Hearing Transcripts

1 Thursday, 18th September 2003
2 (10.30 am)
3 MR RICHARD HATFIELD (continued)
4 Cross-examined by MR GOMPERTZ
5 LORD HUTTON: Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
6 Mr Hatfield, could you sit down please.
7 Yes Mr Gompertz.
8 MR GOMPERTZ: May it please your Lordship.
9 Mr Hatfield, when were you appointed Personnel
10 Director of the MoD?
11 A. In June 2001.
12 Q. Before that, had your career been in personnel at all?
13 A. In the personnel function, no, but I had managed people
14 for at least 20 years.
15 Q. I follow, as a manager or occupying managerial posts in
16 the MoD?
17 A. In the MoD, yes.
18 Q. Because you were Policy Director of the MoD, were you
19 not?
20 A. I was, for five years.
21 Q. Do you remember when you gave evidence on 11th August
22 that you spoke of instructions for dealing with the
23 media?
24 A. I did.
25 Q. One of the things you said was that you believed that

1
1 they were even annexed to Dr Kelly's contract.
2 A. I was talking about the Senior Civil Service contracts
3 at the time. As we now know, Dr Kelly did not have
4 a Senior Civil Service contract. However -- perhaps
5 I -- I was going to clarify: however, the terms of the
6 letter of appointment which Dr Kelly would have had, as
7 everybody below the Senior Civil Service has, refer to
8 the documents I was referring to, they quite
9 specifically refer to those documents.
10 Q. Was there doubt in your mind when you gave evidence
11 before as to whether Dr Kelly was a member of the Senior
12 Civil Service or not?
13 A. No, there was no doubt in my mind in what I understood
14 to be a definition of the Senior Civil Service. Since
15 we were debating rather fine points about what had
16 happened in agencies of the MoD in the 1990s, I was not
17 entirely clear on what his status inside that agency was
18 at the time. I think the Inquiry has had further
19 evidence from the agency on that point.
20 Q. I will come back to that in a moment. When you referred
21 to a contract, can I ask you what contract?
22 A. There are two possible contracts, depending who we are
23 talking about. If you are a member of the Senior Civil
24 Service you have an individual contract these days,
25 personally signed by you and countersigned by the

2
1 Ministry. If you are not a member of the Senior Civil
2 Service you have a letter of appointment, which calls up
3 the standard conditions of service which you will have
4 and will be updated from time to time when any changes
5 are made to those conditions of service.
6 Q. Because Dr Kelly's personal file certainly contained no
7 contract, did it?
8 A. No, but it does contain a letter of appointment.
9 Q. What date is that?
10 A. I think the original letter is about 1984 which is when
11 he was appointed as a permanent civil servant.
12 Q. No updating since then?
13 A. No, it would be updated as everybody else is updated
14 by -- depending on where you are in the organisation --
15 letters that are put round to everybody telling them
16 what changes have been made to the standard contract.
17 The point is he did not have a personalised contract
18 because they only exist these days in the Senior Civil
19 Service.
20 Q. Could I ask you, please, to look at MoD/2/9.
21 This is the first page of a background note on
22 Dr Kelly I believe you prepared; is that right?
23 A. No, my staff prepared it.
24 Q. I beg your pardon. Did you approve it?
25 A. No, I submitted it.

3
1 Q. You looked at it before you submitted it, I dare say.
2 A. I did not approve it because it is a description of what
3 happened in an agency which, as I explained before, was
4 not under my direct control. I am not therefore in
5 a position and was not therefore in a position to
6 approve or disapprove the detailed facts.
7 LORD HUTTON: What date is this note, Mr Gompertz, can you
8 assist me?
9 MR GOMPERTZ: I must confess, my Lord, I am not sure that
10 I can answer your Lordship's question.
11 LORD HUTTON: Approximately when was it?
12 A. It was submitted with my original evidence, my Lord.
13 MR GOMPERTZ: It was prepared after Dr Kelly died.
14 A. Oh yes, indeed.
15 LORD HUTTON: I see. Yes. Thank you.
16 MR GOMPERTZ: You submitted it but did not approve it, is
17 that what you are saying?
18 A. This was information provided from the DSTL file about
19 his career. It was a factual note prepared by my staff.
20 Since I did not read the file I could not tell you
21 whether the facts were exactly right or not, but I am
22 sure my staff got it right.
23 Q. Could you look at the next page, please, MoD/2/10? This
24 refers, after paragraph 7, to the terms and conditions
25 of Dr Kelly's employment; right?

4
1 A. Yes, it does.
2 Q. What is said, as we know, is:
3 "At the time of his death Dr Kelly was an employee
4 of DSTL, (and therefore subject to DSTL terms and
5 conditions)..."
6 Right?
7 A. Correct.
8 Q. When you gave evidence before Lord Hutton before, on
9 I think 11th August, you will no doubt recollect you
10 were taken through various documents, terms and
11 conditions of DSTL, the Civil Service code and so on.
12 A. I do recollect it very well.
13 Q. Yes. I am not going to go through that exercise again,
14 but I would like you, please, if you would be so kind,
15 to look at MoD/2/16, which is the first page of the DSTL
16 procedure for conduct; right?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. This is the document which governed Dr Kelly's
19 employment; is that right?
20 A. That is not strictly true in the circumstances he was
21 when he was working on secondment in MoD. I would
22 expect, and I believe, it to be entirely consistent with
23 the MoD code from which it is derived and in fact
24 I think this is actually a rather clearer document than
25 the MoD document. But since he was working in MoD on

5
1 secondment, he was actually subject to the MoD code, but
2 I do not think there is any substantial difference.
3 Q. I am not asking you to go back to it, but the paragraph
4 in the summary, the background note that I just referred
5 you to, reads:
6 "At the time of his death Dr Kelly was an employee
7 of DSTL, (and therefore subject to DSTL terms and
8 conditions)..."
9 Is that wrong?
10 A. If you read the rest of the note it also says he was on
11 secondment to the MoD. Both are right and in my view
12 anyway the two codes are entirely consistent because the
13 DSTL code is meant to be derived from the MoD code.
14 Q. I would like you please, if you would be so kind, to
15 look at paragraph 8 of the DSTL code which we will find
16 on MoD/2/24. The bottom of the page on 2/24 under the
17 head "Extra-curricular activities".
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. It says this:
20 "If an employee wishes to carry out any of the
21 following types of activities ... he/she must seek prior
22 written consent from his/her line manager."
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. On 2/25 the second item is "Media activities".
25 A. Yes.

6
1 Q. Does this have any relevance with what we are concerned
2 with in this Inquiry?
3 A. It has some relevance but that is a very general
4 procedure. There are much more detailed procedures
5 which I also referred to about dealing with the media,
6 which reinforce that. But that point is actually
7 derived from the point in the Civil Service code, in the
8 MoD conduct code and so on. It is a general point about
9 anybody who wishes to deal with the media if they are
10 not as it were following specific procedures.
11 Q. Do you know whether Dr Kelly ever obtained written
12 consent from anybody with regard to media activity?
13 A. You do not require written consent if you are operating
14 within agreed standard procedures for dealing with the
15 media. This is a general proposition put forward to
16 somebody who is not as it were put into a special
17 position.
18 Q. Where do we find the general standard provisions for
19 dealing with the media then?
20 A. Well, the best example is the document I referred to
21 without naming it in my earlier evidence, which is
22 a Defence Council Instruction circulated in 1999 which
23 goes into a great deal of detail about all sorts of
24 circumstances in which people might find themselves
25 dealing with the media or in contact with the media, for

7
1 example if somebody simply comes up to them, which is
2 clearly not meant to be covered by asking for prior
3 written consent.
4 Q. Would that document apply to someone whose specific task
5 was to deal with the media?
6 A. It would apply to every single employee of the Ministry
7 of Defence, military and civilian.
8 Q. Are you aware of the evidence which was given to us
9 yesterday, I think, or was it -- very recently at any
10 rate, by Dr Shuttleworth?
11 A. I am aware in general terms. I have not read the
12 transcript.
13 Q. Right. He would have closer knowledge, would he, of
14 what happened in practice with regard to Dr Kelly's
15 dealings with the media?
16 A. I would think Dr Shuttleworth would have no knowledge
17 whatsoever of the arrangements under which Dr Kelly was
18 operating during his secondment to the Ministry of
19 Defence. He would clearly have known about the position
20 during which he was the line manager for Dr Kelly in
21 DSTL or DERA as it then was in the 1990s, but that is
22 a very different situation.
23 Q. Very well. Now, is it right that Dr Kelly had had
24 contacts with the media on behalf of DSTL, the MoD, the
25 FCO, UNSCOM and UNMOVIC?

8
1 A. Yes, it is right.
2 Q. Yes. And he had had those contacts for many years?
3 A. He had.
4 Q. There was no suggestion of any irregularity prior to the
5 year 2003?
6 A. In relation to those contacts there was no irregularity
7 at all.
8 Q. Thank you. Is this right: that whether on secondment to
9 the MoD or not, in the year 2003 Dr Kelly sought
10 permission for press contacts from Mr Patrick Lamb?
11 A. That is true in relation to some contacts. The list you
12 read out of things that Dr Kelly had previously spoken
13 on did not include the Ministry of Defence.
14 Mr Patrick Lamb does not have authority to ask anybody
15 to speak on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.
16 Q. If I missed out the Ministry of Defence then
17 I apologise, I thought I had included it, but there it
18 is. You are saying that it was necessary for Dr Kelly
19 to make a distinction between the various bodies for
20 whom he might be acting?
21 A. Quite correct. It is a distinction which he himself
22 recognised.
23 Q. Is it right that Mr Lamb took over responsibility for
24 Dr Kelly's press contacts in the year 2000?
25 A. No, it is not.

9
1 Q. We shall perhaps hear from him. He dealt with
2 Dr Kelly's press contacts because he was instructed to
3 do so; did you know that?
4 A. He dealt with Dr Kelly's press contacts in relation to
5 FCO business because he was instructed to do so.
6 Q. When Dr Kelly started to do more work for the MoD in the
7 year 2003, did anyone tell him that he should seek
8 permission for media contacts from the MoD?
9 A. I believe that is so.
10 Q. Well, you may believe it, but did it happen?
11 A. I am not in a position to say what people said to other
12 people three years ago, but I have every reason to
13 believe he knew that both from things he said to me and
14 from the standing instructions in the Ministry of
15 Defence about talking about Ministry of Defence
16 business.
17 Q. Not three years ago, this year.
18 A. Well, in that case let me be clear. I have referred to
19 the Defence Council Instruction 1999 which was
20 circulated to everybody in the MoD including Dr Kelly,
21 although I cannot tell you if he read it. That makes it
22 absolutely clear if you want to talk about defence
23 business you must get clearance through the MoD.
24 Q. So if it be the case that Mr Lamb dealt with MoD
25 contacts as well, that would be quite wrong, would it?

10
1 A. If he dealt with it without consulting the MoD it would
2 certainly be inappropriate.
3 Q. Right. Could you look, please, at MoD/1/24?
4 A. I am looking at it.
5 Q. Thank you very much. This, of course, is your note of
6 the interview with Dr Kelly on 4th July?
7 A. That is correct.
8 Q. We will have to look at this document again, but if you
9 could go to the bottom of the first page, the end of the
10 penultimate paragraph, this is recorded:
11 "When a journalist approached him, he usually
12 consulted the FCO press office, but on occasions he used
13 his own judgment as explained in his letter.
14 "I asked why he consulted the FCO press office
15 rather than the MoD. Dr Kelly said that his salary was
16 paid by the FCO. I said that was irrelevant -- he was
17 seconded to MoD."
18 Dr Kelly did not say anything there about his
19 practice of consulting Mr Lamb.
20 A. Could I ask you to read the next sentence which said:
21 "I asked who had given him authority to exercise his
22 own judgment about contacts with journalists on defence
23 related business, since this was contrary to standing
24 departmental instructions."
25 We are not talking about dealing with Mr Lamb on FCO

11
1 business, we are talking about MoD business.
2 Q. Yes. Would you then like to read the next sentence:
3 "Dr Kelly said that he had never read those
4 instructions..."
5 I do not want you to have to take up time reading
6 out loud the rest of the paragraph but it comes to this,
7 does it not, that he never answered the question about
8 seeking to discover what guidance existed about contact
9 with journalists, did he?
10 A. He did indeed answer it. He said he had never read them
11 or sought to read them, which I thought was
12 extraordinary, both because the instructions I was
13 referring to should have been read and were available to
14 be read by every civil servant, and he was a man who had
15 just told me that he had spent 10 years dealing with the
16 press.
17 Q. Did he answer the first part of that double question?
18 I asked who had given him authority to exercise his own
19 judgment about contacts with journalists on defence
20 related business.
21 A. He answered it effectively by his silence that nobody
22 had.
23 Q. So he did not answer it?
24 A. He was given an opportunity to tell me and he did not
25 tell me any answer at all.

12
1 Q. Can I come back to what you said when you were present
2 at the Inquiry on 11th August? You said this:
3 "There is no doubt that the instructions that
4 Dr Kelly should have seen, and I believe they are even
5 annexed to his contract, provide sufficient basic
6 guidance for dealing with the press. Unless you feel
7 that you have a problem which is not covered by that, in
8 which case you can seek advice and should seek advice."
9 Why did you say that?
10 A. I said several things in that sentence. In referring to
11 his contract I was referring to his letter of
12 appointment, in practice, since he does not have an
13 individual contract; and I suppose I should have said,
14 technically, not annexed but they are referred to. We
15 do not physically attach them but the appointment letter
16 tells you what they are and they are readily available.
17 The detailed instructions I had in mind were
18 particularly what I have been referring to as the
19 Defence Council Instruction of 1999.
20 Q. So you take the view, do you, that Dr Kelly should have
21 had no contacts with journalists unless previously
22 authorised?
23 A. Or within a standing arrangement, if that had been
24 authorised.
25 Q. Yes.

13
1 A. And in this case neither applied.
2 Q. Did you know that Dr Kelly had had such contacts and
3 reported them ex post facto for many years?
4 A. Yes -- well, I knew that is what he told me and I had no
5 reason to disbelieve it.
6 Q. And that was perfectly acceptable, was it not?
7 A. It was.
8 Q. Did you know that Mr Lamb and Dr Shuttleworth consider
9 that he was scrupulous in reporting ex post facto?
10 A. Well, it is quite clear that he was not from his own
11 letter because he tells us that he had not reported this
12 contact or cleared it with anybody, including Mr Lamb.
13 So in relation to the particular case it is not true.
14 He had previously, apparently, been scrupulous.
15 Q. Thank you. Did anybody ever say to him: you must not
16 act in this way by reporting ex post facto?
17 A. The answer to that is yes, because as he made clear in
18 most cases where he has the opportunity to do so, he
19 should actually clear his contacts in advance and record
20 ex post facto, and in all cases you should report ex
21 post facto anyway not just the contact but the content
22 of that contact.
23 Q. May I suggest to you that, at best, the arrangements
24 which existed for permission to speak to journalists on
25 behalf of the various bodies with which Dr Kelly was

14
1 concerned were a muddle?
2 A. No, I do not accept that. When you have had the
3 opportunity to look at the very detailed 44-paragraph
4 guidance circulated to everybody in the MoD which is
5 periodically drawn to their attention, I do not think
6 you will think they were either a muddle or unclear.
7 Q. Has that document been disclosed to us?
8 A. It has.
9 Q. Can I go on to another matter? When you interviewed
10 Dr Kelly on 4th July, were you under the impression that
11 he had not reported meeting Mr Gilligan and Ms Watts at
12 the end of May?
13 A. I was under that impression in the sense that he had not
14 told anybody and did not tell me in the course of the
15 meeting anything other than that he had met, apart from
16 Mr Gilligan, of course, other journalists.
17 Q. Yes. That is not what I am asking you. What I am
18 asking you is: were you under the impression that he had
19 not reported ex post facto, to somebody else, that he
20 had had those journalistic contacts at the end of May?
21 A. Let me be clear about this. I was clear that he had
22 reported meeting a range of journalists, including
23 Susan Watts and Jane Corbin, in fact he lists quite
24 a few of them in his letter. I did not know and did not
25 need to know for the purposes of the interview on

15
1 July 4th the content of any reports he may have made or
2 may not have made about those because I was only
3 concerned with what he had himself volunteered us about
4 his meeting with Andrew Gilligan on 22nd May. So
5 I formed no judgment whatsoever and I assumed that
6 actually he had reported whatever needed to be reported
7 about those other contacts.
8 Q. Did you?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Would you look, please, at MoD/1/25, which is the second
11 page of your note of the interview of 4th July. It is
12 in the main paragraph in the second half of the page,
13 about perhaps 10 lines up from the end of that
14 paragraph:
15 "I asked why he had not even reported the
16 conversation afterwards, given the public debate about
17 the two Government dossiers. Kelly repeated that the
18 discussion had not really been about the dossier and he
19 had not said anything controversial..."
20 A. Well, I think I have no problem with this one.
21 Dr Kelly's letter to us acknowledges having
22 a substantial conversation with Andrew Gilligan which
23 referred to the dossier, even though it did not say that
24 he started it or anything like that. He had not
25 mentioned this to his line manager or to anybody in the

16
1 Ministry of Defence, despite the fact it was clearly
2 a major piece of information relating to the controversy
3 which was engulfing the Government, regardless of
4 whether he had done anything wrong at all in talking to
5 Mr Gilligan.
6 Q. We now know that he had mentioned contact with
7 Andrew Gilligan and Susan Watts to Mr Lamb, had he not?
8 A. He had mentioned contact.
9 Q. Yes.
10 A. He had not reported what had happened at that meeting
11 and that is what he said to the ISC.
12 Q. Yes. Could you go to the next page, please, MoD/1/26.
13 In the second main paragraph, again perhaps about eight
14 lines down, after referring to Gilligan's primary source
15 you record:
16 "... much of which could have been avoided even if
17 he had reported the contact immediately afterwards."
18 LORD HUTTON: I have not found that Mr Gompertz. Is it the
19 paragraph beginning "It is very difficult..."?
20 MR GOMPERTZ: No, it is the paragraph beginning:
21 "I said that I was prepared to accept..."
22 LORD HUTTON: Where is that in the paragraph?
23 MR GOMPERTZ: About six lines down:
24 "Even if he was not Gilligan's primary source, it
25 had had very awkward consequences both for him and the

17
1 department, much of which could have been avoided even
2 if he had reported the contact immediately afterwards."
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Do you think with what you know now that that is a fair
5 statement?
6 A. I think it is a very fair statement.
7 Q. Do you? He did report the contact to Mr Lamb, did he
8 not?
9 A. He did not report the contact in giving any description
10 of its content and I am afraid I do not accept just
11 saying "I have met a journalist" amounts to, in this
12 context, reporting the contact.
13 Q. He did not say "I have met a journalist", he gave the
14 names, did he not?
15 A. And he did not give any indication that anything had
16 happened in those contacts of significance to the
17 Foreign Office or the Ministry of Defence.
18 Q. So you are not prepared to make any sort of concession
19 in this regard then?
20 A. No, I am not. I think it is a fundamental failing in
21 what he did.
22 Q. Right. Thank you. Can I turn to another topic? You
23 stressed in your evidence previously that Dr Kelly was
24 not a member of the Senior Civil Service.
25 A. I did not stress it. It was asked to explain whether he

18
1 was or he was not.
2 Q. Very well. I will withdraw the word "stressed". You
3 said it?
4 A. I did.
5 Q. Is that still your stance?
6 A. It certainly is.
7 Q. Technically, that is right, is it?
8 A. It certainly is right.
9 Q. That is so even though he had been awarded a CMG?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Which is normally given to the Senior Civil Service, is
12 it not?
13 A. I have to correct you. At the time he was awarded the
14 CMG, whatever the current practice is, the Senior Civil
15 Service did not even exist. He is not a member of the
16 Senior Civil Service otherwise he would have a contract
17 which said he was a member of the Senior Civil Service,
18 an individual contract. He does not have one so he
19 cannot be a member of the Senior Civil Service.
20 Q. Even though his pay band was within the bracket that you
21 might expect for a senior civil servant?
22 A. Very much so. He was not paid in the Senior Civil
23 Service band. It is quite true his salary was in the
24 range of a Senior Civil Service pay band. But that is
25 precisely the point. If he was in the Senior Civil

19
1 Service he would actually have been in the modern pay
2 band covering that part. He was not paid according to
3 that arrangement, at all.
4 Q. So would you adhere to the description of him as
5 a middle ranking official?
6 A. Yes, I would.
7 Q. You would?
8 A. Yes, I would.
9 Q. This tremendous expert?
10 A. That is nothing to do with his rank. He is a tremendous
11 expert, was a tremendous expert. But his rank is quite
12 clearly middle ranking.
13 Q. Or is it that it suited the Government to describe him
14 as a middle ranking official in order to play down his
15 status in order to stress that Gilligan's source could
16 not have known what was ascribed to him by Gilligan?
17 A. I think that is completely false. The Government or the
18 MoD in this context was giving an accurate description
19 of what he was, far from playing down his role, which
20 does not depend on his rank at all, it does indeed
21 depend on his expertise which we were very willing to
22 acknowledge from the outset and still acknowledge. He
23 was a very important expert in this area. That does not
24 change the fact he is middle ranking.
25 Q. There was a meeting arranged for 24th June. Did you

20
1 know that?
2 A. I know that now, but I did not -- I think I may have
3 been aware that a meeting had been planned without
4 knowing what date it was. I did not know that on
5 July 4th.
6 Q. No. There is no suggestion that you were going to
7 participate in that meeting?
8 A. None whatsoever.
9 Q. Can you help us at all as to whether Dr Kelly was told
10 about that meeting?
11 A. No, I cannot.
12 Q. Can you help us at all as to when Dr Kelly was cleared
13 of the leak allegation?
14 A. He was never -- nobody ever alleged that he had leaked.
15 At one stage, in the process I understand of the leak
16 inquiry which was going on quite separately, his name
17 was identified as somebody who might have had access to
18 papers; and it was subsequently established that he did
19 not and therefore he was eliminated from those names
20 even being pursued. I am not sure that he would ever
21 have been aware of that.
22 Q. What I am trying to discover is when that happened.
23 A. I do not know. I could find out for you; but from my
24 point of view it was simply irrelevant. It ceased to
25 exist before this meeting.

21
1 Q. It may be irrelevant in your view. Let me just put
2 these matters to you: the reason for the postponement of
3 the meeting of 24th June, so we are told, was because of
4 the continuance of that leak inquiry.
5 A. That may well be so.
6 Q. And on 2nd July Dr Wells was seeing the police in
7 connection with that leak inquiry.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Indeed, when Dr Kelly wrote his letter Dr Wells thought
10 that it should be sent on or thought that it should be
11 considered for sending on in relation to that leak
12 inquiry. Could you look, please, at MoD/1/23? Do you
13 see that?
14 A. Yes, I do.
15 Q. The last sentence in this memorandum dated 2nd July:
16 "You may wish to pass a copy [of the letter that is]
17 to the leak inquiry personnel."
18 That is 2nd July. You were asked to investigate
19 this matter that we are concerned with on 3rd July?
20 A. On the evening of 3rd July, correct.
21 Q. Indeed. I am just wondering whether, in fact, you can
22 help us at all. When you were asked to assist on
23 3rd July was anything at all said to you about the leak
24 inquiry?
25 A. No, none whatsoever. I knew a leak inquiry was going on

22
1 but nobody had mentioned to me that Dr Kelly's name had
2 been one of those which had been checked, as it were, to
3 see if he had access to the documents. I did not know
4 that when I interviewed him on 4th July. There is no
5 reason why I should have done.
6 Q. I will pursue that with others, perhaps.
7 So we come to the interview on 4th July, which you
8 were asked to conduct by Sir Kevin Tebbit.
9 A. Correct.
10 Q. And were you aware of Mr Howard's letter that had been
11 written? MoD/1/17, please. I call it a letter, it is
12 probably a memorandum. Were you aware of this document?
13 A. I was not aware of this document at the time, although
14 I was aware that the Defence Intelligence Staff had had
15 some sort of reminder about leaks. But I had not seen
16 that document until this Inquiry began.
17 Q. Yes. If you would like to turn to the next page,
18 MoD/1/18, and just read to yourself, because we have had
19 it read out already, the last part of the letter
20 beginning "Leaking material to the press..."
21 A. Yes, I have read it.
22 Q. It refers, does it not, to the strongest possible action
23 being taken?
24 A. Correct.
25 Q. No doubt you went into the interview on 4th July with an

23
1 open mind?
2 A. I did.
3 Q. Indeed, if you go back to your record of that meeting at
4 MoD/1/24, please, you start off by -- this is the first
5 main paragraph:
6 "I began by explaining to Dr Kelly that his letter
7 had serious implications."
8 A. Indeed.
9 Q. You refer to the possibility of disciplinary action, and
10 we know that you said various things by way of
11 introduction.
12 Yet within an hour or so you had accepted Dr Kelly's
13 account; right? You had decided that it was not
14 necessary that there should be any formal disciplinary
15 process; right? You are nodding, are you?
16 A. I accepted Dr Kelly's account in good faith, as it says
17 in that document.
18 Q. Albeit certainly you kept the possibility of
19 disciplinary process open if further facts emerged, and
20 Dr Kelly was simply admonished?
21 A. Correct.
22 Q. I am not saying that you were wrong in your conclusions,
23 but were you reaching them in a manner in which you
24 normally would have done so?
25 A. Well, this is a very abnormal set of circumstances.

24
1 I believe that I followed the correct procedure in those
2 circumstances very clearly.
3 Q. You did not conduct any sort of investigation?
4 A. Investigation of what?
5 Q. Of what Dr Kelly was telling you, other than with him?
6 A. I had no basis on which to do so. The only reason I was
7 interviewing Dr Kelly was he had volunteered an account
8 of a meeting with a journalist. I took that in good
9 faith. I checked, as it were, so far as I could, what
10 he was saying as I was listening to it. I also
11 subsequently checked some of the information he gave me
12 with his line manager and particularly with
13 Martin Howard who was more familiar with the
14 intelligence facts. Nothing called into question the
15 essentials of the account that he gave me.
16 Q. After the first interview you gave an oral report of the
17 interview to Sir Kevin Tebbit?
18 A. Correct.
19 Q. Then submitted these notes?
20 A. Correct.
21 Q. Together with your memorandum of 7th July on MoD/1/28;
22 is that right?
23 A. It sounds right. (Pause). Yes, that is correct.
24 Q. That, in turn, enabled Sir Kevin to write to
25 Sir David Omand on 4th July. MoD/1/34, please.

25
1 If you could now be taken, please, to 1/35, the next
2 page, the last paragraph on that page refers in the last
3 two sentences to:
4 "Contingent lines have, therefore, been prepared by
5 officials here. These are enclosed."
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. What are those contingent lines?
8 A. It was a very brief draft press statement prepared
9 against the possibility that over the weekend somebody
10 else would expose, in some form or other, the problem we
11 were then wrestling with that Dr Kelly had come forward
12 and said he talked to Andrew Gilligan.
13 Q. Is MoD/1/51 the draft press statement?
14 A. Yes, it is, I think.
15 Q. Drafted by yourself and Mr Howard?
16 A. Yes, I think so. It was done collectively.
17 Q. Any Q and A material?
18 A. None whatsoever.
19 Q. You had nothing to do with drafting of any Q and A
20 material on 4th July?
21 A. No, did not.
22 Q. Did you, at any stage, have anything to do with the
23 Q and A material?
24 A. I saw very late in the day, because I was not in my
25 office, one draft of the Q and A material that was

26
1 finally used, I think.
2 Q. Right. I will come on to that chronologically.
3 So can we go back to the letter at MoD/1/44, please?
4 You told us, yesterday, that the second key issue at the
5 bottom of the page was one which was read out to you,
6 together with the rest of this document, over the
7 telephone?
8 A. Correct.
9 Q. Did you simply not take it on-board or what?
10 A. The only honest answer I can give you is I formed an
11 impression on the basis of that of what I was being
12 asked to do was precisely what I expected to do in the
13 interview.
14 Q. So did you ask Dr Kelly whether he was ready to be
15 associated with a public statement that named him?
16 A. I explained this yesterday. I did not ask him about his
17 readiness to be associated with a specific early public
18 statement which named him because that is not how
19 I heard the minute even if that is what was intended.
20 I did however discuss with him, which is what
21 I understood it to refer to, the more general
22 proposition of being associated in public, I mean with
23 his name clearly being revealed, at some stage, in order
24 as it were to respond to the charges about the core
25 allegation on the 45 minutes intelligence.

27
1 Q. So could you look, please, at MoD/1/50 which is the
2 notes of the meeting on 7th July, prepared by Dr Wells;
3 right?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. 1/50 is the last page of it.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Do you see paragraph 19 there?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Is there anything in that paragraph about what you were
10 asked to do by the letter that we have just looked at,
11 in effect from Sir Kevin Tebbit?
12 A. That depends how you interpret that letter. That
13 paragraph is focusing very specifically on the statement
14 that I expect is quite rightly -- sorry, on the sort of
15 statement that I expect the department may well have to
16 make in the next 24/48 hours, whatever. It was not
17 addressing the longer time, for example appearances
18 before the Foreign Affairs Committee, by which time in
19 some form or other he would clearly have had to be named
20 in public by somebody.
21 LORD HUTTON: Well, is that paragraph an accurate note of
22 what you said to Dr Kelly?
23 A. It is an accurate summary of what I was saying to
24 Dr Kelly at that point. It is not a verbatim account.
25 LORD HUTTON: Yes.

28
1 MR GOMPERTZ: I wonder if you could just look, quickly,
2 please, at MoD/5/25. That, when it comes up, should be
3 the first page of Dr Wells' handwritten notes of this
4 occasion. If we can go on to MoD/5/30, that is the last
5 page of his notes. Do you see, if we can scroll down,
6 please, that that comes to an end with an entry:
7 "[The] only person probably is Susan Watts."
8 Do you see that?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. At any rate an entry about Susan Watts.
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. There is nothing at all in those notes about what is
13 contained in paragraph 19 of the typescript version, is
14 there?
15 A. Apparently not.
16 Q. Can you offer any explanation?
17 A. Presumably Mr Wells did not record those in his
18 manuscript notes.
19 Q. Yes, Mr Hatfield, that is indeed a possibility.
20 A. I think it is quite likely.
21 Q. Yes. Would you like to address your mind to the
22 question? Can you offer any explanation of how that
23 comes about?
24 A. I imagine he did not think it was necessary to record it
25 in detail. We ended that meeting by actually going

29
1 through a draft press release which Dr Kelly actually
2 specifically agreed to. We made a change at that
3 meeting. All that, as far as I can see, and I have
4 never seen Dr Wells' manuscript notes until last week,
5 does not appear to be recorded because there is no need
6 for it to be recorded. We reached an agreed output.
7 Q. No? The paragraph 19, I suggest to you, contains some
8 of the most important material in this interview, does
9 it not?
10 A. From the point of view of the Inquiry now going on, of
11 course it does. From the point of view of what we were
12 doing at the time, it did not seem so. We were doing
13 something perfectly ordinary in the Ministry of Defence,
14 discussing the terms of a statement which might have to
15 be made in the next 24 hours which involved one of the
16 individuals in the room. We did not need to record, in
17 our manuscript notes, what we could record directly, if
18 we needed to do so. I recorded my version of that note
19 contemporaneously, and for the purpose that I was doing
20 it, it was quite important.
21 Q. Where in that paragraph, 19, is there any reference to
22 the statement being made in the next 24 hours? I am
23 sorry, MoD/1/50.
24 A. I did not say specifically 24 hours. 24 hours or so.
25 We did not know when we would have to make the statement

30
1 because we did not know whether it would be under our
2 control, whether we would be responding to something
3 from outside, whether we would be responding to
4 developments from the Foreign Affairs Committee, the ISC
5 and so on. The whole point of agreeing it is we did not
6 know when we might have to make it. As I explained
7 explicitly to Dr Kelly, we would consult him if we
8 possibly could before making any statement, as I did.
9 This was designed to be a statement on which we had
10 already consulted him and which we might have to put out
11 in circumstances where we could not consult him quickly.
12 Q. The press statement which you showed him, is that
13 MoD/1/51?
14 A. No.
15 Q. Right. Are you able to tell us, then, what about
16 MoD/1/67? Is that it?
17 A. That is it, although when I initially showed it to him
18 it did not include the sentence which is the last
19 sentence of paragraph 3:
20 "He is not a member of the Intelligence Services or
21 the Defence Intelligence Staff."
22 At that meeting we added that in. It was written in
23 after a conversation between Martin Howard and Dr Kelly,
24 in Martin Howard's manuscript; and at the end of the
25 meeting everybody at that meeting took away a photocopy

31
1 of what we had been working on which included the
2 manuscript sentence. The version you have is the one
3 I then circulated around the MoD where we typed up the
4 manuscript sentence.
5 Q. Apart from that one sentence, the document you showed to
6 Dr Kelly at the end of the second interview is identical
7 to that which appears on MoD/1/67?
8 A. Correct and the one sentence was identical with what it
9 ended up at the end of the meeting with, if you see what
10 I mean.
11 Q. Going back to MoD/1/50, please, is this accurate as to
12 what he was told:
13 "Hatfield said that although Kelly was not named in
14 the press release his identity may become known in due
15 course."
16 Is that an accurate account of what was said to
17 Dr Kelly at the end of that interview?
18 A. It is an understatement of the impression that he would
19 have had; and it is actually an understatement of the
20 language I used.
21 Q. So it is an inaccurate report?
22 A. It is an understatement. It is not a verbatim report.
23 It is an understatement.
24 Q. Have you ever sought to correct that sentence before
25 this moment?

32
1 A. I had not actually seen that until after Dr Kelly's
2 death.
3 Q. That is not the question I asked you. You have given
4 evidence on a previous occasion, have you not?
5 A. I have.
6 Q. And you are giving evidence today, and no doubt you have
7 considered, carefully, the evidence that you were going
8 to give on those two occasions?
9 A. I was not asked about this, although I offered the
10 opportunity at the end of my first evidence session to
11 answer other questions in relation to the witness
12 statement I had provided. If you turn to my own account
13 you will find slightly different words in there.
14 Q. We then have --
15 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, your own account?
16 A. My own account of the same meeting I wrote at the time.
17 In that, again I was using polite reporting language,
18 I think I say "quite likely".
19 LORD HUTTON: Can we look at that? Can you assist
20 Mr Gompertz on that? It must be in MoD/1.
21 MR BEER: MoD/1/26.
22 LORD HUTTON: MoD/1/26. Thank you very much.
23 This was the interview I think of 4th July. Had you
24 written a note of the interview on the 7th as well?
25 A. Yes, I did, my Lord. Immediately after the meeting,

33
1 although it was sent the following morning, I went and
2 wrote my own if you like off the top of the head account
3 of what had happened without the benefit of Dr Wells'
4 notes.
5 MR GOMPERTZ: That, I think you told us, does not survive.
6 A. No, it is my minute of the 8th July to Sir Kevin Tebbit.
7 Q. Ah, that is what you are talking about. We can look at
8 that, can we not?
9 A. We can indeed.
10 Q. Let us do so. MoD/1/54. That is what you are talking
11 about, is it?
12 A. It is, yes. Yes.
13 Q. That is dated 8th July, is it not?
14 A. Correct. It was drafted however in manuscript at home
15 on the evening of 7th July.
16 Q. And typed up exactly as you had drafted it?
17 A. For all I know I corrected some of my English but there
18 was no substantial change.
19 Q. I ask you that for a reason. Do you see --
20 LORD HUTTON: Just before that, is there any particular
21 passage in that note or memorandum that you wish to
22 refer to on this point?
23 A. I presume that in paragraph 3:
24 "I made it clear to Dr Kelly ... et cetera
25 et cetera, in particular:

34
1 "It was, however, quite likely that his name would
2 come out, not least because speculation about the nature
3 of the source (eg the Times of 5 July 2003) might lead
4 in his direction. It was also possible that, depending
5 on further developments, the FAC might seek to call him
6 as a witness."
7 I had been talking to him about that even since the
8 first meeting on 4th July. I still cannot understand
9 how anybody could possibly assume you could give
10 evidence to the FAC without your identity being known.
11 MR GOMPERTZ: Yes. I will come back to that paragraph. Let
12 us just see if we can get any greater clarity about when
13 this note was drafted and typed. You see in paragraph 1
14 you say:
15 "I saw Dr Kelly again yesterday afternoon..."
16 A. Yes. It was typed on the morning of 8th July. As
17 I say, I drafted it the evening before. I may even, in
18 my original draft of the evening before, have put in the
19 word "yesterday" since it was quite clear it was going
20 to be sent the following day and it would not make sense
21 to put in "this afternoon" in a document dated 8th July.
22 Q. You anticipated it would be typed the next day?
23 A. Indeed.
24 Q. That, I suppose, is the explanation of the words at the
25 second paragraph:

35
1 "As I told you last night, there was no change ...",
2 and so on?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. So this was being typed first thing on the morning of
5 8th July?
6 A. Correct.
7 Q. Did you know that at that very time, in fact at 8.07 am,
8 a version of the Q and A material was being submitted by
9 Ms Teare which was highly likely to lead to the
10 identification of Dr Kelly?
11 A. No, I did not know anything was being prepared like that
12 and I did not think it was highly likely to lead to the
13 identification of Dr Kelly.
14 Q. We will look at that in a moment. In the middle of
15 paragraph 3 you make your position quite clear, do you
16 not:
17 "I said that I did not think that it would be
18 necessary to reveal his name or to go into detail beyond
19 indicating that the account given to us did not match
20 Gilligan's [and it should be 'FAC'] account, at least
21 initially."
22 A. Indeed.
23 Q. "It was, however, quite likely that his name would come
24 out, not least because speculation about the nature of
25 the source ... might lead in his direction."

36
1 Right?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. So that was the state of mind in which you left Dr Kelly
4 at the end of the interview of the 7th?
5 A. At least initially, which is quite correct.
6 Q. Did you have anything to do with any of the Q and A
7 material?
8 A. I saw one draft and I have no idea which draft it was.
9 I should think it was, from what I have seen at
10 the Inquiry, it must have been a sort of middle, in
11 time, draft; and I made two minor comments on it.
12 Q. We had better look at the various drafts very quickly to
13 identify which one you are talking about.
14 LORD HUTTON: Mr Gompertz, just before we leave this minute,
15 I would just like to be quite clear: are you suggesting
16 to Mr Hatfield that his paragraph 3 was in some way
17 drawn up by him in bad faith?
18 MR GOMPERTZ: No, I am not. I am not in a position to make
19 that suggestion, my Lord. I am merely investigating
20 what the position is.
21 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I appreciate that. Because there was
22 a slight implication when you questioned him about
23 paragraph 19 of Dr Wells that perhaps that was not
24 a genuine paragraph.
25 MR GOMPERTZ: I do not know is the answer to your Lordship's

37
1 question.
2 LORD HUTTON: Very well. You are not putting that directly
3 to Mr Hatfield.
4 MR GOMPERTZ: I do not think I have sufficient material on
5 which to put that suggestion, my Lord. It may be, let
6 me make it plain, that that suggestion might be made in
7 due course when the other matters are clarified with
8 other witnesses. But I do not think it would be right
9 for me to put that now.
10 LORD HUTTON: Very well.
11 MR GOMPERTZ: Can you look, please, at CAB/21/3? I show you
12 this just to eliminate it. I think that this was
13 produced on the evening of 4th July by Ms Teare and
14 Mrs Wilson.
15 A. As far as I can recall, I have never seen this.
16 Q. CAB/21/5, please. This is a draft, as we can see, sent
17 to PUS office at 8.07 on Tuesday 8th July subject to
18 discussion and approval.
19 A. I did not see this at the time.
20 Q. Not at all?
21 A. Not at all. I have seen it in the context of
22 the Inquiry, but, I mean --
23 Q. Oh yes, but not at the time?
24 A. No.
25 Q. Can we look at the remaining version, MoD/1/62? This

38
1 was the draft which became the material which was
2 approved for use; yes?
3 A. If you tell me it is.
4 Q. That is the evidence. I would like you to tell his
5 Lordship, please, whether this is the version which you
6 saw?
7 A. This is similar to the version. It may even be
8 identical. If I can help you: what actually happened
9 was I was sent by e-mail one draft, and it was a draft.
10 I believe the e-mail probably reached my office at about
11 2.30 in the afternoon of the day in question although
12 I was not in my office. I saw it on my screen at
13 roughly 4.30 -- roughly the time, in fact, I was talking
14 to Dr Kelly on the phone; and I cannot be more accurate
15 than that.
16 Q. So at the very time or at about the time you were
17 talking to Dr Kelly on the phone, you saw a document
18 very similar to that which we are looking at now?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Did you ever tell Dr Kelly about it?
21 A. No.
22 Q. Why not?
23 A. Because I did not think that I needed to tell Dr Kelly
24 about it. I am not quite sure what you think I should
25 have told him.

39
1 Q. Well, never mind what I am thinking, Mr Hatfield. My
2 thoughts are irrelevant, it is yours that matter.
3 A. Well, first of all, may I just, again, explain that
4 I was literally looking at this on my screen possibly
5 simultaneously, not having read it through with Dr Kelly
6 for the first time. I might even have looked at it
7 afterwards. I cannot actually tell that because I am
8 not aware of the precise time of the call I made to
9 Dr Kelly -- sorry, the call that Dr Kelly made to me.
10 That is why I am not aware of the precise time.
11 LORD HUTTON: This was the call he made back to you after he
12 had parked his car; is that right?
13 A. That is right. I had not seen this when I made my call
14 to him at 4 o'clock, that I am clear of. Though it was
15 probably on my computer terminal, I had not found it
16 because I had come straight back into my office in order
17 to call Dr Kelly. I would have expected Dr Kelly to be
18 aware that if we were making any statement there would
19 be question and answer material behind it, and I did not
20 think that would be necessary to tell him.
21 MR GOMPERTZ: Even if he was aware of the practice of using
22 Q and A material, the content of the Q and A material
23 would not be within his knowledge, would it?
24 A. Well, most of the content in that is actually drawn from
25 the information we had already agreed with him to be

40
1 revealed at the appropriate point.
2 Q. What are you talking about when you give that answer?
3 A. Well, description of the details and so on, of what --
4 of him. But it is not usual to clear question and
5 answer material with the people being referred to in it
6 unless there is a very specific reason to do so, for
7 example disclosing personal data which is not normally
8 disclosed. I would not expect the MoD to clear
9 a question and answer statement about me in my role as
10 Personnel Director with me unless there was some very
11 specific reason to do so.
12 Q. What changes did you suggest to this document?
13 A. I can answer that if I return to my computer but
14 I cannot here. They were very small descriptions. And
15 since this is the final version, they may well have been
16 incorporated in it.
17 Q. Can you not remember?
18 A. I can find out without -- they were very minor points of
19 detail.
20 Q. So, you have talked of e-mails in relation to this
21 Q and A material. Why have they not been disclosed?
22 A. For all I know they have been disclosed. The e-mail was
23 not a specific e-mail to me. It was an e-mail. All the
24 e-mail did was circulate the draft.
25 Q. I think you can rest assured, Mr Hatfield, that these

41
1 e-mails have not been disclosed. I received that
2 assurance from Mr Dingemans.
3 A. I am sure we can disclose them.
4 Q. Why not?
5 A. You have the content of the e-mail. I mean, the e-mail
6 is a method, in this context -- was a method of
7 circulating the document for comment. You have the
8 documents. But there is no difficulty about giving you
9 the e-mails if you think they are relevant.
10 Q. Because let me put this suggestion to you --
11 A. I should also say there may only be one e-mail. I am
12 only aware of one, which is the one I received.
13 Q. Let me put this suggestion to you: first of all, that
14 the important material which might lead to
15 identification nearly all appears in this third draft,
16 would you agree with that?
17 A. No, I do not agree with that because I do not think that
18 this material does necessarily identify somebody.
19 Q. I am not going to spar with you over that.
20 Can you tell us: here you were talking to Dr Kelly
21 about the press statement and clearing that with him;
22 right?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Almost in the next breath you are dealing with this
25 Q and A material?

42
1 A. Can I --
2 Q. I have not asked a question yet.
3 A. Sorry. Fine.
4 Q. That is right, is it?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Did you not think that Dr Kelly had been left with, at
7 best, a thoroughly misleading impression of how he was
8 being handled by his employers?
9 A. No, I did not because I read this Q and A as saying that
10 we are not going to volunteer his name and that if the
11 correct name is given we can confirm it, which is
12 precisely the position I thought he would be in. The
13 rest of the material as far as I am concerned then
14 becomes factual material released in support of a name.
15 Q. When you made your suggestions with regard to this
16 Q and A material, to whom did you send them?
17 A. I sent them back to the press office, I think. The
18 originator of the e-mail was sending me a copy.
19 Q. Was there what has been described as a rolling meeting
20 on this day, 8th July, I think in the morning and
21 perhaps continuing into the afternoon?
22 A. I only know about this from the evidence given to
23 the Inquiry because I was not involved during this day
24 at all, I was dealing with other matters.
25 Q. So you did not concern yourself with these matters until

43
1 about the time when you telephoned Dr Kelly?
2 A. On this particular day, I spoke to Dr Kelly first thing
3 in the morning; and I then spoke to him again in the
4 afternoon.
5 LORD HUTTON: What did you speak to him about?
6 A. At the end of our meeting on the previous day, my Lord,
7 we agreed that he should go back to his course overnight
8 at RAF Honnington; but we were not completely sure
9 whether we would need to talk to him again the following
10 day, partly because of the possibility of needing to
11 make a statement, if it had come up. And it was agreed
12 that either he or I would ring before he actually
13 started work at the course in the morning by 8.30 to
14 make sure that it was sensible for him to as it were go
15 back into the training rather than simply drive back to
16 London.
17 He rang me, from memory, just before 8.30 on his
18 mobile, I think to my mobile, though I was by that time
19 in the office, and I confirmed he should actually attend
20 the training for the rest of the day and that I did not
21 expect anything to happen, as it were, between then and
22 early afternoon.
23 MR GOMPERTZ: I am aware of the time, so can I move on to
24 what I hope is the last topic I want to ask you about.
25 That is the welfare of Dr Kelly.

44
1 You told the Inquiry yesterday that you thought that
2 the support which was provided for Dr Kelly was
3 outstanding?
4 A. I did.
5 Q. You stand by that description, do you?
6 A. I stand by that absolutely.
7 Q. Do you think it was outstanding support by the MoD not
8 to warn him of the Q and A material and its contents so
9 that he was wholly unaware of the process?
10 A. I do not accept that he was wholly unaware of the
11 process. He did not know the detail of what was going
12 on in the press office. But I do not accept that
13 Dr Kelly did not expect his name to come out quite
14 probably from the MoD, if nobody else got there first,
15 within the next 48 to 72 hours.
16 Q. Do you consider it was outstanding support by the MoD
17 not to inform him of the decision to confirm his name if
18 suggested by a journalist?
19 A. I am afraid I do not actually accept your question.
20 I think he knew all along if we were faced with
21 a serious statement that they knew that it was Dr Kelly
22 that we would have to confirm the name because the
23 Ministry of Defence cannot deny things that are true.
24 Q. Do you consider that it was outstanding support for
25 Dr Kelly to refrain from dispatching or attempting to

45
1 dispatch a press officer to assist him until after he
2 had been named?
3 A. I think we provided outstanding support from the press
4 office in accordance with Dr Kelly's wishes.
5 Q. Do you think it was outstanding support to wait for
6 something like 2 to 2 and a half hours after he was
7 named before telling him, before telephoning to tell him
8 that he had been identified?
9 A. I think it was outstanding support to warn him 24 hours
10 in advance that we were going to put out a statement
11 which could -- sorry, 24 hours was the time interval we
12 got. It was quite clear when I finished speaking to
13 Dr Kelly it was only a matter of time before his name
14 came out. We gained a lot of time by the strategy of
15 not revealing his name in that initial statement.
16 Q. It is your view, is it not, that there was no need to
17 obtain his consent to naming him?
18 A. No.
19 Q. You told us that yesterday. Would you like to be
20 treated like that Mr Hatfield?
21 A. I have been treated like that.
22 Q. Have you?
23 A. Yes, I have.
24 Q. In comparable circumstances?
25 A. In very comparable circumstances. The media have made

46
1 all sorts of statements about what I did and did not do.
2 They have attempted to say that I am going to be moved
3 at the end of my job. All this is, you know, deduction
4 from the basis of nothing.
5 Q. Do you agree or disagree with the Secretary of State who
6 has said, many times, that it would have been quite
7 wrong to name Dr Kelly until the MoD were sure that he
8 was Andrew Gilligan's single source? Do you agree with
9 that statement?
10 A. Without knowing the context, I have to say I do not
11 completely agree with it.
12 Q. Did you not take any notice of the evidence which the
13 Secretary of State gave when he appeared before this
14 Inquiry?
15 A. I have not read it in great detail and I am not
16 answering for the Secretary of State; but in my view,
17 I would not fully agree with that sentence. I would
18 certainly agree that it would have been very preferable
19 to have established, before we named Dr Kelly or even
20 referred to an individual coming forward, whether or not
21 the individual was Mr Gilligan's source, because that
22 would have made a great deal of difference to
23 everything. However, it was not in our power to do so
24 although we made considerable efforts to achieve that,
25 with Dr Kelly's cooperation.

47
1 Q. Did the MoD take any steps to contact Mrs Kelly to
2 enquire about how her husband was handling the pressure?
3 A. I think it would have been inappropriate to ask
4 Mrs Kelly how her husband was handling the pressure.
5 Q. So the answer to my question is "no".
6 A. I am unaware of any such steps.
7 Q. Was there any counselling offered?
8 A. In relation to what?
9 Q. In relation to the stress which Dr Kelly was undergoing
10 at the time.
11 A. On the basis of what we knew at the time, the only
12 stress Dr Kelly was undergoing was the stress associated
13 with appearances before the FAC and the ISC and the
14 stress induced by what had come to be modern media
15 behaviour. He was given advice in relation to all those
16 things in the same way as anybody appearing before
17 committees would be given, and support was offered.
18 Dr Wells, for example, actually cancelled a visit to the
19 United States in order to provide support to him.
20 Q. Hmm. Let me suggest to you that there were various
21 other matters which were subjecting Dr Kelly to severe
22 stress: three interviews, two by you and one briefing
23 interview before he went before the Committees.
24 A. I do not regard any of those except the first as
25 subjecting him to particular stress.

48
1 Q. The possibility of the question of discipline being
2 reopened?
3 A. There was no possibility of the question of discipline
4 being reopened unless something came to call his account
5 into question. And I made very clear I actually
6 accepted his account in good faith.
7 Q. The two appearances before the Select Committees?
8 A. Well we gave him the support that we give to anybody in
9 those circumstances.
10 Q. Most of all, perhaps, the public identification of an
11 intensely private man?
12 A. The public identification followed from his own act in
13 talking to Mr Gilligan.
14 Q. The very considerable media interest?
15 A. He was given support in relation to that.
16 Q. Having to go away from home at very short notice and
17 stay in a hotel in Weston-Super-Mare?
18 A. I think you are putting to me the suggestion that the
19 media put him under stress. That is a very difficult
20 thing for me to respond to.
21 Q. Not so, Mr Hatfield. What I am asking you is did the
22 MoD and you yourself, in particular, as the head of
23 personnel, take any of these matters into account in
24 order to assess whether Dr Kelly was likely to be
25 suffering from severe stress?

49
1 A. The answer to your question is "yes", and we believe,
2 and on the basis of how he behaved during all this
3 period, that he was not suffering any stress other than
4 the sort of stress that we commonly expect from people
5 going in front of committees in slightly difficult
6 circumstances, and we gave him the appropriate support.
7 Q. Last point. The Osmotherly rules.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. You are aware of them?
10 A. I am very well aware of them.
11 Q. Yes. Did you take them into account at the time when it
12 was being considered whether --
13 A. I did.
14 Q. -- he should appear before the Committees?
15 A. I did.
16 Q. You did, did you? You gave advice about it?
17 A. I did not refer to them by name but Sir Kevin Tebbit did
18 ask me at one stage whether there were any grounds we,
19 as a ministry of Government, could refuse, if we wished
20 to, a request from the Foreign Affairs Committee and
21 I thought very hard about the Osmotherly rules in that
22 context, although I would also add the Foreign Affairs
23 Committee does not necessarily accept that the
24 Osmotherly rules govern their behaviour; and I do not
25 think there is anything in the Osmotherly rules which

50
1 would lead us to the conclusion that we either could or
2 should not, as it were, respond to a request from the
3 FAC. They of course do not apply to the ISC because it
4 is not a Parliamentary Committee.
5 Q. Let me just ask you one question of detail about the
6 rules: there is a provision, is there not, that in
7 certain circumstances a witness can give evidence in
8 closed session before the FAC?
9 A. They certainly have. I have done it myself to the
10 Defence Affairs Committee.
11 Q. Was any consideration given to that provision?
12 A. The circumstances do not seem to me to apply.
13 Q. Did you know that the Minister, although in fairness the
14 letters were never sent, in draft, at any rate, was
15 suggesting the reverse? That the evidence should be
16 heard in open session by both the FAC and the ISC?
17 A. I am certainly aware -- sorry, I would have expected the
18 evidence to the FAC to be given in open session. The
19 ISC point I was unaware of.
20 MR GOMPERTZ: My Lord, I apologise, I have overrun again.
21 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much. I think it would be
22 a convenient time now to take a break.
23 Will you be a short time?
24 MR DINGEMANS: May I have five minutes before the break?
25 There will be time afterwards, but just before the

51
1 break.
2 Cross-examined by MR DINGEMANS
3 Q. Can I go to the 7th July meeting and the press
4 statements you cleared with Dr Kelly. MoD/1/51 was the
5 first one that you were shown. This is the shorter one.
6 A. The very short one?
7 Q. Well, very short, shorter.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. That is, I think you said to my learned friend
10 Mr Gompertz, not the one you were dealing with on
11 7th July?
12 A. Correct. That is the one that we drafted on the evening
13 of 4th July.
14 Q. Can I take you to MoD/1/67? This is the one, subject to
15 the addition in the third paragraph, that you think you
16 did discuss with Dr Kelly on 7th July?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. But the last sentence on the third paragraph was added
19 in after discussions between Mr Howard and Dr Kelly?
20 A. Correct.
21 Q. How sure are you about that?
22 A. (Pause). Well, unless I am actually just misidentifying
23 it, I am very sure indeed.
24 Q. Because the importance, obviously, is that in this
25 second one there is a lot more detail that is likely to

52
1 assist in identifying Dr Kelly or at least accelerate
2 the process by which the press might work it out?
3 A. Yes. I mean if there is any doubt whatsoever,
4 I actually still have a photocopy of the original with
5 the manuscript sentence in. My understanding is that
6 Dr Kelly's copy of that has since been found too.
7 Q. Do not worry about other documents. Your recollection.
8 A. Sorry, I am just trying to make sure that this is
9 exactly the same document. But if this is the same
10 document as the one with the written manuscript
11 sentence, which is what I think it is from just seeing
12 three paragraphs on here, we discussed it in great
13 detail.
14 Q. Because it is particularly important, is it not, on
15 7th July, to let him know that the Ministry of Defence
16 are going to give details that any fool is going to work
17 out is likely to lead to his identification? "Expert on
18 WMD", you are probably down to 20. "Advised Ministers
19 on WMD", down to 10. "Whose contribution to the dossier
20 of September 2002", down to 5. That is obviously
21 particularly important to clear with Dr Kelly, is it
22 not?
23 A. I absolutely agree with you, except that despite the
24 relatively small number if you do your sleuth work very
25 carefully, I am afraid it is not true that any fool

53
1 could do it. Even after we published the actual
2 statement, it took two very good journalists 24 hours to
3 manage to do it.
4 Q. Sorry, any reasonable journalist would do it.
5 A. Shall we leave the adjective out?
6 Q. Can I just take you to one final document, TVP/3/302,
7 because this is what was found in Dr Kelly's possession.
8 A. Right. That is precisely what we discussed and agreed
9 at the interview.
10 Q. Does this document have "expert in WMD"? Scroll down,
11 please.
12 A. In that case I did misidentify, then, I think the
13 previous one from the short bit you put on the screen.
14 Q. So your recollection --
15 A. I am sorry --
16 Q. -- was faulty?
17 A. No, I think I may just have misidentified which document
18 we were referring to. This is specifically the document
19 that we discussed on 7th July.
20 Q. But you said to my learned friend it was MoD/1/67.
21 A. I am -- that is -- I am afraid the reference did not
22 mean anything to me. I am just sorry, I misidentified
23 the document in the evidence this morning.
24 Q. It does not matter about the references. You were shown
25 both documents. It suggests at the least this, does it

54
1 not: that your recollection of which document you were
2 discussing on the Monday night is inaccurate?
3 A. I am sorry, that was --
4 MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, I apologise for interrupting my
5 learned friend, the witness was not shown this document.
6 LORD HUTTON: Very well.
7 MR DINGEMANS: Was not shown this document, no, but you were
8 shown MoD/1/51.
9 A. I was shown a chunk of MoD/1/51 because that is all that
10 was shown on the screen. I am afraid I misidentified it
11 as being the typed up version of this, and I am sorry
12 about that.
13 Q. But MoD/1/67, which you were shown, has in the "weapons
14 of mass destruction" bit; we looked at that, with the
15 extra paragraph. Do you want to go back to that?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. MoD/1/67. That has in the critical, I suggest to you,
18 third paragraph which reasonable journalists are going
19 to use to work out his name.
20 A. Yes. That statement -- this is actually the statement
21 that was issued, in fact, is it not?
22 Q. Yes.
23 A. Right. Sorry. That statement I cleared with him on
24 8th July, paragraph by paragraph. I am sorry, I just --
25 what I mixed up was which days we were talking about on.

55
1 That was cleared with him specifically but not on the
2 7th, it was cleared on the 8th.
3 LORD HUTTON: When you spoke to him on the telephone?
4 A. When I spoke to him on the telephone.
5 MR DINGEMANS: We will come back to that. Let us go back to
6 the one you did look at on 7th July.
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. That is TVP/3/302. That is very similar to MoD/1/51.
9 A little bit more, but very similar, yes?
10 A. Yes, though it does include one or two very specific
11 additional things, including the manuscript sentence.
12 Q. "He is not a member of the Intelligence Services or the
13 Defence Intelligence Staff."
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. That is excluding aspects.
16 Could you show me, because I may have missed it,
17 those bits that would help reasonable journalists
18 identify him?
19 A. I am assuming that the reasonable journalists are also
20 drawing on the various other clues in the public domain
21 already: from Mr Gilligan's appearance at the FAC, what
22 he said in the various articles, the Baldwin article on
23 the 5th July. Putting all those together, you would not
24 get straight to him but you would get to a small group,
25 just as we had already got to on 5th July. Some of

56
1 us -- not me -- thought that the Baldwin article almost
2 certainly identified him.
3 Q. And just at the end of my five minutes before the short
4 break, the transformation from this, on 7th July, to
5 8th July, some very clever people are working on the
6 press statement. We have heard Sir Kevin Tebbit,
7 John Scarlett, Jonathan Powell, Alastair Campbell,
8 Mr Godric Smith, all drafting away in Mr Godric Smith's
9 office. How long was your conversation with Dr Kelly on
10 the telephone clearing the changes?
11 A. I do not regard them as changes, in the sense -- it
12 clearly was changed but I was clearing this specific
13 statement. The answer is I do not know for certain,
14 although no doubt his mobile record will tell you. My
15 recollection would be that there were three calls that
16 are relevant: a very brief one in which I simply told
17 him I wanted to clear a statement with him, but did not
18 go into the content because he was driving. He then
19 rang me back. My recollection, and I cannot be sure
20 exactly how long, but I would say it was about
21 a 10 minute conversation.
22 Then the third conversation, which was after I had
23 reported the clearance to him -- sorry, back to
24 Sir Kevin Tebbit's office -- incidentally, I noticed in
25 my transcript last night somebody had mistranscribed

57
1 rather importantly, I did not report it to the PMOS,
2 which is the Prime Minister's spokesman; it was the
3 PUS's office, Sir Kevin Tebbit's office. I rang him
4 back to say that the statement was now in the process of
5 being released, as it were. So those three --
6 Q. So the critical part, you say, is about 10 minutes when
7 you go through that statement?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. You were tasked to deliver his consent to that
10 statement. After all, these people had spent their time
11 drafting, they obviously did not want Dr Kelly coming
12 back with suggestions, did they?
13 A. I was asked to clear it with Dr Kelly. That is
14 precisely what I did. Had he objected to anything which
15 referred to him in ways which I thought reasonable,
16 I would certainly have brought that back. Had he asked
17 me for extra time for any particular reason, I would
18 certainly have tried to get it for him.
19 Q. Who asked you to clear it with Dr Kelly?
20 A. Sir Kevin Tebbit's office.
21 Q. Who?
22 A. From memory it was Dominic Wilson.
23 Q. He said: please clear this statement with Dr Kelly?
24 A. Yes. There were probably a few more words than that,
25 but yes.

58
1 Q. Was Dr Kelly given any real chance to object to any part
2 of it?
3 A. Yes, he was. I went through each paragraph with him and
4 asked him whether he was content with it, and I asked
5 him at the end whether he was content with the whole
6 statement.
7 Q. Did you draw his attention -- he obviously did not have
8 it in writing before him and it is difficult enough when
9 you have flashing it up on screens -- to critical
10 changes which made it more likely that reasonable
11 journalists would identify him?
12 A. I drew his attention to the fact that it was a more
13 substantial statement than we had produced the day
14 before. In the course of the three conversations,
15 I made it very clear to him that I expected that whether
16 directly as a result of this statement or indirectly,
17 because other people would come forward, it would lead
18 to his identification. But I did not predict when.
19 MR DINGEMANS: Perhaps we will come back to those aspects.
20 Thank you, my Lord.
21 LORD HUTTON: Any re-examination?
22 MR DINGEMANS: I had not finished. I thought you wanted
23 a short break, my Lord.
24 LORD HUTTON: Very well. I will rise for five minutes.
25 (11.55 am)

59
1 (Short Break)
2 (12.00 pm)
3 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Hatfield, can I just clarify a couple of
4 things, if I may. The Government were asking
5 Mr Gilligan about the press statement issued yesterday
6 by the BBC about where Dr Kelly was working. Can I just
7 ask now, if I may, for definitive answers. In May 2003,
8 who employed Dr Kelly?
9 A. He was employed by DSTL, an agency of the Ministry of
10 Defence. He was on secondment to the main part of the
11 Ministry of Defence and his post, but not his salary,
12 was paid for by the FCO.
13 Q. Who was his line manager?
14 A. His line manager was Bryan Wells.
15 Q. Because we have heard Dr Scott volunteering for the
16 position as well.
17 A. No, he was not his line manager, he was his personnel
18 manager. That reflects the fact that his parent
19 organisation was DSTL.
20 Q. So he was employed by DSTL and on secondment to MoD?
21 A. Correct.
22 Q. And who was responsible for his media dealings
23 generally?
24 A. Well, in the case of Dr Kelly it is complicated by the
25 fact that he does appear to have been dealing with the

60
1 media on three separate subjects at different times:
2 UNSCOM, in which case we had no responsibility, whatever
3 arrangements he had with UNSCOM were a matter between
4 him and UNSCOM.
5 In relation to the subject matter dealt with by the
6 FCO, it had clearly been agreed, although I did not know
7 this until Dr Kelly told me, that in relation to that
8 subject matter he consulted normally the FCO press
9 office, which was a very unusual arrangement given he
10 was working in MoD.
11 And in relation to anything else, anything that
12 related to the his Ministry of Defence activities, it
13 was quite clearly the Ministry of Defence. His line
14 manager and the press office, if they had become
15 involved.
16 Q. And weapons of mass destruction, are those Foreign and
17 Commonwealth Office or Ministry of Defence?
18 A. Well, if we are talking about in relation to the
19 September dossier, I think it is quite clearly the
20 Ministry of Defence. If we are talking about what he
21 had done previously for UNSCOM, or the history of UNSCOM
22 or something like that, then it might well have fallen
23 under the FCO umbrella.
24 Q. If he had gone, whatever he actually said, but if he had
25 gone to discuss Iraq with Mr Gilligan, whatever he ended

61
1 up discussing, then that would have been Foreign Office,
2 is that fair?
3 A. No, I do not think so.
4 Q. Why not?
5 A. Well, I am not quite sure what you mean when you say
6 "discussing Iraq".
7 Q. Well Dr Kelly told I think you in interview, and in his
8 letters suggested he was going to Mr Gilligan to talk
9 about Iraq. He was interested that Mr Gilligan had been
10 there and he was going out.
11 A. In that context I would have expected him to go to the
12 MoD. Had he gone to the FCO, I would have expected him
13 to have either got the advice to talk to the MoD or
14 simply told that he should not do so.
15 Q. You mentioned a 44-page document dealing with?
16 A. 44-paragraph.
17 Q. 44-paragraph. Can I take you to MoD/34/4, DCIs, Defence
18 Council Instructions.
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Is this the document to which you are referring?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Which says this, it is difficult to read the middle
23 left, 26th November 1999.
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. A bigger box:

62
1 "DCIs are automatically cancelled after one year."
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. This is a document we got during the course of the week,
4 from which I infer it is the latest one, is that right?
5 A. I think it is the latest time a Defence Council
6 Instruction has been issued as a reminder in that form.
7 However, this is itself only a reminder for the
8 procedures which I have already referred to elsewhere.
9 Various parts of the organisation may well have had
10 reminders since, and I am certainly aware that the
11 Defence Management Board, which is the level below the
12 Defence Council, have recently issued a minute -- sorry
13 last October I think it was, drawing attention to the
14 contents of this document.
15 Q. But in fact this DCI was cancelled in November 2000
16 automatically.
17 A. All DCIs automatically cancel. Let me be clear, this is
18 not the authority, this is the reminder. Indeed the
19 very first paragraph of it draws attention, the very
20 first substantive paragraph, draws attention to the
21 document on which it is all based.
22 Q. That is paragraph 2?
23 A. That sounds about right.
24 Q. Is that right?
25 A. Yes.

63
1 Q. So to the extent that the 44-paragraph document is that
2 document, that finishes in November 2000; is that right?
3 A. The document itself finishes but the contents do not
4 come out of date. The DCI is simply a reminder,
5 bringing together, in one place, all the information
6 that is available. I think it was probably issued at
7 the time as a result of some other leak or something
8 like that and we wanted to remind everybody yet again of
9 all the existing rules and indeed provide extra
10 guidance. But the fact that the DCI is cancelled does
11 not change the content of it at all. Indeed, as I say
12 there was a minute last November drawing attention to it
13 as a very good description of all the procedures.
14 Q. This is fair, is it not: Dr Kelly had a number of
15 different sources to go to, to clear his media contacts?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And there was no one document that was ever drawn up
18 assisting Dr Kelly in that respect?
19 A. If he had followed the procedures in this, I do not
20 think he would have had a problem, because it is very
21 clear who he should go to.
22 Q. There was no one document dealing with UNSCOM, Iraq,
23 FCO, MoD and DSTL?
24 A. No, can I be very clear about this? UNSCOM is nothing
25 to do with the Government, so that arrangement, you

64
1 know, has to be between him and the UN. I would not --
2 and I would not expect anything that we wrote to say
3 what he could say about when he was working for the UN.
4 That would be between him and the UN. Apart from that,
5 this gives clear guidance to everybody in the MoD of
6 what they are supposed to do. If he was in any doubt he
7 should go to the MoD, there is no doubt about that,
8 because that is who he is working for.
9 Q. 3rd July. You have a conversation with
10 Sir Kevin Tebbit. You said last night it was a short
11 conversation. What did he say to you?
12 A. He basically asked me to conduct the interview with
13 Dr Kelly the following day which had I think originally
14 been planned for Bryan Wells.
15 Q. Did he suggest to you there should be either
16 a disciplinary process or a management process by which
17 the public record could be corrected?
18 A. What he suggested to me is that the thing I had to do on
19 4th July was establish whether or not there should be
20 a formal disciplinary process, and if I concluded that
21 there should not, could I begin to explore with Dr Kelly
22 whether or not, having, as it were, admitted to us that
23 he had spoken to Andrew Gilligan, he might be the single
24 source or not.
25 Q. On 4th July, when you interviewed him, afterwards you

65
1 produced a table comparing his evidence and
2 Mr Gilligan's evidence?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. One significant point that Mr Gilligan had made to the
5 Foreign Affairs Committee, and he made it in evidence
6 and he had made it before, and this appears to be
7 a principal plank on which he relied, was that his
8 source had been right about two important things. First
9 of all, that the 45 minutes source, claim, call it what
10 you will, came in late and secondly that it was single
11 sourced. Were you aware of that?
12 A. On 4th July I was aware in broad terms of that, but not
13 as specifically as you put it. On 7th July I was aware
14 much more closely of that because in the interval I had
15 spoken to Martin Howard about the background of the
16 dossier, of which I was completely unaware, apart from
17 what I had read in the media.
18 Q. Let us then go to 7th July. A critical point to
19 determine then, was it not, was how Mr Gilligan had got
20 this information?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Did you ever determine that with Dr Kelly?
23 A. On the basis of what Dr Kelly said to us, it was, in my
24 mind at least, very doubtful whether Dr Kelly could have
25 been responsible for all the information in relation to

66
1 those points although he could certainly have been
2 responsible for quite a lot of it.
3 Q. But just concentrate on those two bits -- late single
4 sourced --
5 A. Dr Kelly told us on 7th July that he had not been aware
6 of the fact that it was a single source. Dr Kelly told
7 us on both occasions that he had not been involved in
8 drawing up the intelligence portion of the dossier and
9 did not know what had happened to it at a late stage.
10 Q. If Mr Howard concluded that Dr Kelly was in fact the
11 source, and that is what Mr Howard has told us, after
12 the interview, he must have concluded that Dr Kelly, on
13 that part of the interview, had been misleading him?
14 A. No, I do not follow -- I do not agree with that.
15 Q. How else could he have got the 45 minute point?
16 A. Well, Dr Kelly certainly said things about the 45 minute
17 conversation because he said so himself. That could
18 have provided quite a lot of that. There was also --
19 I think, throughout this, there was a difference of
20 opinion between myself and Martin Howard about whether
21 Dr Kelly was likely to be the single source. We both
22 thought that he was a source of a significant amount of
23 the material, either confirming or supplying it for the
24 first time.
25 But there were elements of Dr Kelly's account which

67
1 did not match and, in my view, could not be made to
2 match Mr Gilligan's account unless one or both of them
3 was misleading us. There still seemed to be
4 considerable doubt about some of the detail of what
5 passed between the two of them, but that was
6 unresolveable. The essential point from Dr Kelly, as
7 far as I was concerned, was that he was not in
8 a position, on the evidence he had given us, to have
9 said that.
10 Q. If you had known -- if you had known, you obviously did
11 not at the time, that he had been in the DIAS, making
12 comments about growth media which were reported on on
13 10th September in an e-mail and at a meeting on
14 19th September where strong views are expressed about
15 the dossier, would you then have thought that there was
16 a need to issue a press statement?
17 A. If I had known what I think I have discovered from
18 reading the evidence to this Inquiry about the meeting
19 on the 19th September, I would have wanted to -- I think
20 I would probably have wanted to institute formal
21 disciplinary proceedings in order to try to get to the
22 facts, because I did not -- if that is accurate, I do
23 not find that squares with the account that Dr Kelly
24 told us about what he could have known.
25 Q. So, Dr Kelly has been told by you, you have told us

68
1 this, on the Friday evening, that no disciplinary
2 proceedings unless further information comes to light?
3 A. Which caused us to call into account the account.
4 Q. His account?
5 A. In some substantial way, yes.
6 Q. If you had then known what you appear to have found out
7 from reading the transcripts, that Dr Kelly had spoken
8 to Mr Gilligan and had discussed the 45 minutes claim
9 and had said, correctly, that it was single source, and
10 correctly that it came in late, you would have wanted to
11 discipline him, would you?
12 A. No, I would have wanted to start proceedings.
13 Q. Start proceedings, sorry?
14 A. In order to have a proper investigation of all the facts
15 in a way that was not possible without that.
16 Q. And Dr Kelly is likely to have worked that out for
17 himself?
18 A. He might have done if he knew things that I did not
19 know.
20 Q. On 7th July Q and A material has already been prepared,
21 we have heard that from Mrs Wilson. Had you seen the
22 Q and A material at that stage?
23 A. No, I had not.
24 Q. When was the first time you saw Q and A material?
25 A. The first time I saw it, the only time I saw it, until

69
1 the Inquiry, was the passage I was referring to earlier
2 when a draft arrived on my computer terminal on the
3 afternoon of the -- sorry, I think 8th July.
4 Q. 8th July, the day that the press statement is issued?
5 A. Correct.
6 Q. When you suggested two changes, was that by telephone or
7 e-mail?
8 A. I think it was by e-mail.
9 Q. So we will get those as well, will we?
10 A. Yes. There is no problem about that.
11 Q. And your conversations with Dr Kelly on 8th July were
12 after you had seen the Q and A material?
13 A. No, I cannot actually establish that, at least not
14 without being told precisely when I had the -- sorry,
15 the first conversation I had at 4 o'clock or just before
16 4 o'clock, I had not seen the material.
17 Q. Yes.
18 A. By the time of the middle conversation, when I was
19 clearing the statement with him, I might even have had
20 it on my screen at that moment.
21 Q. But not concentrated on it?
22 A. But I cannot even tell that without knowing the exact
23 time of the call.
24 LORD HUTTON: Mr Hatfield do you know where Dr Kelly was
25 travelling from and where he was travelling to when you

70
1 had those conversations?
2 A. The understanding I formed from the conversation was he
3 was driving home from RAF Honnington.
4 LORD HUTTON: I see. Thank you.
5 MR DINGEMANS: He pulled in shortly after your call to
6 return your call; is that your recollection?
7 A. The time lag can be established. Yes, he pulled in or
8 got to some convenient point.
9 Q. But the third time you spoke to him on 8th July you had
10 seen the Q and A material by then?
11 A. Yes, I had.
12 Q. The Q and A material has three drafts, you know that
13 now?
14 A. I know that now, yes.
15 Q. The first draft: we are not going to give his name at
16 all.
17 A. Apparently so.
18 Q. The second draft: we are not going to give you a name
19 until we have confirmed it with him.
20 A. Again, apparently so.
21 Q. Third draft: if you give us the right name, we will
22 confirm it.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Why did you not confirm with Dr Kelly that he was happy
25 for his employer to give out his name?

71
1 A. Because as I explained yesterday, I do not think we
2 actually need his explicit consent to give out his name
3 in the circumstances that we are talking about. There
4 would be circumstances in which we did need to give out
5 his explicit consent. Moreover, I understood -- I took
6 it as understood between me and Dr Kelly that once the
7 statement was out, that at some stage very soon, fairly
8 soon, his name would come out.
9 I also took it as understood that he was likely to
10 appear before the FAC and/or the ISC later in the week,
11 by which time again we would have had to have, if you
12 like, announced his name if it had not already come out
13 from other sources.
14 Q. I am not going to take you to the passage on 7th July
15 but that concludes with saying "likely". Your note says
16 "quite likely".
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. I am not going to ask you about the differences between
19 that, but it is perfectly clear Dr Kelly is saying:
20 well, yes, I suppose it may do. My friend in RUSI -- in
21 fact she was at Chatham House -- knew the connection.
22 So there he is thinking privately: oh well, Olivia is
23 not going to shop me. He also knows he has spoken to
24 Susan Watts, he knows and trusts her. He has spoken to
25 Tom Mangold. Tom Mangold has given evidence: I would

72
1 not have identified him. Mr Rufford went down, he did
2 not print a story the next day in relation to the name.
3 These are people that he thinks, rightly or wrongly,
4 are not likely to identify him. So he is hoping perhaps
5 against hope that his name will not come out. There is
6 the world of difference, is there not, between the name
7 coming out and your employer saying: we will confirm the
8 correct name if given, and then confirming the correct
9 name; do you not think there is a difference between the
10 two?
11 A. I think there is a development, but I do not actually
12 accept that he was under the impression -- though
13 I agree he may well have been hoping against hope, and
14 indeed there was one possible hope perhaps if he had
15 been established as not being Gilligan's source that it
16 might not have come out or would have come out in a very
17 different way. But I feel, myself, I have always felt
18 from the moment he wrote that letter to us he must have
19 been expecting his name to come out in one way or
20 another. It is not possible, in my view, to write
21 a letter to your employer saying: I have done something
22 which is quite significant, and expect that the employer
23 will simply ignore it.
24 Q. Before your employer ignores it, before your employer
25 confirms the name, do you not think it is at least fair

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1 to tell him that you are going to do that?
2 A. I think that if there was the opportunity to warn him
3 that the name is actually about to come out now, we
4 should do it. But that is not the same thing as saying
5 that you have to do that. He could have been anywhere
6 when the name came out. We did not know when it was
7 going to come out or from what source.
8 Q. You told us last night that you were astonished you got
9 24 hours, that was your evidence; yes?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. So part of the reason you were going to be astonished
12 was because you were issuing a press statement far more
13 detailed than the one you go through on 7th July and you
14 are issuing Q and A material far more detailed than
15 anything that has been discussed with him?
16 A. But we are not issuing Q and A material, but in a way
17 you are precisely right. I did not expect once we had
18 made a statement of that sort, even without the
19 detail -- let us leave that to one side -- it would take
20 very long, given all the other clues, people speculating
21 about Dr Kelly already inside the MoD and outside the
22 MoD, for somebody to say, either from a good guess or
23 from deduction, they thought it was Dr Kelly. And at no
24 point did I think that it would be possible for us to
25 deny that Dr Kelly had come forward and said to us what

74
1 he had said to us, which is precisely why we did clear
2 exactly what he said to us with him.
3 Q. One of the answers you gave to my learned friend
4 Mr Gompertz this morning was this: It would have been
5 wrong to do anything other than confirm the name, once
6 it had been put to us.
7 A. In a credible manner. I mean --
8 Q. But the first draft of the Q and A did not confirm the
9 name. Is that right or not, yes or no?
10 A. I do not know what circumstances that draft was being
11 drawn up in --
12 Q. Did it confirm the name, yes or no?
13 A. Well, I am told that it did not but --
14 Q. And the second draft did not confirm the name. It said:
15 we will have to go back to the person concerned.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. So what was wrong with doing that with the third draft?
18 A. Well, you will have to ask those who drew it up, but
19 I imagine that they took the view that it would not
20 necessarily be possible to go back and confirm the name
21 in some circumstances.
22 Q. If it is not possible to go back and confirm the name,
23 you are the person speaking to him about the press
24 statement, you are the person speaking to him about what
25 is going to come with it. What is wrong with telling

75
1 him: we will confirm the name if it is given?
2 A. Had I known that we were going to have this Inquiry
3 focusing on that point, I would have of course done so
4 explicitly. I thought that somebody who had been
5 involved with the media for several years, who had been
6 discussing the prospect of his name becoming public, for
7 example in the FAC hearing, had agreed the statement,
8 would realise, especially since he had agreed the
9 content of that final statement, would realise that his
10 name was going to become public very quickly.
11 Indeed, the whole point of what I said to him about
12 the need to contact the press office and his line
13 manager for support was because it would become public
14 very quickly, although I could not predict how long it
15 was going to be. There would have been no point in me
16 telling him to contact the press office for assistance
17 if I thought we were going to be able to maintain his
18 anonymity.
19 Q. We have heard that Dr Kelly, rightly or wrongly,
20 perceived that he had been betrayed, as Mrs Kelly told
21 us, by the Ministry of Defence. Do you think the fact
22 that his employer had not told him they were going to
23 confirm the name may have contributed to that sense of
24 betrayal?
25 A. I do not know what his sense of betrayal or otherwise

76
1 was, apart from what he said in public to the Foreign
2 Affairs Committee and what he said to people in the
3 Ministry of Defence. I was very surprised to hear that
4 he thought we, if that means the people dealing with him
5 in this crisis, betrayed him because I think we gave him
6 a lot of support.
7 Q. Do you know anything about those who contacted
8 journalists after the name had been confirmed to brief
9 them on various other identities, or various other
10 details of the story: Mr Blitz, Mr Baldwin; do you know
11 anything about that?
12 A. No, and if Mr Blitz or Mr Baldwin were able to identify
13 any sources inside the Civil Service I would regard
14 those sources as having behaved in a totally improper
15 manner.
16 Q. I suspect, having heard that, they are less likely to
17 identify them now.
18 A. I am sure.
19 Q. With hindsight, hindsight, not foresight, do you think
20 there is anything that the Ministry of Defence should
21 have done differently in these unusual circumstances?
22 A. With hindsight I think I probably should have stopped
23 the interview after about 15 minutes/half an hour on
24 4th July and initiated formal disciplinary proceedings;
25 and with hindsight I would probably -- with hindsight,

77
1 I emphasise that, with what has come out since or
2 appeared to come out since, I think I would probably
3 have been forced to suspend Dr Kelly with no prejudice
4 to the outcome, simply because much more serious matters
5 appeared to have been called into question by evidence
6 which has been produced since, of which I was totally
7 unaware and was unlikely to be aware since I could not
8 call the sort of witnesses that this Inquiry has had.
9 Q. Mr Campbell told us this on 19th August, page 152:
10 "Look, if you are in this kind of situation you do
11 have to have some element of control over the process
12 here. You cannot just let this sort of dribble out in
13 a way that you are not clear how it is then going to
14 unfold."
15 Do you agree with that point?
16 A. Ideally, yes, it is much better to have control than not
17 to have control.
18 Q. Was not an essential vice of the Q and A material that
19 you were never going to have control over when he was
20 named?
21 A. We were never in control because he could have been
22 named before we made a statement anyway, we know that.
23 We could have -- the only way we could have taken
24 control at that point is of course by putting his name
25 in the first statement, and I personally believed, and

78
1 even with hindsight, I have thought about this very
2 hard, believe it was right not to put his name in the
3 initial statement.
4 Q. One final point: his appearance before the Foreign
5 Affairs Committee. Why did no-one accompany him to give
6 evidence with him?
7 A. Well, my understanding is that he was offered somebody
8 to accompany him and sit at the table. He was of course
9 accompanied behind the table. The main reason nobody
10 else could give evidence is because nobody else had
11 knowledge of the matters on which he was giving
12 evidence. My understanding was that Bryan Wells in
13 particular offered to sit alongside him at the table and
14 Dr Kelly declined it.
15 Q. Because questions that he referred to the MoD could of
16 course have been dealt with by somebody else.
17 A. They could have been, indeed.
18 Q. And he was pressed on those questions by Mr Mackinlay.
19 A. Yes, although Mr Mackinlay was going outside the agreed
20 scope in doing so, but you are quite right. I would
21 have preferred to have seen somebody sitting alongside
22 him to do exactly that but it was Dr Kelly's decision,
23 is my understanding.
24 Q. One final point: it is clear from the evidence from
25 Mrs Kelly that on 9th July there is Dr Kelly bumbling

79
1 around in his garden, no idea of the media storm
2 apparently about to engulf him, and yet he is told by
3 Mr Rufford, he then rings the MoD or the MoD ring him
4 and he packs his bags within 10 minutes. That suggests,
5 suggests, that he was not aware of what was about to
6 happen, do you agree?
7 A. I find that evidence, and I am sure it is true,
8 astonishing because the evidence also shows that he has
9 not done anything apparently to prepare anybody for what
10 may be coming in some form or other since at least
11 4th July.
12 Q. Because he may have been hoping against hope, he knows
13 the people out there, they are not going to shop him; he
14 came to you because Olivia Bosch had told him she
15 recognised some pieces of evidence. Does it not really
16 come to this: there is the world of difference between
17 your employer doing it for you and other people finding
18 out?
19 A. Well, I do not accept that. First of all, he had been
20 almost shopped to the FAC it now appears. Secondly,
21 I had spoken to him earlier that evening and I am in no
22 doubt whatsoever that if he had been under any illusions
23 or any hopes before that, he now knew, at 17.10 if not
24 before, and I think it is well before, that his name
25 would be coming out regardless of whether he thought we

80
1 should be doing it or not; and he did not take any
2 opportunity, at any time whatsoever, to suggest that we
3 should not hold his name out in any of these
4 discussions.
5 Had we wished to withhold his name, we would have
6 needed to agree with him how he was going to do it,
7 since we would have had to agree with him what he would
8 say in answer to any questions, bearing in mind the
9 whole thing from our of point of view starts with him
10 coming forward and saying somebody, who we now know to
11 Mrs Bosch, had already drawn the inference that it might
12 be him.
13 Q. He did not say "please withhold my name", did he?
14 A. At any stage.
15 Q. But he did not say "please confirm my name", did he?
16 A. No, he did not.
17 MR DINGEMANS: Thank you, my Lord.
18 LORD HUTTON: Mr Lloyd-Jones, do you have any
19 re-examination?
20 MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, I have no re-examination.
21 LORD HUTTON: Yes, thank you.
22 MR LLOYD-JONES: Thank you, Mr Hatfield.
23 LORD HUTTON: Mr Hatfield, just wait a moment. You said you
24 have thought back on the question whether it would have
25 been right to name Dr Kelly in the statement which was

81
1 issued.
2 I appreciate you have already given reasons for
3 that, but I would be grateful if you would just be good
4 enough to summarise, to me, why you take that view now.
5 A. The reasons that I had in mind at the time were, first
6 of all, that I did not want to put Dr Kelly under any
7 pressure sooner than was necessary from the press;
8 secondly, I had already told him, on several occasions,
9 that I hoped and expected that it would probably not be
10 necessary to name him in the initial statement, although
11 I kept my options open very clearly to him and therefore
12 he would have known that one possibility was that we
13 would wish to name him in the first statement.
14 Nonetheless, that is what I told him and I did not want
15 to change that unless I had to, particularly at the last
16 moment.
17 The other very strong reason at the back of my mind
18 was, indeed, the thought that we would gain some
19 interval, however long or short, between making our
20 statement and the name being identified. As I said
21 yesterday, I was astonished it was as much as 24 hours.
22 My personal guess is we would get away with it
23 overnight. That would actually give both him and the
24 MoD some time to make any preparations that we might
25 want to make, he might want to make.

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1 It would also give us time to make an assessment of
2 whether the media reaction was, if you like, at one end
3 of the spectrum: the MoD have just identified somebody
4 who talked to Andrew Gilligan but he is nothing to do
5 with this source which is sort of what the FAC
6 concluded. Or: this is the single source. All of that
7 would have affected the handling and the pressure very
8 much. I even had a hope that the BBC might either
9 confirm or deny whether he was the source.
10 So that was my personal reasoning then. In relation
11 to some of the evidence I have seen at the Inquiry,
12 particularly Alastair Campbell's, I have thought very
13 hard, with hindsight, about whether, despite that, it
14 was a mistake.
15 Alastair Campbell's point, as I understood it, was
16 taking control has already been brought out, and that we
17 would have removed the chance of anybody else being put
18 under pressure, which was one of the reasons why we
19 eventually confirmed the name.
20 I think, with hindsight, that that is outweighed by
21 my original considerations; and above all, the reason
22 I think with hindsight was the fact that Dr Kelly, from
23 Mrs Kelly's evidence, did not appear to have given her
24 any preparation at all for what was coming or might be
25 coming. Therefore, had we put the name in that

83
1 statement, the press would have been on his doorstep
2 that evening.
3 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
4 Evidence was given by Mrs Kate Wilson that on the
5 evening of Tuesday 8th July she spoke to Dr Kelly and
6 said that the statement had been issued; and she had
7 said to him he should think about alternative
8 accommodation. Had you said that to him at any stage?
9 A. No, what I had said to him is he should talk to the
10 press office about any help or advice he might want
11 because I did not think it was my place to give him
12 detailed advice on press handling. But that is the sort
13 of thing that I expected the press office to consider.
14 LORD HUTTON: Yes. If the Ministry of Defence had decided,
15 when it issued the statement, to name Dr Kelly and had
16 told him of that, and had shown him a draft which named
17 him but which had decided to delay the issuing of the
18 statement for 24 hours, would that not have meant that
19 Dr Kelly would have had more time to prepare himself,
20 perhaps to go to alternative accommodation? I say that
21 against -- I recognise evidence has been given that he
22 was told to think about alternative accommodation on the
23 evening of the 8th.
24 If a statement had been issued in that way naming
25 him and he had been told, let us say 24 hours in

84
1 advance, that it would be issued a day later, looking
2 back at it in hindsight, would that not have been
3 a better method to adopt?
4 A. I am not sure, my Lord, because -- I am not quite sure
5 because I was not involved in the substance of the
6 issue, what was driving the timing of making a statement
7 at all that evening.
8 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
9 A. Certainly if there was no need to make a statement or we
10 could hold off for another 24 hours, that could have
11 been an alternative strategy. Indeed, if Dr Kelly had
12 asked for more time, I would have attempted to get it
13 although I do not know whether I would have been able to
14 because I did not know at the time what was driving the
15 need to make a statement that evening.
16 I am not sure that the substance of what happened
17 would necessarily have been very different because he
18 did get 24 hours, even though I did not expect him to
19 get that long.
20 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much Mr Hatfield.
21 A. Thank you my Lord.
22 LORD HUTTON: Yes Mr Lloyd-Jones.
23 MS PAMELA MAY TEARE (called)
24 Examined by MR LLOYD-JONES
25 Q. My Lord, Ms Teare, good morning. Is your full name

85
1 Pamela May Teare?
2 A. Yes, it is.
3 Q. Are you the Director of News of the Ministry of Defence?
4 A. Yes I am.
5 Q. Have you previously given evidence in phase 1 of this
6 Inquiry?
7 A. That is correct.
8 Q. I want to ask you first about the nature of Q and A
9 briefings. Is there anything unusual about the
10 production and use of Q and A briefings in Government
11 departments?
12 A. No, far from that. The production of Q and A material
13 is standard practice across Whitehall. The Q and A
14 tries to anticipate the sort of questions that the media
15 may ask the press office on a given issue and to provide
16 factual information in answer to those.
17 Q. So what are they intended to achieve?
18 A. Essentially they are to provide or to enable -- they are
19 to enable press officers to handle media inquiries on
20 a specific subject particularly when they may not be
21 familiar with that subject. They also ensure
22 consistency of approach. But the material is not
23 deployed by the press office unless it has been cleared
24 by the policy officials concerned; and you know they are
25 used in a reactive way. They are not issued in their

86
1 entirety in any way. So if a journalist asks a specific
2 question, then that specific part of the Q and A will be
3 used. But they are not issued as a whole.
4 Q. I was going to ask you about authorisation for use.
5 Would they normally be drawn up or drafted by the press
6 office or by the relevant policy officials?
7 A. It can be either way.
8 Q. If they are drafted by the press office, is it
9 necessary, then, to obtain some sort of clearance?
10 A. Most certainly, yes.
11 Q. How is that done?
12 A. The draft would be sent or discussed with the
13 appropriate policy officials, then not until it had been
14 agreed would it be available for use by the press
15 office.
16 Q. So could the press office draw up and use a Q and A
17 briefing on its own authority?
18 A. No.
19 Q. Are the Q and A briefings themselves issued to
20 journalists?
21 A. No.
22 Q. Are they ever read out in their entirety to journalists?
23 A. No.
24 Q. So is it right that before a journalist could acquire
25 all of the information in a Q and A brief, he would have

87
1 to ask all the right questions?
2 A. That is correct.
3 Q. Turning to the particular specific matters with which
4 this Inquiry is concerned, we know that on the afternoon
5 of Friday 4th July Mr Hatfield and Mr Howard produced
6 a first draft of a press statement.
7 A. (Nods).
8 Q. Did you have any part in drafting that statement?
9 A. No, I did not.
10 Q. Were you aware at the time that they were drafting it?
11 A. No, I only learnt subsequently that that had taken
12 place.
13 Q. Did you know why it was considered necessary, at that
14 time, to produce a statement?
15 A. As I understand it, it was thought likely that on
16 a number of counts there was a worry that the story
17 might break over the weekend; and that was largely
18 because journalists were continuing to try to identify
19 the single source for Andrew Gilligan's story; they were
20 working on that aspect. And Dr Kelly, as I understand
21 it, had quite a wide range of contacts among
22 journalists, so he was well known in certain circles;
23 and also that a friend of his at the time he thought
24 worked at RUSI had actually identified some of his
25 comments as maybe those that Andrew Gilligan referred to

88
1 at the FAC. But all of this I only found out
2 subsequently when the Chief Press Officer reported it to
3 me. But that is what I understand to be the reasoning
4 why a contingent press statement had been prepared for
5 the weekend.
6 Q. Was that statement, the statement produced on 4th July,
7 supported by a Q and A document?
8 A. The statement was, as I understand it, prepared by
9 Martin Howard and Richard Hatfield in the Permanent
10 Secretary's office and was agreed there. The Chief
11 Press Officer and I recognised that should we need to
12 deploy this over the weekend, and it would only have
13 been on a reactive basis, we would need --
14 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, I think it is clear but if you could
15 explain a bit more what you mean by a reactive basis.
16 A. Sorry my Lord.
17 LORD HUTTON: It is quite clear. I just want it for the
18 sake of the record to be clear.
19 A. We would not have volunteered that statement. It would
20 have only ever been used in whatever form if the story
21 itself had broken in the media over the weekend.
22 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
23 MR LLOYD-JONES: So it is a reactive statement in that
24 sense, does it need Q and A material?
25 A. If it got to the circumstances where it had to be

89
1 deployed then, as is the norm, we would have to have
2 some Q and A materials because inevitably we would be
3 asked questions related to the statement. So yes, we
4 would need to have some material.
5 Q. Was any Q and A material drawn up during the 4th July?
6 A. Yes, the Chief Press Officer and I did draw up a draft.
7 Q. The Chief Press Officer is Mrs Kate Wilson; is that
8 right?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. You drew up a draft. What was the source of the
11 material in the draft?
12 A. The source of the material in the draft was the
13 information that she had obtained from the meeting in
14 the PUS's office she had attended earlier in the day.
15 But the draft that we came up with was very raw, very
16 green.
17 Q. Could I ask you: would it normally have been
18 Mrs Wilson's responsibility to attend at the PUS's
19 office in those circumstances?
20 A.