Hearing Transcripts

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1 A. No, that was a mistake in transcription.
2 Q. And I think the Inquiry is aware that the LiveNote
3 services very kindly checked, at our request, whether
4 the word "the" or "a" had been used.
5 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
6 MS ROGERS: It is accepted that it was a rare slip by
7 LiveNote that the word Mr Gilligan had used was "a", not
8 "the".
9 LORD HUTTON: I certainly accept that.
10 MS ROGERS: It is not a suggestion that you had changed your
11 evidence.
12 LORD HUTTON: No.
13 MS ROGERS: Mr Gilligan, thank you.
14 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much, Mr Gilligan.
15 Thank you, Ms Rogers.
16 I will rise now and sit again at 2 o'clock.
17 (1.10 pm)
18 (The short adjournment)
19 (2.00 pm)
20 MR RICHARD SAMBROOK (called)
21 Examined by MR CALDECOTT
22 Q. Mr Sambrook, you gave evidence to this Inquiry on
23 13th August. Have you been following the evidence
24 since?
25 A. I have, yes.

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1 Q. Are you aware that both Mr Dyke and Mr Davies have given
2 evidence to the effect that there are lessons to be
3 learnt by the BBC?
4 A. I am, yes.
5 Q. Is that a view you share?
6 A. Yes, it is. I think there are a number of lessons that
7 the BBC will have to take from this.
8 Q. Can I just run through some possibilities and get your
9 comments on them? Mr Gilligan referred, this morning,
10 to the fact that the 6.07 broadcast was in fact produced
11 live and not scripted. Have you any comment to make
12 about that?
13 A. I think it is clear that any report which sets out a set
14 of serious allegations should be carefully scripted in
15 advance.
16 Q. Mr Gilligan also referred, in his evidence this morning,
17 to the fact that on Radio 4, on 26th June, you described
18 his source as a senior and credible source in the
19 Intelligence Services. Was it right that there was
20 a conversation between you and Mr Gilligan shortly after
21 that broadcast?
22 A. My recollection is that it was the morning of
23 Friday 27th when Andrew Gilligan told me the identity of
24 his source; and at that point it became clear to me he
25 was not a member of the Intelligence Services.

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1 Q. Can you tell us why no correction was broadcast, putting
2 that right?
3 A. I felt myself to be in a dilemma over it. Clearly it
4 would be preferable to be absolutely accurate about it;
5 but equally, again as Mr Gilligan indicated earlier, we
6 had a dilemma because we did not wish to do anything
7 which might lead to the identification of our source;
8 and by narrowing the scope for the search for the
9 source, which was clearly already under way, to those
10 people closely involved in the dossier who were not
11 members of the Intelligence Services, it seemed to me
12 would be likely to help significantly in their
13 identification.
14 So I was uneasy about the fact that we were not
15 correcting something that -- an error I had clearly
16 made. My view was that on balance we owed a greater
17 duty of confidentiality to try to help prevent the
18 identification of Dr Kelly.
19 Q. Can I move on now, please, to the question of notice to
20 a party criticised or to be criticised on a programme?
21 In the context of this particular case, what was your
22 view about no notice being given to Downing Street
23 before the broadcast?
24 A. I indicated in a conversation with the Today Programme
25 team that my view on it was that the allegations were

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1 such that they should have been put to Downing Street in
2 advance. The programme team's view was that their
3 experience was that Downing Street refused to comment
4 ever on intelligence matters and that Downing Street
5 were also happy for ministries to take the lead; and
6 that as this was in broad terms a defence issue, and
7 they already had the Defence Minister, Mr Ingram,
8 booked, it was right to try to extend the bid for
9 Mr Ingram. I mean, I noted the sort of custom and
10 practice they referred to, but again my view was that
11 the allegations were such that they should probably have
12 been put to Downing Street in advance and I told them
13 that.
14 Q. We have seen the correspondence in your first round of
15 evidence. There was clearly a live dispute between
16 Kate Wilson of the MoD on the one hand and Mr Gilligan
17 of the BBC on the other as to what took place in
18 a telephone conversation between them on the evening of
19 28th May. Did you form any view about the procedures
20 which the BBC had followed in relation to that dispute
21 which gave you concern?
22 A. Yes, when it became clear that there was a difference of
23 view over what notice had been given to the Ministry of
24 Defence, on I think it was that Sunday, I asked
25 Miranda Holt, who is one of the Today Programme's day

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1 editors, to come in and go through the programme's
2 computer records to see if we could put together exactly
3 what calls had been made, which she did, which formed
4 the basis of the letter to Ben Bradshaw which was showed
5 earlier.
6 It was clear that although they had noted times and
7 some individuals or initials who had made calls, there
8 was no note of the content of those calls. Indeed, in a
9 conversation I had with Andrew Gilligan about what he
10 may or may not have said to Mrs Wilson, although he said
11 this morning that he spoke about cluster bombs but her
12 also extended the bid to WMD and outlined the
13 allegations that have been made, he had no note of that
14 conversation and could not be precise about what he had
15 said. Therefore it seemed to me that actually a better
16 note should have been taken.
17 Q. Can I, please, just move on to some matters involving
18 you rather more closely? The reply to Mr Campbell's
19 substantially long letter of complaint of 26th June was,
20 in part, drafted by you?
21 A. It was, yes.
22 Q. Do you accept that there were some errors in that letter
23 as to what Dr Kelly had in fact said to Mr Gilligan?
24 A. Yes, I do.
25 Q. Had you looked at Mr Gilligan's notes at the time that

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1 you drafted that reply?
2 A. No, I had not, no.
3 Q. Do you accept, with hindsight, that you should have
4 done?
5 A. Yes, I think if I had been able to go through
6 Andrew Gilligan's notes in some detail and gone through
7 them with him in some detail, we might have got to
8 a point where we realised these were not comments that
9 were directly attributable to Dr Kelly; and clearly
10 I regret that.
11 Q. Was Mr Gilligan involved in the drafting process of that
12 letter?
13 A. Yes, he was.
14 Q. I do not think we need turn the passages up, but did
15 Mr Gilligan consent to the letter going out in the form
16 that it did?
17 A. Yes he did. Indeed, part of the reason why Mr Gilligan
18 spent most of that day in our offices, as the letter was
19 being drafted, was that he could be consulted on matters
20 such as that.
21 Q. I want to go into a little more detail, to the
22 circumstances in which you received Mr Campbell's
23 letter. Can you, first of all, tell us what time you
24 received it on 26th June?
25 A. My recollection is I received it at about 4 o'clock in

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1 the afternoon.
2 Q. When did you become aware that that letter had been
3 leaked by or on behalf of Mr Campbell into the public
4 domain?
5 A. At about the same time, it became clear. We were
6 getting calls from other journalists to the effect they
7 had seen the letter and had it released to them.
8 Q. Had you any forewarning from Mr Campbell that he was
9 going to do that?
10 A. No, I had not.
11 Q. Was there a deadline for reply imposed by Mr Campbell in
12 his letter?
13 A. Yes, he asked for a reply by the end of the day.
14 Q. Do you follow the Lobby briefings at all, Mr Sambrook?
15 A. I had a number of them, at that time, drawn to my
16 attention by BBC staff who attended the Lobbies. And of
17 course they are available on the Internet shortly
18 afterwards.
19 Q. Were you following the Lobby briefings on the morning of
20 26th June?
21 A. Yes, I was.
22 Q. Can we please have up on the screen BBC/5/101?
23 If we could please scroll down towards the bottom of
24 the first page -- I am not going to go through these in
25 detail because I think it is common ground that the

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1 questions with those bullet point marks beside them at
2 the bottom of the page, and indeed over the top of the
3 next page, very closely if not verbatim match the
4 questions asked by Mr Campbell in his letter.
5 A. Yes, that is right.
6 Q. This briefing, we can see, is the 11 am briefing.
7 I just want to ask you about some passages on
8 page 5/102, that is the page we are on. Could you just
9 look, please, at the first long paragraph, in effect the
10 third paragraph, starting: "Asked if we had...". Do you
11 see that?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. If you go three lines is, halfway through the line:
14 "... the PMOS said that as Alastair Campbell had
15 underlined to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee
16 yesterday, we had repeatedly asked the BBC questions
17 about these matters, but we had not yet had a
18 satisfactory response."
19 Then a couple of lines further on:
20 "... as Mr Campbell had said yesterday, extensive
21 private correspondence unfortunately had not managed to
22 resolve the issue, particularly since the BBC's answers
23 kept changing. Pressed as to why Downing Street would
24 not be sending a letter to the BBC, the PMOS said the
25 questions were based on what had already been broadcast

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1 by the BBC. So far, we had failed to obtain any
2 satisfactory answers."
3 Then the next paragraph, please, about four lines
4 in, starting at the end of a line:
5 "We had been in lengthy correspondence with them, as
6 he had set out, to obtain satisfactory responses to our
7 questions."
8 Had any of those questions listed in that briefing
9 ever been put to you before by Mr Campbell in anything
10 like that form?
11 A. No, they had not. The letters -- we had had three
12 letters from Downing Street, one from Ann Shevas and two
13 from Mr Campbell which obviously have been looked at
14 earlier in this Inquiry. They had concentrated on the
15 question of the coverage of denials, on whether the BBC
16 had abided by its own producer guidelines and so on.
17 But they had not had questions set out in that form or
18 in that detail. Indeed some of the issues raised in
19 those questions had not been raised with us before.
20 Q. What decision did you in fact make as to when you should
21 reply by?
22 A. We believed it was wrong to try to rush out a reply
23 within a couple of hours that day. I talked to my
24 deputy, Mark Damazer and also to the Director General,
25 and we agreed that we would have to reply the next day.

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1 Q. What was the extent of the media interest in your
2 pending reply?
3 A. There was enormous media interest. We were being called
4 almost relentlessly, wanting to know when the BBC was
5 going to reply and what our response would be. So there
6 was a very high expectation that we would have to meet
7 the deadline set to reply by the end of that day. So
8 I released a brief statement that evening to say we
9 would not be meeting that deadline but we would reply as
10 soon as possible.
11 Q. Looking back at the matter now, do you have any comment
12 to make on the timetable you set for yourself?
13 A. I think, clearly, it would have been better if we had
14 given ourselves more time to respond. It was extremely
15 difficult given the degree of public and media pressure
16 upon us at that time, but with hindsight, and given that
17 new questions were raised in a new way, I think we
18 should have taken longer to consider exactly what was
19 being asked of us.
20 Q. One matter that you addressed in your evidence first
21 time round was the fact that you did not focus
22 specifically as closely on the 6.07 broadcast as you
23 might have done. Could I just ask you to look, please,
24 at CAB/1/352? This is the first page of Mr Campbell's
25 letter of 26th June. If we could scroll down a little

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1 way, please. If you just look at the quote there. It
2 is from Mr Humphrys. It is an introduction. It reads
3 as follows:
4 "'Mr Campbell will answer questions about
5 allegations made on this programme by Andrew Gilligan
6 that the case for going to war was exaggerated,
7 specifically that one of the dossiers presented by
8 Mr Blair had been sexed up to make it appear that Saddam
9 was a greater threat to the West than the intelligence
10 justified.'
11 "That is one of many statements on the BBC by
12 reporters and presenters making clear that Mr Gilligan
13 made these allegations..."
14 That summary of what the BBC was saying, do you
15 agree with that as a fair summary of the gist of at
16 least many of the broadcasts, or not?
17 A. Yes, I think I do.
18 Q. Can I just ask you, very briefly, about the e-mail sent
19 by Mr Gilligan to Mr Maples and Mr Ottaway? Did you or
20 anyone else, to your knowledge, at the BBC ever
21 authorise that e-mail or ever be consulted about it?
22 A. Absolutely not. I think it was an improper e-mail to
23 have sent and I do not think it would be right under any
24 circumstances. I appreciate that Mr Gilligan felt
25 himself to be under a great deal of pressure and may

117
1 have made a misjudgment in those circumstances, but
2 I certainly was not aware of it and I do not believe
3 anybody within the BBC was aware of it or could have
4 authorised it.
5 Q. Could you give us, please, in outline how the editorial
6 process for a story of this kind would work?
7 A. Well, the reporter would come to one of the day editors
8 on the Today Programme to outline the story that they
9 wished to run. The day editor would discuss it with the
10 reporter and, if they thought it was a serious one,
11 refer it up to the programme editor, which is what
12 I believe happened in this case.
13 With a story involving an anonymous source, and
14 clearly involving serious allegations, I would expect
15 a discussion or consideration by the programme editor of
16 a number of issues, such as the credibility of the
17 source, the extent to which the source could genuinely
18 have knowledge of the matters that they were discussing,
19 their reliability, what their motive might be for giving
20 evidence -- giving this information, what steps might be
21 taken to corroborate or verify what they were saying,
22 and so on, and I understand that Kevin Marsh indeed had
23 a detailed conversation with Andrew Gilligan along those
24 lines before transmission; and was satisfied that
25 Dr Kelly's status and reliability and locus on the

118
1 issues on which he was talking about merited the
2 broadcast.
3 Q. Do you know whether lawyers were involved in this
4 particular story before it was broadcast on 29th May?
5 A. No, I do not believe they were.
6 Q. Mr Gilligan gave some evidence about a distinction
7 between some stories where lawyers would be brought in
8 and some where they would not. Was that a distinction
9 that you recognised, or not?
10 A. Yes, absolutely. I think if we are running a report
11 which we believe there are serious allegations of
12 dishonesty or there may be other legal sensitivities, we
13 would always bring in a lawyer in advance of broadcast
14 to consider the allegations we are making and to agree
15 a script.
16 Q. Can I ask you a hypothetical question? If you had seen,
17 in advance, the 6.07 broadcast, including the "probably
18 knew it was wrong" passage, what would your view have
19 been about whether or not it would have been appropriate
20 to involve lawyers?
21 A. I think if I had seen that allegation being made about
22 the Government in advance, I would have said it was
23 essential to have a lawyer involved.
24 Q. Can I just ask you, lastly, one other matter? I think
25 we heard from Mr Dyke that as a general proposition the

119
1 BBC are broadcasting 40 hours of material for every hour
2 of time. What would the figure be solely for news?
3 A. About 5 hours of news programming for every hour of
4 realtime.
5 Q. And how many different news programmes are there within
6 the BBC?
7 A. It is about 120.
8 Q. And how many of those are radio news programmes?
9 A. It is about half and half, roughly, radio and
10 television.
11 Q. Are those different programmes under some central
12 editorial control or do they very much have their own
13 teams?
14 A. The programmes have their own programme teams and each
15 programme has its own editor who reports in to
16 departmental heads, so the head of radio news and head
17 of television news, for example, although each editor
18 would be making their own judgments about their
19 programme's content each day. And there would be one or
20 two conversations a day probably with that head of
21 department or senior manager.
22 MR CALDECOTT: Thank you very much Mr Sambrook. Would you
23 stay there, please?
24 LORD HUTTON: Yes Mr Sumption.
25 Cross-examined by MR SUMPTION

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1 Q. Mr Sambrook, you are on record as saying that the BBC
2 was not making any allegations against the Government,
3 but only reporting allegations made by its anonymous
4 source.
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. You told the Inquiry last time round that it was most
7 unusual for the BBC to broadcast allegations derived
8 from an anonymous source; do you remember that?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Would you agree that that is because it is only in
11 special circumstances that that course can be justified?
12 A. It is certainly unusual that -- I mean, there are
13 different sorts of anonymous sources, in one sense
14 anonymous sources are used in journalism every day. But
15 in setting out circumstances of this kind it is unusual.
16 Q. So allegations critical of third parties it would be
17 unusual to rely on an anonymous source and there would
18 have to be some special circumstances?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. When the BBC broadcasts serious allegations against
21 public figures coming from an anonymous source,
22 presumably the BBC is concerned to some extent at least
23 with the question of whether those allegations are true?
24 A. Whether they are credible.
25 Q. Whether they are true?

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1 A. I do not believe we are always in a position to judge
2 the absolute truth of the allegations that are being
3 made. What we have to consider is: are they credible
4 allegations coming from an individual who himself is
5 credible and has some locus on the subject on which they
6 are talking or discussing, if we believe their views are
7 sufficiently weighty to be placed in the public domain.
8 But quite often we are unable to judge for ourselves the
9 absolute truth of what they are saying.
10 Q. You certainly cannot judge beyond reasonable doubt. But
11 the source, at the very minimum, has to be worthy of
12 belief?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Presumably, that is because when a reputable news
15 organisation puts into the public domain a serious
16 allegation coming from an anonymous informant, it is
17 presenting those allegations to the world as worthy of
18 belief?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. When that news organisation is the BBC, that is
21 something that will carry particularly weight, is it
22 not, because of the BBC's worldwide reputation as
23 a broadcaster with the highest standards of journalism?
24 A. Well, I certainly hope we enjoy that reputation.
25 Q. It is a reputation that you have and which you wish to

122
1 conserve, is it not?
2 A. Indeed.
3 Q. Would you agree that the more serious the allegation,
4 the greater the care which you would expect the BBC to
5 take to ensure that it can be properly supported?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. These were exceptionally serious allegations, were they
8 not?
9 A. Well, I think one thing I should make clear is that I do
10 not think the programme or indeed the BBC, in those
11 early weeks, ever took the wording of the 6.07 broadcast
12 or that phrase within the 6.07 broadcast to be the
13 definitive version of the allegations that we were
14 making. I think our view was the definitive version was
15 the scripted version, in the news bulletins at
16 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock and 8 o'clock and at 7.32.
17 The live two-ways at 6 o'clock are deemed by the
18 programme, although it is certainly true the audience
19 does not necessarily perceive them this way, as a sort
20 of preview for the major reports that are coming up
21 during that day's programme. So I think the mindset on
22 the programme, and I think this continued for some time
23 afterwards, was that the definition of this item, in the
24 BBC's view, were the scripted versions of it and the
25 6.07 was something that had strayed from what we

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1 believed to be the core allegations we were making or
2 that our source was making.
3 Q. Leaving aside the mindset of the programme, you very
4 fairly accept the audience would not necessarily have
5 perceived it the same way?
6 A. Indeed.
7 Q. In practice it is the most dramatic and gravest
8 allegation which will attract the most attention rather
9 than the allegation which is scripted?
10 A. Depending on how often it is repeated and how many
11 people hear it, yes.
12 Q. Yes. But if you make a sufficiently dramatic
13 allegation, other media will catch on to it, will they
14 not?
15 A. They may do, yes.
16 Q. They are professional followers of each other's copy,
17 are they not?
18 A. They are.
19 Q. Now, you have already I think agreed in your earlier
20 evidence, and indeed I think it is implicit in the
21 evidence you have given today, that the 6.07 allegation
22 that the Government probably knew that the 45 minutes
23 point was wrong before putting it into the dossier was,
24 in fact, going to strike people as an exceptionally
25 grave allegation. I think you have accepted that?

124
1 A. It clearly had that effect.
2 Q. Yes. It was an attack, was it not, on its face, on the
3 integrity of those who had been involved at the highest
4 levels in the production of the dossier?
5 A. In the way it was phrased, it clearly would have had
6 that effect. It is a different question about intent.
7 Q. Yes, I understand that. Even in the 7.32 broadcast, the
8 allegation was, was it not, that the Government had put
9 the 45 minute point into the dossier against the advice
10 of the Intelligence Services, who had told them that
11 they regarded it as questionable?
12 A. Words to that effect, yes.
13 Q. Yes. You were aware, I imagine, when you came to
14 consider this in the course of June, that the dossier
15 had actually said that it reflected the views of the
16 JIC?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. So, if you accuse the Government of putting information
19 into the dossier which was contrary to the views of the
20 Intelligence Services you are effectively accusing them
21 of presenting the dossier to Parliament on a false
22 basis?
23 A. I would say two things. Firstly, I do not think we were
24 ever specific about who in Government might be, if there
25 was any bad faith indeed to be attributed, who might be

125
1 guilty of that bad faith. Secondly, when we spoke about
2 it against the wishes of the Intelligence Services I do
3 not believe we ever said or intended or expected people
4 to understand that would necessarily mean the heads of
5 those services or the JIC. Clearly a number of people
6 from the Intelligence Services were involved in
7 assessing and drawing up the information for that
8 dossier and it may well have been a number of them who
9 were still concerned about its presentation.
10 Q. The thrust of your allegation was that the Government
11 had put information into the dossier against the advice
12 they had received, was it not?
13 A. The thrust of the allegation was that material had been
14 put in there against some advice from those involved in
15 compiling or assessing it; but who was responsible for
16 that act we were never specific about.
17 Q. The advice that they had received would have been advice
18 relating to intelligence, would it not?
19 A. It would.
20 Q. And you are aware, presumably, that the advice which the
21 Government receives, the organ which is responsible for
22 giving the Government advice on the effect of
23 intelligence sources is the JIC?
24 A. Indeed.
25 Q. Now, anyone who had seen the dossier and saw the

126
1 description in the dossier itself about how this system
2 works would have appreciated that what you were saying
3 was that the dossier had been presented to the public on
4 the basis that it reflected the advice received from the
5 JIC, when in fact it did not.
6 A. No, I do not think we were ever clear about where --
7 whether the JIC were aware of any misgivings there may
8 have been lower down the chain. All we were suggesting
9 was that there were misgivings lower down the chain and
10 at some point in that chain somebody took the decision
11 to include it, against the advice of those below them.
12 We never suggested that had to be the JIC level.
13 Q. What you did suggest was that it was the Government
14 which had overturned the advice.
15 A. Clearly the dossier was compiled by a machinery of
16 Government, yes.
17 Q. You are also, I imagine, aware that Mr Gilligan in fact
18 said in the 7.32 broadcast that such mistakes can be
19 made honestly, however, the Government knew this
20 particular information was, as he put it, questionable?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. You were aware of that?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Do you not regard that as an attack on the good faith of
25 those responsible for publishing the document?

127
1 A. I took the view that this was what his source had told
2 him.
3 Q. I see. You now know that is in fact not exactly what
4 had been said, do you not?
5 A. Indeed.
6 Q. In the 7.32 broadcast, John Humphrys said, I will
7 certainly show you the transcript if you would find that
8 helpful, but you may remember the graphic phrase he
9 used, that the Today correspondent, this was
10 Andrew Gilligan, had discovered evidence that the
11 dossier was cobbled together at the last minute with
12 some unconfirmed material that had not been approved by
13 the Security Services.
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. That is a statement by the presenter of the BBC's
16 flagship radio news programme, is it not, that that is
17 evidence to that effect that the BBC has discovered?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. It is clearly an endorsement by the BBC of the
20 allegation, is it not?
21 A. No, I would not say that.
22 Q. You would not?
23 A. No, I would say it is a description of the allegations
24 that the BBC is reporting.
25 Q. So if a BBC presenter says that the BBC has discovered

128
1 evidence of a fact, you do not regard that as an
2 endorsement by the BBC?
3 A. I think a credible and well placed source expressing
4 their view could, in a general conversational sense, be
5 described as evidence.
6 Q. When you came to investigate this matter in June and
7 early July, what steps did you understand to have been
8 taken by the editorial staff of Today before the
9 broadcast went out, to satisfy itself that the source
10 was authoritative and the allegation was credible?
11 A. I understood that Andrew Gilligan had done a number of
12 things before broadcast; that he had attempted to
13 corroborate the allegations with two other of his
14 contacts, neither of whom had confirmed it but neither
15 had denied it. He had taken a number of steps in terms
16 of researching partly Dr Kelly's background but also the
17 dossier.
18 Q. Forgive me, I do not want to be at cross purposes. What
19 I am getting at is steps taken in exchanges between
20 Mr Gilligan and the editorial staff.
21 A. Sorry, I was trying to go through all the checks that
22 had happened.
23 Q. Forgive me.
24 A. In terms of when Andrew Gilligan had brought the story
25 to the attention of the editorial staff on the

129
1 programme, as I understand it the day editor,
2 Miranda Holt, realised this was a serious story and said
3 that the editor, Kevin Marsh, needed to take a view on
4 it. Andrew, as I understand it, showed the notes that
5 he showed Miranda Holt to Kevin Marsh and discussed the
6 item with him. Kevin had a specific conversation about
7 who the source was, not their name but the kind of
8 position that they held, what Andrew Gilligan understood
9 to have been his source's role in the compilation of the
10 dossier, track record of his source, how long
11 Andrew Gilligan had known him, whether he had proved
12 reliable in the past and so on.
13 They, I think, also discussed whether or not the
14 source might have some malicious or mischievous motive
15 in making these allegations and concluded that he did
16 not. They also looked at whether there was any other
17 information at the time or in the news at the time that
18 lent some support to the kinds of allegations being made
19 and concluded, for the reasons we have heard earlier in
20 the Inquiry, that there were a number of Intelligence
21 Service briefings to journalists, there were a number of
22 reports in newspapers, there were comments from people
23 like Hans Blix and so on questioning the nature of some
24 of the intelligence in the run up to the war in Iraq and
25 they felt that that was broadly supportive and that

130
1 therefore the allegations being made here fitted within
2 that context.
3 After having a conversation along those lines and
4 Kevin having considered it on his own to some extent, he
5 took the decision it should be broadcast.
6 Q. Could you please look at BBC/14/31. You have no doubt
7 seen this document several times, it is a transcription
8 of shorthand notes taken at the Governors' meeting of
9 6th July, most of which you attended.
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. I do not want to take bits out of context, it is quite
12 a long document, but just to give you what I understand
13 to be the context. There is, at this stage in progress,
14 a discussion about whether the matter should have been
15 put to No. 10.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. That is not what I am going to ask you about at the
18 moment. The discussion appears to take a different turn
19 about three quarters of the way down when Dame Pauline
20 Neville-Jones, who I think was the governor with the
21 strongest reservations about what happened, raised the
22 question of the quality of your reporting, do you see
23 that?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. That is an introduction to the discussion which goes on

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1 for the next page or so. Perhaps you could now look at
2 the next page, if we could go over to that. Halfway
3 down you will see that DG, which is Dermot Gleeson,
4 asked:
5 "Was it vetted properly? If it was vetted?"
6 You reply:
7 "The story has changed. Originally Kevin Marsh said
8 he had vetted it which would have been normal procedure.
9 But since then transpires he did not. Have been on the
10 record saying we will look at it."
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. As I understand it, what you are saying there is that
13 you had originally believed that Kevin Marsh had vetted
14 it, because he had told you he had, but it had turned
15 out, on further investigation, that he had not vetted
16 it?
17 A. No, I am afraid that is completely wrong. What this
18 refers to is the Mail on Sunday article that
19 Andrew Gilligan submitted. It does not refer to the
20 original report.
21 Q. I see. This is not concerned with the report at all?
22 A. No, as you can see -- as it goes on, it is quite clear,
23 we have Gavyn Davies, I think:
24 "I think it is relevant Andrew Gilligan made the
25 allegation in the Mail on Sunday" and so on. This is

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1 a conversation about the Mail on Sunday article.
2 Q. The conversation certainly turned to the Mail on Sunday.
3 You say it was all, even earlier, about the Mail on
4 Sunday?
5 A. Absolutely.
6 Q. We have certain observations from Mr Marsh himself which
7 are included in an e-mail on 27th June which you will
8 find at BBC/5/118.
9 When did you first see this e-mail?
10 A. When it was disclosed for the Inquiry.
11 Q. I see. Now, as I understand it, partly from documents
12 and partly from Mr Dyke's evidence, Stephen Mitchell is
13 somebody who, from time to time, looks into matters
14 which one might loosely call regulatory for the senior
15 executives; is that wrong?
16 A. No, Stephen Mitchell is the head of Radio News who
17 reports to me. It is Stephen Whittle who is the
18 controller of editorial policy.
19 Q. You are quite right to correct me on that. If we could
20 look at what Mr Marsh says:
21 "Some thoughts -- clearly I have to talk to
22 Andrew Gilligan early next week. I hope that by then my
23 worst fears -- based on what I'm hearing from the spooks
24 this afternoon -- aren't realised. Assuming not, the
25 guts of what I would say are:

133
1 "This story was a good piece of investigative
2 journalism, marred by flawed reporting -- our biggest
3 millstone has been his loose use of language and lack of
4 judgment in some of his phraseology.
5 "It was marred also..." that is a point about the
6 Mail on Sunday and the Spectator.
7 "That is in many ways a result of the loose and in
8 some ways distant relationship he's been allowed to have
9 with Today."
10 Have you discussed with Mr Marsh his views as
11 reflected in this document?
12 A. I had discussed, before this document, in broad terms
13 his views of Andrew Gilligan as a reporter and indeed
14 with Stephen Mitchell as well, yes.
15 Q. Can you tell us why it is, what is the loose language
16 which Mr Marsh is drawing attention to as possibly
17 fulfilling his worst fears?
18 A. I am not sure that the loose language is related to the
19 worst fears. I think that is a separate point.
20 Q. Leaving the fears, let us concentrate on the loose
21 language.
22 A. As I said, this was not flagged up to me at the time.
23 I only knew about it after it was disclosed to this
24 Inquiry. My understanding of what Kevin was talking
25 about is we should have had a consistent phrase for

134
1 capturing the allegations that Dr Kelly was making, both
2 for presenters and for reporters and within the report
3 scripts, and it would have been a lot better if we had
4 been entirely consistent on that.
5 Q. You had not seen this document, as I understand your
6 evidence, by the time you briefed the Governors' meeting
7 on 6th July?
8 A. That is correct.
9 Q. Do you think you should have done?
10 A. I think if Kevin Marsh or Stephen Mitchell had had real
11 concerns about the nature of the reporting or indeed
12 about the nature of the way we were dealing with the
13 Government's complaint, I would have expected them to
14 bring those to my attention. I am not clear that this
15 e-mail necessarily represents serious concerns.
16 LORD HUTTON: You think it does not represent serious
17 concerns?
18 A. My personal view about it is that it is much more
19 saying -- it is entitled "from here"; my personal view
20 about it is that it is an e-mail from a programme editor
21 to his line manager saying that in future we would be
22 better to have a more disciplined use in terms of
23 scripting materials and not doing live two-ways and so
24 on; and it is an attempt to look forward at how things
25 should be managed in the future. Again, this was not

135
1 flagged up to me at the time. All I can say is that, I
2 mean, I know both Kevin Marsh and Stephen Mitchell
3 extremely well and I believe if they had serious
4 concerns about the quality of the journalism or indeed
5 our response to the Government, they would have raised
6 it directly with me and they did not.
7 MR SUMPTION: Is it not a source of concern if grave
8 allegations are made against public figures on the basis
9 of loose use of language and lack of judgment in the
10 phraseology? Is that not a source of concern?
11 A. If that is their view then it would be, yes.
12 Q. Well, it does seem to have been Mr Marsh's view; and
13 what exactly did the Governors, when they came to
14 consider this, know about the views of the editor of the
15 programme itself, ie Mr Marsh?
16 A. Well, they -- I do not think the Governors were
17 particularly interested in the editor's view; they were
18 interested in my view; and I shared with them the view
19 I had had for a considerable period of time, and which
20 was certainly partly informed by Mr Marsh and by
21 Mr Mitchell, which was that Andrew Gilligan was in some
22 respects a good reporter.
23 There are two aspects to journalism. There is the
24 finding out of the information and there is then how you
25 present it. My view for some time would be that

136
1 Andrew Gilligan is extremely good at finding out
2 information but there are sometimes questions of nuance
3 and subtlety in how he presents it which are not all
4 that they should be. Indeed, in my evidence to
5 the Inquiry on August 13th we talked a little bit about
6 some of the issues that arose during his reporting of
7 the Iraq War in that context, and I was frank with the
8 Board of Governors about that, my view of
9 Andrew Gilligan in those terms. I think I described him
10 as a reporter who paints in primary colours rather than
11 something more subtle.
12 Q. If you had known that Mr Marsh's views were as reflected
13 in this e-mail at the time of the Governors' meeting,
14 would you have thought it right to draw their attention
15 to the fact?
16 A. I think it is hypothetical because I was not -- I did
17 not see this e-mail.
18 Q. Yes, I know it is hypothetical but I would still like
19 your answer to the question.
20 A. No, I think the Governors would have wanted to know what
21 my view was.
22 Q. Right. They would not have been interested in the views
23 of Mr Marsh, as the editor of the programme that was
24 being complained about?
25 A. Well, only if they significantly differed from mine.

137
1 Q. I see. Do you share the views expressed here?
2 A. I have already told you what my views of
3 Andrew Gilligan's reporting were.
4 Q. Let us look at Mr Marsh's proposals for change, to
5 ensure this sort of thing does not happen again. I do
6 not want to go through all of them, but do draw my
7 attention to anything else that you think I am leaving
8 out. The third bullet point:
9 "That all his proposed stories are discussed with
10 me, in detail as early as possible in the process --
11 face to face if possible."
12 Does it look as if he did not discuss this piece in
13 good time face to face with Mr Gilligan?
14 A. No, I do not think you can necessarily draw the
15 conclusion from these proposals that they are all things
16 that failed to happen on this occasion. I think they
17 are simply an encapsulation of what Kevin's view of good
18 practice would be, some of which -- much of which
19 happened on this occasion in advance.
20 Q. This is a statement by Mr Marsh of lessons to be learnt
21 from what had happened in this particular case, is it
22 not?
23 A. Yes, but I would also expect him to outline good
24 practice from the past as well as changes for the
25 future.

138
1 Q. Well, he is not outlining good practice in the past, he
2 is proposing changes to the future. All these bullet
3 points are proposed changes which represent lessons
4 learnt from what had actually happened over these
5 broadcasts.
6 A. Yes, but I know that Andrew Gilligan did discuss the
7 story with him in advance, face to face.
8 Q. The fourth bullet point is:
9 "That anonymous sources pass an explicit credibility
10 test with me."
11 Does it look as if no explicit credibility tests had
12 been passed at editorial level before the piece was
13 broadcast?
14 A. No, I know that Andrew Gilligan did discuss the
15 credibility of his source and they had an explicit
16 conversation about it in advance of broadcast.
17 Q. The next bullet point but one is that:
18 "That we agree on a script or on core elements of
19 a script that he does not subsequently vary."
20 That clearly was something that did not happen in
21 the case of the 6.07 broadcast?
22 A. That is true.
23 Q. And had particularly serious consequences in the light
24 of what was actually said?
25 A. As it appears now, yes.

139
1 Q. Yes. Now, when the broadcast had been made and the row
2 had broken out, you, personally, had to look into what
3 had happened and decide for yourself whether proper
4 journalistic standards had been applied?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. As I understand it, correct me if I am wrong, you had to
7 do that first of all in order to brief yourself to
8 answer Alastair Campbell's complaints and particularly
9 to write your long response of 27th June?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. And secondly you had to do it in order to brief the
12 Governors on 6th July?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. As I understand it, from your evidence, you did not read
15 Mr Gilligan's notes of what the source had said to him
16 before writing to Alastair Campbell on 27th June,
17 although you now feel that you should have done; you
18 did, however, read those notes before briefing the
19 Governors?
20 A. Yes, I did.
21 Q. And equally you had known since 27th June both that the
22 informant was Dr Kelly and that Dr Kelly was not
23 a member of the Intelligence Services?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Now, as I understand it, it is not something you

140
1 actually said but it was the impression I gained from
2 your evidence-in-chief just now, as soon as Dr Kelly was
3 identified by name by Mr Gilligan you realised who he
4 was and that he was not a member of the Intelligence
5 Services; is that right?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Who did you understand Dr Kelly to be?
8 A. I understood him to be a scientific adviser to the
9 Government on weapons of mass destruction and
10 particularly biological weapons.
11 Q. Which ministry did you understand him to be working in?
12 A. Well, he seemed to me to be advising both the Foreign
13 Office and the Ministry of Defence.
14 Q. Yes, he had described himself as a chief biological
15 weapons adviser to the Ministry of Defence; is that
16 a description that --
17 A. Well I looked him up on the Internet and it seemed he
18 had a dual title relating both to the Foreign Office and
19 to the Ministry of Defence.
20 Q. The BBC's own database of contacts refers to him as
21 somebody who:
22 "... works for the MoD, is employed by the Foreign
23 Office but is [this is actually out of date] seconded to
24 the UN at the moment."
25 Did you look up that?

141
1 A. No, I did not.
2 Q. But if somebody had told you he works for the MoD but is
3 employed by the Foreign Office, you would have assumed
4 he was seconded to the MoD and that he worked there?
5 A. Yes. As I said, what I did at the time was to look him
6 up on the Internet and I think one of the first things
7 that came up was a mention of him from the LSE
8 conference in which he had titles both relating to the
9 Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence.
10 Q. Would you agree the public impression created by
11 Mr Gilligan's broadcasts on 29th May, whether or not he
12 intended it, was that his source was a senior member of
13 the Intelligence Services?
14 A. No, I think he gave the impression that he was close to
15 intelligence, but I do not think, other than the handful
16 of occasions which you raised with Andrew Gilligan, that
17 he -- I do not believe Andrew Gilligan set out to give
18 that impression at all that he belonged to the
19 Intelligence Services.
20 Q. I am not asking what his purpose was, I am asking you
21 whether you agree that that was in fact the impression
22 that was created, whether he intended it or not?
23 A. I do not think it was created by Andrew Gilligan.
24 I think when this story happened, quite quickly a number
25 of people -- I would need to check the script but

142
1 I think even Adam Ingram on that first morning referred
2 to him as "Security Services". It very quickly got into
3 the bloodstream of the way this issue was discussed,
4 both by the BBC, I accept, but also outside of the BBC.
5 Q. It was not actually Adam Ingram, Mr Sambrook, it was
6 John Humphrys who told him that was the position.
7 A. Certainly by the time John Reid was being interviewed he
8 was talking about Intelligence Services. The point I am
9 trying to make is that it was very quickly in the
10 bloodstream of everybody discussing this issue that
11 intelligence was used in a very broad sense in terms of
12 describing the source.
13 Q. If you look at BBC/1/15, you will see that at the fourth
14 entry down this page, this is part of the transcript of
15 John Humphrys' interview with the Minister:
16 "Oh well I'll tell you. Again it isn't a question
17 for me to take any words but if, well hang on a minute
18 er Mr Ingram if I may, you've asked me the question.
19 What we have here is a source, within the Intelligence
20 Service."
21 That was the conclusion presumably Mr Humphrys had
22 drawn from listening to Mr Gilligan's broadcasts that
23 very morning?
24 A. It was an assumption he made, I assume, yes.
25 Q. Do you not accept it was a natural one?

143
1 A. Well it was clear that the BBC's source dealt with
2 intelligence and was close to intelligence because they
3 had been involved in this dossier, yes. So it was an
4 assumption that I think quite a number of people made.
5 Q. Yes. Now, if you look at BBC/4/247, you will see that
6 in the first chunk of an extract from the transcript of
7 extracts from the World at One on the same day,
8 Nick Clarke says in the third sentence:
9 "The Today Programme this morning reported the views
10 of an anonymous member of the Security Services who cast
11 doubt on the status of the dossier published with
12 a foreword by Tony Blair last September."
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. That is a clear statement that the source was a member
15 of the Security Services, is it not?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And the position was that whatever Mr Gilligan may have
18 intended, the result of what he had done is that the BBC
19 itself, on a number of occasions in the course of that
20 day and later, was describing this as a report based on
21 a senior member of the Intelligence Services, was it
22 not?
23 A. I absolutely accept he was described in that way both in
24 the BBC and by a number of other people -- as I said,
25 this association of intelligence got into the

144
1 bloodstream in the way our source was described.
2 Q. You yourself were under that impression, were you not?
3 A. When I gave my interview to the Today Programme on the
4 morning of the 26th, I did refer to him as Intelligence
5 Services erroneously. As I have said, I did not know
6 Dr Kelly's identity at that stage.
7 Q. You referred to it in that way because that is what you
8 had understood Mr Gilligan to be saying?
9 A. Well, by this time it was not simply Mr Gilligan who was
10 saying this. It was being widely discussed by all
11 broadcasters and in the newspapers, and the association
12 with the Intelligence Services was being widely made by
13 a number of people, obviously including Government
14 Ministers, stemming from the general coverage.
15 Q. By the general coverage you mean the way in which it was
16 covered by the BBC, which was the origin of all this.
17 A. Yes, though by 26th June clearly a lot of other news
18 organisations, besides the BBC, were covering it.
19 Q. Yes. Until Mr Gilligan told you, on the 27th, that his
20 source was Dr Kelly, Mr Gilligan had never sought to
21 correct this impression, had he?
22 A. No.
23 Q. You realised the position on the 27th, as I understand
24 your evidence?
25 A. Yes.

145
1 Q. Not because Mr Gilligan said it in terms but because the
2 moment that he identified the source as Dr Kelly, you
3 realised he was not a member of the Intelligence
4 Services?
5 A. Yes, I think we may actually have had quite an explicit
6 conversation about that. Whether it was raised by him
7 or me, I do not know. But we explicitly acknowledged in
8 that conversation that he was not a member of the
9 Security Services.
10 Q. Would you accept that if an allegation is made that
11 things have been put into the dossier contrary to the
12 advice that the Government has received from the
13 Intelligence Services, it will lend a great deal of
14 authority to that report to say that the source was
15 himself a senior member of the Intelligence Services?
16 A. Clearly, that we were saying it was a senior source,
17 whether being a member of the Intelligence Services adds
18 additional seniority or additional credence I think is
19 subjective.
20 Q. If the allegation is that the advice of the Intelligence
21 Services has been disregarded, do you not accept that it
22 lends weight to that to say: and we have been told this
23 by a senior member of the Intelligence Services?
24 A. Well, whenever we made the primary story, we were quite
25 careful, other than the Radio 5 example you used, to use

146
1 the phrase "a senior official involved in drawing up the
2 dossier".
3 Q. You were not actually, Mr Sambrook. You say apart from
4 the 5 Live broadcast, but I have just shown you the
5 World at One on the same day.
6 A. I meant in Andrew Gilligan's reporting.
7 Q. I see. I am looking at the BBC as a whole. Your answer
8 would not be right, would it?
9 A. No.
10 Q. When you were told that it was Dr Kelly on 27th June,
11 and for whatever reason you realised he was not a member
12 of the Intelligence Services, that must have caused you
13 some considerable concern?
14 A. Yes, I was concerned about it.
15 Q. You would not have wanted to perpetuate that
16 misunderstanding given the currency that it had
17 obtained, would you?
18 A. No.
19 Q. Could you look at CAB/1/360 for a moment, please?
20 I just want to turn to a slightly different matter to
21 get this in chronological sequence.
22 This is part of your letter to Alastair Campbell.
23 I do not wish, you will be relieved to hear, to refight
24 every aspect of this battle in the course of this
25 afternoon, but if you look at the bottom of page 360,

147
1 you quoted Alastair Campbell's question:
2 "Does it still stand by the allegation made on that
3 day that both we and the intelligence agencies knew the
4 45 minute claim to be wrong and inserted it despite
5 knowing that."
6 We can read your answer:
7 "Andrew Gilligan accurately reported the source
8 telling him that the Government 'probably knew that the
9 45 minute figure was wrong' and that the claim was
10 'questionable'."
11 At this stage the BBC's line was: there is
12 a difference between our reporting what the source had
13 said and our making an allegation for our own part; and
14 that is a point that you make several times in this
15 letter, including under this particular heading?
16 A. Hmm, hmm.
17 Q. Had Andrew Gilligan actually told you: well, this is
18 definitely what my source told me?
19 A. I cannot remember the exact words he used, but certainly
20 we understood that everything he had said was a proper
21 representation of his conversation with Dr Kelly.
22 Q. That is the impression that he accepts that he had given
23 in his original broadcast; but you had Andrew Gilligan
24 available to you I think in a next door room or
25 something when this was being drafted?

148
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. Presumably, since you were drawing the distinction
3 between what the BBC was saying and what the source had
4 said to the BBC, you must have said to him: is this what
5 your source told you?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. And he must have said: yes, it is?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. It was after drafting this letter, about a week after,
10 in fact, that you saw Andrew Gilligan's notes?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Just to make sure we are looking at the right document,
13 as I understand it that means the notes that he drew up
14 for Miranda Holt rather than the printed out text from
15 his personal organiser?
16 A. No, I saw the printed out text from his personal
17 organiser.
18 Q. Did you not see the Miranda Holt version?
19 A. Not at that stage, I do not think, no.
20 Q. When did you first see the Miranda Holt version?
21 A. I cannot remember, it was probably some time that week.
22 The first notes I remember seeing were the printout from
23 his personal organiser. I was aware other people had
24 seen the Miranda Holt notes and discussed them with
25 Andrew.

149
1 Q. The fact is you saw both versions in the first week
2 of July?
3 A. I think I certainly saw the printout of the organiser
4 notes then. I cannot remember if I saw the Miranda Holt
5 notes then or later.
6 Q. Do you remember whether you saw the Miranda Holt notes
7 before you appeared before the Governors on the 6th?
8 A. I do not recall for sure. I cannot remember.
9 Q. Did you find in either set of notes anything that
10 supported Mr Gilligan's broadcast statement that his
11 source had been one of the senior officials in charge of
12 drawing up the dossier?
13 A. No, that was not in the organiser notes, no.
14 Q. Were you troubled that a description of himself which
15 was of some importance was not in fact included in
16 Mr Gilligan's note, in either version?
17 A. No, not particularly, because it was quite clear that
18 Mr Gilligan had not taken a verbatim note. He was also
19 quite clear that he had discussed and agreed this
20 description in advance; and by the end of that week we
21 were also discussing Susan Watts' report where almost
22 exactly the same description had been arrived at
23 independently.
24 Q. Dr Kelly did not describe himself to Susan Watts as one
25 of the people in charge of drawing up the dossier, did

150
1 he?
2 A. I cannot remember the precise description but it is very
3 close to a senior official I think she says intimately
4 involved in drawing up the dossier, I think that is the
5 phrase.
6 Q. Are you thinking of the transcript of what was said to
7 Susan Watts on the telephone on 30th May?
8 A. No, I am thinking of her report on 2nd June.
9 Q. Yes, I see. So you were not concerned that there was
10 nothing in the note to vouch for the description of the
11 source's precise functions?
12 A. No, I was clear that the note was not going to be
13 a verbatim copy of the conversation that he had had or
14 that necessarily everything he had broadcast was going
15 to be fully represented in that note. That did not
16 strike me as particularly surprising. I clearly had
17 a conversation with Andrew about exactly what had been
18 said and the extent to which his conversation backed up
19 those elements of his reporting which were not in the
20 notes and he assured me that it did.
21 Q. Mr Sambrook, I can quite see that a note is only
22 a summary of the most important matters. But from the
23 BBC's point of view, it was of absolutely critical
24 importance, was it not, to satisfy itself that this was
25 an authoritative and credible source?

151
1 A. It was, yes.
2 Q. Yes. So the absence of any information which enabled
3 you to take a view about that from Mr Gilligan's note
4 must have been a source of concern?
5 A. Well, in terms of the credibility of the source, once he
6 had told me who David Kelly was and I had had an
7 opportunity to independently research Dr Kelly's
8 background, I took considerable comfort from that in
9 terms of his seniority and credibility.
10 Q. Yes, but what mattered as far as his credibility was
11 concerned was what David Kelly had to do with the
12 preparation of the dossier. That was what mattered, was
13 it not?
14 A. It was, yes.
15 Q. You did not find any information about that on the
16 Internet or elsewhere, did you?
17 A. No.
18 Q. Mr Gilligan was the only source of information you had
19 about that?
20 A. He was, although clearly from the things that had been
21 reported from the conversation, Dr Kelly did have some
22 close contact and close involvement with the dossier
23 because of the things he spoke about.
24 Q. Yes, but there is a world of difference between somebody
25 who reads intelligence material on his special subject

152
1 and somebody who is actually in charge in a managerial
2 or editorial sense in the preparation of a Government
3 paper, is there not?
4 A. I agree with that. But clearly the process of the
5 compilation of this dossier was not something that I was
6 clear about or ever likely to be. However, I was clear
7 that Dr Kelly was a world renowned expert on the issues
8 he was discussing and he did have some involved with the
9 dossier because of the detail in which he spoke about it
10 and he was a highly credible figure. So in terms of the
11 credibility of the source, I took comfort from that.
12 Q. The suggestion that he was in charge of drawing up the
13 dossier or one of those who was in charge of it, it was
14 a brand new piece of information which you had on
15 Mr Gilligan's authority and was not supported by
16 anything in his note?
17 A. Well, he used two descriptions, "one of those in charge"
18 or "a senior official involved", and it seemed to me
19 highly credible that either of those descriptions might
20 fit.
21 Q. Would you agree that at least as practised by the BBC,
22 it is normal if you make a serious allegation against
23 public figures to give them advance notice? I think you
24 have accepted that in principle?
25 A. Yes.

153
1 Q. You were shown, a few minutes ago, the letter which you
2 wrote on 28th June --
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. -- about this. Would you like to see it again?
5 A. By all means, yes.
6 Q. It is BBC/5/153.
7 Directly or indirectly the information that you
8 included in this letter must have come from Mr Gilligan;
9 do you agree?
10 A. Some of it came from Mr Gilligan, some of it came from
11 Miranda Holt and the Today Programme team.
12 Q. She could only have got it from Mr Gilligan.
13 A. Well, I mean, some of the details about the timings of
14 phone calls from members of the Today team came from her
15 and not from Andrew Gilligan, who may not have been
16 aware of those.
17 Q. Let us look at the second bullet point:
18 "At 6.30 pm Andrew Gilligan spoke to Kate O'Connor,
19 the MoD press officer, about the cluster bomb interview
20 and added there would be another story running on WMD."
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. That is something that could only have come from
23 Andrew Gilligan.
24 A. No, it was also the Today Programme's understanding that
25 that phone call took place.

154
1 Q. Since there was no written record of Mr Gilligan's
2 conversation --
3 A. Yes, I had spoken to Andrew Gilligan about it.
4 Q. You had spoken to him about it?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Had he confirmed the accuracy of this statement? I am
7 not suggesting you showed him the letter. Had he said
8 something to you, to this effect?
9 A. I spoke to him first and then wrote the letter. I did
10 not show him the letter before I sent it. What was said
11 to me was that he had spoken to Kate Wilson, as she now
12 is, he said Kate O'Connor, I think that may have been
13 her maiden name --
14 Q. Yes.
15 A. -- at about 6.30 in order to expand the bid from cluster
16 bombs to WMD. He told me that he had outlined the
17 allegations to be made but he could not remember exactly
18 what he had said.
19 Q. But was that an exchange which was fairly reflected, as
20 you saw it, in this particular paragraph?
21 A. I suppose so, but I was not trying to be forensic about
22 that particular bullet point, but yes.
23 Q. You were presumably trying to be accurate because you
24 were writing --
25 A. Indeed.

155
1 Q. -- in order to correct the record.
2 Mr Whittle told the Governors, on 6th July, in your
3 presence, that Andrew Gilligan had also said that he had
4 told the press office of the Ministry of Defence that
5 the WMD story was not for them?
6 A. Hmm, hmm.
7 Q. Do you remember that?
8 A. I do.
9 Q. Were you, yourself, told that by Mr Gilligan?
10 A. Yes. He did say that it was not an issue that he was
11 expecting them to respond in detail on, but he wanted to
12 expand the bid for Adam Ingram.
13 Q. The point he was saying he had put to the Ministry of
14 Defence press office was that the WMD story was not
15 a matter for the Ministry of Defence and what he meant
16 by that presumably, as you appreciated, was that it was
17 a matter for No. 10?
18 A. Well, my understanding of it, at the time, was that the
19 primary purpose for the call was to expand the bid for
20 Adam Ingram to include WMD, to outline some detail of
21 what the allegations were going to be; and what he said
22 during that conversation, he indicated he was not
23 expecting a detailed response then from the MoD, he was
24 simply trying to expand the bid and give him some sense
25 of what it was they were going to have to respond to.

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1 I accepted his explanation of that.
2 Q. Yes. His explanation was in fact not consistent with
3 his suggestion now that he explained the gist of the
4 allegations to the MoD press office, was it?
5 A. No, he was always quite clear that he had outlined -- he
6 was never specific about the terms in which he had done
7 it, which was a problem for us, which is why we then
8 said we need to take better notes of these kind of
9 conversations. But he was always clear he had outlined
10 the nature of the allegations that were going to be put.
11 Q. Would you agree that proper journalistic standards may
12 require the BBC to retract a statement after it has been
13 broadcast if it finds that it cannot be properly
14 supported?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. So if the BBC were to discover, after broadcasting
17 a serious allegation from an anonymous source, that
18 there was in fact no reliable basis for what that source
19 had said or the way in which the BBC had summarised it,
20 as a matter of general policy would the BBC regard it as
21 right to retract that?
22 A. Yes, if it was clear that we had got something wrong.
23 Q. And that would be so even if you were satisfied that, at
24 the time, proper journalistic standards had been
25 observed?

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1 A. Yes.
2 Q. And was that why you made it clear to the Foreign
3 Affairs Committee, on 1st July, that if they were
4 unanimous and had concrete evidence to support that
5 conclusion that the dossier had not been sexed up, you
6 would retract?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. Who took the decision that that would be the BBC's
9 attitude?
10 A. I think it was a position that we -- I think it was
11 a decision probably taken by myself and my deputy
12 Mark Damazer. But we certainly discussed it at some
13 point with the Director General.
14 Q. What did you mean by "concrete evidence"?
15 A. Documentation.
16 Q. Documentation?
17 A. Hmm.
18 Q. Ie drafts?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. One of the points that has been made from time to time
21 is that Mr Scarlett did not appear before the Foreign
22 Affairs Committee.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Was his evidence what you had in mind by "concrete
25 evidence"?

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1 A. Yes, I think it might have been.
2 Q. If Mr Scarlett had given evidence that he had supervised
3 all of the drafts and was entirely happy with the
4 document as laid before Parliament, would you have
5 regarded that as concrete evidence?
6 A. It is difficult to hypothesize when you do not know the
7 terms in which he might have done it.
8 Q. Let us suppose he did it in the most unequivocal
9 possible fashion.
10 A. That would clearly have lent weight to that fact.
11 I think what we said was on the basis of concrete
12 evidence because we could not understand why, given much
13 of this intelligence had been declassified, it was not
14 possible to see some of these drafts and quite quickly
15 settle the point.
16 Q. It was obvious why you could not see the drafts.
17 A. Well, not to us at the time.
18 Q. It was not obvious to you. I see. Well, I am not going
19 to argue that point with you.
20 Would you accept that if Mr Scarlett had,
21 unequivocally, said that he was happy with the document
22 as published, that would have satisfied you?
23 A. I do not think it would have satisfied the point that
24 there may well have been some dissent about the
25 presentation of intelligence in the ranks below

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1 Mr Scarlett of which he was unaware.
2 Q. You certainly would have had, at the very least, to
3 retract parts of what had been said, would you not?
4 A. Parts, yes.
5 Q. Was it therefore the BBC's position that they were not
6 prepared to take at face value Mr Scarlett's statement,
7 which was by now known, that he and the JIC were
8 entirely satisfied with the dossier as published unless
9 he appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee and
10 satisfied them of it? Was that their position?
11 A. No, we had reported Mr Scarlett's position to the extent
12 that it had been reported second-hand -- we reported the
13 Warsaw press conference. We had reported the
14 Prime Minister's comments in the House of Commons and so
15 on. But really the point I am making is there may well
16 have been aspects of the story which were correct of
17 which Mr Scarlett was unaware.
18 Q. I am a little puzzled by the fact that you would have
19 attached a great deal of weight to Mr Scarlett's view
20 and it would have caused you to retract at least part of
21 the broadcasts, but only if he not only allowed that
22 statement to be made publicly but said it to the Foreign
23 Affairs Committee and persuaded them.
24 A. Well, all I am really saying is we fully reported
25 Mr Scarlett's support for the Prime Minister. If

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1 Mr Scarlett had given evidence to the Foreign Affairs
2 Committee, I am sure it would have been very powerful
3 evidence. But without knowing what he said or what
4 documentation may or may not have been brought forward
5 to support it, it is quite difficult for me to
6 hypothesise about any impact it would have given on our
7 position.
8 Q. Mr Dyke has given evidence and you I think have
9 associated yourself this afternoon with that evidence,
10 to virtually quote him, I think, that he wished that he
11 had paused in late June and ordered a full investigation
12 of the whole issue.
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. That is one of the points that Mr Dyke made which you
15 associate yourself with?
16 A. I certainly think we should have paused and considered
17 at greater length the charges that were being levelled
18 against us. Whether that amounts to a full
19 investigation of the whole issue, I am not sure. But
20 I certainly think the letter of the 27th was written
21 under considerable pressure, particularly the deadline
22 imposed on us by Mr Campbell, and if we had not been
23 under that pressure to respond then the errors in that
24 letter of the 27th might not have been made.
25 Q. There was not in fact a careful examination of all the

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1 allegations that had been made, how far they could be
2 supported by Mr Gilligan's notes and what conclusions
3 should be drawn from that before the Governors' meeting,
4 was there?
5 A. There was an investigation and examination. What we did
6 not do was go through the personal organiser notes in
7 point by point detail with Andrew. If we had done that,
8 I think it might have pointed up the two errors that we
9 made in that letter. But we certainly went through
10 every point that Mr Campbell raised in his letter. We
11 discussed them in some detail, both with Andrew Gilligan
12 and with Kevin Marsh, and we just discussed them between
13 ourselves as a senior editorial team before coming out
14 with that letter.
15 I would not want anybody to think that the letter
16 was written purely in haste. We spent as much time as
17 we had over it and we went into considerable detail on
18 all the points that Mr Campbell made.
19 Q. The truth is that the investigation that had been
20 carried out by the time the Governors met on 6th July
21 was no fuller than the investigation that had been made
22 before you wrote that letter, except in this respect:
23 that you had, by now, looked at both versions of
24 Mr Gilligan's notes?
25 A. We had seen Mr Gilligan's notes, that is true. We had

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1 also, by that time, identified many similarities in
2 Ms Watts' reports as well with the reports
3 Andrew Gilligan had made, which had taken us some time
4 to get to because I was abroad when her broadcasts
5 originally went out. I think that also lent some
6 support to the broad thrust of the allegations that
7 Mr Gilligan's source was making.
8 Q. In the press release following the meeting of the
9 Governors, it was said that the BBC had never attacked
10 the good faith of the Prime Minister.
11 A. That is also what I said in my Today interview on the
12 26th.
13 Q. Did anyone draw the Governors' intention to what
14 Mr Gilligan had in fact said at 6.07?
15 A. No, it was not at the forefront of our minds. Indeed,
16 it was not at the forefront of our minds in drafting the
17 response of the 27th because it was raised there by Mr
18 Campbell for the first time, as the third of those
19 12 questions, and indeed in the previous three letters
20 from the Government the wording of the 6.07 broadcast
21 had never been referred to you and their complaints were
22 much more about whether we had abided by the producer
23 guidelines, the strength given to denials and a number
24 of other issues, such as the description of the JIC.
25 They had never drawn the precise language of the 6.07 as

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1 being the core of their complaint. Indeed, even when we
2 got the letter of the 26th where it was raised for the
3 first time in that list of questions, I took the core of
4 their complaint to be that John Humphrys paragraph on
5 the front page.
6 Q. So nobody said, as I understand your evidence, to the
7 Governors at that meeting: there is a problem about the
8 6.07 broadcast, which was unscripted, and where
9 Mr Gilligan appears to have gone further than he should
10 have done?
11 A. No, because at that time the Government's complaint was
12 all-encompassing. They were not saying: we have
13 a problem, we have a complaint about the 6.07 broadcast.
14 They said: we have a complaint about the entirety of
15 these allegations. I think Mr Campbell's letter to the
16 Director General on the 26th said "the story is 100 per
17 cent wrong". This was an all or nothing complaint, not
18 a complaint about a phrase in one version of
19 19 broadcasts.
20 Q. It was a number of complaints, one of which related
21 specifically to the 6.07 broadcast.
22 A. I accept that the wording of the 6.07 was raised for the
23 first time in the letter of the 26th, yes.
24 Q. In fact you had at 6.07, whether you intended to or not,
25 attacked the good faith of the Government, had you not?

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1 A. On reflection I can see that. At the time, I do not
2 think that was sufficiently recognised, no.
3 Q. Did anyone point out to the Governors that the dossier
4 had said that it reflected the views of the JIC and
5 Mr Gilligan had broadcast, at 7.32, an allegation that
6 the Government had actually inserted things contrary to
7 intelligence advice? Was that point made to the
8 Governors?
9 A. No. As I have explained to you before, we saw the core
10 allegations that were being made about the scripted
11 items rather than 6.07, and again, even in that
12 allegation we did not accept that the reservations of
13 the Intelligence Services necessarily referred to the
14 heads of those services or the JIC; and I believe we
15 always thought of it in terms of people lower down the
16 chain who had been involved in the assessment and
17 production of the dossier, who were concerned, and at
18 some level unspecified in the BBC's broadcast, that
19 stuff had been included against their advice.
20 LORD HUTTON: May I just ask you on that point, Mr Sambrook,
21 if we look at BBC/1/4, which is the first page of the
22 transcript, if we can scroll down that, please. Yes,
23 just there. You see the passage there beginning:
24 "Well, erm, our source says that the dossier, as it
25 was finally published, made the Intelligence Services

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1 unhappy..."
2 Then if we go over to the next page which is the
3 commencement of the broadcast at 7.32, about halfway
4 down that passage:
5 "... Andrew Gilligan has found evidence that the
6 Government's dossier on Iraq that was produced last
7 September was cobbled together at the last minute with
8 some unconfirmed material that had not been approved by
9 the Security Services."
10 Now, there is a reference to the Intelligence
11 Services being unhappy and then there is a reference to
12 "had not been approved by the Security Services".
13 A. Hmm.
14 LORD HUTTON: I think later there is a reference at 006 to
15 Mr Gilligan, where he said "most people in intelligence
16 were not happy"; but if one looks at the first two
17 references, that gives the picture, does it not, that it
18 was the entirety of the Intelligence Services, or would
19 it not apply certainly to the heads of the Intelligence
20 Services?
21 A. I accept that reading can be taken from it.
22 LORD HUTTON: You say "can be taken from it". Is that not
23 the only reading if you just look at those passages?
24 Once they were heard by someone listening to the
25 broadcast: "the Intelligence Services".

166
1 A. I think all I can say, my Lord, is that in the
2 programme's mind, and indeed in ours for some time, that
3 was not what we believed to be the allegation that had
4 been made.
5 LORD HUTTON: Is the important thing not what the listeners
6 take it to mean?
7 A. I agree with that, yes.
8 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
9 MR SUMPTION: You have accepted that there was no basis in
10 Mr Gilligan's notes for the assertion that that point
11 had been made to him by Dr Kelly, the conscious
12 misfeasance point.
13 A. It was not in his notes, yes.
14 Q. Was that point made to the Governors?
15 A. Yes, I said to the Governors that his notes were not
16 verbatim, were not -- not every that he had broadcast
17 was contained in his notes but that Mr Gilligan asserted
18 that what was not there was a proper reflection of his
19 conversation with Dr Kelly. The one point the Governors
20 challenged me on was whether the name "Campbell" was
21 represented in the notes and I told them that it was,
22 next to a phrase about transformation of the dossier.
23 And that was really the only point that they wanted to
24 have more clarification about the notes on.
25 Q. You see, Mr Sambrook, when you wrote the 27th June

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1 letter you had not seen Mr Gilligan's notes; and when
2 you subsequently saw them you realised that there might
3 be a problem about the unequivocal way in which you had
4 answered Mr Campbell's question whether the BBC stood by
5 the 6.07 allegation.
6 A. when I saw his notes I had the conversation with Andrew
7 about those elements of his broadcast which were not
8 captured in his notes and he continued to assert that
9 his conversation with Dr Kelly backed up those comments,
10 and I took him at face value.
11 Q. So he continued to tell you that that was what Dr Kelly
12 had actually told him?
13 A. He continued to say it was a proper -- he did not say it
14 was a direct quote at that point but he did say it
15 continued to be a proper reflection and interpretation
16 of what Dr Kelly had told him, which is what I think
17 I said in my evidence on the 13th.
18 Q. You have told us that by this stage the notion that the
19 source was a senior member of the Intelligence Services
20 had got into the bloodstream. But you, by now, knew at
21 the Governors' meeting that the source was not a senior
22 member of the Intelligence Service.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Now, was that point made to the Governors?
25 A. No, because the Governors again did not press me on the

168
1 identity of the source or where the source came from.
2 As I explained earlier, the dilemma I found myself in,
3 and I had some unease over it but nevertheless it was
4 a dilemma I faced, was about clarification of that point
5 against anything which might assist the identification
6 or narrow the scope for identification of our source.
7 Given the climate and the high public attention at that
8 time, I believed our primary responsibility was to
9 continue to try to protect the identity of the source
10 and therefore decided not to proceed with that
11 clarification in public. The Governors did not question
12 me about it specifically in any way.
13 Q. But the Governors had no reason to doubt what the BBC
14 had itself been saying for weeks, namely that this was
15 a senior intelligence source, what you yourself had said
16 in the Today Programme on the 26th.
17 A. That is true, though it is also true that after the
18 27th, when I was aware of Dr Kelly as the source, I took
19 every step I could to ensure that future communications
20 accurately described him. I am aware that the
21 Governors' statement did not but I was not consulted
22 about that statement before it was released.
23 Q. The problem is that the Governors were under the
24 impression that it was a senior intelligence source.
25 You knew that in fact it was not.

169
1 A. I do not altogether accept that, I am afraid. I think
2 that the description of the source was not solely an
3 Intelligence Service source, which seems to be the
4 implication of what you are saying. There were many
5 varied descriptions of the source, some of which
6 suggested he came from the Intelligence Services, many
7 of which did not. So my view is that there was a very
8 confused picture of where the source may have sat.
9 Q. Well, you have just yourself confirmed, have you not,
10 that the Governors' press release immediately after this
11 assumed that he was an intelligence source.
12 A. It did.
13 Q. You say you were not consulted about that. But would
14 you not agree that it is a rather serious matter that
15 the Governors of the BBC should have endorsed the
16 journalistic standards of the broadcast on the basis
17 that the source was a senior member of the Intelligence
18 Services, without appreciating that that description was
19 wrong?
20 A. I think it is regrettable that their press release
21 referred to Intelligence Services, yes. Whether -- the
22 extent to which they derived comfort themselves from any
23 idea they may or may not have had that he was an
24 Intelligence Service source I cannot speak to.
25 Q. The only other matters I want to ask you about

170
1 Mr Sambrook concern a couple of press releases. Could
2 you look, please, at BBC/3/25? This is a press release
3 of 9th July. Were you here when I asked Mr Gilligan
4 about this?
5 A. I was, yes.
6 Q. In that case, we can take it quite shortly. Did you
7 have any involvement at all with the issue of this press
8 release?
9 A. I was aware of it. I do not remember directly drawing
10 it up, no.
11 Q. When were you aware of it?
12 A. On that evening.
13 Q. Were you aware of it before it was actually issued?
14 A. I may have been, I cannot recall exactly.
15 Q. Were you consulted about its terms?
16 A. Not that I recall in detail, no.
17 Q. Do you regard it as satisfactory -- given that you, at
18 this time, knew that the source was Dr Kelly -- that the
19 BBC should put out a public statement saying
20 Mr Gilligan's source does not work in the Ministry of
21 Defence?
22 A. I remember precisely what our view was about it because
23 I remember a mobile telephone conversation I had on the
24 way back into the office that evening, where we were
25 discussing the Ministry of Defence press statement. And

171
1 our view was that the original Ministry of Defence press
2 statement had two facts in it: 1. That the individual
3 had known Mr Gilligan for a number of months and it
4 appeared to say, quite firmly, words to the effect that
5 it was an MoD official.
6 Our view -- my understanding of Dr Kelly, and indeed
7 that of Andrew Gilligan, was that Dr Kelly had a roving
8 role and was not kind of directly line managed by the
9 MoD, and also that Andrew Gilligan had known him for
10 a number of years. Our view in the first few hours of
11 that evening was that it was quite likely they had
12 actually identified somebody else and not
13 Andrew Gilligan's source. It was not clear until
14 I think the next day that actually Dr Kelly who had been
15 identified.
16 Q. Knowing as you did that Mr Gilligan's source was in fact
17 Dr Kelly, did you regard it as a fair and honest
18 statement, on the part of the BBC, to say that
19 Mr Gilligan's source does not work in the Ministry of
20 Defence?
21 A. Well, I think what we were trying to say is he was not
22 a Ministry of Defence official directly; and I think
23 that the Ministry of Defence statement had indicated
24 that. It is as simple as that.
25 Q. So with no gloss at all you regard it as a perfectly

172
1 fair statement to make, do you: Mr Gilligan's source
2 does not work in the Ministry of Defence?
3 A. Of course I understand the point you are making, but
4 I have to say at the time I think we regarded it was
5 perfectly fair, yes.
6 Q. It is pure trouble making, is it not?
7 A. No, I do not agree with that.
8 Q. Did you accompany Mr Gilligan when he gave evidence to
9 the Foreign Affairs Committee second time round?
10 A. No, I did not.
11 Q. The other press release I want you to look at is at
12 BBC/6/261.
13 This is a press release issued by the BBC's Director
14 of Communications, Sally Osman, on behalf of
15 Andrew Gilligan. Were you consulted about this?
16 A. No, I was not.
17 Q. Can you help us at all on the circumstances in which
18 a decision was made that a press release in these terms
19 should be put out?
20 A. I believe this was the day I had made the announcement
21 that Dr Kelly was our source, which had obviously caused
22 a lot of media and public interest. And I think that
23 part of that interest was suggesting, therefore, that
24 following Dr Kelly's evidence to the FAC that
25 Andrew Gilligan had not properly represented his

173
1 comments and his reporting of it; and my understanding
2 was that Andrew Gilligan wanted to send out this press
3 statement to, in his view, correct that. But beyond
4 that, those are the circumstances under which it arose
5 but I was not consulted about the terms of it.
6 MR SUMPTION: I see. I will not ask you any more about it.
7 Thank you.
8 LORD HUTTON: We will rise now then for five minutes.
9 (3.22 pm)
10 (Short Break)
11 (3.27 pm)
12 Cross-examined by MR DINGEMANS
13 Q. Mr Sambrook, first of all can I deal with the letter of
14 27th June? Can I take you to BBC/5/119 which is page 1
15 of the letter? You make the point, in your first
16 paragraph, that you did not answer on 26th June because
17 you wanted time to examine fully the questions you asked
18 and to write a considered reply.
19 Do I take the gist of your evidence to be this: that
20 although you had hoped to write a considered reply, this
21 was not it?
22 A. Yes. At the time under the deadline of responding by
23 the end of that day, to take an extra 24 hours in the
24 climate in which we were at this time seemed to be
25 taking a significant extra time. What I have said today

174
1 is on reflection I think we should have withstood the
2 pressure to reply and have taken longer and considered
3 at greater length.
4 Q. Because if we go on to page 124 there is part of this
5 letter which says at the bottom of the page:
6 "Does it still stand by the allegation made on that
7 day that both we and the intelligence agencies knew the
8 45 minute claim to be wrong and inserted it despite
9 knowing that."
10 It says this:
11 "Andrew Gilligan accurately reported the source
12 telling him that the Government 'probably knew that the
13 45 minute figure was wrong' and that the claim was
14 'questionable'."
15 Both those aspects of the answer are simply wrong
16 and unsupported by the evidence, are they not?
17 A. As I now understand it, that is the case. At the time
18 Mr Gilligan, I think, told me that that was a proper
19 reflection of what his source had told him.
20 Q. Can I then turn to the meeting you had on 3rd June at
21 The Times. Mr Baldwin told us about this in evidence.
22 He said that you were, as it were, doing the rounds of
23 media; is that right? You were going round to various
24 media outlets?
25 A. Yes, at the time there was a great deal of briefing of

175
1 newspapers going on, particularly by the Government, to
2 be fair; and I felt it would be useful for me to speak
3 to the editors of a number of newspapers so they could
4 at least try to understand the BBC's position even if
5 they did not sympathise with it.
6 Q. Was there any discussion about the source for
7 Mr Gilligan's story at that meeting?
8 A. Yes. As I said in my evidence on the 13th, I was asked
9 about the source and I used the phrase that
10 Andrew Gilligan used at 7.32 that it was a "senior
11 source involved in the compilation of the dossier",
12 I think I said. I was then asked by Mr Baldwin whether
13 we had attempted to go back to the source and check
14 whether we was happy with the way that his allegations
15 had been reported; and I said that we was unavailable
16 due to the nature of his work. This is a phrase that
17 Andrew Gilligan had used when I had asked the same
18 question of him at some stage in the preceding days.
19 Mr Baldwin then pressed me further to say: does that
20 mean he is abroad? And I did not wish to --
21 I understood that Dr Kelly might be in Iraq but I did
22 not know for certain and I did not wish to say yes or
23 no, either to mislead or to help direct people towards
24 Dr Kelly if he was in Iraq. So I said "something like
25 that", intending it to cover a range of possibilities.

176
1 Q. Could I take you to the article written by Mr Baldwin on
2 5th July? It is BBC/6/5. He says this in the first
3 paragraph:
4 "The source for bitterly contested allegations that
5 Downing Street 'sexed up' its dossier on
6 Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction is
7 a military expert who is now based in Iraq, BBC insiders
8 are claiming."
9 Did you tell Mr Baldwin that the source was based in
10 Iraq?
11 A. Absolutely not.
12 Q. Mr Baldwin also appears to know that the person is
13 a weapons of mass destruction military expert. Did you
14 tell him that?
15 A. Absolutely not.
16 Q. Mr Baldwin said that parts of that information had come
17 from BBC insiders. Did you know anything about that?
18 A. I knew nothing about that at all, no.
19 Q. If it had come from BBC insiders, it would have been
20 plainly inappropriate for that information to have been
21 disclosed, would you accept that?
22 A. I think it would have been extremely inappropriate and
23 I would be very surprised if anybody within the BBC had
24 made those sorts of comments to Mr Baldwin at all.
25 Q. On 8th July in his article Mr Baldwin said this: some

177
1 executives, BBC executives, have hinted that he may be
2 in Iraq searching for weapons of mass destruction. Such
3 loose talk convinced Downing Street that he is a weapons
4 of mass destruction specialist at the Foreign Office,
5 which appears to be picking up the same point. No doubt
6 you would condemn, if BBC executives were the source of
7 that information, anyone leaking that information?
8 A. I would completely condemn it. I have no doubt
9 whatsoever that it was not possible for Tom Baldwin to
10 reach those conclusions from any conversation I had.
11 Q. Anything you had said to him?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. He did not provide us, beyond saying there were two
14 persons who had spoken with Mr Marsh, any further
15 details of the BBC executives.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Have you undertaken any investigations to see whether or
18 not those claims were right?
19 A. We have not.
20 Q. You have not?
21 A. No. I am afraid that the BBC insiders get quoted
22 a great deal in the newspapers. It is not really
23 possible to investigate all of them.
24 Q. Finally, can I turn to the question of editorial
25 concerns and whether those were passed on sufficiently

178
1 to the Governors? It is right, is it not, that by the
2 time of the Governors' meeting on 6th July there were
3 real concerns about the language that had been used by
4 Mr Gilligan in his broadcast?
5 A. There was certainly concern that there -- we had not
6 been consistent and that the range of interpretations
7 was being drawn from the way we had reported the story,
8 that is certainly true.
9 Q. It was also plain, if you looked at his notes, that
10 there was no full support for the broadcast; that is
11 right, is it not?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. It is also right if you analysed his evidence to the
14 Foreign Affairs Committee on 19th June that it did not
15 support the more serious allegations that had been made
16 on the BBC programmes?
17 A. I do not think I entirely accept that. I think his
18 evidence on the 19th broadly supported most of the
19 allegations that had been made. He did not have
20 "probably know it was wrong", it is true, and he was not
21 directly asked about that phrase, as far as I recall.
22 Q. No, but by the time we come to the Governors you are
23 under pressure to reply on 27th June, you have told us
24 about that. There had been plenty of time between
25 27th June and the meeting on 6th July to consider these

179
1 things at more leisure?
2 A. Yes, and when I looked at Andrew Gilligan's notes on
3 I think it was 1st July, I did explicitly have a
4 conversation, going through his notes, about what was
5 contained in them and what he had broadcast that was not
6 contained in them and received assurances from him that
7 what he had broadcast was stood up or was justified by
8 the conversation he had had with Dr Kelly, even if it
9 was not captured on his personal organiser.
10 Q. But we also know that Mr Marsh, head of or editor of the
11 Today Programme, had passed up to the head of radio news
12 serious concerns in the e-mail at BBC/5/118.
13 A. I was not aware of that, no.
14 Q. You were not aware of that?
15 A. No.
16 Q. Do you think you ought to have been made aware of that?
17 A. I think if Kevin Marsh or Stephen Mitchell had had
18 serious concerns about any flaws in the journalism or
19 the way that we were responding to the Government, they
20 should and would have flagged that up to me, and they
21 did not.
22 Q. But the position is this: Be it the fault of the
23 editorial side or the Governors, an error is made on
24 27th June in the letter for the reasons you have given
25 in --

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1 A. Yes.
2 Q. -- the meeting on 6th July to consider this specific
3 broadcast and these specific complaints, yes?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And yet whether it is a failure of the Governors or
6 the failure of the editorial side, no-one has yet picked
7 up the errors that were made?
8 A. No, we were still, and Andrew Gilligan was still
9 standing by all of the reporting that he made of
10 Dr Kelly's remarks, including the phrases he used at
11 6.07, and saying they were a fair reflection of the
12 conversation he had.
13 LORD HUTTON: But is it appropriate to rely entirely on
14 Mr Gilligan? If serious complaints have been made about
15 a report of his and his notes do not fully support his
16 report, is it enough for the BBC just to rely on what
17 Mr Gilligan tells them?
18 A. Ideally, of course, we would prefer corroboration,
19 my Lord, but the corroboration was not available. We
20 had pressed him on the point. He had been entirely
21 consistent on it. At the time, as I said before, we had
22 looked closely at the Susan Watts reports which I accept
23 not in terms of the "probably knew it was wrong" phrase,
24 but in many other respects supported Andrew Gilligan's
25 reporting. At this time, as I said earlier, the

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1 Government's complaint was not about that phrase, it was
2 all encompassing. They were saying the story and all of
3 the whole coverage was 100 per cent wrong; it was an all
4 or nothing complaint and they wanted the full withdrawal
5 of every aspect of the story. So~--
6 LORD HUTTON: I quite appreciate the point you make -- I beg
7 your pardon, carry on.
8 A. Sorry, I was trying to explain. So the way we were
9 looking at it was not about one particular phrase,
10 particularly. It was about the breadth of the
11 allegations that had been made across our coverage. We
12 had reason to believe significant parts of it had been
13 demonstrated to be right and indeed had been confirmed
14 from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
15 We had a second BBC correspondent who independently
16 appeared to have a similar conversation with -- we did
17 not know at that time it was also with Dr Kelly -- which
18 had supported, again, kind of the broad thrust of many
19 of the allegations. So we did not believe it was right
20 to fully retract every aspect of it, which is what the
21 Government were asking of us. It is true to say that we
22 had not honed in on that phrase "probably knew it was
23 wrong" in a way that, with hindsight, I can accept we
24 should have done.
25 LORD HUTTON: I see. Thank you.

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1 MR DINGEMANS: If you do not accept that you knew of
2 editorial concerns, do you accept this proposition: that
3 you ought to have known about editorial concerns?
4 A. If there had been editorial concerns, yes. I am afraid
5 personally I do not fully accept that Kevin Marsh e-mail
6 highlights the level of editorial concerns that have
7 been attached to it.
8 MR DINGEMANS: Thank you very much.
9 LORD HUTTON: Mr Caldecott, any re-examination?
10 Re-examined by MR CALDECOTT
11 Q. Mr Sambrook, you were asked about a passage in the
12 shorthand notes of the Governors' meeting, BBC/14/31,
13 please.
14 Could we go just about halfway down? I am not sure
15 I have the right reference here. 14/31. Just go up
16 a bit. I think I must have the wrong reference. I can
17 do this by later submission.
18 LORD HUTTON: Would you like to take a moment Mr Caldecott?
19 MR CALDECOTT: I can actually remember what it says.
20 LORD HUTTON: Would you like to put it then?
21 MR CALDECOTT: Mr Sambrook, it was put to you that this was
22 a reference to Kevin Marsh not having spoken to
23 Mr Gilligan about the programme. Your answer was that
24 it was about The Mail on Sunday article. I think I am
25 right that very shortly higher up in the transcript you

183
1 will see actually a reference to newspapers/journalists
2 notes. I am very grateful. It is just two-thirds of
3 the way down the screen now, do you just see there
4 between Gavyn Davies and DG, "Journalists and
5 newspapers?" That was a change of subject to The Mail
6 on Sunday, which is what you were talking about in the
7 passage you were asked about?
8 A. That is right, yes.
9 Q. Secondly, you referred to Susan Watts' description of
10 her source. Just for the sake of completeness, could we
11 please look at BBC/1/33?
12 If you could look, please, at Ms Watts' first
13 contribution on that page, we see the initials there,
14 SW, three lines into that:
15 "We've spoken to a senior official intimately
16 involved with the process of pulling together the
17 original September 2002 Blair weapons dossier."
18 Was that the reference you had in mind?
19 A. It was, yes.
20 Q. Lastly, it was put to you that you, in a lunch with
21 Mr Baldwin on 3rd June, may have mentioned Iraq or the
22 fact that Dr Kelly was a weapons inspector and
23 suggestions to that effect. I want to show you, in
24 fact, the article which Mr Baldwin wrote the following
25 day, on 4th June, rather than the article he wrote on

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1 5th June, which is at BBC/5/198 -- July, sorry.
2 BBC/5/198.
3 I would be grateful if you could just quickly read
4 that through to yourself, Mr Sambrook. (Pause). You may
5 find it easier on the hard copy, because this is not as
6 easy as it might be. (Handed)?
7 A. Yes. I am familiar with the article.
8 Q. Do you see a reference at the top right hand of the
9 second column, the top of the second column?
10 A. Yes. Yes.
11 Q. "Unsuccessful because of the nature of his position."
12 Do you see that?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Do you see any reference in that article to anyone on
15 behalf of the BBC having said anything about Iraq or
16 weapons inspectors?
17 A. No.
18 Q. And this is an article written by Mr Baldwin on the day
19 following the lunch with you?
20 A. That is right.
21 MR CALDECOTT: My Lord, that is all I have.
22 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you very
23 much then Mr Sambrook.
24 A. Thank you.
25

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1 MR RICHARD HATFIELD (called)
2 Examined by MR LLOYD-JONES
3 Q. My Lord. Mr Hatfield, is your full name Richard Paul
4 Hatfield?
5 A. It is.
6 Q. Are you the personnel director of the Ministry of
7 Defence?
8 A. I am.
9 Q. Have you previously given evidence to this Inquiry?
10 A. I have.
11 Q. Mr Hatfield, we have heard a great deal of evidence
12 about line management and line management chains. Could
13 you, please, explain to us the essence of how the line
14 management system works?
15 A. The basic proposition is that the line manager is
16 responsible for directing individuals under him or her
17 in the course of their work and for their day-to-day, if
18 I can put it this way, their day-to-day welfare at work.
19 Q. In your capacity as personnel director, do you have
20 responsibility for others in line management chains?
21 A. I have my own line management chain and I am directly
22 responsible for about 3,300 people.
23 Q. Was Dr Kelly one of those persons in a line management
24 chain for which you were responsible?
25 A. He was not.

186
1 Q. How does the system of line management chains differ
2 from personnel organisation?
3 A. My personnel organisation, and indeed lower level
4 personnel organisations advise the line management chain
5 when they have personnel issues. They also support them
6 when they need it and indeed support individuals when
7 they need it in various ways and the primary
8 responsibility, day-to-day, lies with the line manager
9 to look after their staff.
10 Q. Mr Hatfield, how did it come about that you undertook
11 the first interview with Dr Kelly on 4th July?
12 A. The evening before, at about a quarter to 7, from
13 memory, I was rung by Sir Kevin Tebbit's office to ask
14 me for some advice on what initially was described as
15 a hypothetical complicated case which involved potential
16 disciplinary issues but also related to matters in the
17 public domain. It fairly quickly became clear that it
18 was related to the ongoing dispute between the
19 Government and the BBC, although not precisely what
20 aspect of it. In the course of the evening, I was made
21 aware of Dr Kelly's letter of 30th June and, again in
22 the course of the evening, in a telephone conversation
23 with Sir Kevin Tebbit, we agreed that unusually, because
24 of the very complicated circumstances, that I should
25 conduct the interview planned for the next day with

187
1 Dr Kelly which was originally, I think, planned to be
2 conducted by Bryan Wells as his line manager, because as
3 I say of the complicated circumstances.
4 Q. What precisely were you asked to do by Sir Kevin?
5 A. I was asked to interview Dr Kelly and, in particular, in
6 the light of the advice I gave to him about the
7 disciplinary issues that might be involved in this case,
8 to establish, first of all, whether there were serious
9 disciplinary issues and to make a judgment on how that
10 should affect the further handling of, if you like, the
11 substance of the issues raised by Dr Kelly's letter to
12 do with his meeting with Andrew Gilligan.
13 Q. So what was your role in relation to the disciplinary
14 aspect of the matter?
15 A. In this particular case, unusually, because I conducted
16 the interview, I assumed direct responsibility on making
17 the initial judgments about the disciplinary issues and
18 process to be followed. In a more normal case --
19 LORD HUTTON: Which normally would have been carried out by
20 the direct line manager, would it?
21 A. Yes, in an ordinary case Bryan Wells or perhaps one of
22 his superiors would have conducted the interview after
23 seeking any advice they wanted from me or my staff.
24 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
25 MR LLOYD-JONES: We will return to the disciplinary aspect

188
1 in a moment. Did you have any wider role in relation to
2 the substantive issues or the handling of the
3 controversy between the Government and the BBC over the
4 September dossier?
5 A. I had absolutely no involvement at all up to that
6 evening.
7 Q. Did you have any responsibility for deciding whether,
8 when or how what Dr Kelly told you should be revealed?
9 A. No, but clearly in relation to one or two aspects of
10 what happened subsequently, because I conducted the
11 interview on the Friday and chaired the meeting on the
12 Monday, I was in a position to advise on some things
13 that were relevant to that; but the substantive issue
14 was never my responsibility.
15 Q. What responsibility did you have for the general welfare
16 of Dr Kelly?
17 A. In this particular case, I think that I had
18 responsibility to give advice in relation to the two
19 meetings I took part in; and subsequently, when the
20 action returned to those dealing with the substance of
21 the problem, for maintaining, if you like, a general
22 supervising role, to see that they were providing the
23 support and assistance that I would expect any member of
24 the department in similar circumstances to get.
25 Q. Did you have any responsibility to advise Dr Kelly in

189
1 relation to handling the media?
2 A. In relation to handling the media, no. My only role in
3 relation to that was to make sure that he knew who he
4 should go to to get that advice.
5 Q. As the matter then developed, did you keep in touch with
6 what was happening so far as the welfare of Dr Kelly was
7 concerned?
8 A. I kept in broad touch throughout. In particular,
9 I spoke to Bryan Wells, on occasion to Martin Howard,
10 and we kept in regular touch with Sir Kevin Tebbit's
11 office.
12 Q. And what was your view, at the time, as to the level and
13 the nature of the support which was provided to
14 Dr Kelly?
15 A. I thought it was outstanding; and I remain of that view.
16 Q. Did you receive any reports as to how Dr Kelly was
17 coping?
18 A. I did, particularly from Bryan Wells, and in relation to
19 the preparation for the two Committee appearances
20 I think I also spoke to Martin Howard and I spoke, as
21 I say, regularly to the PMOS' office.
22 Q. What did they tell you?
23 A. They told me essentially what Bryan Wells said in
24 evidence, that he was looking tired but he was coping
25 well. I also saw his appearance before the FAC

190
1 committee myself.
2 Q. So far as Dr Kelly's appearance before the FAC was
3 concerned, did you have any responsibility in respect of
4 the arrangements for his appearance there?
5 A. I had no responsibility but at one stage I did intervene
6 to check whether something was being done, which was to
7 agree or to try to agree with the FAC in advance the
8 scope of the questioning. I found that was already in
9 hand, and I think in fact the Inquiry has had a copy of
10 the letter from the Secretary of State to the Chairman
11 of the FAC which records the understanding that they
12 reached.
13 Q. You have given evidence that when you first came to the
14 matter it appeared to you that there might be
15 a disciplinary aspect to this. How did you approach
16 that disciplinary aspect?
17 A. The thing that was clearest in my mind, from the moment
18 I undertook responsibility for the interview, was that
19 before getting into the issue of whether or not Dr Kelly
20 might be Andrew Gilligan's source, I had to decide how
21 to handle the disciplinary issues that might arise. On
22 the face of Dr Kelly's own letter, he appeared to be
23 admitting quite openly to a number of breaches of
24 Ministry of Defence, indeed wider Civil Service
25 procedures, nonetheless they did not necessarily appear

191
1 to be particularly serious on the basis of his account.
2 On the other hand, if he was Andrew Gilligan's
3 source, the issue obviously arose, especially if you
4 accepted the portrayal of that source given by
5 Mr Gilligan to the FAC, that there were potentially very
6 serious issues not least because the portrayal suggested
7 that the source was seeking, if you like, to criticise
8 Government policy, although that was precisely denied in
9 Dr Kelly's letter.
10 So I had to reach a view on whether we were in
11 potentially serious disciplinary territory or not,
12 because if we were I had to stop the interview, start
13 formal procedures and take it from there, a very
14 different course of events.
15 Q. At this stage, the first approach to the matter, before
16 the first interview took place, what material was
17 available to you?
18 A. Essentially I had only two sources at that stage:
19 Dr Kelly's letter, and the evidence given by
20 Andrew Gilligan to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which,
21 of course, might or might not relate to the same
22 discussion. So what I did before the meeting with
23 Dr Kelly on 4th July was read those two accounts for the
24 first time, compare them and try to establish how much
25 of that related to disciplinary matters.

192
1 Very importantly for me I formed the view that even
2 if they were describing the same meeting and that
3 Andrew Gilligan's account was essentially accurate,
4 there was no issue arising about security; neither
5 account suggested there was any breach of the Official
6 Secrets Act or any disclosure of privileged information.
7 Q. On the basis of this preliminary view, before the
8 interview had taken place, have you formed any view,
9 preliminary view, as to whether it would be appropriate
10 or necessary to institute disciplinary proceedings?
11 A. I did not. I did, however, form a view about the sort
12 of question I needed to answer in order to decide not to
13 proceed to disciplinary proceedings. If you like, I had
14 a series of questions which, if I got the correct
15 answer, I thought I could foreclose without going to
16 formal disciplinary procedures. If I got the wrong
17 answer or if I was not satisfied, I would have had no
18 option but to start procedures without necessarily
19 prejudging in any way what the outcome of those
20 procedures would be.
21 Q. In approaching the matter for the first time, did you
22 take account of Dr Kelly's interests?
23 A. Very much so. The first half of the meeting on 4th
24 July, which I would characterise as an interview --
25 I would not really say the second half was an interview.

193
1 I based myself essentially on Dr Kelly's account, since
2 it was not even clear that Andrew Gilligan's account was
3 referring to the same meeting.
4 It was also very important to me that Dr Kelly had
5 come forward and volunteered information. If he had not
6 done so, we would have, at that stage, had no inkling
7 that he might have been Andrew Gilligan's source, as far
8 as I was concerned. So I essentially interviewing him
9 on the basis of his letter and only after I got past
10 that point, if I got past that point, was I going to go
11 into a detailed analysis of what Gilligan said that his
12 source had said.
13 Q. At the first meeting, did you say anything to Dr Kelly
14 about how you were intending to handle the matter?
15 A. Yes. The very first thing I did was to spell out to him
16 the procedure, the idea that I had had for a two part
17 meeting, that we might not even get to the second part
18 of the meeting, because if I was not able to rule out
19 formal disciplinary proceedings, I would have to stop at
20 that point. I also very explicitly told him what his
21 rights would be if I decided not to foreclose
22 disciplinary action.
23 Q. Apart from the disciplinary aspect of the meeting, did
24 you discuss with Dr Kelly, at that meeting, the wider
25 implications of the situation in which he then found

194
1 himself?
2 A. I did. At the very beginning of the meeting, before, if
3 you like, getting into the meat of either the interview
4 about his letter or of comparison with Andrew Gilligan's
5 evidence, I made it clear to him that there were
6 actually two sets of problems here: there was the issue
7 of whether or not he had done something that he should
8 not have done in talking to Andrew Gilligan in the way
9 he described in his letter; and regardless, if you like,
10 of the outcome of that discussion, because he either was
11 advertently or inadvertently the source of
12 Andrew Gilligan's or might be thought to be, which of
13 course is why he had come forward and told us, he was
14 already embroiled necessarily in the controversy between
15 the BBC and the Government; and I made it quite clear to
16 him that in many ways I thought -- I made quite clear to
17 in many ways that was, if you like, the more serious
18 practical problem on the basis of his account.
19 Q. Did you form any view as to Dr Kelly's understanding of
20 the problems as you saw them?
21 A. I did. Before I invited Dr Kelly into my office I had
22 Bryan Wells in briefly, who had come up to attend the
23 interview and had walked up to the interview with
24 Dr Kelly, and I asked Bryan whether he thought that
25 Dr Kelly had fully appreciated the seriousness of the

195
1 controversy into which he had walked, by talking to
2 Andrew Gilligan, whether or not he was the specific
3 source. Bryan said he did not think, at that stage, it
4 had fully sunk in; and I made it a real point of the way
5 I conducted the meeting to make sure that it did sink
6 in. I think I succeeded.
7 Q. What makes you think you succeeded in that regard?
8 A. There are a number of very specific bits of that
9 conversation, on that day, on 7th July and in my two or
10 three brief telephone conversations with Dr Kelly which
11 fit with that, but much more importantly as far as I am
12 concerned, the whole basis of the conversation does not
13 really make sense without the shared understanding which
14 I think I referred to in my oral evidence on the first
15 day of this Inquiry, that there is a major public
16 controversy out there which is linked to
17 Andrew Gilligan's story in Today and in The Mail on
18 Sunday which may or may not have anything to do with
19 Dr Kelly but people may think it does; and even if he is
20 not the source, things that he said, according to his
21 own account, would at the very least corroborate or
22 appear to corroborate part of that story.
23 So he was undoubtedly caught up in this from the
24 outset, regardless, as I say, of the disciplinary
25 consequences. And I have no doubt that by the end of

196
1 that meeting he understood.
2 Q. At that stage, at the first interview, did you form any
3 view as to whether Dr Kelly had any understanding as to
4 whether he was likely to be identified or not?
5 A. Yes, I did. The first view I formed on that was from
6 his own letter, which specifically refers to a colleague
7 which I think we now know to be Mrs Bosch, having drawn
8 his attention to apparent similarities between evidence
9 given by Andrew Gilligan to the FAC and things that he
10 would have said. He, himself, again referred to that in
11 the course of his discussion with me on 4th July.
12 He also made it clear, though without going into
13 details, that his general views about, if you like, the
14 technical aspects of weapons of the mass destruction
15 programme were well known to a number of journalists,
16 for example Susan Watts and Jane Corbin. I think he may
17 have mentioned one or two other names as well.
18 Q. Can I ask you, then, about the records of that first
19 interview? We have a number of different contemporary
20 records. You are the author of two of those, I think.
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. We will look at them on the screen in a moment. Can
23 I ask you first: so far as those records of which you
24 are the author are concerned, were those intended to be
25 verbatim records of the meeting?

197
1 A. No.
2 Q. Could you tell us, please, how it came about that you
3 made the various records following the first meeting?
4 A. Yes. When I began the first meeting, I assumed that the
5 first record I was going to produce in the course of the
6 afternoon was a short note to Sir Kevin Tebbit giving,
7 if you like, the headline outcome of the meeting with
8 Dr Kelly, whatever that was going to be, and I conducted
9 the meeting, as I have said, on two parts. I planned
10 from the outset to write in detail, or as much detail as
11 required, the bit covering the potential disciplinary
12 issues; and I told Bryan Wells in advance that he would
13 not need to take notes on that, but I would want him to
14 take notes, assuming we got to it, on the second part of
15 the meeting when we did the comparison.
16 My intention was essentially to put together a quick
17 note in the afternoon and attach, as soon as I could,
18 a longer record based on those two contributions.
19 Events did not turn out quite that way. I did the first
20 report orally to Sir Kevin Tebbit in the course of the
21 afternoon; and in practice I wrote up my notes for the
22 two records I sent forward over the weekend.
23 There are in fact three parts of that. There is
24 a covering note to Sir Kevin which is still a brief
25 overview of what happened, but a more considered one

198
1 than if I had done it immediately in the afternoon.
2 There is my formal note of the meeting, which is quite
3 detailed on the first half, the disciplinary side, if
4 you like; and only, I think, largely records the
5 conclusion of the second part because I was still
6 expecting a sort of question by question analysis to be
7 produced separately by Bryan Wells, as he did. I also
8 attached a grid which I prepared as an extra, if you
9 like, which compared, as far as I could, what Dr Kelly
10 had said to me with what Andrew Gilligan said about his
11 single source; and that, I think, has also been made
12 available for the Inquiry, although it may in fact be
13 the slightly updated version after the second meeting
14 which has been published, but they are very, very
15 similar.
16 Q. If we could have on the screen, please MoD/1/28.
17 If I could scroll down a little, please.
18 Mr Hatfield, was that the minute which you prepared from
19 your handwritten note?
20 A. That is.
21 Q. Then if we could have MoD/1/24, please. Is that the
22 formal note of the meeting which you prepared from the
23 note?
24 A. That is correct.
25 Q. What happened to the note?

199
1 A. My manuscript notes were actually destroyed by me as
2 I wrote this up and this replaced, as it were, my
3 handwritten notes on the Saturday morning at home.
4 Q. What happened to the table which was annexed to the
5 minute?
6 A. Well, the table was actually written straight onto
7 a computer and I still actually have the very first
8 draft which is very similar, I think, to the one you
9 have got but I am not sure whether the one on --
10 Q. We need not look at it but it is MoD/1/57 is the version
11 which the Inquiry has. So the table which was annexed
12 to the minute was a predecessor of that?
13 A. That is my understanding.
14 Q. That can be made available to the Inquiry should it so
15 wish?
16 A. Indeed.
17 Q. At the time you drafted the notes on 5th July, had you
18 seen Dr Wells' note?
19 A. No I had not, with one exception. I had in my
20 possession, though I did not look at it until the
21 following week, a few draft paragraphs which Dr Wells
22 sent me on the Friday afternoon, but I did not, as
23 I say, even see, for the note I never wrote that
24 afternoon, if you see what I mean.
25 Q. The reference I believe is MoD/5/62.

200
1 Could I ask you about the records of the second
2 meeting? We have a record produced by Dr Wells which is
3 MoD/1/46. You have produced a typed minute --
4 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, MoD/1 --
5 MR LLOYD-JONES: Dr Wells' typed record is MoD/1/46. You
6 also produced a minute for Sir Kevin.
7 A. I did.
8 Q. Could we have MoD/1/54 on the screen, please? If that
9 could scroll down a little please. Thank you. Is that
10 the minute that you prepared for Sir Kevin?
11 A. That is right, yes.
12 Q. When did you draft the minute?
13 A. I drafted it at home on the night of the 7th from memory
14 and I think it was typed up at work first thing the
15 following morning, which is why it is dated the 8th.
16 Q. Could you scroll up again, please. You see it bears the
17 date the 8th July.
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. When you produced that minute for Sir Kevin, had you
20 seen the record that had been prepared by Dr Wells?
21 A. No, I had not.
22 Q. Thank you.
23 Going back to the first interview, was anything said
24 in the first interview about the methods by which
25 Dr Kelly's identity might become known from an external

201
1 source, from a source other than the Government?
2 A. There was -- it was not something we focused on, but it
3 kept on coming up, not least because, as I mentioned, we
4 talked about his then unnamed colleague who had drawn
5 his attention to the similarities between -- apparent
6 similarities between his views and what was attributed
7 to Gilligan's single source. We also touched on the
8 speculation that was already going on in the media about
9 the type of person Gilligan's source might be and so on.
10 We were not at that stage talking about precisely
11 what would happen next, because we did not know, with
12 one very big exception which was raised very
13 specifically with Dr Kelly, what I personally thought
14 was a high likelihood that he might, unless we were able
15 to completely separate him from this and, as it were,
16 show what he had to say was completely irrelevant,
17 a high likelihood he might be called to the Foreign
18 Affairs Committee, since it seemed to bear directly on
19 the concerns that had been addressed by that Committee.
20 One of the reasons I did this was because that
21 morning there had been a lot of speculation about what
22 the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee was going to
23 say; and at the time I interviewed Dr Kelly I was under
24 the mistaken impression that the Foreign Affairs
25 Committee inquiry had not actually closed. It was only

202
1 that afternoon when those more closely involved told me
2 that it had closed and the issue was whether it would,
3 if you like, reopen. So I thought it was even more
4 likely when I spoke to Dr Kelly in the morning, than
5 Sir Kevin Tebbit when I spoke to him in the afternoon.
6 LORD HUTTON: Can I just ask, Mr Hatfield: this concept you
7 had that Dr Kelly might be called before the FAC, had
8 that arisen purely in your own mind or was it because of
9 something Sir Kevin Tebbit or someone else had said to
10 you?
11 A. Purely in my own mind, my Lord. I had hardly spoken to
12 Kevin Tebbit apart from a brief telephone call and
13 I think 30 seconds as I picked up a document from his
14 office. It was because of the probably Today news
15 report that morning about the imminence of the report
16 that had got it in my mind because I had not really been
17 following the detail of the saga.
18 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
19 MR LLOYD-JONES: At that time, at the time of the first
20 interview, did you have any knowledge as to whether it
21 might be possible for an individual to give evidence in
22 private to the FAC?
23 A. I have never known an individual to give evidence to the
24 FAC anonymously. I have myself given evidence to the
25 Defence Committee in closed session, though it was

203
1 subsequently published. But there was no doubt who was
2 giving evidence.
3 Q. So, when the possibility of an appearance before the FAC
4 was raised in the first interview, what was said about
5 it and what was Dr Kelly's reaction?
6 A. Dr Kelly seemed to accept it, in the sense of recognise
7 that it might well be a consequence. I do not mean that
8 he, like anybody else, was overjoyed at the idea of
9 being brought before a Parliamentary Committee.
10 Q. No. Was anything said at that first interview about the
11 possibility that the Government would need to reveal
12 that Dr Kelly had met Mr Gilligan and what Dr Kelly had
13 told the Government about that?
14 A. Nothing was said explicitly, but the tenor of my
15 comments, especially when we moved into the second part
16 of the meeting to talk about the comparison, as it were,
17 between Dr Kelly's account and the evidence relating to
18 the unknown single source, was that I expected the
19 Government, in one form or another, to have to say
20 something about the evidence he had come forward with,
21 because I could not see how we could regard it as
22 irrelevant to the Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.
23 As I say, even if he was not Gilligan's source the
24 mere fact that he had spoken to Gilligan and some of the
25 things that he had explicitly said he had said to

204
1 Gilligan were clearly highly relevant to the issue that
2 the FAC had been looking at. I did not expect it to be
3 my call whether the Government made a statement but
4 I offered him my opinion that in some way or the other
5 the Government would have to reveal what he had told us.
6 The some way or the other depended on what happened
7 subsequently, whether his name was revealed from
8 external sources, whether he was recalled to the FAC,
9 whether the BBC commented on developments. There were
10 so many possibilities on 4th July that we did not
11 discuss any specific options other than my reference to
12 the FAC.
13 Q. Was anything said about the manner in which the
14 Government might reveal that?
15 A. Other than my reference to the FAC, which was not
16 specific.
17 Q. Was anything said about the MoD issuing a press
18 statement?
19 A. Not specifically, other than, going back to where we
20 started, we recognised the possibility that we might all
21 be trumped, if you like, by somebody else naming
22 Dr Kelly, rightly or wrongly, as a possible source.
23 Q. At the end of that first interview was anything said
24 about the possibility of a further interview?
25 A. Yes, very specifically. First of all, I made it clear

205
1 to Dr Kelly that any further interview or discussion
2 would not be about disciplinary matters. Unless
3 something completely new came forward, that was closed.
4 But we all reached the end of that first discussion very
5 unclear about whether there was a serious possibility
6 that Dr Kelly was the single source, if such a single
7 source existed.
8 It was also clear to me that to pursue that I needed
9 to go and try to find some more information about the
10 background to the saga, if you like, the preparation of
11 the dossier, and so on; to particularly have a word with
12 Martin Howard, which is one of the first things I did,
13 because I could not ask follow-up questions in relation
14 to that without knowing more about the background.
15 I made it clear to Dr Kelly that I was certain there
16 would be a follow-up interview, not necessarily by me.
17 I did not know when it was going to take place. He
18 asked me whether he could go to the training which he
19 had planned for the Monday and the Tuesday at
20 RAF Honnington, preparatory for his planned deployment
21 to Iraq. I said that he could, indeed that I wanted him
22 to do so for various reasons.
23 LORD HUTTON: You said he could because?
24 A. He could and I wanted him to do so for various reasons;
25 and I hoped that he could do that without being

206
1 disturbed, if you like. But if the timetable moved
2 faster than I hoped, it might be necessary to recall
3 him.
4 LORD HUTTON: What were the various reasons why you hoped he
5 would be able to do that?
6 A. Well, the first reason was because I think both Dr Kelly
7 and I were still very much hoping he would go to Iraq
8 and do the job at which he was a tremendous expert.
9 I told him it might be delayed by a few days while we
10 sorted out some of the consequence of this, but that
11 I expected it to happen, therefore I wanted him to do
12 the necessary pre-employment training so that he would
13 go whenever required.
14 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
15 A. Secondly, I was conscious already that the fact that
16 I had called him into interview might, without telling
17 anybody what it was, be attracting attention in the
18 Ministry of Defence. If he did not turn up on the
19 Monday morning for his training, that would certainly
20 attract attention too. So again it seemed in
21 everybody's interest that the training should proceed if
22 at all possible. But we agreed, very explicitly agreed
23 that he could be recalled if necessary, and he would be
24 prepared to do that and that he would prefer to do that
25 rather than, as it were, postpone the training.

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1 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
2 MR LLOYD-JONES: Could we move forward then, please, to the
3 second interview on 7th July?
4 Could we have on the screen, please, MoD/1/44?
5 Mr Hatfield, this is a minute dated 8th July from
6 Mr Dominic Wilson, who is the private secretary to
7 Sir Kevin Tebbit. It is addressed to you, with copies
8 to the various other people. Do you know, first of all,
9 when this document was produced?
10 A. My understanding is that the typed version was produced
11 probably late on -- sorry, I am trying to get the dates
12 right because there is confusion about this. Let me
13 start the other way round. Just before I began the
14 interview with Dr Kelly or the meeting with Dr Kelly on
15 7th July, Dominic Wilson, Sir Kevin Tebbit's secretary,
16 rang me up and read me over the telephone -- this is
17 literally about five or 10 minutes before we began the
18 interview -- a draft of that minute. I received the
19 typed version the following day after the interview had
20 occurred. So I read the content in advance and it was
21 then subsequently typed up, I do not know precisely
22 when.
23 Q. Could we scroll down to paragraph 4(b), please? We see
24 there that the PUS would like to consider in the light
25 of -- I will read the whole paragraph:

208
1 "Against this background I understand that
2 arrangements have been made for the further interview to
3 be carried out by you and addresses at 1600 today. The
4 PUS would like to consider in the light of this whether
5 to recommend a public announcement. The key issues will
6 be:"
7 We see at (b):
8 "Kelly's readiness to be associated with a public
9 statement that names him and carries a clear and
10 sustainable refutation of the core allegation on the
11 '45 minute' intelligence."
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. When that minute was read to you, what did you
14 understand that passage to mean?
15 A. The honest answer is I did not focus on the precise
16 wording of that paragraph, in as much as I registered
17 it, I read it as confirming what I expected to do, which
18 is go through with Kelly the need, the likelihood by
19 this time that in some way or another -- and by now
20 I think the ISC is in play as well as the FAC -- the
21 Government would need to respond to the continuing
22 controversy by putting into the public domain or
23 possibly, as I say, Kelly himself doing it in
24 a committee appearance, his account of his meeting with
25 Gilligan.

209
1 Therefore, I expected -- very clearly expected that
2 Kelly should be clear that at some stage, and we still
3 did not know at what stage, he would need to be publicly
4 associated with his account and stand by it, by which
5 I mean that by that stage, his name would be clear.
6 I did not read this, if I registered it, as asking me to
7 clear an early statement which named him and I did not,
8 of course, do so. I cleared a statement -- an early
9 statement which did not name him.
10 Q. So you did not raise with Dr Kelly at that second
11 interview his readiness to be associated with a public
12 statement that named him?
13 A. In the short term. The only statement that I was
14 addressing was a short-term statement. I did address
15 his readiness to be associated in public with his
16 account, but the only statement I discussed was
17 a short-term statement. Had I read that as specifically
18 referring to a short-term statement, I would, of course,
19 have done what my Permanent Secretary was asking me, if
20 that is what he meant, and I am still not clear whether
21 that is what he meant.
22 I would have also advised against putting Dr Kelly's
23 name in a short-term statement, ie the actual statement
24 I discussed with him that afternoon.
25 Q. Why would you have given that advice?

210
1 A. Because at the stage we were then at, I did not think it
2 was necessary to put his name into an initial statement,
3 I think that is made clear in some of my covering notes,
4 and I said it to him. And I thought there would be
5 every advantage, both for Dr Kelly and the department,
6 in having whatever interval we could have between the
7 initial statement which got the essential facts out and
8 the media managing to get his identity.
9 Q. Did you have any view at that stage as to how long that
10 interval might be?
11 A. Can I put it the other way round? I was astonished that
12 we got 24 hours.
13 Q. Was Dr Kelly told anything at the second interview about
14 whether it would be necessary to name him in a press
15 statement?
16 A. As I say, the specific statement which we focused on,
17 which was a draft which was attached to my minute, did
18 not name him; and I did not expect him to be named in
19 a statement made in the sort of circumstances we were
20 envisaging for that document.
21 However, I did say to him, quite clearly, that it
22 would be, I thought, my judgment, it would probably not
23 be necessary -- and I emphasised the probably because
24 I made it clear to him that I was not ruling out the
25 possibility that we might have to. I do not think there

211
1 is any doubt that he understood that.
2 Q. Was anything said at the second interview about the
3 possibility of an appearance before the Foreign Affairs
4 Committee?
5 A. I think it came up and I think we also referred to the
6 ISC on that occasion, as well.
7 Q. Was anything said about an approach to the BBC?
8 A. Again, I think, although we did not discuss how it might
9 be done, one of the things I said to Dr Kelly at that
10 meeting was that the best way of clearing this up would
11 be if the BBC would be prepared to confirm or deny --
12 I never expected them to tell us the other source if
13 there was another source -- whether or not he was the
14 source. My understanding was Dr Kelly would be quite
15 happy to have that because he took the view, as he
16 expresses in his letter and to the FAC, that he was not
17 at least the prime source, which is also the view
18 I took.
19 Q. Was anything said about the Ministry of Defence
20 confirming Dr Kelly's name if it was discovered from
21 another source and put to the Ministry of Defence?
22 A. No, it was not discussed explicitly, though I think,
23 again, that Dr Kelly would have had no illusions that if
24 we faced a credible approach from the press identifying
25 Dr Kelly, that we would not be able to deny it. One of

212
1 the things we did specifically refer to, I think it
2 appears in Bryan Wells' manuscript note, right at the
3 beginning, is indeed the Baldwin article of the
4 Saturday, 5th July, which I pointed out to Kelly right
5 at the start was -- I think I used the term "if
6 stretched", fitted Kelly quite well. As we now know it
7 did indeed refer to him.
8 Q. At this stage, at the time of the second interview, did
9 you ask for Dr Kelly's consent to his name being made
10 public?
11 A. No, I did not.
12 Q. Why not?
13 A. Because in the circumstances in which I was envisaging
14 that the MoD might make it public, I do not believe --
15 I did not and I do not believe I required his consent.
16 Q. Did Dr Kelly ever do anything to suggest to you that he
17 considered that his consent would be required?
18 A. No, he did not. On the contrary, I think that the fact
19 that we discussed a statement which put in quite a lot
20 of detail about, if you like, our source, Dr Kelly --
21 LORD HUTTON: Put in what, sorry?
22 A. The statement that I did agree with Dr Kelly which did
23 not include his name gave quite a lot of detail about
24 him, not enough to identify him uniquely but it
25 certainly would help people and Dr Kelly recognised

213
1 that.
2 LORD HUTTON: Why did you think that you would not need his
3 consent for his name to be made public?
4 A. In the circumstances I was envisaging, for example
5 responding to a credible media claim from outside or
6 because we had just been putting him forward for the
7 Foreign Affairs Committee, there was no way I could not
8 put it forward -- sorry, at least the MoD could not
9 reveal the name, I think, and certainly no reason to
10 give him a veto, if you like.
11 If I can make the point, in a sense it is exactly
12 the same position that I and MoD witnesses are in in
13 relation to this Inquiry and the subject of this
14 Inquiry, I would have had no veto on the MoD revealing
15 my name in relation to the actions I took in the course
16 of my duty.
17 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
18 MR LLOYD-JONES: To what extent was Dr Kelly in fact
19 consulted about the publication of the press statement?
20 A. He was very closely consulted about the statement that
21 actually appeared. He was also consulted about the one
22 I drafted on 7th July which was seen as an emergency
23 statement, essentially something that if we had to
24 respond to a revelation coming from elsewhere, if you
25 like. Both those texts were, in different ways, cleared

214
1 explicitly with him.
2 The one we actually used, which contained a lot of
3 similar material to the one we discussed on 7th July,
4 was cleared with him by me over the telephone on the
5 afternoon of 8th July. I rang him at, I believe the
6 records show, 2 minutes to 4. He was driving and my
7 memory is he said he would ring me back; and some time
8 in the next half an hour -- I am afraid since he rang
9 from his mobile I cannot tell you the exact time he did
10 ring me back. At that point I read through, paragraph
11 by paragraph, the statement that was ultimately
12 released, got his explicit consent to it. I reported
13 that to the Permanent Secretary --
14 LORD HUTTON: Did he suggest any amendments or make any
15 comments?
16 A. None whatsoever, my Lord. None whatsoever, my Lord.
17 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
18 A. I reported that to the Permanent Secretary's office; and
19 I do not know exactly what steps they then took, but
20 they, as it were, completed the process of agreeing that
21 the statement should now be released. I was notified
22 that, if you like, the button had been pressed; and
23 I rang him back at, the records show, 5.10, I think, for
24 a brief conversation where I told him not only that
25 I passed back that he had cleared it, but the statement

215
1 was now being released and, therefore, it could actually
2 hit the news at any moment.
3 I may have said, and I honestly cannot recall this,
4 that I thought it was -- I cannot recall this for
5 certain -- I remember thinking, and I do not know
6 whether I said it to him, that it was unlikely to make
7 the 6 o'clock news, which I think it did just, but would
8 probably make the 7.
9 MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord I have one eye on the clock.
10 I have a time limit of course. I have 5 to 10 minutes
11 left.
12 LORD HUTTON: Yes, of course. I do not want to rush you.
13 MR LLOYD-JONES: Thank you very much.
14 Mr Hatfield, did you at any time tell Dr Kelly he
15 would be informed before his name was confirmed as the
16 individual who had come forward?
17 A. No I did not.
18 Q. Did you give him any undertaking or assurance in
19 relation to any such confirmation?
20 A. Not in relation to his name because I was not in
21 a position to do so. The only undertaking I gave him in
22 this area was the undertaking which I was able to fulfil
23 that if I could, I would give him advance warning of us
24 putting out any statement, which is precisely what I was
25 able to do, but I also made it clear to him that in some

216
1 circumstances, especially if he was away on a course or
2 away from home, even that might not be possible, which
3 was of course why we agreed a contingency statement on
4 the Monday afternoon.
5 Q. Did Dr Kelly ever express to you a view that if his name
6 was to become public then he should be referred to,
7 initially, by some description and not immediately
8 named; that it might be done in stages, so to speak?
9 A. No he did not. I should say of course, since I was
10 already suggesting that line to him, he might have been
11 taking that for granted.
12 Q. Did you ever mention that possibility to anybody else?
13 A. No.
14 Q. Did you ever tell Dr Kelly that his participation in the
15 second meeting, the second interview, depended on his
16 agreement?
17 A. I did not, but it just did not arise that way because,
18 as I have already explained, we simply discussed the
19 idea of a follow-on meeting and made explicit
20 arrangements to call him back from RAF Honnington, if
21 that was necessary. So I believe I had his consent, but
22 it was not approached in that manner.
23 If I may say so, part of my problem with some of the
24 questions is they do not really represent the situation
25 as I saw it or, I think, Dr Kelly saw it. We were not

217
1 talking, after the first disciplinary issue, in a formal
2 way. We were just talking about the circumstances which
3 I think we understood, and nobody was asking people's
4 consent, because it was part of the whole situation.
5 Q. There is one matter I should have asked you in relation
6 to that early stage when the disciplinary issue was
7 still at large, going back to the beginning of the first
8 interview. At that stage, did it ever occur to you that
9 you should offer legal assistance or welfare assistance?
10 A. I did --
11 Q. Trade union assistance to Dr Kelly?
12 A. I did make clear to Dr Kelly that if I even initiated
13 the first stage of formal disciplinary procedures which
14 would essentially be a fact-finding exercise, a formal
15 one, he would be entitled to seek assistance from
16 a trade union or to bring, if you like, another
17 representative, a friend of court of his own. There
18 were all sorts of other formal procedures which would be
19 followed and he would get advice on those, if it became
20 necessary.
21 Q. But in the events which occurred, did you consider that
22 there was any need to make any further offer in relation
23 to that?
24 A. In relation to those specific forms of assistance, the
25 answer is: no, because disciplinary issues or

218
1 proceedings were ruled out. I did, however, make clear
2 to him, indeed it was provided, that he would get all
3 the, if I can put it this way, in the unusual situation,
4 all the usual forms of departmental support in relation
5 to appearing before Select Committees, if he did so, and
6 in dealing with the press insofar as it is possible to
7 assist people in dealing with the press.
8 Q. Did Dr Kelly ever request legal assistance or welfare
9 assistance?
10 A. Certainly not from me.
11 LORD HUTTON: When did you tell him? At what interview did
12 you tell him he would get departmental support?
13 A. It came up on both the 4th and the 7th July. Much more
14 clearly in the 7th July meeting because by then we were
15 clearly envisaging the likelihood of at least one
16 committee appearance. And I specifically told him
17 during one or both of my two final telephone
18 conversations with him about the statement that he
19 should now seek support through his line manager, in
20 particular, but also particularly from the press office
21 in relation to any contact with the media or any
22 approaches from the media; and that was, I believe, put
23 in hand.
24 MR LLOYD-JONES: Was the matter of Dr Kelly's pension ever
25 raised by anybody at any time during your discussions

219
1 with Dr Kelly or any meeting in Dr Kelly's absence?
2 A. Never.
3 Q. Would there have been any reason to raise the question
4 of his pension rights?
5 A. None whatsoever.
6 Q. Were Dr Kelly's pension rights ever at risk?
7 A. Never.
8 Q. If, and I emphasise if, more serious matters had come to
9 light than had been disclosed by Dr Kelly in his letter
10 of 30th June and at the interviews, could his pension
11 then have been at risk?
12 A. In the realm of the real world the answer is "no".
13 I think eight people have had their pension in some way
14 adjusted in the course of the last 30 years. It can
15 only be considered in the case of a major criminal
16 conviction. These include, I think, manslaughter,
17 a million pound embezzlement and somebody convicted of
18 spying.
19 Q. Did you have any reason to reassure Dr Kelly in relation
20 to his pension?
21 A. No, because in my mind under no possible interpretation,
22 and that remains true to this day, could his pension
23 have been put at risk. He never asked about it. It
24 never occurred to me that a civil servant would think
25 his pension could be put at risk in any of the

220
1 circumstances that might be envisaged.
2 Q. During this time that we are concerned with, from the
3 time Dr Kelly came forwards onwards, was the subject of
4 his security clearance ever raised?
5 A. In the form you have just put the question the answer is
6 "no". It was however effectively dismissed, very
7 quickly, by my taking the view that on both Dr Kelly's
8 own account and on Mr Gilligan's account, assuming that
9 referred to Dr Kelly's discussion, there were no OSA
10 issues, there was not even if you like a release of
11 privilege information issue on the information available
12 to me.
13 Moreover, the fact that I encouraged him to go on
14 his training and at a later stage we explicitly agreed
15 that subject to the practicalities of sorting out the
16 date, he would go to Iraq, confirmed very clearly that
17 there was no security issue, no risk to his clearance at
18 all --
19 LORD HUTTON: Do I understand the position, Mr Hatfield,
20 that the question of security clearance was never
21 expressed in any way at the interviews with Dr Kelly and
22 that in your own mind you dismissed any issue as to
23 security clearance once you decided that there was not
24 any disciplinary issue?
25 A. That is correct, my Lord; and it was not only in my own

221
1 mind, I made that explicit to Dr Kelly.
2 LORD HUTTON: I see. Well, it then was mentioned to him?
3 A. Sorry, what was --
4 LORD HUTTON: It was mentioned expressly or it was made
5 clear by implication by you saying he could go to
6 Honnington and on to Iraq?
7 A. I expressly told him by saying I did not see any
8 security issues involved. Therefore, as it were,
9 I ruled security out. I never suggested security was in
10 any doubt but I wanted him to be quite clear, just in
11 case he was worried, that I did not see any security
12 issues at all.
13 LORD HUTTON: I think just so that I can understand, I am
14 sure it is clear to you and to people in the Ministry of
15 Defence, but I understand security clearance to mean
16 that he had permission or clearance to see secret
17 documents. I understand that to mean security
18 clearance --
19 A. Yes, my Lord.
20 LORD HUTTON: -- as regards security issues. When you told
21 him no security issues were involved, did you mean by
22 that that as far as you could see, after your first
23 interview, there is no issue of him revealing secret
24 documents? Is that what is meant by security issues?
25 A. I was going further than that. Not only had he not as

222
1 it were breached security, he had not done anything, on
2 either his account or Andrew Gilligan's account, if it
3 was the same meeting, which suggested anything that
4 might call into question his suitability to see secret
5 documents.
6 If I had concluded, for example, that although he
7 had not revealed a classified document he had breached
8 confidence in relation to security matters, I might have
9 wanted to call into question his security clearance,
10 simply because he might have seen -- I was making quite
11 clear that there was no security issue at all in my
12 mind.
13 LORD HUTTON: By security issue you meant or included in
14 that security clearance?
15 A. Very much so.
16 LORD HUTTON: You said that to him expressly?
17 A. I did not use the word security clearance but he would
18 have understood what I was saying to say that there was
19 no risk to his security clearance on the basis of what
20 I had just told him.
21 LORD HUTTON: I am just trying to understand, and
22 I appreciate it is probably impossible to express, but
23 I am just trying to understand as fully as I can what
24 words you actually said to him on this.
25 A. I think the closest you will get is if you turn to my

223
1 letter to him after the event of 9th July.
2 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
3 A. Which is as close as I could remember then were the
4 exact words on this point.
5 MR LLOYD-JONES: Would it assist if we put that letter on
6 the screen? MoD/1/69.
7 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much. Yes. What paragraph?
8 A. I am thinking particularly, here, of the paragraph -- at
9 the end of paragraph 3:
10 "I also concluded on the basis of your account that
11 you had not divulged any classified or otherwise
12 privileged information."
13 The important point with that is it is not just
14 about classified information. If you go to my original
15 record, I made it very clear I did not think there was
16 any OSA issues.
17 LORD HUTTON: I still want to try to understand this
18 a little more fully. Was the position that you said to
19 Dr Kelly, at the end of the first stage of the first
20 interview, that you were satisfied that no security
21 issue arose and he would have taken from that that there
22 was no threat to his security clearance?
23 A. Correct, my Lord.
24 LORD HUTTON: I see. Yes thank you.
25 MR LLOYD-JONES: Mr Hatfield, if Dr Kelly's security

224
1 clearance had been in jeopardy, would it have been
2 possible for him to go to Iraq as contemplated?
3 A. It might have been but we would have had to have taken
4 a very specific decision to proceed with that in those
5 circumstances. My judgment, and it might well have been
6 my judgment because I am also responsible for the
7 vetting agency, would have been if there was any
8 significant question mark over his security clearance,
9 in the circumstances we were talking about, it would not
10 have been the right thing to do.
11 MR LLOYD-JONES: Thank you very much Mr Hatfield. My Lord,
12 I am most grateful.
13 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much.
14 Mr Hatfield, we will continue with further
15 examination tomorrow. Thank you. I will rise now and
16 sit again at 10.30 tomorrow.
17 (4.42 pm)
18 (Hearing adjourned until 10.30 am the following day)
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

225
1 INDEX
2 PAGE
3 MR ANDREW GILLIGAN (called) ...................... 3
4
5 Examined by MS ROGERS ........................ 3
6
7 Cross-examination by MR SUMPTION ............. 16
8
9 Cross-examination by MR GOMPERTZ ............. 67
10
11 Cross-examined by MR DINGEMANS ............... 79
12
13 Re-examination by Ms Rogers .................. 97
14
15 MR RICHARD SAMBROOK (called) .................... 108
16
17 Examined by MR CALDECOTT ..................... 108
18
19 Cross-examined by MR SUMPTION ................ 121
20
21 Cross-examined by MR DINGEMANS ............... 175
22
23 Re-examined by MR CALDECOTT .................. 184
24
25 MR RICHARD HATFIELD (called) ..................... 187

226
1
2 Examined by MR LLOYD-JONES ................... 187
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

227

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