; is that
16 right?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. We can scroll down. So you were called over to the
19 office. Who else was there?
20 A. Initially the Permanent Secretary and his private
21 secretary, and then a bit later on Martin Howard and
22 Richard Hatfield arrived.
23 Q. So that is Sir Kevin Tebbit; and who is the private
24 secretary?
25 A. Dominic Wilson.

150
1 Q. I think that is in fact your husband as well, is that
2 right?
3 A. It is, yes.
4 Q. Who else was there?
5 A. Initially it was -- I was called over because Pam was
6 not around to have a look at the letter and there was
7 nobody else there to start with.
8 Q. Is Pam Teare more senior than you?
9 A. Yes she is, she is my boss.
10 Q. She is your line manager and boss?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. What was discussed on 4th July?
13 A. Initially I was just told to have a read of the letter.
14 Q. So you read the letter?
15 A. I read the letter a couple of times. Then I had a brief
16 discussion with Sir Kevin and Dominic about what we
17 thought it meant in terms of whether this meant he was
18 the source or he was not the source. Of course, at that
19 point nobody really knew; and then, as I say,
20 Martin Howard and Richard Hatfield arrived. Richard had
21 just conducted an interview with Dr Kelly so we had
22 a meeting around the table about, you know, how the
23 interview had gone.
24 Q. And what was reported?
25 A. Richard said that on the basis of the interview he was

151
1 not at all convinced that he was the source. In fact,
2 he thought he probably was not. We had a discussion
3 about whether we all agreed with that. My view, and
4 Martin's view at the time, was that if that were the
5 case then it did not explain why in his FAC evidence
6 Andrew Gilligan had said he only had one source.
7 Q. Right. So it was your reading of Dr Kelly's letter that
8 there had been a meeting, put together with what you
9 knew Mr Gilligan had said to the Foreign Affairs
10 Committee?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Had you followed what Mr Gilligan had said to the
13 Foreign Affairs Committee?
14 A. No, not particularly. I was aware he was giving
15 evidence but no more than that. But when I was shown
16 the letter I was also given a copy of the transcript to
17 have a look at.
18 Q. Somebody had already downloaded or got a copy of
19 Mr Gilligan's transcript?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Do you know who had done that?
22 A. I do not know where it had come from but it was in the
23 Permanent Secretary's office.
24 Q. That is in Sir Kevin Tebbit's office?
25 A. In his outer office.

152
1 Q. In the area that he occupies. Was any view taken on
2 this Friday night -- this is Friday 4th July, is it not?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Was any view taken about what to do?
5 A. I mean, the view taken at the end of the meeting was
6 that we did not know -- we could not know whether or not
7 he was the source or not at that stage and, therefore,
8 we should alert David Omand, and a letter was drafted in
9 the course of the meeting, but there was not anything we
10 could or should do publicly.
11 We were also quite concerned that because the letter
12 said that Dr Kelly had himself realised that it was
13 possible he was the source because it had been flagged
14 up by somebody outside the department, and also that the
15 letter mentioned the recent and varied contact he had
16 had with journalists, that there was quite a strong
17 possibility that somebody would put two and two together
18 at some point, potentially quite quickly. So in the
19 meeting Richard and Martin had already put together
20 a draft reactive statement.
21 Q. Can I take you a document, which is CAB/1/49? This is
22 a document that is sent over on 7th July. If we go back
23 to CAB/1/48 we can see that it is sent over by fax on
24 the Monday saying:
25 "Two draft statements attached. One based on the

153
1 defensive lines prepared on Friday, the other reflects
2 further discussions today."
3 If I go back to 49, which is headed "version 1",
4 this appears to be the more defensive lines that have
5 been prepared. Do you recollect that?
6 A. Yes. It looks like the original version which Martin
7 and Richard put together, I think.
8 Q. Right. That original version --
9 LORD HUTTON: May I just ask you: in what circumstances did
10 you envisage that that statement might be issued,
11 Ms Wilson?
12 A. The only occasion on which we would issue it is if
13 journalists got the story from somewhere else and had
14 come to us asking for a response.
15 LORD HUTTON: Did you use the word "reactive" or
16 "defensive"?
17 A. Reactive.
18 LORD HUTTON: Reactive. Yes.
19 MR DINGEMANS: This statement does not give any details of
20 the official who has come forward. It just says "an
21 individual working ..."; is that right?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. And there is added in:
24 "He is not a member of the Intelligence Services or
25 Defence Intelligence Staff."

154
1 That, we have heard from Mr Howard, got added in on
2 the Monday.
3 Did you also work on some Q and A material?
4 A. Yes. While I was in the Permanent Secretary's office --
5 one of the reasons I was called over was to start
6 thinking about a Q and A pack, which is just a standard
7 bit of paper we have for anything that is newsworthy in
8 the press office really.
9 Q. What is the purpose of Q and A material?
10 A. We have hundreds of them at any one time. All it is is
11 a supplementary briefing, if an issue comes up, to try
12 to predict the sort of questions that journalists might
13 ask us.
14 Q. Rather like you had the cluster bomb material you could
15 pull out. Also I think you had something on WMD which
16 someone had prepared.
17 A. Exactly.
18 LORD HUTTON: Was this question and answer material, at this
19 stage, related to this reactive statement that you
20 prepared?
21 A. Yes. It was all -- because if the story had got out
22 then even if we put the statement out to people in
23 response to specific enquiries, we would still have had
24 follow up questions from journalists quite quickly. So
25 this was just the first draft at trying to predict what

155
1 those questions might have been.
2 LORD HUTTON: Would that question and answer material have
3 been used if the reactive statement had not been issued?
4 A. No, it would only be issued in support of a statement.
5 That is not always the case. Occasionally you would not
6 have a statement. But in this case we thought we would
7 need both because it would be a big story if it did
8 happen.
9 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you.
10 MR DINGEMANS: Can I take you to CAB/21/3? Someone has
11 written in the top right-hand corner of this, but it is
12 very cut off "Produced on the evening of 4.7.03".
13 Your version is probably as cut off as mine. The
14 Q and A material produced that evening says this:
15 "Who is the official?
16 "We are not prepared to name the individual
17 involved.
18 "Why not?
19 "We have released all the relevant details. There
20 is nothing to gain by revealing the name of the
21 individual who has come forward voluntarily.
22 "Can we interview the individual?
23 No.
24 "Is it a senior figure?
25 "It is not a member of the Senior Civil Service

156
1 (steer -- a middle ranking official)."
2 First of all, can I just deal with the first two
3 questions? At that stage, it looks as if no-one was
4 going to give Dr Kelly's name; is that right?
5 A. My view certainly at the time was we were never going to
6 volunteer the name unless at some point perhaps we could
7 have been sure it was definitely the source. But the
8 position from the very beginning was we were not in
9 a position to prevent the name getting out.
10 Q. There does not appear to be on this Q and A material,
11 prepared on 4th July, anything about: is the name
12 Dr Kelly?
13 A. No. A Q and A evolves -- this was just an early draft
14 that was not shown to anybody else. It was our first
15 stab at trying to put down on a bit of paper what the Q
16 and A was. If the story had broken over the weekend we
17 would have had to have spoken to a lot of people about
18 it before we could have used any of it. But it just
19 reflects the fact that, you know, we were asking
20 ourselves questions but we had not dwelt on it long
21 enough at that stage to get to the end of where we would
22 need to be and what questions we would be asked.
23 Q. Who was party to the preparation of this material on
24 4th July?
25 A. Myself and Pam Teare.

157
1 Q. Had you left Sir Kevin Tebbit's outer office at this
2 stage?
3 A. Sorry, yes. I e-mailed it to Pam's machine from
4 Sir Kevin's office and then went back to Pam's office
5 and worked on it with her there.
6 Q. So before you left Sir Kevin's office you were working
7 on it?
8 A. I was putting the questions together, yes, and a couple
9 of the answers I think.
10 Q. Who else was contributing at Sir Kevin's office?
11 A. Nobody.
12 Q. It was just you while the others were chatting in the
13 background?
14 A. It was before Richard and Martin arrived, after I had
15 read the statement and had a look at the FAC evidence.
16 I was just sitting down trying to think what the
17 questions might be that we would get asked.
18 Q. If one goes down the page, you pick up at the fourth
19 paragraph, as I said:
20 "Is it a senior figure?
21 "It is not a member of the Senior Civil Service
22 (steer -- a middle ranking official)."
23 Who was responsible for that proposed steer?
24 A. Sorry, I do not understand the question.
25 Q. Do you see the fourth question?

158
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. "Is it a senior figure?
3 "It is not a member of the Senior Civil Service
4 (steer -- a middle ranking official)."
5 That rather suggests not a member of the Senior
6 Civil Service and that, you know, in follow up
7 conversations you are going to steer the journalists to
8 believe he is a middle ranking official.
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Who was responsible for putting that "steer" in?
11 A. I cannot remember if it was me or Pam; it may well have
12 been me. The point of it was to make it clear that he
13 was not a junior official. One of the things that
14 journalists often like to establish, you know, for good
15 reason is exactly where in the hierarchy somebody fits
16 within a story. So if somebody's laptop has been stolen
17 you try to establish how important they were, therefore
18 what did they have on their laptop? It was that sort of
19 question I was trying to predict, but it was important
20 that people did not assume it was somebody very junior
21 as well.
22 Q. Did you know anything at all about Dr Kelly apart from
23 the letter you had read at this stage?
24 A. I knew that his boss was a grade 5, and I think I had
25 probably asked what grade he was and been told a sort of

159
1 6/7.
2 Q. You were told he was 6/7?
3 A. Something like that, yes.
4 Q. Who had told you that?
5 A. It would probably have been Martin. I cannot remember
6 but it was something that came up during the meeting.
7 Q. Martin being Mr Howard?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. If we go down the page a bit further, you can see this
10 question:
11 "Are you suggesting that Andrew Gilligan has
12 deliberately sexed up his story and twisted/exaggerated
13 the information he received?
14 "The MoD has drawn no conclusions and is not making
15 any suggestions. We have simply given the facts. Only
16 Mr Gilligan can know how he handled the information he
17 received.
18 "This is just spin -- you're releasing this
19 information in order to help clear the Government's
20 name?"
21 And then this comment:
22 "MoD did not break this story. We have today put
23 out a statement in response to clarify speculation."
24 We know, for whatever reason, that no-one actually
25 required the issuing of the statement over the weekend;

160
1 and we know, in fact, that the Ministry of Defence
2 issued the press statement on 8th July. Is it fair,
3 then, to think that when it was issued on 8th July and
4 the Ministry of Defence did break this story, that it
5 was spin in order to help clear the Government's name?
6 A. No, not at all. I mean, the reason that we put this
7 Q and A brief together was because we thought there was
8 a possibility that it would come out that weekend, which
9 would have been just before the FAC report was
10 published. What we needed to do was, you know,
11 establish, as far as possible, whether or not this was
12 the source of the story. We were not in a position to
13 put out a statement at all at that stage, but it
14 certainly was not spin. There was a danger, if we had
15 not said anything at all throughout, then the Government
16 would be accused of trying to cover up something that
17 was directly relevant to the FAC.
18 LORD HUTTON: Are you saying that the suggested answer, "The
19 MoD did not break this story", is to be related to the
20 point you made a short time ago that this would only
21 issue if the press broke the story themselves over the
22 weekend?
23 A. Yes.
24 LORD HUTTON: I see. Yes.
25 MR DINGEMANS: I think at the bottom it deals with the

161
1 suggestion of the cover up story, is that right:
2 "The letter was written on 30 June. Why did it take
3 a week to deal with it?"
4 Then you suggest some answers to be checked against
5 Dr Wells' recollection.
6 A. Yes, that is right.
7 Q. Did you have any further involvement over the weekend?
8 A. No direct involvement, only that I saw the Tom Baldwin
9 piece on the Saturday, which I thought was quite
10 interesting and, if anything, sort of put more pressure
11 on the Department.
12 Q. In what sense?
13 A. In what sense did it put more pressure on?
14 Q. In what sense was it both interesting and likely to
15 increase pressure?
16 A. I thought it was interesting because it quoted
17 unattributable BBC sources, but it was the first time
18 anyone had given any information out about who the
19 source might be. It seemed to me that was almost a sort
20 of watershed moment potentially and also suggested that
21 there was, you know, still a lot of interest in it.
22 Q. I have shown you the fax which sent two drafts of the
23 statement over to No. 10. That was CAB/1/48. This
24 appears to be sent over on 7th July. The first draft
25 was said to be defensive lines. The other reflects

162
1 "further discussions today" but requires "further
2 checking and represents a higher risk approach as we
3 cannot be sure that he is Gilligan's single source".
4 Can I go through 49 then to 50, which is version 2?
5 This is the higher risk approach --
6 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, Mr Dingemans, where are we at?
7 MR DINGEMANS: CAB/1/50:
8 "An individual working in the MoD has come
9 forward ...
10 "The official has volunteered that he had known
11 Mr Gilligan for some time.
12 "This individual was not 'one of the senior
13 officials in charge of drawing up the dossier'..."
14 He is not a member of the Intelligence Services.
15 Mr Gilligan raised the issue of the involvement of
16 Mr Campbell:
17 "The individual was not involved in the process, he
18 did not comment."
19 Mr Gilligan has made it clear he only had one
20 source. It said this:
21 "From the account we have received from the MoD
22 official, this leads us to conclude that either there
23 was more than one source, or Mr Gilligan misled his
24 employers about the information the MoD official
25 discussed with him.

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1 We assume the Intelligence and Security Committee
2 will take this into account..."
3 That was a higher risk version. Do you know who
4 produced that? Had you been party to producing that on
5 7th July?
6 A. It is based on the version that Pam and I were working
7 on on Monday night, but I do not recognise the final
8 bit.
9 Q. There are various bits which appear to have been added
10 in. We can see some handwriting at the bottom; and 51
11 and 52 there is more handwriting, and 53. Some of that
12 we have heard about from Mr Powell and Mr Campbell and
13 I think Mr Smith and Mr Kelly as to who was responsible
14 for that.
15 The next draft of the statement appears on 8th July
16 at CAB/1/68. This is 9.16 in the morning. That is on
17 Godric Smith's computer. We know, from the evidence,
18 that he is at No. 10. You can see:
19 "Dominic..."
20 That is obviously to Dominic Wilson:
21 "This is a revise of version 2 reordering a bit with
22 a different penultimate para which asks the question but
23 doesn't point the finger. Grateful if you could forward
24 to Pam."
25 That must be Pam Teare, is that right?

164
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. "Let me know how things progress."
3 CAB/1/69 is the statement. That says:
4 "The individual is an expert on WMD but is not
5 a member of the Intelligence Services or a member of the
6 Defence Intelligence Staff."
7 It then goes on to deal with what is said.
8 We have heard of various discussions that took place
9 during the day and drafting of the press statement.
10 CAB/1/63 appears to be the next version we get on
11 8th July. Were you involved in looking at that press
12 statement that had been faxed over or e-mailed over from
13 No. 10 on the morning of 8th July?
14 A. No. I was not involved on 8th July until we actually
15 put the statement out.
16 Q. Right. Well, this appears to be getting closer to the
17 final version.
18 Then at CAB/1/70 we get a document that is saved on
19 Mr Smith's machine at 4.35. You were not party to any
20 of that; is that right?
21 A. No.
22 Q. The press statement is issued. In fact, because I have
23 got confused before about which was the right press
24 statement, can I take you to FAC/1/9, which is what the
25 Foreign Affairs Committee say is the right one, so that

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1 I can be sure, because there are various changes. When
2 did you see the press statement that was actually
3 issued?
4 A. I saw it just after 5 o'clock, when Pam Teare came back
5 with the final version of the statement and the final
6 version of the Q and A -- sorry, came back to the press
7 office.
8 Q. Does this look like the final version that was issued?
9 A. Yes, it does.
10 Q. And you can see:
11 "The individual is an expert on WMD..."
12 Which we have had before:
13 "... who has advised Ministers on WMD and whose
14 contribution to the dossier of September 2002 was to
15 contribute towards drafts of historical accounts of UN
16 inspections. He is not 'one of the senior officials in
17 charge of drawing up the dossier'. He is not a member
18 of the Intelligence Services or the Defence Intelligence
19 Staff."
20 Do you know who had been responsible for inserting
21 the greater detail about Dr Kelly or his role?
22 A. No, I do not.
23 Q. Did you not consider whether or not this was likely to
24 lead to an identification of Dr Kelly, giving quite
25 a degree of detail about his role?

166
1 A. I mean, I was not involved in considering the final
2 version; but I mean, you know, the point from the outset
3 was that it seemed to be only a matter of time before
4 somebody put 2 and 2 together, and we were not in
5 a position to prevent his name coming out.
6 Q. No, but do you agree there is a difference between not
7 preventing someone's name coming out and giving it
8 a healthy push?
9 A. I do agree with that; but I mean, it was a small field
10 to start with.
11 Q. I have shown you the Q and A material I think you said
12 you worked on on the Friday night.
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. The next version of the Q and A material we have is at
15 CAB/21/5. This is said to have been sent to the PUS
16 office at 8.07 on 8th July, subject to discussion and
17 approval.
18 You can see, three lines down:
19 "Is it X (the wrong name)?
20 "No.
21 "Is it X (the right name)?
22 "If the correct name is put to us from a number of
23 callers, we will need to tell the individual we are
24 going to confirm his name before doing so."
25 Did you see this material on the morning of

167
1 8th July?
2 A. I think this is the material that we were working on on
3 the evening of the Monday, so I saw it then.
4 Q. Who else was working on the material in the evening on
5 the Monday?
6 A. It was just me and Pam again.
7 Q. We know the final version, as it ends up in the final
8 version -- perhaps we can just leave that on screen --
9 but in the final version it says: we will confirm the
10 correct name if given. Do you know who was responsible
11 from the change from "Is it X..." to "We will confirm
12 the correct name if given"?
13 A. No, I do not.
14 Q. From what you have said it must have been you or
15 Ms Teare, is that right?
16 A. Sorry, I thought you were talking about the final
17 version.
18 Q. Yes, the final version of the Q and A material. You are
19 working on it on 8th July, is that right?
20 A. No, on the 7th, on the evening of the 7th July.
21 Q. Did you work on it after the evening of the 7th July?
22 A. No, I did not.
23 LORD HUTTON: You were not concerned with either the
24 statement or the question and answer material until just
25 a little before the statement was put out on the late

168
1 afternoon of 8th July; is that your evidence?
2 A. I was working on other things. Pam was working on this
3 and she came back with both final versions.
4 MR DINGEMANS: She came to you with effectively, as far as
5 you were concerned, a fait accompli, because she is your
6 boss and: here is the press statement and here is the
7 Q and A material.
8 A. Yes, they were the final versions.
9 Q. The final draft version you were working on on Monday,
10 7th July was pretty close to this type of material, is
11 that right?
12 A. I think this was it.
13 Q. Right. By this stage you have obviously decided that
14 a question you have to anticipate -- and that is the
15 point of the Q and A material, is it not, to anticipate
16 questions? A question you have to anticipate is: is it
17 Dr Kelly?
18 A. Yes. And other names as well.
19 Q. You have decided: "Is it other names?" "No." "Is it
20 Dr Kelly?" "We will need to tell the individual we are
21 confirming his name before doing so."
22 Why had you put that in as a draft answer?
23 A. Sorry, the second, is it the correct name?
24 Q. Yes.
25 A. At the time we did not know that Dr Kelly had already

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1 had a discussion about the fact that his name was
2 likely, almost inevitable, to come out once the
3 statement had been put out. Not because that was the
4 position --
5 Sorry, if I start again. Because the statement
6 would accelerate, you know, the interest in the story,
7 and people that might have put two and two together at
8 some point would probably put two and two together more
9 quickly once the statement had gone out.
10 Q. So what is the difference between Monday 7th July when
11 you are drafting it, and Tuesday 8th July when it is
12 decided, not by you but by others, that Dr Kelly is not
13 going to be contacted before his name is confirmed?
14 A. He had already been told that his name was likely to
15 come out. This was before that had happened or before
16 we knew that had happened. That conversation we would
17 have had once the correct name was put to us had already
18 happened with Richard Hatfield.
19 LORD HUTTON: That was the meeting on the afternoon of
20 7th July?
21 A. Yes.
22 MR DINGEMANS: When were you drafting this material?
23 A. On the evening of the 7th.
24 Q. Which was after the interview anyway?
25 A. We did not know the outcome of it or any detail of it at

170
1 the time.
2 Q. You were no party to the interview or any discussions
3 after it?
4 A. No, but I mean, Pam was in the lead on the issue. But,
5 you know, we understood what the discussion had been
6 about and the fact we would have to put out a statement
7 and his name was almost certain to get out was part of
8 that discussion.
9 Q. Is there a distinction between a name coming out and
10 your employer giving out your name to the correct
11 question, so far as you are concerned?
12 A. Sorry, can you say the question again?
13 Q. You are a member of the Civil Service. Do you think
14 there is a distinction between your employer confirming
15 your name in answer to the correct question and your
16 name, as it were, just coming out because press have
17 identified it through other sources?
18 A. There is a distinction; but I think, you know, as
19 a press officer the thing that we were keen to do was
20 (a) to prevent the wrong name being put all across the
21 papers, but also to try and encourage media to come to
22 us rather than go direct to Dr Kelly. If we were -- if
23 our Q and A did actually provide some information,
24 journalists were more likely to come to us.
25 Do not forget, there were a lot of journalists that

171
1 did not -- well, there was certainly Nick Rufford who
2 did not need the Q and A material or the statement in
3 order to identify Dr Kelly, he had already done so.
4 Q. He said, in evidence, that he thought it was and then
5 was going up to try to confirm that.
6 Can I then take you on to the 8th July? You are
7 there and you are presented with the final version of
8 the press statement and the final version of the Q and A
9 material. Do you have any conversations with Dr Kelly
10 at all on 8th July?
11 A. Not at that point. I knew that Richard Hatfield had
12 just cleared the statement, which is why we were then in
13 a position to put it out. I was going to speak to him
14 once it had gone out and we had had some response to it,
15 to let him know what the response was.
16 Q. When did you in fact speak to him?
17 A. I think it was 8.26 that evening.
18 LORD HUTTON: I missed that.
19 A. Sorry, my Lord, 8.26.
20 LORD HUTTON: 8.26, yes.
21 MR DINGEMANS: On the evening of the ...?
22 A. Of the 8th.
23 Q. What did you say to him?
24 A. Well, I had two calls with him; both of them were very
25 brief. The first call he said he was out walking and

172
1 could I call him back, so I called him back about
2 20 minutes later and I said that we had put the
3 statement out. I wanted to make sure he had my contact
4 numbers. He said he did not have anything to write with
5 so he could not take my number down, so I asked him if
6 he had the number for the duty press officer which he
7 said he did. I said: we have had a lot of follow up
8 questions. He did not ask me what they were. I said:
9 you do need to think about alternative accommodation.
10 I asked him if there was anything he wanted from me and
11 he said no. That was also a brief conversation.
12 LORD HUTTON: Did he have any reaction when you said he
13 should think about alternative accommodation?
14 A. I mean, he acknowledged the comment but he did not
15 actually say anything other than sort of "yes" or "hmm"
16 or something like that.
17 MR DINGEMANS: Did you tell him that a decision had been
18 taken to confirm his name if the correct name was given?
19 A. No, I do not think I did. The conversation was about
20 how to handle what I thought was inevitable at some
21 point, which would be that media would come direct to
22 him, and if that were to happen then he should put them
23 on to me or on to the press office. It was about
24 directly handling the media himself.
25 Q. Did you offer him accommodation or you just said he

173
1 ought to go and stay with friends?
2 A. I did not offer him accommodation. My view is always
3 that it is better to go and stay with family or friends
4 than, you know, go to a hotel or something, and that is
5 what I recommended to him.
6 Q. How did he sound at that time?
7 A. I mean, he was not surprised by anything I said. He
8 seemed very calm.
9 Q. Did you have any other conversations with Dr Kelly?
10 A. I spoke to him on the next day, on the 9th, which was
11 after his name had been confirmed. He actually called
12 me, although I was about to call him to ask if he wanted
13 a press officer to go to his house.
14 Q. So what time was that conversation?
15 A. The conversation on the 9th?
16 Q. Yes.
17 A. That was 8 o'clock.
18 Q. 8 o'clock. We have heard evidence that Mrs Kelly
19 believed that the call was made to Dr Kelly.
20 A. I mean, I do not think it can have been, assuming it
21 came from the press office, because I was the only
22 person with his number.
23 Q. You phoned him or he phoned you?
24 A. He phoned me at 8 o'clock.
25 LORD HUTTON: Before you phoned Dr Kelly, did you phone

174
1 Dr Wells?
2 A. I spoke to the Permanent Secretary's office once I knew
3 that the name had been confirmed, so that someone in the
4 Permanent Secretary's office could get Dr Wells to give
5 him a ring.
6 LORD HUTTON: Yes. And you did that before you rang
7 Dr Kelly yourself?
8 A. I did not ring Dr Kelly. He called me.
9 LORD HUTTON: I should have said: before you were about to
10 ring Dr Kelly.
11 A. Yes.
12 LORD HUTTON: I see.
13 MR DINGEMANS: When did you ring Dr Wells? Do you remember
14 what time that was?
15 A. I did not ring Dr Wells myself because I did not have
16 his mobile number. I asked the Permanent Secretary's
17 office to ring.
18 Q. When did you ring the Permanent Secretary's office
19 asking them to call Dr Wells?
20 A. It would have been about quarter past 6.
21 Q. What time was Dr Kelly's name first confirmed?
22 A. I heard that it was first confirmed at about 6 o'clock.
23 Q. Did anyone think of ringing and telling Dr Kelly this?
24 A. Yes, that is why I rang the Permanent Secretary's
25 office, to make sure somebody was doing that.

175
1 Q. And do you know what process was followed to notify
2 Dr Kelly?
3 A. I knew that Dominic was going to get hold of Bryan Wells
4 to get him to make the call, because however inevitable
5 being in the media spotlight is, you know, it is never
6 pleasant. Dr Kelly had not wanted to discuss anything
7 particular with me the night before, so I thought if he
8 did have any concerns they would probably be better
9 coming to Bryan than to me.
10 Q. What did Dr Kelly say to you at 8 o'clock?
11 A. He was ringing specifically to tell me that
12 Nick Rufford -- I thought it was a phone call at the
13 time, I learned on Sunday that he had actually been to
14 the house. He said that Nick Rufford had been in
15 contact with him and asked him why he was not now in a
16 hotel. He was now minded to go to family and friends
17 and he would be heading to the West Country, but he
18 would let me know where he was when he got there.
19 Q. How did he sound at that time?
20 A. Again, he still sounded calm.
21 Q. Did he say that anyone had actually told him, before he
22 had seen Mr Rufford, that his name had been confirmed?
23 A. He did not say and I did not specifically ask him
24 because, you know, we were dealing with the fact that
25 Nick Rufford had already been in contact with him.

176
1 I did say that I confirmed that other journalists had
2 got the name.
3 Q. And how long did your conversation with Dr Kelly last?
4 A. I do not know. I mean, it was again very short. All
5 three conversations were all very short.
6 Q. There is a document dated 9th July at MoD/31/19. Do you
7 know what this document is?
8 A. Yes, that is an extract from my notebook from the 9th.
9 Q. Right. If we scroll down that, does it have anything to
10 do with Dr Kelly?
11 A. No, no. I mean, the first issue was a member of the
12 public that had rang -- sorry, that had called me. And
13 the second was a journalist who had called saying that
14 he understood that the 45 minutes claim had come from an
15 MI6 agent and therefore could not have come from
16 somebody that did not work in the SIS. That was the
17 only call I made a note of because it was the only thing
18 that was not covered in the Q and A. I did not know
19 whether or how to answer it.
20 Q. At the bottom, the journalist appears to have asked: how
21 could he have known that if he did not get it from the
22 source? And surely this: did he have access to the MI6
23 documents?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Over the page at MoD/31/20, is this also from your

177
1 notebook?
2 A. Yes, this is the next page of my notebook.
3 Q. What is the last entry referring to?
4 A. The last entry, which I think must have been the next
5 day because at that stage the FAC had not asked for
6 Dr Kelly, I do not think -- but that is from
7 a journalist at Sky News.
8 Q. That is on 9th July, in the evening. Had you attended
9 any discussions earlier on in the day relating to
10 Dr Kelly and press announcements?
11 A. The only meeting that I had attended was the standard
12 No. 10 8.30 meeting, which is a meeting of all press
13 people from different Government departments.
14 Q. What had been discussed there about the MoD press
15 statement which had gone out on 8th July?
16 A. I mean, the discussion was primarily about the fact that
17 the BBC had issued a statement shortly afterwards, and
18 the BBC statement had sort of confused us slightly,
19 I suppose, because it said, to start off with, that
20 their source did not work in the MoD, which seemed to be
21 a fairly categoric piece of proof that it could not be
22 the same person. But the statement ended by saying: we
23 do not know whether it is the same person or not. So we
24 talked about the implications of that statement.
25 Q. Was there any discussion about whether or not to say, as

178
1 a result of that: well, Dr Kelly actually does work for
2 the MoD but he is paid for by another Department?
3 A. Yes, there was discussion about whether we could make
4 that point or whether we should make that point, and
5 also whether it was relevant to make the point that
6 specialists in particular areas often advise more than
7 one department or agency.
8 Q. What was the point of making those points?
9 A. Well, we were very confused by the BBC statement. As
10 I say, on the one hand it seemed to be a categorical
11 denial that it could be the same person, but at the end
12 it seemed to be a non-denial denial, is what I would
13 call it. It was whether or not there was more
14 information that would be relevant to that specific
15 point; we were getting asked questions about it.
16 Q. Is that why the Prime Minister's official spokesman in
17 the afternoon of 9th July gave -- I will not take you to
18 it, if that is all right -- far more details about
19 Dr Kelly saying: in fact, he was employed by the
20 Ministry of Defence but paid for by another Department.
21 There were very few people. Is that the reason that
22 that was given out to journalists?
23 A. I mean, I can only speak from the MoD perspective but
24 from our perspective we were getting asked the question:
25 does this mean he cannot possibly be the same person?

179
1 The actual answer to that was: not necessarily, no. We
2 were being asked a specific question; we needed to be
3 able to say something about it.
4 Q. At this stage you have done what was perceived to be
5 necessary, declared that a person had come forward. The
6 BBC had clarified the matter. Why was there a need to
7 give further detail and information which, as we know,
8 journalists used to help identify Dr Kelly, because
9 Mr Blitz went along to the Prime Minister's official
10 spokesman's lobby briefing and said that he got the
11 distinct impression that further details were being
12 given out which inspired him to make further
13 investigations. Why was that?
14 A. It was not my decision to do it but, as I understand it,
15 (a) we had to come up with an answer to the question we
16 were being asked and the question was: does this mean it
17 could not possibly be the same person? But (b) the
18 additional information that was being given out did not
19 particularly narrow down the field, I do not think.
20 Q. Can I just take you, very briefly, to MoD/32/46, which
21 I think is the beginning of the log. It goes up the
22 page, as it were, in time order. It is the beginning of
23 the logs on 8th July, dealing with contact in relation
24 to Dr Kelly; is that right?
25 A. Yes.

180
1 Q. If we go back to 45, and then to 44, we can see that at
2 18.10, it is about five entries down: Paul Sykes, the
3 press officer; caller, Kate Wilson:
4 "The FT have the name of the person from MoD who was
5 Gilligan contact."
6 That is the first noting, is it?
7 Then Mr Norton-Taylor for the Guardian:
8 "I have the name: Is it Dr David Kelly?"
9 "Confirmed name is correct."
10 Those are the details of the noting.
11 Then it appears to be No. 10, Paul Sykes:
12 "Has Dr Kelly been told that he is to become
13 a public figure and what arrangements are in hand to
14 protect him?
15 "Advised that I was sure Kate would have considered
16 this. Rang Kate to make sure."
17 Do you recall that conversation?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. What arrangements had been made for Dr Kelly by this
20 time?
21 A. It is the arrangement that we would always make, which
22 is that we have a press officer on standby to go to his
23 house if needed, and if indeed he was going to stay in
24 the house. The normal arrangement is that -- or the
25 normal way it works is that once a journalist has got

181
1 the correct name they then work through the electoral
2 register, come up with all the people of the same name,
3 in this case David Kelly, and then it takes them another
4 couple of hours to work out which one it is and where he
5 lives. So that was the arrangement we were working on.
6 Q. Was not a problem with the Q and A material this: that
7 you were just never going to know exactly when
8 Dr Kelly's name was going to be confirmed?
9 A. Well, I mean, it comes back to the sort of point that
10 first of all we were trying to encourage journalists to
11 come to us with names rather than go anywhere else, so
12 that we knew if they were going to run the name in the
13 paper the next day, but that we could never prevent
14 journalists from ringing Dr Kelly direct if they
15 suspected that he was the source. So what we were
16 trying to do was encourage people to come to us so that
17 we had advance notice, so that we could get our press
18 officer up to him if he chose to stay in the house.
19 Q. But if his name was inevitably going to come out, why
20 was it not done by the Ministry of Defence who would
21 then have been able to answer all the follow up
22 questions: he will not be contacted; he will not be
23 interviewed; he has gone away to an undisclosed
24 location, rather than have a situation where from
25 Mrs Kelly's evidence he felt, so it is said, betrayed

182
1 that the Ministry of Defence had confirmed his name?
2 A. Well, I mean, the point in terms of, so that nobody
3 could get in contact with him -- journalists already had
4 his number, we knew that, so we were not in a position
5 to stop journalists from calling him direct. All we
6 could do was try to encourage them to come to us, which
7 is what we did.
8 Q. And encouraging them by giving a series of draft answers
9 which provided quite a lot of information?
10 A. There was certainly some information provided, but they
11 were legitimate factual questions. What we did not do
12 was give clues, which has been suggested. There were
13 plenty of questions that we were asked that would have
14 been clues that we refused to answer, because we were
15 sticking to legitimate factual questions.
16 Q. Is there anything else surrounding the circumstances of
17 Dr Kelly's death that you can assist his Lordship with?
18 A. No, I do not think so.
19 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much. I think we will rise for
20 a short time now, to give the stenographers 5 minutes.
21 (3.30 pm)
22 (Short Break)
23 (3.35 pm)
24 MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, I have in fact just been asked to
25 elicit a few more pieces of information.

183
1 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
2 MR DINGEMANS: Did anyone ask for any clues? We have looked
3 at the press log. Did any journalists ever ask for any
4 clues over the course of that afternoon when you were
5 being asked questions?
6 A. The afternoon of the 9th?
7 Q. Yes.
8 A. Yes, various journalists asked for various bits of
9 information. Examples are: what were his initials; what
10 does he look like; does his name rhyme with anyone in
11 the press office's name?
12 Q. What was your response to those questions?
13 A. We refused to answer them.
14 Q. How many names were put to you by The Times, for
15 example?
16 A. Mike Evans says it was 20, which is possible, but it
17 seemed certainly lower than that to me, and they were
18 not all put to me in a great long list; it was three
19 names at one point during the afternoon, then in the
20 evening another two, then perhaps another three.
21 Q. When you had been told that the correct name had been
22 put and confirmed, were other journalists still calling?
23 A. Particularly The Times, who called me probably another
24 three or four times after I knew that the FT and the
25 Guardian had got the name. At one point I said to

184
1 Pam Teare: this is stupid, I am being pestered, can I
2 not just give them the name, it is already out? Pam
3 said: no, absolutely not. So I did not give the name
4 out .
5 Q. In the Q and A material describing Dr Kelly as "not a
6 member of the Senior Civil Service", is there anything
7 else you wanted to say in relation to that?
8 A. I mean, the only thing that I wanted to say is it has
9 clearly been taken as a slur, and what I was trying to
10 get across by saying -- you know, the steer about middle
11 ranking was to make the point he was not a junior
12 official. It was not intended as a slur, it was just
13 intended to give people an indication of where in the
14 hierarchy he was. The statement itself did make the
15 point, you know, that he was an expert in his field.
16 Q. On 9th July you have told us that Dr Kelly called you.
17 Had you planned to call him at any stage yourself?
18 A. Yes. Sorry, I meant to call him as soon as I had got
19 Howard ready to go to his house, to make sure he wanted
20 somebody to go to his house.
21 Q. Howard?
22 A. Sorry, Howard Rhodes, who was the senior press officer.
23 Q. After the meeting on 9th July in the morning with the
24 Prime Minister's official spokesman, was there any
25 follow up to that meeting with the Foreign Office?

185
1 A. Yes. I mean, it was taken away as an action for the
2 Foreign Office representative to go and check, because
3 it was the Foreign Office who paid the salary, although
4 we did not know whether or not they would say that or
5 they should say that. We did not think they would, and
6 indeed they did not in the end. But it was for the
7 Foreign Office to decide whether or not that information
8 could be used in some format. So Ian went away to check
9 it.
10 Q. And they came back and said: no. Do you know what the
11 result of the Foreign Office checking was?
12 A. I mean, I assume that the result was the briefing that
13 Tom gave in Lobby that afternoon. But, I mean, because
14 time was running out, originally I thought they wanted
15 something for the morning Lobby, which is at 11 o'clock,
16 so Ian Gleeson went direct back to No. 10, rather than
17 coming through me.
18 MR DINGEMANS: Thank you very much.
19 LORD HUTTON: Yes, Mr Gompertz.
20 Cross-examination by MR GOMPERTZ
21 Q. Ms Wilson, you had Dr Kelly's home telephone number on
22 the evening of the 8th?
23 A. I had his mobile number.
24 Q. Mobile only?
25 A. Yes.

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1 Q. You did not have his home number?
2 A. No.
3 Q. Did you try to get it?
4 A. No, I did not need it.
5 Q. Very well. At any rate, you had it available to you,
6 did you, on the evening of the 9th?
7 A. His mobile number?
8 Q. Yes.
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. We know that the first identification of him was made at
11 about 5.30; right?
12 A. Between 5.30 and 6 o'clock, yes.
13 Q. We have heard about 5.30. It was not communicated to
14 you that that had happened until 6 o'clock, are you
15 saying?
16 A. It was about 6 o'clock, yes.
17 Q. Were you not in the MoD press office?
18 A. Yes, I was.
19 Q. How come it took nearly half an hour, or whatever the
20 time lag was, before you were even told of an
21 identification?
22 A. Because the first -- the FT, who were the first
23 journalists to get the name, spoke to Pam Teare direct.
24 Her office is right at the other end of the corridor and
25 her phone was ringing permanently. I went in to see her

187
1 about 6 and she told me straight away that the FT had
2 got the name, and straight away I told the duty press
3 officer and the Permanent Secretary's office.
4 Q. Did she have no means of telling you that there had been
5 a positive identification?
6 A. I mean, her phone was going constantly, so it was when
7 I walked in that I learnt that.
8 Q. Was there no other means of her telephoning you? Only
9 one phone, is that what it is? No internal phone or
10 anything?
11 A. I mean, there is not an internal phone. At that time of
12 night her assistant would have gone home anyway.
13 Q. Well, all right. Let us take it that there was that
14 time delay. Why did you not immediately telephone to
15 Dr Kelly?
16 A. Well, because, as I have said, I had spoken to him the
17 night before and he did not seem to want to have
18 a particularly prolonged conversation with me. Being in
19 the media spotlight is never pleasant, even if you are
20 expecting it, so I thought it would be better to come
21 from his line manager.
22 Q. I dare say he would not have minded knowing that he had
23 been identified as the source. Did that thought cross
24 your mind?
25 A. That is why I, you know, put in train for him to be

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1 informed by what I thought was the most appropriate
2 person.
3 Q. Why not phone him immediately yourself?
4 A. The reason I did was, as I said, because I thought it
5 was better he heard what to anybody would be fairly bad
6 news from his line manager.
7 Q. Had you taken the trouble to get his line manager's
8 number in advance?
9 A. No, I had not got his line manager's number, but I spoke
10 to somebody that did have it.
11 Q. Why not? You were supposed to be helping him out, were
12 you not?
13 A. Sorry, helping out Dr Kelly?
14 Q. Yes.
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Why had you not got the means of communicating with his
17 line manager, if that was the appropriate method of
18 communication?
19 A. Well, I spoke immediately to the Permanent Secretary's
20 office, who did have his mobile number, who spoke to him
21 straightaway.
22 Q. When did you speak to Dr Wells?
23 A. Sorry, I did not speak to Dr Wells because I wanted to
24 carry on getting Howard ready to go. I asked for the
25 Permanent Secretary's office to speak to Dr Kelly.

189
1 Q. We can hear in due course from Dr Wells whether that
2 happened, but did it occur to you to, after that,
3 enquire whether any contact had been made with Dr Kelly?
4 A. I mean, I was focusing on getting Howard ready to go to
5 his house. I knew that he had my number if he needed
6 it. I was going to ring him as soon as Howard was
7 ready, to say, you know: Howard is on his way if you
8 want him.
9 Q. It might have been suggested the obvious thing to do was
10 for you to telephone Dr Kelly immediately, as you had
11 telephoned him the night before. Why could you not do
12 that?
13 A. I could have done that. As I have said, what I thought
14 was better was to hear what would in any circumstances
15 be bad news from somebody he knew.
16 Q. Right, well, I do not wish to labour the point, but in
17 fact you never telephoned him until he telephoned you.
18 A. I was about to telephone him when he called me.
19 Q. Let me go on to something else.
20 Is it right, as you have told us, I think, that you
21 were involved in the first draft of the Q and A material
22 which is CAB/21/3?
23 A. Yes, I was involved in that.
24 Q. Yes. I am not going to take you through it, but you can
25 see at the top the first question, the answer:

190
1 "We are not prepared to name the individual
2 involved."
3 And the second question:
4 "There is nothing to gain by revealing the name of
5 the individual who has come forward voluntarily."
6 Right?
7 A. Hmm, hmm.
8 Q. You and Ms Teare put that in of your own initiative, did
9 you?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Because you thought that was appropriate?
12 A. Yes. I mean, as I have said, it is an early draft.
13 These things evolve over time.
14 Q. Yes. Can you look, please, at CAB/21/5? This is the
15 draft that was reworked, I think you have told us, in
16 the evening of Monday 7th July; right?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. We can see what is endorsed at the top. It was
19 evidently ready certainly by 8 o'clock on Tuesday
20 morning. Would you like to look at just two questions
21 there? The fourth one down asks:
22 "Is it X (ie the wrong name)?"
23 Answer:
24 "No."
25 "Is it X (ie the correct name)?

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1 "If the correct name is put to us from a number of
2 callers, we will need to tell the individual we are
3 going to confirm his name before doing so."
4 Did you put that question and answer in of your own
5 volition?
6 A. I cannot remember who of Pam or I put in which bits. We
7 were working on it together.
8 Q. What are you saying, that it was either you or Ms Teare
9 who put that question and answer in this draft; is that
10 what you are saying?
11 A. It was Pam and I who worked on that document, yes.
12 Q. Why was there such a change in approach from that which
13 you had thought proper to adopt on the first draft?
14 A. Well, I mean, I was not involved in the -- sorry, from
15 the first draft?
16 Q. Yes. You have just told us that you were responsible
17 for producing, with Pam Teare, the draft which we looked
18 at -- if you want to see it again, by all means,
19 CAB/21/3 -- the draft that was produced on the evening
20 of Friday 4th July.
21 A. Hmm.
22 Q. Yes?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. There is a very considerable difference in the approach
25 to the naming of the individual between that draft and

192
1 the one which you worked on on the evening of Monday,
2 7th. I would like to know, please, why it was that that
3 change took place?
4 A. I mean, you know, a Q and A evolves over time. It is
5 not something that you start with and you have one
6 finished document. You go away and you think about it,
7 you try to predict the questions you are likely to get
8 asked by journalists. By Monday night we were asking
9 the question: what we will do when names get put to us?
10 What we will do if the wrong name gets put to us? We
11 were never in a position to prevent Dr Kelly's name
12 coming out but we were in a position to prevent other
13 people's names coming out.
14 Q. So, are you saying this: that the responsibility in the
15 MoD for the decision as to whether somebody should be
16 named or not is left to the press office; is that the
17 position?
18 A. No, not at all. This is a second draft, this is not the
19 final version.
20 Q. Right. Perhaps you better look at the final version,
21 even though, as I understand it, you did not have
22 anything to do with it. MoD/1/62, please. You see
23 there has been a change to the wording used in the
24 question 2:
25 "We wouldn't normally volunteer a name."

193
1 But after that:
2 "If the correct name is given, we can confirm
3 it...", and so on.
4 Is this what you are saying: that you and Ms Teare
5 were responsible for changing the approach from not
6 making any revelation as to the name to what we can see
7 and have seen on 21/5, that you will name the individual
8 if he is identified, and you have confirmed the name
9 with the person involved; but you and Ms Teare were
10 responsible for that policy, were you?
11 A. I was involved in the first two versions but not the
12 third version. It was only the third version that
13 needed to be cleared, because that was the final
14 version, and that is what happened.
15 Q. Right. And that what you and Ms Teare had drafted was
16 subsequently, without your knowledge, adopted by whoever
17 was responsible for the final draft?
18 A. As I have said, a Q and A evolves. It just happens that
19 in the final version I was not working on it. Pam was
20 working on it with Martin Howard, and it was
21 subsequently cleared with the Permanent Secretary. But
22 as I have said, it evolved and this is the final
23 version.
24 Q. One other matter: I wonder if you could look, please, at
25 MoD/31/16, which I understand is the log of calls made

194
1 to the press office. We see, working up the page, that
2 the last call recorded for the 8th is 22.37. The first
3 one that we have on this document for the 9th is at
4 5 minutes to 6 in the evening of the 9th. Why is that?
5 Were there no calls during the day?
6 A. No. The purpose of the duty log is so that the duty
7 press officer can log what has happened overnight so
8 that everybody else coming in in the morning is
9 instantly up to speed on what has happened overnight.
10 It is not a day log, it is just for the night time.
11 MR GOMPERTZ: I see. I have misunderstood the nature of the
12 document. It would not be the first time.
13 That is all that I want to ask. Thank you, my Lord.
14 LORD HUTTON: Now Ms Rogers, thank you.
15 Cross-examination by MS ROGERS
16 Q. I want to ask you about the calls to the MoD on
17 28th May.
18 A. Okay.
19 Q. You first met or came into contact with Andrew Gilligan
20 when you were a junior press officer at the MoD?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. He at that point was at a newspaper The Telegraph?
23 A. The Sunday Telegraph.
24 Q. Then you go away to the Home Office and come back as
25 chief press officer at the MoD.

195
1 A. I was in MoD for four years, then I went to the Home
2 Office for two, and then I came back last July.
3 Q. When you come back, he is defence and diplomatic
4 correspondent on the Today Programme?
5 A. He was actually on the Today Programme before I left
6 MoD.
7 Q. So you deal with him as a junior and as a chief press
8 officer?
9 A. Well, I mean, it is boring, but as an information
10 officer, then a senior information officer, then I went
11 away and came back as a chief press officer.
12 Q. If you forgive me I will omit the detail of the Civil
13 Service grades.
14 One gets an impression that life in the MoD press
15 office is rather busy and rather demanding.
16 A. It is fairly busy, yes.
17 Q. Plenty of phone calls coming in every day?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. You mentioned to Mr Dingemans the possibility of say 20
20 to 30 calls a day. Presumably there could be days you
21 are on the phone all day?
22 A. There could well be, yes.
23 Q. In terms of calls coming in from Andrew Gilligan, I mean
24 he was a regular caller to you as well as to the MoD
25 press office more generally?

196
1 A. That is right, yes.
2 Q. I think his recollection is he probably would have
3 spoken to you a couple of times a week.
4 A. Yes, that sounds about right.
5 Q. Unless there is a particularly big story in which he is
6 having more regular contact, but that is the kind of --
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. At that point you are having lots of calls, lots of
9 phone calls from lots of people, lots of calls from
10 Mr Gilligan?
11 A. Sorry, on the 28th?
12 Q. No, just as part of the general pattern before we get to
13 the 28th. So in a sense, when he rings you on the 28th
14 there is nothing at all out of the ordinary about that?
15 A. No, not particularly.
16 Q. In terms of the wider story, I suppose there was a time
17 when people did not talk about weapons of mass
18 destruction, the WMD, but the WMD story had been running
19 for very many months?
20 A. Different twists to it but there had been a story since
21 the war had finished.
22 Q. Sure. There had been a story before the war started.
23 A. There may well have been.
24 Q. About the dossier. Lots of stories that had been
25 running for many months. You have the dossier, there is

197
1 the war, then there is the post war. By the time we get
2 to the 28th, the war is over and there are running
3 stories about the failure to find WMD.
4 A. Hmm, hmm.
5 Q. And, in particular, I think it is on the 28th itself,
6 there is reporting of Donald Rumsfeld's statement.
7 A. Yes, that is right.
8 Q. And as Defence Secretary he had raised the possibility
9 and I think it is the first time, that perhaps the
10 Iraqis had destroyed WMD before the war began.
11 A. That is right.
12 Q. That was seen as a significant new angle on the running
13 story. And you were aware of that on the 28th,
14 presumably?
15 A. Probably. I do not know what time on the 28th I was
16 aware of it, but at some point, yes. I think it was
17 running on the 27th as well, actually. I am not sure.
18 Q. I do not know, but certainly by the 28th you would have
19 been aware of it before he called?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. When someone calls you, because you are getting calls
22 from all sorts of people, is it not your practice to log
23 the time and the person calling you?
24 A. It is my practice to log the time of the person calling
25 me and what they want if what they want I cannot just

198
1 give them over the phone as I have it. Because if it is
2 a journalist ringing about something that we already
3 have, that has already come up, in this case perhaps
4 I would have alerted -- well, I did alert someone
5 because it was a bid anyway, but you know, you would not
6 necessarily make copious notes of each call if you
7 already had information on it.
8 Q. You do not simply keep, in a sense, a diary of calls, at
9 such and such a time someone calls, just as an aide
10 memoire?
11 A. I do not keep a call of everybody that has called me. I
12 keep a call of the people that have called me who I have
13 not been able to help on the spot, so I have to go away
14 and find some information and then come back to them.
15 Q. If it requires action from you, you make a record; and
16 if you have dealt with it, you do not make any record?
17 A. Hmm, hmm.
18 Q. As far as the daily log is concerned, help me with this:
19 this is a log that is only kept by the overnight duty
20 officer?
21 A. The purpose of the log is so that people coming in the
22 next morning understand, without having to go and ask
23 whoever was on duty, exactly what happened the night
24 before. So the log is for the out of hours period,
25 effectively.

199
1 Q. Is there a set time at which the log commences or does
2 it depend on which time the day staff go home?
3 A. It depends a little bit when people go home but it is
4 normally between 6 and 6.30.
5 Q. The earliest time that we have seen on the 28th is
6 a call at 8 o'clock.
7 A. Yes. The reason for that is simply that we had not had
8 any calls before that, and the log only starts at the
9 time of the first call.
10 Q. So the first call on the evening of the 28th, after you
11 had gone home, is 8 o'clock?
12 A. Yes, the first call that was logged, yes.
13 Q. Is it normal for you to be in the office at 7.30 on
14 a week day or is there something extraordinary about
15 that?
16 A. Sadly it is not that unusual.
17 Q. So when Mr Gilligan calls, again there is nothing about
18 the fact he is ringing at 7.30 that is out of the
19 ordinary?
20 A. No, he also regularly rings fairly late.
21 Q. Just part of the job. In terms of the Today Programme,
22 that would be an important exercise for you to be
23 dealing with that programme?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Just a normal part of your job again?

200
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. You would get calls sometimes from reporters as they
3 were preparing stories, and sometimes from reporters
4 giving notice of a story the next day?
5 A. Hmm, hmm.
6 Q. There were also calls from the editorial production
7 staff?
8 A. Occasionally, yes.
9 Q. Is that occasionally or is that normal? If you want to
10 know about the format of the programme the next day.
11 A. From my understanding, it depends how early they know
12 what is running and what time it is going to be on.
13 Sometimes you get that from the journalist who has put
14 the piece together and sometimes they will call you back
15 later, after the editorial meeting presumably, to tell
16 you that they have now finalised it and they would like
17 you at whatever time on the programme.
18 Q. So there is no set practice. As long as you have
19 someone who has told you what time they want what
20 Minister --
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. -- you do not mind who it is who tells you?
23 A. No.
24 Q. We have been told that you had a document in front of
25 you when Mr Gilligan called; I have it as MoD/31/2.

201
1 I fear that there is a whole set of documents marked
2 MoD/32 which I have not seen. So ...
3 If that could be scrolled down, you see you have
4 "Cluster Munitions" at the top. At the bottom we see
5 there is a printed page number, 32. So this is part of
6 a much larger document.
7 A. Yes. All it has come from is there was, for the whole
8 of Operation TELEC, the Iraq operation, a briefing pack.
9 So you extract the relevant bit from it.
10 Q. That is something that is pre-existing and covers all
11 sorts of different aspects of, if I call it the bigger
12 story?
13 A. Yes, it is updated fairly regularly.
14 Q. That is the page that I understand you pull out, the
15 duty log, we had a copy initially at MoD/18/15. This is
16 the copy of the log that has Ian Watson on it.
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Now, I appreciate you did not take this call, but you
19 know who Ian Watson is?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. He is the political correspondent on the Today
22 Programme.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. And you certainly know now, you may not have known at
25 the time, that he was the reporter dealing with the

202
1 cluster bombs story.
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. We see this entry is made on the log at 8 o'clock.
4 According to this, it is Ian Watson who makes a bid for
5 the Minister to talk about the clearance operation for
6 cluster bombs. There is a note there, a response there
7 that it is a bid accepted by the Minister, which I take
8 to be the armed forces, which is Adam Ingram?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. So that is Richard Whalley, his note of that?
11 A. Hmm.
12 Q. If there had been a 7.30 entry for Andrew Gilligan's
13 call, might that not have caused questions to be asked,
14 at least within the press office, as to why two
15 reporters had called?
16 A. No. I mean, it is reasonably -- not regular but it is
17 certainly not without precedent that Andrew Gilligan
18 will call to put in a bid for somebody and then someone
19 from the programme will call to put in a bid for that
20 person, or occasionally, as has happened, for somebody
21 else within the MoD. Then you ask them to speak to each
22 other to say who they actually want on the programme.
23 So that is not unusual at all.
24 Q. Is it unusual to have two reporters calling, as opposed
25 to a reporter plus an editorial person?

203
1 A. No, not particularly.
2 Q. We have that version of the log. We have another
3 version of the duty log, which is MoD/31/3.
4
5 This one starts at later than 8 o'clock. I cannot
6 see the Ian Watson call on this version. I think you
7 have described this as a rolling log?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. We can see again from the bottom right-hand corner that
10 what we have is page 372 of 1952. So it is a very big
11 log.
12 But are there two different versions kept or --
13 A. Yes. The only reason why it looks different on one bit
14 of paper to the other is that the format that you see
15 now is the standard format and that is what gets printed
16 out and given to everybody that needs to see it in the
17 morning. The original grid version that you have is
18 because the system went down and we had to get somebody
19 who knew what they were talking about to come to make it
20 print for us.
21 Q. The advantage of the MoD one we now have up is that at
22 least it has the press officer's name on, as opposed to
23 the grid version which did not?
24 A. It may well have. We do not normally see it in that
25 format. It was just because we needed it urgently.

204
1 Q. Now, just looking at the entries that we have got that
2 relate to Today. There is the 22.30 call; that is from
3 Chris Howard, who is the producer.
4 As we see, he says he is told that:
5 "Be prepared to answer some questions (2 minutes at
6 the end on WMD)."
7 A. Hmm, hmm.
8 Q. I appreciate this was not a call to you, but WMD, at the
9 time for you, the live issues were principally the
10 Rumsfeld issue?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. And in the past there had been the February dossier
13 issue?
14 A. Although that was not such a current issue at the time.
15 Q. The real live issue so far as you were concerned --
16 A. Although they were not particularly issues for MoD, they
17 were more issues for the Foreign Office and No. 10.
18 Q. After that we have the 23.20 call, the Martin Sheahan
19 call. There is a discussion between Downing Street
20 press office and the MoD.
21 We have heard that at one point what used to happen
22 in the evening is that 10 Downing Street used to call
23 Today every night as a matter of routine to see what was
24 going on. We heard that had stopped at some point, I do
25 not think we know precisely when, before 28th May. You

205
1 mentioned that it was a routine matter for you, as
2 a press office, to ring Downing Street tell them what
3 was going on?
4 A. To tell them what we were proposing to do in terms of
5 the morning's bids and programmes.
6 Q. That was your standard practice at the time, to call
7 Downing Street?
8 A. Yes, it is standard so that No. 10 knows what you are
9 actually planning to do, to let them know if you are
10 doing what is called the Millbank round, where you take
11 a minister down and do a series of interviews.
12 Q. The Millbank round. So that is an established feature
13 within Government, a sensible way of making sure that
14 information is shared and knowledge shared.
15 Now, Mr Sheahan, we see, says at 23.20 that he is
16 going to send a fax, because obviously there are several
17 lines that are agreed in different aspects. I have as
18 MoD/31/11, if we look at the top of that, there is a fax
19 date of 28th May.
20 A. Hmm, hmm.
21 Q. And a time of 23.47.
22 A. Hmm, hmm.
23 Q. I think you see it is part of the MoD fax. If you look
24 to the top right one sees it is page 3.
25 A. Hmm, hmm.

206
1 Q. I accept you were at home by the time the nearly
2 midnight fax arrived. Do you know what is on the first
3 two pages of this fax?
4 A. I do not. It is an extract from the Prime Minister's
5 press conference so it would be whatever he was asked
6 about at the time.
7 Q. So there would probably have been some kind of cover
8 sheet plus?
9 A. Plus the first page of the press conference.
10 Q. We do not know whether page 3 was the last page or not?
11 A. There was a page 4, I think, because that has been shown
12 up already today.
13 Q. Has it?
14 A. Unless the page 4 was page 2. I do not know.
15 Q. The only page I have been able to identify as the fax is
16 that one. It is not a criticism of you at all.
17 A. Thank you.
18 Q. I think we would like to see that whole fax.
19 So he sends a fax. That is pointing out what the
20 Prime Minister had said about it. He is also, one sees
21 back on MoD/31/3, which is the log, raising the Rumsfeld
22 issue in particular, and giving certain lines; one has
23 the expression "on message". The message here is:
24 "Whatever Rumsfeld says, we are confident we will
25 uncover evidence of WMD programme and sticking with the

207
1 jigsaw argument."
2 I am not going to go to the broadcast. One will see
3 that reflected in what Mr Ingram says the next day.
4 In terms of briefing the Minister for the Millbank
5 run, as you mentioned, Mr Ingram is speaking over the
6 phone to the Today Programme it appears.
7 A. In the studio, yes.
8 Q. In terms of briefing, what is the normal practice? Is
9 the Minister normally briefed the night before or on the
10 day or does it matter?
11 A. There is no point briefing him the night before because
12 you do not know what the issues might be in the next
13 morning's papers. So the routine, which is what
14 happened in this case, is that the duty press officer
15 went over at 7.30 the next morning, just to talk him
16 through what the issues were in the first editions of
17 the newspapers and to talk him through the briefing
18 pack -- the cluster bombs bit of it I think he had seen
19 bef