Hearing Transcripts

111
1 thing. But I was anxious your Lordship should know the
2 sequence of events. I am most grateful.
3 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much.
4 I will rise now and sit again at 2 o'clock.
5 (1.00 pm)
6 (The short adjournment)
7 (2.00 pm)
8 LORD HUTTON: Mr Lloyd-Jones, yes.
9 MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, Mr Smith, the solicitor for
10 the Inquiry, has rightly pointed out I was unfair in
11 something I said about him before the adjournment. I am
12 anxious to put it right and apologise to him for that.
13 We on 15th September requested Dr Kelly's phone
14 logs. On 16th September Mr Smith replied in a letter in
15 which he did say:
16 "Your client's request still seems to be largely
17 irrelevant."
18 He also said:
19 "Provision of this information is not
20 straightforward as the Thames Valley Police need to
21 obtain necessary authorities and consents. Nevertheless
22 I have passed a copy of your letter to them and asked
23 that they attempt to provide the information requested.
24 I will keep you informed of progress."
25 My instructing solicitor then reiterated the request

112
1 on the same day, pointing out the relevance and saying:
2 "I would be grateful if you could please ask the
3 Thames Valley Police to treat this as an urgent
4 request."
5 There was then a response from Mr Smith on the 18th,
6 the concluding paragraph of which invites the MoD police
7 to make their own RIPA application for the records if
8 they consider it relevant.
9 My Lord, I am anxious to put the record straight in
10 relation to that.
11 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much, because Mr Smith is doing
12 a great deal to ensure that a vast mass of evidence is
13 made available to the Inquiry. I know he has done
14 a great deal in that regard. Thank you very much for
15 that.
16 Yes, Mr Gompertz.
17 MR GOMPERTZ: My Lord, before I cross-examine --
18 LORD HUTTON: I gather, Mr Gompertz, that for very
19 understandable reasons you would like to make your
20 submissions tomorrow morning.
21 MR GOMPERTZ: I would my Lord.
22 LORD HUTTON: I will certainly accede to that request.
23 MR GOMPERTZ: My Lord, I am very grateful.
24 LORD HUTTON: Yes. That means, then, for the ladies and
25 gentlemen of the press, there will be no submissions by

113
1 counsel made today. They will begin tomorrow morning.
2 Cross-examined by MR GOMPERTZ
3 Q. Dr Wells, your background experience first. You are
4 a scientist by training?
5 A. I was educated as a scientist, yes.
6 Q. Have you always had scientific jobs?
7 A. No, sir. Once I left university in 1988 I joined the
8 administrative Civil Service and since that stage I have
9 had administrative jobs in the Civil Service.
10 Q. Yes. Have you had any personnel training?
11 A. Yes, I have, sir, at a number of points throughout my
12 career.
13 Q. Thank you. And you became Dr Kelly's line manager in
14 August 2002?
15 A. No, sir, strictly speaking I became his line manager
16 when I took up my responsibilities which I think was
17 5th August of that year. 9th August was when I first
18 met Dr Kelly.
19 Q. I follow. And you got on well with him?
20 A. I believe I did, yes, sir.
21 Q. And you became friends?
22 A. Yes, we were close colleagues, I would put it that way.
23 Q. I do not mean you socialised together but you were
24 friendly at work?
25 A. We were friendly at work. When we were in New York

114
1 together we would normally go out for an evening meal or
2 perhaps have breakfast together.
3 Q. You may like to know before I ask you any further
4 questions that Dr Kelly always spoke well of you to his
5 family.
6 A. Thank you, sir.
7 Q. Can I ask you, first, about media contacts. There was
8 a system in place before you took over, am I not right?
9 A. That is correct.
10 Q. And as you understood it, it had been in place for many
11 years?
12 A. I understood it to be long-standing.
13 Q. That system was complicated by the fact that Dr Kelly
14 worked not only for the MoD but also the FCO, DSTL and
15 the United Nations agencies UNSCOM and UNMOVIC; is that
16 right?
17 A. Yes, he had a range of responsibilities across
18 Government; and the media handling arrangements
19 reflected his very wide talents and the fact that he was
20 undertaking work for different agencies and departments.
21 Q. Yes. Can I remind you of what you said about media
22 contacts when you gave evidence before:
23 "At our introductory meeting he explained the
24 arrangements for dealing with the press and that these
25 would be through the Foreign Office. He would gain

115
1 authorisation to do that. He did say that on certain
2 topics, I think on smallpox and anthrax, he would go
3 through the Ministry of Defence press office."
4 Is that what you understood to be the position?
5 A. That is a fair reflection of my understanding of what he
6 told me at his first meeting on the 9th August.
7 Q. Thank you. That was how things remained?
8 A. Correct.
9 Q. And he obtained authority for his press dealings from
10 Mr Patrick Lamb, who we heard this morning, and from
11 Mr James Paver in the FCO press office?
12 A. Yes, I know Patrick from previous jobs, so when David
13 explained to me that his policy contact in the Foreign
14 Office was Patrick Lamb, I immediately knew the person
15 to whom he was referring.
16 Q. Yes. So what I put to you is correct?
17 A. Correct, sir.
18 Q. Would this be right: that what happened was that he
19 would tell you about press contacts afterwards as
20 a matter of courtesy?
21 A. Yes, if there was anything major that he had undertaken,
22 he would normally try to tell me. If time did not
23 permit, if we were not in the office together over
24 a relevant period, then he may not do.
25 Q. Thank you. This year, with the war in Iraq, his work

116
1 became more focused on the MoD than previously.
2 A. That is correct, particularly with the establishment of
3 the Iraq Survey Group and UNMOVIC undertaking
4 inspections in Iraq.
5 Q. Did you ever tell him anything like this: henceforth,
6 you must clear all your press contacts through the MoD?
7 A. I did not, sir. David's interactions with the press
8 remained predominantly technical. They remained
9 historic, largely to do with UNSCOM experiences. He had
10 cleared those through the Foreign Office. That system
11 worked and I did not ask him to change that.
12 Q. Yes. You are aware, no doubt, of the memorandum
13 produced by Mr Lamb, part of which I referred to this
14 morning. I think you were in court, were you not?
15 A. I have seen that memorandum, sir.
16 Q. The quotation where Mr Lamb says that the system relied
17 on self discipline, and so on.
18 A. (Nods).
19 Q. You would accept that?
20 A. Yes, I would, sir.
21 Q. Thank you very much. So when it came to the interviews
22 on 4th and 7th July with Mr Hatfield in charge, did you
23 ever bring these de facto arrangements to his attention?
24 A. David had set those arrangements out very clearly, in my
25 judgment, in his letter of 30th June which Mr Hatfield

117
1 had read.
2 Q. Yes. And which Mr Hatfield, in those interviews,
3 appeared not to accept; is that right?
4 A. That is right. We were dealing with a system that had
5 worked well and that had broken down.
6 Q. Yes. But did you ever bring to Mr Hatfield's attention
7 anything like this: really this is a bit unfair, because
8 this is the system that I understood had been operating
9 for a long time and Dr Kelly should not be criticised
10 for it; did you ever say anything like that?
11 A. I did not. I did not think I could add anything to the
12 way in which David had very clearly set it out in his
13 letter of 30th June.
14 LORD HUTTON: Mr Gompertz, does that question relate to the
15 actual fact of a meeting or the contents of what was
16 said?
17 MR GOMPERTZ: The fact of the meeting.
18 LORD HUTTON: The fact of the meeting, yes.
19 MR GOMPERTZ: Can I ask you about the earlier meeting which
20 was arranged, I believe, for 24th June? You were aware
21 that it was intended that there should be such
22 a meeting?
23 A. There was to be a meeting between Martin Howard, myself,
24 Tim Dowse of the Foreign Office, who is Patrick Lamb's
25 superior, and Martin Howard.

118
1 Q. For what purpose?
2 A. To discuss with David his press contacts. This was in
3 the light of continuing concerns about the Observer
4 article which had mentioned a British BW expert and also
5 that that was the point at which I had heard that David
6 had spoken to Andrew Gilligan.
7 Q. At the time when it was decided to hold that meeting,
8 where was Dr Kelly? Was he in America when the decision
9 was made?
10 A. (Pause). I do not believe he was, sir.
11 Q. Very well.
12 A. I cannot remember exactly, but --
13 Q. At any rate, did you tell him about this meeting on the
14 24th?
15 A. I did, sir. It was left to me to tell David that there
16 would be a meeting on the 24th and that this was going
17 to discuss his contacts with the press.
18 Q. So you told him the reason for the meeting, as well as
19 the fact that it was going to take place?
20 A. I said it was going to be contacts with the press, sir.
21 Q. And then it was cancelled?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. At the time, you told us when you gave evidence before,
24 you did not know why.
25 A. At the time that the meeting was cancelled I was just

119
1 told it was cancelled and not given any explanation.
2 Q. What did you tell Dr Kelly?
3 A. I quite simply told him that, that it had been
4 cancelled. Dr Kelly was coming up to London on that day
5 in any case so he had other business to deal with.
6 Q. So you gave him no reason?
7 A. I did not know the reason myself, sir. It was set up at
8 Martin Howard's behest. Martin is an extremely busy man
9 and it is not unusual for meetings to be cancelled in
10 this way.
11 Q. So it provoked no surprise from Dr Kelly?
12 A. I do not believe it did.
13 Q. No. Any reaction?
14 A. No, as I say it is not unusual for meetings chaired by
15 a busy person like Martin Howard to be cancelled without
16 explanation.
17 Q. There was, in fact, this leak inquiry which, at that
18 time, was still outstanding.
19 A. I subsequently learnt that, sir.
20 Q. You learnt that, I believe, on 1st July, did you not?
21 A. 1st July.
22 Q. Which is when you saw the police, or was that the next
23 day?
24 A. That was the next day. I was informed by MoD security
25 personnel on 1st July, sir.

120
1 Q. Yes. I do not want to know what passed between you and
2 the police, but was that concerned with the leak
3 inquiry?
4 A. The meeting with the police was on 2nd July. I had, by
5 that stage, received David's letter dated 30th June; and
6 when I saw the MoD security people they recognised that
7 what David might be saying in his letter of 30th June
8 may have relevance to the leak inquiry. Clearly, we
9 could not make that decision until we saw the letter;
10 and so that was why we had a subsequent meeting on
11 2nd July, to discuss the follow-on handling of that
12 letter.
13 Q. Yes. Because the reason we have been told why the
14 24th June meeting was cancelled, although you did not
15 know it at the time, was because of this leak inquiry?
16 A. That is what I subsequently learnt.
17 Q. So when was the leak inquiry resolved, so far as
18 Dr Kelly was concerned?
19 A. I do not have details of that, sir.
20 Q. Because he was excluded, was he not?
21 A. That is my understanding, but I did not know a lot of
22 the details of that until after his death.
23 Q. Had that inquiry been resolved by 4th July?
24 A. I do not know, sir.
25 Q. Because that was the date of the first interview?

121
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. So that it would seem that by 4th July the reason for
3 the postponement of the 24th June meeting had passed.
4 Is that right, or not?
5 A. I do not know when David was excluded from the leak
6 inquiry, so I am not in a position to comment on that.
7 Q. You cannot comment, right. Let us go on to the
8 interview on 7th July. You have told us that that
9 meeting concerned two issues: mainly the discrepancies
10 between Dr Kelly's and Mr Gilligan's accounts --
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. -- of what was said when they met on 22nd May, and then
13 whether the MoD would wish to make a public statement;
14 is that right?
15 A. That is correct.
16 Q. The vast majority of the meeting concerned the first
17 topic?
18 A. What we were trying to do here was to get a better
19 understanding of David's account, in preparation for
20 a possible statement which might lead to questions from
21 the press, and in preparation for possible interest from
22 the Foreign Affairs Committee.
23 Q. At the end of that meeting, was he shown a press release
24 which had been drafted?
25 A. He was, sir. I did not see that press release myself,

122
1 but I know he was shown a press release and he read it
2 through.
3 Q. Ah, so you would not be able to identify which one it
4 was?
5 A. I would not, sir.
6 Q. Very well. In which case I shall pass on.
7 I would like you to look, nonetheless, at the MoD
8 statement which was in fact issued. Would you look,
9 please, at MoD/1/67, which will come up on your screen?
10 That was the press release, MoD statement, released at
11 5.45 pm on 8th July; right?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Did you ever see that?
14 A. (Pause). I believe I saw it the day after its release.
15 Q. Were you ever given the opportunity to talk to Dr Kelly
16 about it before it was released?
17 A. I was not, sir.
18 Q. You were his line manager.
19 A. The press arrangements were being dealt with by other
20 people. I was not involved in this.
21 Q. So nobody thought it right that you should be involved
22 in this process.
23 A. I had other business to attend to. We have a press
24 office.
25 Q. No doubt.

123
1 A. We have other people who would doubtless be involved;
2 and I was not involved.
3 Q. Can I go back to the meeting of 7th July? Could you
4 look at the notes which were made I think by yourself?
5 MoD/1/46, please. That is the typed version, is it not?
6 A. That is correct.
7 Q. And you told us this morning that those notes were typed
8 up the next day at your dictation.
9 A. I dictated them the following day.
10 Q. Yes. Did you make any note at all at the meeting, or
11 indeed on 7th July at any time, about the matters in
12 paragraph 19 which appears on MoD/1/50?
13 A. No, I did not, sir. The bulk of the meeting was
14 concerned with getting a better understanding of David's
15 account. That was actually quite technical and that is
16 reflected in the earlier paragraphs. As I said earlier,
17 I did not see the press statement that David was reading
18 and consequently I was not really in a position to take
19 any detailed handwritten notes; but the following day
20 I thought it appropriate to record, to the best of my
21 recollection, what transpired at that meeting in
22 relation to the statement.
23 Q. Is there any reason why you could not have made notes of
24 what is contained in paragraph 19?
25 A. No reason at all, sir. As I say, the principal -- the

124
1 bulk of the meeting was concerned with getting a better
2 understanding of David's account, and that is what
3 I focused on.
4 Q. Yes. And when that finished and you moved on to stage 2
5 of the meeting, why not make notes of it, Dr Wells?
6 A. It was a very short part of the meeting. I retained
7 sufficient memory to make a short summary paragraph of
8 what transpired; and that is what I did.
9 Q. You are content, are you, that what you have in fact
10 recorded in the typed version is an accurate record of
11 what was said with regard to matters other than the
12 conversation between Mr Gilligan and Dr Kelly?
13 A. It is a short summary, sir.
14 Q. Yes. So there was mention that the department would
15 need to make some public statement; right?
16 A. Correct, sir, sorry, yes.
17 Q. There is examination and expression of contentment with
18 the press release, whichever one that was.
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Yes. And then Mr Hatfield said that although Dr Kelly
21 was not named in the press release, his identity may
22 become known in due course, and Dr Kelly replied that he
23 acknowledged that; right?
24 A. Yes. As I explained this morning, the word "may", the
25 qualifier, there may have been a number of qualifiers

125
1 used. There was an exchange at this point which I did
2 not record. But to the best of my recollection that
3 word was used at some point.
4 Q. Your state of mind at the end of that interview was
5 certainly not that there was to be a process by which
6 Dr Kelly's particulars would be fed to the media?
7 A. I had no knowledge of that, sir.
8 Q. No. Still less that his name would be given if press
9 personnel correctly identified him?
10 A. I did not know of that, sir.
11 Q. And nobody told you subsequently?
12 A. I was told at some point that there would be the policy
13 that Dr Kelly's name would be confirmed if it was
14 correctly put to the press office. I cannot remember
15 quite when that was.
16 Q. Can I ask you this: in his letter of 30th June, Dr Kelly
17 mentioned press contact not only with Mr Gilligan but
18 also with Susan Watts, did he not?
19 A. He did.
20 Q. Was that contact ever pursued in interview?
21 A. (Pause). It was, very briefly, sir -- in our interviews
22 we were, of course, focusing on what transpired between
23 David and Andrew Gilligan.
24 Q. Can I interrupt you? You used the expression "of
25 course".

126
1 A. I am sorry.
2 Q. Why do you say "of course"?
3 A. Because we were concentrating on that at that time, on
4 the meeting between David and Andrew Gilligan.
5 At the meeting on 7th July, Martin Howard asked
6 David about other journalist contacts and he said that
7 he had spoken to Susan Watts and Martin Howard asked
8 a similar question at the meeting on 14th July. That is
9 the best of my recollection.
10 Q. Yes. Why was contact with Susan Watts not pursued?
11 A. At that stage, we were focusing on what transpired
12 between David and Andrew Gilligan.
13 Q. This would have been another unauthorised press contact,
14 would it not?
15 A. We did not ask David what had transpired between him and
16 Susan Watts.
17 Q. No. What I am trying to find out is why not?
18 A. I could not say, sir. We were focusing on what
19 transpired between David and Andrew Gilligan.
20 Q. Precisely. The focus was on Mr Gilligan because that
21 was the point of interest for the Government; is that
22 not right?
23 A. I would not be in a position to comment on that, sir.
24 Q. You just took notes at these interviews, did you?
25 A. These meetings, yes, sir.

127
1 Q. You did not participate in the process at all?
2 A. With the exception of the meeting on 14th July.
3 Q. Ah, we have not come on to that yet.
4 A. Okay.
5 Q. Did you at any time feel marginalised by Mr Hatfield and
6 Mr Howard?
7 A. Not at all, sir.
8 Q. Was any pressure ever applied to Dr Kelly?
9 A. In respect of what, sir, if I may?
10 Q. In order to ensure he was going to cooperate with the
11 process?
12 A. No, sir.
13 Q. Were you surprised on 4th July how quickly Mr Hatfield
14 decided there were no disciplinary issues to be
15 resolved?
16 A. I do not think I made a judgment one way or the other on
17 that, sir.
18 Q. There was no sort of deal or offer of a deal or anything
19 of that kind at all?
20 A. Certainly not, sir.
21 Q. Was there any requirement that Dr Kelly should attend
22 before the FAC?
23 A. He was asked -- I asked him on the morning of 11th July
24 whether he was content, in principle, to appear before
25 that Committee and he said that if he was asked he would

128
1 do it.
2 Q. It was his choice, was it?
3 A. (Pause). He did not -- he did not articulate an
4 unwillingness to do it. He said that he was nervous
5 about the potential for the press and that he was
6 uncertain about the procedures, but if he was asked
7 formally, he would do it.
8 Q. Yes. That is not his choice though, is it? That is
9 Dr Kelly agreeing to a request or requirement from
10 others; that is right, is it not?
11 A. Well, those were the words he used, sir. If he is asked
12 to do it, he would do it.
13 Q. I wonder if we could look at CAB/1/91, please. If we
14 can scroll down a little bit, we can see this is from
15 Menna Rawlings. Can you remind us who she is please?
16 A. I am afraid I do not know, sir, I have not seen this
17 before.
18 Q. Can we look at the first paragraph of this document?
19 LORD HUTTON: It was dated 10th July, is that right?
20 MR GOMPERTZ: 10th July indeed. Thank you my Lord.
21 I do not want to take much time over this. It
22 refers to Sir Kevin Tebbit telephoning Michael Jay on
23 10th July "to discuss requests from the FAC and the ISC
24 for David Kelly (of Andrew Gilligan fame) to appear
25 before them both on 15th July.

129
1 "I had spoken about this to you and Kara Owen
2 beforehand. Kevin said that the MoD was unlikely to
3 stand in Kelly's way, if he decided this was something
4 he should do."
5 It is that phrase that I want to ask you about. Was
6 it Dr Kelly's choice that he should appear or not appear
7 before the FAC?
8 A. I quite simply asked his views on the principle of
9 appearing in front of both the ISC and the FAC; and, as
10 I said, he said that if asked he would do it. I have
11 not seen this record before, before now.
12 Q. Yes. After the 7th July meeting, the next time you saw
13 Dr Kelly, face to face, was on the 14th; is that right?
14 A. That is correct, sir.
15 Q. Yes. Meanwhile, he had, as it were, been on the run,
16 I do not want to overdramatise it, but escaping from the
17 media in Cornwall; is that right?
18 A. He was advised to leave his house, sir, yes.
19 Q. Yes. You tell us, do you, that in accordance with the
20 phone records which we see today for the first time,
21 that you managed to contact Dr Kelly at 3 minutes past 7
22 and 9 minutes past 7 on the evening of the 9th July?
23 A. The call that I made is 3 minutes past 7 and David
24 called me at 9 minutes past 7.
25 Q. Thank you. It was a very brief call at 9 minutes past,

130
1 was it not?
2 A. We were -- I was on a train. For understandable reasons
3 I was limited in what I could say on the train.
4 Q. I see. So what did you tell him at that time?
5 A. I said that the press office had confirmed his name and
6 that he should be in touch with the press office.
7 Q. Did you tell him that his name would be in the papers
8 the next day?
9 A. I said that his name had been confirmed.
10 Q. Did he understand what you were talking about?
11 A. I believe he did, sir.
12 Q. Right. And so it was that you phoned him at 6 minutes
13 to 8, another call of no great length, about one and
14 a half minutes, is that right?
15 A. That is right, sir.
16 Q. What was that all about?
17 A. That was because, as I say, I was limited on what
18 I could say on the train. I said I would try to phone
19 him once I got off the train. That was that telephone
20 conversation then.
21 Q. Thereafter there were indeed a number of telephone calls
22 to Dr Kelly when he was in Cornwall?
23 A. That is correct.
24 Q. I think there were two of some length, one of six
25 minutes at 10 o'clock on the 11th, and another one of

131
1 just over nine minutes at nearly 6 o'clock in the
2 evening the same day.
3 A. That is right. I think the rest are probably my
4 attempts to get hold of David. He had told me that
5 mobile phone contact could be difficult.
6 Q. Yes. Was he being told, during the course of that day,
7 that he was going to have to come back to London the
8 following Monday for a meeting in order to prepare for
9 the FAC?
10 A. That would have been the conversation at 4 minutes to 6.
11 I expect at that point I conveyed to him that he would
12 be appearing before both Committees and suggested that
13 he came back on Monday to prepare for those.
14 Q. Yes. When you saw him at the briefing meeting on
15 14th July, you saw him together with Mr Howard; right?
16 A. Correct, and Heather Smith from personnel.
17 Q. You or rather Mr Howard went through a list of items
18 about which he might be asked; is that right?
19 A. The purpose of the meeting was to ensure that David
20 understood the different constitution of the two
21 Committees and to set out our view on the likely areas
22 of questioning. It was also fair to say that at the
23 beginning Martin said that there were no departmental
24 lines to take on this.
25 Q. He was given some steers though, was he not?

132
1 A. He was told what the likely areas of questioning were;
2 and it was made clear to him, on a number of occasions,
3 that he could -- he should feel free to give his own
4 account.
5 Q. We have seen a document produced by Mr Alastair Campbell
6 that you have no doubt read about, his diary or part of
7 it.
8 A. I am aware of the diaries from the press, sir; yes.
9 Q. Yes. In it there is an entry that the MoD had assured
10 Mr Campbell that Dr Kelly had been well schooled. Do
11 you recognise that process as having taken place on
12 14th July?
13 A. I saw that entry in the press, sir. I have to say that
14 the meeting on 14th July was not schooling Dr Kelly, it
15 was making sure that he understood the nature of the two
16 Committees and --
17 Q. Sorry, I did not mean to interrupt you, go on.
18 A. And that he understood the sorts of questions that the
19 Committees were likely to ask. We did not know what
20 questions they would ask, of course.
21 Q. Because giving him departmental answers would be quite
22 wrong, would it not?
23 A. It was made clear to him that he should answer in the
24 way that he wished.
25 Q. Yes. Was that true even of the tricky areas?

133
1 A. The tricky areas were tricky in the sense that, and
2 Martin Howard was clear on this, that they were at the
3 margins of legitimacy in terms of what the Committees
4 could ask David, given the Defence Secretary's earlier
5 letter.
6 Q. That expression was used during the meeting, was it not,
7 "tricky areas"?
8 A. I have answered questions on this before sir, and
9 I believe it was.
10 Q. It appears in everybody's notes.
11 A. Including mine.
12 Q. Including yours. Why does it not appear in the typed up
13 version of your notes?
14 A. Because I expressed it as being at the margins of what
15 was permissible within the bounds of the
16 Defence Secretary's letter. I did not feel it necessary
17 to use the verbatim words.
18 Q. The typed up version is an approximation of what went on
19 at that meeting, is it not?
20 A. It is a summary, sir -- yes, it is a summary of what
21 transpired.
22 Q. Can I just go back to 9th July for a moment? Were you
23 aware that the name was going to be, in effect, released
24 by a combination of the statement, the Prime Minister's
25 Official Spokesmen's briefings and the Q and A material?

134
1 A. All I was aware of, sir, was that David's name would be
2 confirmed by the press office if it was put to them.
3 Q. Did you ever tell him that?
4 A. I did not, sir. I knew that he was in touch with the
5 press office, they are the experts in dealing with the
6 press; and -- so I did not discuss that with David.
7 Q. Can I come to two last topics? You knew David Kelly
8 really quite well by this time, did you not?
9 A. Fairly well, sir, yes.
10 Q. Would you describe him as a private, sensitive and
11 modest man?
12 A. I would describe him as a private man, a man who thought
13 carefully, a man who was proud in the best sense of the
14 word. He was a world renowned expert. That is how
15 I would describe David.
16 Q. And his character was such that what he perceived to be
17 a public loss of his reputation would impact upon him
18 very seriously?
19 A. I have to say from my own perspective, sir, David knew
20 that I wanted him out in Iraq as soon as we could.
21 David knew that the theatre wanted him out in Iraq as
22 soon as we could manage.
23 Q. Could you answer my question? I know you are trying to
24 be helpful.
25 A. So from my perspective, sir -- my perspective -- David's

135
1 reputation as one of the world's foremost weapons
2 inspectors had not been damaged.
3 Q. Did you ever become aware that he had a sense of
4 betrayal?
5 A. I heard that in evidence, sir.
6 Q. No, I meant at the time, when he was still alive.
7 A. No, no, sir, I did not.
8 Q. Did you take into account the effect of the media
9 attention upon him?
10 A. Yes, I did, sir. When he left his home on 9th July the
11 records show that I have phoned him very regularly to
12 check how he was feeling.
13 Q. Yes. Did you take into account the reports of stress
14 made by Mr Colin Smith, first of all?
15 A. I was not aware of that record.
16 Q. Nobody told you about that.
17 A. I was in constant touch with David, as the record shows.
18 David was back in my office on Monday morning. I was
19 asking how he was and he was assuring me that he was
20 tired but otherwise he was fine.
21 Q. Were you aware of Mr Nick Rufford's article in the
22 Sunday Times on July 13th?
23 A. I was, sir, and I phoned David mid morning, I think
24 Mrs Kelly said it was about 11.30, first of all to check
25 how he was and also to discuss Sunday's coverage which

136
1 actually was less than we had been expecting.
2 Q. Yes.
3 A. And David said, at that time, that he was dismayed at
4 Nick Rufford's article.
5 Q. I am not asking -- my fault entirely, I am not asking
6 for that reason. You will recollect that he, Mr Rufford
7 that is, expressed certain comments about Dr Kelly's
8 appearance and how he was handling the pressure; do you
9 remember that, or not?
10 A. That was in evidence, was it, sir?
11 Q. No, I am talking about in the article. We can show it
12 to you if you would prefer to see it.
13 A. I do not recall that bit in the article, sir.
14 Q. Regrettably I do not have the reference immediately to
15 hand. Perhaps I could come back to it. The reason
16 I ask you these questions is as a basis for the next
17 question: did you ever do anything to help Dr Kelly
18 other than talk to him on the telephone, as you have
19 told us, and then face to face when you met him on the
20 14th, 15th and 16th in connection with the briefing
21 meeting and then the Select Committees?
22 A. I was doing a lot to help David, sir. I had cancelled
23 an important trip to the US so that I could be with
24 David on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
25 Q. Yes.

137
1 A. I had arranged -- or had arranged hotel accommodation
2 for David at MoD expense, should he need it. He
3 actually wished to have other arrangements.
4 LORD HUTTON: When did you offer that to him, Dr Wells?
5 A. I offered that to him when he arrived back in London on
6 the 10th, my Lord. Sorry, on the 14th, my Lord, excuse
7 me.
8 LORD HUTTON: And was that for what night or nights?
9 A. That would have been initially for the nights of Monday
10 and Tuesday, on the basis that David was giving evidence
11 to two Committees on the Tuesday.
12 LORD HUTTON: Yes. And his response to that was ...?
13 A. That he was staying with one of his daughters in Oxford
14 and he would prefer to do that. I said if that was what
15 he wanted to do, that was fine by me.
16 MR GOMPERTZ: Yes.
17 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, I interrupted you. You were going on
18 to add something else?
19 A. Other things I was doing for David at the time.
20 I arranged a separate office for him if he wanted to be
21 alone. We checked that he had lunch arrangements.
22 I did all the necessary administrative arrangements so
23 that David could concentrate on preparing himself for
24 the Committee appearances.
25 MR GOMPERTZ: You did not think that some form of

138
1 professional counselling would be a good idea?
2 A. David was an experienced civil servant; he had
3 experience of stressful situations as a UN weapons
4 inspector. In answer to repeated questions, he said he
5 was tired but otherwise fine. And I have to say when
6 someone of that seniority and experience repeatedly
7 assures me that he is fine, then I am bound to take him
8 at his word.
9 Q. Can I ask you to look at the Sunday Times article. It
10 is MED/2/8.
11 If you look in the sixth paragraph down, what is
12 said is:
13 "Looking pale and tired, Kelly admitted the affair
14 had played heavily on his mind since it broke six weeks
15 ago."
16 And the last two lines of that same paragraph, he is
17 said to have told Mr Rufford:
18 "It has been a very difficult time, as you can
19 imagine."
20 I have reminded you of those parts of the article.
21 Do they come back to your mind?
22 A. What comes back to my mind was that David denied the
23 quotes that are in quotation marks.
24 Q. You actually put those to him, did you?
25 A. No, he put it to me, sir.

139
1 Q. So he said: this is wholly untrue, I am fine. Is that
2 what he was saying?
3 A. The word he used, sir, if I may, is "bullshit".
4 LORD HUTTON: Did he use that word in respect of that
5 description of him, that he looked pale and tired and
6 that it had played heavily on his mind, or did it relate
7 to another part of the article or was it the article as
8 a whole?
9 A. My recollection, my Lord, is he was referring to the
10 passages in quotation marks. He did not draw me to any
11 particular quote.
12 MR GOMPERTZ: I am sorry, my Lord.
13 LORD HUTTON: Carry on, please.
14 MR GOMPERTZ: Would you look, please, at the fourth
15 paragraph of that report because that appears there:
16 "I met Gilligan at the Charing Cross Hotel. I did
17 talk to him about purely factual stuff. The rest is
18 bullshit."
19 Is that what you were talking about?
20 A. No, sir. These were the quotations that David said were
21 throughout this article.
22 MR GOMPERTZ: Thank you very much Dr Wells.
23 A. Thank you sir.
24 LORD HUTTON: Mr Lloyd-Jones do you have any questions you
25 wish to put?

140
1 MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, no.
2 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much indeed.
3 A. Thank you my Lord.
4 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Harrison, please, my Lord.
5 MR JAMES HARRISON (called)
6 Examined by MR KNOX
7 Q. Mr Harrison, could you give the Inquiry your full name?
8 A. James Harrison.
9 Q. And your position?
10 A. Deputy Director Counter Proliferation and Arms Control
11 in the Ministry of Defence.
12 Q. You have given evidence before. Since you last gave
13 evidence it has emerged that four Parliamentary
14 Questions were found on Dr Kelly's computer which had
15 been sent by the Ministry of Defence on 17th July 2003.
16 Perhaps we can just call them up before I ask you to
17 comment on them. Could we call up COM/1/1?
18 Do you recognise this? This, I think, is the text
19 of an e-mail that you sent at about 9.28 in the morning,
20 in fact.
21 A. That is correct, yes.
22 Q. And then COM/1/2. This is one of the attachments that
23 you sent which is a Parliamentary Question from
24 Bernard Jenkin. Do you see that?
25 A. Yes.

141
1 Q. You can see what the nature of the question is:
2 "To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether
3 his Department has complied with Dr Kelly's terms and
4 conditions of employment in handling the matter of his
5 discussions with Mr Andrew Gilligan."
6 Then COM/1/4, another question from Mr Jenkin:
7 "To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, on how
8 many occasions Dr David Kelly spoke to BBC Radio 4
9 defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan; and whether his
10 line managers were aware of this."
11 Then COM/1/6:
12 "To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what (a)
13 Civil Service and (b) MoD rules and regulations may have
14 been infringed by Dr David Kelly in talking to BBC
15 Radio 4 defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan."
16 Finally page 8:
17 "To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what
18 disciplinary measures his Department will take against
19 Dr Kelly."
20 LORD HUTTON: Do I understand they were all sent at 9.25 am?
21 A. 9.28 am, my Lord, yes.
22 MR KNOX: I think we can actually see your e-mail at
23 MoD/30/51.
24 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
25 A. That was the covering e-mail, my Lord, and the four PQs

142
1 were attached to it.
2 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much. Yes.
3 MR KNOX: You say in that e-mail:
4 "More PQs! But plenty of time for reply. I expect
5 that Bryan will deal tomorrow."
6 Can you explain why you say plenty of time for
7 reply?
8 A. If you look at each of the four PQs there is a date for
9 answer stamped on it. As I recall, the date was Monday
10 8th September. So the answers were not required to the
11 House of Commons until that date.
12 Q. Can you explain how these e-mails came to be sent or
13 rather this e-mail with these attachments came to be
14 sent to Dr Kelly?
15 A. Yes. They were received by Dr Wells' secretary by
16 e-mail from the Parliamentary Branch on that morning,
17 I think perhaps about half past 8. She herself was on
18 leave that day but had left her e-mail such that any
19 would be automatically forwarded to somebody else in the
20 branch. They were so forwarded, in effect, to one of my
21 staff who passed them on to me again by e-mail.
22 I received them around 9.13 or so on that morning.
23 I looked at them. Plainly he referred to Dr Kelly.
24 If, on that particular day, he had been coming into
25 the office, then I would have simply printed them off

143
1 and handed them over to him for his information. He
2 was, of course, not in the office that day. I knew that
3 he was at home. John Clark, I knew, was speaking to him
4 about the two Parliamentary Questions from
5 Andrew Mackinlay and also the letter to the Foreign
6 Affairs Committee. It seemed to me that David Kelly
7 ought to be aware of these questions. They were matters
8 of public record. There was in fact no reason to
9 consider concealing them from him by not making them
10 available to him.
11 I had access to e-mail to be able to forward them to
12 David, which John Clark did not. So it seemed to me
13 that I should forward them to him, simply so that he was
14 aware of them, as a matter of courtesy.
15 Q. Before forwarding them did you yourself open the
16 attachments and read the attachments?
17 A. Yes, I looked at each of the questions before forwarding
18 them to see just what they were.
19 Q. Just as a matter of mechanics, if one goes to MoD/30/7
20 you can see, I think, the first of the Parliamentary
21 Questions coming in to you. At the foot of the page you
22 see the initial e-mail at 8.25.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Then it gets passed up to CPAC-ADNS, which is the second
25 entry down, then it goes from CPAC-ADNS to you,

144
1 CPAC-CB3, is that right? Arriving with you at 8.25.
2 Would that be how it is going?
3 A. Not quite. CPAC-CB3 in fact is a member of my staff.
4 He forwarded it to me, top of the page, CPAC-DD, you
5 will see it is forwarded to me in the top entry and to
6 two others.
7 Q. You get it at 9.15 and you send it on at 9.23?
8 A. That is right, 9.28, yes.
9 Q. Did you discuss these PQs with Mr Clark?
10 A. I do not recall any discussion, but I am quite certain
11 since he also received them at the same time in that
12 same covering e-mail -- sorry, Wing Commander Clark that
13 is, and I think we will have -- I probably expressed my
14 views which were these were not matters for us to reply
15 on. They seemed to me primarily matters for
16 Richard Hatfield, the personnel director, and his staff
17 in terms of making formal replies; that nevertheless
18 I thought that David should be aware of them and
19 I proposed therefore to forward them to him.
20 Q. Did you speak to Dr Kelly at all about these PQs?
21 A. I did not speak to him at all on that day.
22 Q. And you spoke to Wing Commander Clark on this day. Do
23 you know, from your conversations with him, whether he
24 spoke to Dr Kelly about these Parliamentary Questions?
25 A. (Pause). I do not know that he did.

145
1 Q. By this time, 17th July, did you understand Dr Kelly to
2 be under continuing pressure?
3 A. My perception was that he had been under pressure, but
4 that the peak of that had very much passed. I say that
5 for a number of reasons. He had to leave his home to
6 avoid the press over the weekend, he was now back at
7 home on the Wednesday. He had had to appear before the
8 Foreign Affairs Committee on the Tuesday, he had had
9 some pressure obviously with that, but at the end of the
10 hearing he had effectively been discharged as an honest
11 witness, so that was behind him.
12 There had obviously been a great deal of press
13 reporting, some of which was clearly offensive.
14 Descriptions of him as a mole, for example; comparisons
15 with Harold Shipman seemed obviously likely to be
16 hurtful. Again the peak of that was over.
17 On the Wednesday the Intelligence and Security
18 Committee hearing had, as I understood it, passed
19 without incident. So that was behind him. All that
20 seemed to me to remain was to answer these outstanding
21 factual questions from Andrew Mackinlay and the Foreign
22 Affairs Committee for which he was checking his records
23 at home that day. That seemed to me a straightforward
24 issue. Once that was out of the way, he was able to
25 focus on deployment to Iraq.

146
1 After the ISC hearing on Wednesday afternoon I had
2 heard him speaking to John Clark about that and, as it
3 seemed to me, as I say, the peak had passed, he had
4 these administrative details in effect to attend to.
5 Beyond that, he could focus on his deployment to Iraq.
6 Q. One of these PQs raised the question of disciplinary
7 measures that were going to be taken against Dr Kelly.
8 Did you think that might in some way upset him in
9 sending him that e-mail?
10 A. My understanding was that there were no disciplinary
11 proceedings outstanding or being considered, so it did
12 not seem to me that that was a difficulty.
13 Q. Likewise there is another e-mail talking about rules and
14 regulations having been infringed. What about that?
15 A. Again, he had had an interview, as I understood, with
16 Richard Hatfield, the personnel director. That,
17 I believed, concerned this interview with
18 Andrew Gilligan, so it seemed to me that issue was
19 a dead one.
20 Q. Did you keep any paper copies of the e-mails that you
21 received or indeed of the e-mails that you sent?
22 A. I printed out copies just of the Parliamentary Questions
23 at the time; and I did keep them with other papers for
24 some period after that, yes.
25 Q. And do you still have them?

147
1 A. I do not. I was due to be on leave from 21st August for
2 a period of 10 days. In the middle of that I had to
3 return to give evidence on the 27th, so on the day
4 before I went on leave, I organised any relevant papers
5 that I had relating to my appearance on the 27th.
6 I found these PQs amongst those papers, they did not
7 seem to me to be relevant. There was no action that
8 I was required to do with them so I destroyed them on
9 that day.
10 Q. I take it nothing has ever in fact happened to these
11 outstanding Parliamentary Questions by Mr Jenkin?
12 A. As I understand it, yes, indeed the questions were dealt
13 with by the personnel branches within the Ministry of
14 Defence who had received copies of them at the same
15 time. They were the people who were primarily
16 responsible -- whose area of responsibility the
17 questions fell into and I know, having -- when I was
18 asked by the Inquiry about the questions, I checked with
19 them subsequently and also with the Parliamentary Clerk
20 and I am aware that those questions were subsequently
21 answered in time, I think, for that 8th September
22 deadline, but I think the answers, as I understand it,
23 were in the terms of: this is a matter for Lord Hutton's
24 Inquiry and no further information was given.
25 Q. I see. We have not actually seen the answers as

148
1 eventually drafted. Perhaps they could be provided in
2 due course to the Inquiry.
3 A. I have not done. They certainly can be, yes.
4 MR KNOX: Thank you very much.
5 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much Mr Harrison.
6 A. Thank you my Lord.
7 WING COMMANDER JOHN CLARK (called)
8 Examined by MR KNOX
9 Q. Wing Commander, we have heard, this afternoon --
10 I should ask your full name.
11 A. My name is Wing Commander John Clark.
12 Q. Your position?
13 A. I work in the Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat
14 and my appointment is CONAC 1 which is conventional arm
15 control and the appointment is just identified as number
16 1 of a series.
17 Q. We have heard this afternoon from Mr Harrison about four
18 Parliamentary Questions by Mr Bernard Jenkin which were
19 sent to Dr Kelly on 17th July. Did you yourself, in the
20 course of your conversations with Dr Kelly on 17th July,
21 discuss these four Parliamentary Questions at all?
22 A. No, I made no reference at all.
23 Q. Can you recall Dr Kelly making any reference to these
24 four Parliamentary Questions in the discussions?
25 A. No, I have no recollection of that at all, I am afraid.

149
1 Q. Can I press you a little on that. When you say you have
2 no recollection of that, are you saying you believe he
3 did not or are you saying you cannot remember one way or
4 the other?
5 A. I am saying I believe he did not.
6 Q. Were you, yourself, aware of the content of these four
7 Parliamentary Questions?
8 A. No, I was not actually. My priority at the time was
9 clearly to facilitate the two outstanding Parliamentary
10 Questions and the response to the Foreign Affairs
11 Committee. So that was my priority. So when the four
12 PQs arrived, my initial reaction was to look at the
13 deadline, saw that it was September, had a large sigh of
14 relief and then ignored them.
15 Q. Are you aware of any reason why Dr Kelly should not have
16 been sent those four Parliamentary Questions on
17 17th July?
18 A. No, none at all. My relationship with David Kelly was
19 founded on loyalty and integrity. He was a very senior
20 individual within the Department and to be honest it
21 would have been unfair if elements of the investigation
22 or the PQs were kept from him. It was important he knew
23 what was going on.
24 Q. I think you have suggested you were aware that these
25 four Parliamentary Questions were sent to Dr Kelly?

150
1 A. No, I was not aware of that.
2 Q. You were completely unaware even of the existence of
3 these four Parliamentary Questions?
4 A. No, I did see the four Parliamentary Questions and, as
5 I said, I checked the deadline and then ignored them.
6 Q. Were you, yourself, sent the Parliamentary Questions on
7 a computer that you had?
8 A. Yes, they were forwarded to myself some time after
9 9 o'clock on the morning of the 17th.
10 Q. Did you print out any hard copies?
11 A. No, I did not.
12 Q. Can I just move to a different topic, a short point: it
13 appears from the telephone records we have seen that
14 a phone call was made from Dr Kelly at 1.36 in the
15 afternoon to the Ministry of Defence, and indeed to your
16 telephone line at the Ministry of Defence. Can you
17 recall receiving a telephone call from Dr Kelly at 1.36
18 in the afternoon?
19 A. No, I cannot, and the Thames Valley Police drew my
20 attention to this and I have thought long and hard about
21 that telephone call. I have no recollection of that
22 call, unfortunately. I surmised at the time that
23 I traditionally pop out for a sandwich somewhere between
24 1 o'clock and 2 o'clock and perhaps he had left
25 a message on my answerphone. When I returned from

151
1 leave, I checked -- I have a notebook which if there are
2 any actions outstanding from answerphone messages,
3 I will note those down. I have no notes whatsoever, so
4 I am afraid I have no recollection of that at all.
5 Q. Was there a voicemail left on the telephone?
6 A. I have no evidence to suggest that there was.
7 Q. Finally, just one matter: in Mr Harrison's evidence to
8 the Inquiry when he last appeared, he said that he told
9 you in the course of the 17th July to make sure, amongst
10 other things, I now quote, "that the answers given by
11 Dr Kelly fully dealt with telephone contacts as well as
12 face to face meetings that he had had with journalists".
13 Can you recall if you passed on that message to Dr Kelly
14 on 17th July?
15 A. No, I did not. That was one of the elements I had to
16 pass on when I was trying to contact him after
17 3 o'clock. So that was one of the elements that
18 James Harrison had raised but no, I had not discussed it
19 with him.
20 MR KNOX: Thank you very much Wing Commander Clark.
21 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much Wing Commander.
22 A. Thank you my Lord.
23 MR KNOX: I think the next witness is Mr Rufford.
24 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
25

152
1 MR NICHOLAS RUFFORD (called)
2 Examined by MR KNOX
3 Q. What is your full name?
4 A. Nicholas Rufford.
5 Q. Your occupation?
6 A. I am a journalist.
7 Q. And you have already given evidence to this Inquiry, so
8 I will not take you over all the same points again.
9 I just want to ask you this first: when you first
10 arrived at Dr Kelly's house in the afternoon or the
11 evening of 9th July, did you already know that he was
12 the source of the Gilligan report on the Today
13 Programme?
14 A. I did not know.
15 Q. What was your state of belief or suspicion at that time?
16 A. I suspected he might be the person who had spoken to
17 Andrew Gilligan but I did not know for sure.
18 Q. Had you discussed your proposed visit to Dr Kelly on
19 9th July with anyone at the Sunday Times?
20 A. Yes, I discussed it with the news editor, Charles Hymas.
21 Q. What had you told Mr Hymas?
22 A. I had said to him that I suspected that Dr Kelly may be
23 the person who had spoken to Andrew Gilligan, but I did
24 not know for sure. I also told him that I had been
25 trying to contact Dr Kelly during the day by telephone

153
1 and had been unsuccessful; and we agreed that the best
2 strategy would be for me to go and call on Dr Kelly.
3 Q. When you arrived at Dr Kelly's house, can you recall
4 whether he said anything about having been contacted by
5 the Ministry of Defence or not?
6 A. Yes. His first words were that he had been contacted by
7 the Ministry of Defence and told that he would be named
8 in national newspapers the following day.
9 Q. After you left Dr Kelly's house, did you report back to
10 your editor or Mr Hymas?
11 A. Yes, I did. I phoned him almost immediately I left
12 Dr Kelly's house; and I told him that Dr Kelly had
13 confirmed that he was the person who had spoken to
14 Andrew Gilligan and I also told Mr Hymas that Dr Kelly
15 had told me that his name would be in the papers the
16 next day.
17 Q. You said, on the last occasion, that you discussed with
18 Dr Kelly the possibility of his writing an article for
19 the Sunday Times. Would you like to explain the
20 circumstances in which you came to make that offer to
21 him?
22 A. Yes, he told me he felt he had been misrepresented in
23 the way that the BBC had reported their contacts with an
24 intelligence source; and I asked him whether he would
25 like to put his point of view in an article for the

154
1 Sunday Times.
2 Q. I think you also mentioned that you made an offer of
3 hotel accommodation to Dr Kelly on that occasion. Did
4 you link the offer of hotel accommodation to the writing
5 of an article?
6 A. No, I did not. They were made at separate ends of the
7 conversation. The offer of hotel accommodation was made
8 in the context of any help he may need and which the
9 newspaper may be able to give and it was right at the
10 end of the conversation.
11 Q. Did you know, when you suggested that Dr Kelly might
12 write an article for the Sunday Times, that he was going
13 to give evidence or might have to give evidence before
14 the Foreign Affairs Committee or the Intelligence and
15 Security Committee?
16 A. No, not at that stage.
17 Q. When you suggested to Dr Kelly, "Would you like to write
18 an article?", how did he respond to that?
19 A. He said he would be happy to do it with the agreement of
20 the MoD press office.
21 Q. Therefore, when you left Dr Kelly eventually, did you
22 take the matter up with the MoD press office?
23 A. Yes, very soon after I left his house I phoned Pam Teare
24 on her mobile phone and asked whether Dr Kelly might be
25 able to write an article for the Sunday Times to put his

155
1 version of events.
2 Q. And what did she say?
3 A. She at first said "no", then she said in the unlikely
4 event that Dr Kelly was allowed to write an article, she
5 would remember that I was the first journalist to submit
6 such a request.
7 Q. Can you say at what time you made that telephone call to
8 Pam Teare?
9 A. Yes. It was 20.17.
10 Q. How soon after leaving Dr Kelly's house did you make
11 that call to her?
12 A. I left his house at round about quarter to 8, so it was
13 roughly half an hour later.
14 Q. Just working back from the mobile phone records, you say
15 you leave his house about quarter to 8. What time do
16 you think, therefore, you arrived at Dr Kelly's house?
17 A. It was roughly 7.30 that I crossed the road to his
18 driveway.
19 Q. I take it, therefore, your conversation with Dr Kelly on
20 this occasion was about 15 minutes; is that right?
21 A. That is correct.
22 Q. I think it has been suggested that possibly your visit
23 was not entirely welcome or something of a surprise.
24 What do you have to say to that?
25 A. Before I crossed the road, Dr Kelly saw me in the car

156
1 park of the Wagon and Horses. I waved to him and he
2 acknowledged me. It took some time to cross the road
3 because of the traffic and he stood at the end of his
4 drive and waited. So I do not believe that it was an
5 unwelcome visit.
6 Q. It has also been suggested that Dr Kelly asked you to
7 go. Is that correct?
8 A. That is not correct.
9 Q. So when you did leave, how did the parting take place?
10 A. It took place amicably. I had been talking to him for
11 about 15 minutes, he had not invited me into the garden
12 or into the house so I felt that I did not want to stay
13 any longer.
14 Q. Mrs Kelly's evidence was that when she spoke to Dr Kelly
15 after he had seen you he mentioned the name Murdoch, the
16 suggestion being that you must have also mentioned the
17 name Murdoch to Dr Kelly. What do you say about that?
18 A. It is possible that the name Murdoch did come up in the
19 conversation but not in the context of a deal as has
20 been suggested.
21 Q. Could you say in what context the name Murdoch came up?
22 A. It was in a light hearted context. Dr Kelly, when we
23 met for a drink or a meal, would always want to ensure
24 that I did not pay personally and he would say: is this
25 on Mr Murdoch? And it became something of

157
1 a catch-phrase after our meetings. So when I suggested
2 at the end of the conversation hotel accommodation, he
3 said: is that on Mr Murdoch?
4 Q. And you said?
5 A. It is.
6 Q. In your article which you wrote in the Sunday Times on
7 13th July, after this meeting, you have mentioned
8 Dr Kelly by name and I think there has been a suggestion
9 that he was upset to see his name mentioned as if he was
10 giving you an interview. What do you say to that?
11 A. There were parts of the conversation that were off the
12 record and I honoured that and kept those parts of the
13 conversation off the record until after he died. But
14 the rest of the conversation was not off the record.
15 Q. And I think you have given evidence before, but perhaps
16 you can just remind the Inquiry, why do you think that
17 some parts of the interview were on the record?
18 A. By implication, because he had asked for certain parts
19 to be off the record, the rest was on the record. That
20 is the convention when journalists interview somebody
21 and I think Dr Kelly was well aware of that.
22 Q. I think it has also been suggested you may have been one
23 of the writers or a writer of an article that appeared
24 in The Times on 10th July, that is to say the Thursday
25 of that week. Is that right?

158
1 A. That is not true. I do not write for the daily Times,
2 I write only for the Sunday Times.
3 Q. On another article that you wrote on 13th April it was
4 said, I think in Rachel Kelly's evidence, that Dr Kelly
5 appeared to be upset or frustrated to see that his name
6 was mentioned, in terms, in the article which you had
7 written in which I think you quoted him as saying that
8 one of the Iraqi generals knows where all the bodies
9 were buried. You quoted Dr Kelly's name in terms. What
10 do you have to say about that?
11 A. Dr Kelly -- we had a lot of discussions afterwards and
12 Dr Kelly never said to me that he objected to having
13 been quoted. It was a one line quotation and it was
14 after an interview in which he had described this Iraqi
15 general and his meetings. He had had about 20 meetings
16 with this particular individual.
17 Q. You say you had lots of conversations after this. This
18 is 13th April. How many conversations did you have with
19 Dr Kelly after 13th April?
20 A. I would say about nine or ten.
21 Q. Would these have been on the telephone or at meetings?
22 A. They were almost entirely -- no, they were entirely on
23 the telephone.
24 Q. Finally, Wing Commander Clark, in his evidence on the
25 last occasion he came to the Inquiry, remembers

159
1 overhearing a telephone conversation which Dr Kelly had
2 with you on 6th June 2003. Is there anything you would
3 like to say about that?
4 A. Only that I called Dr Kelly and he said he was unable to
5 speak at the time and asked me to call him back two
6 hours later, which I did. So I believe that the
7 conversation which Wing Commander Clark overheard was
8 the first of two conversations.
9 Q. Is there anything else you would like to add in the
10 light of comments that you have heard in evidence since
11 you yourself gave evidence to the Inquiry?
12 A. No, there is not.
13 LORD HUTTON: Do you have any questions Mr Gompertz?
14 MR GOMPERTZ: No thank you, my Lord.
15 LORD HUTTON: Mr Rufford.
16 A. I beg your pardon.
17 LORD HUTTON: When Dr Kelly told you that he had been
18 contacted by the MoD and told that he would be named in
19 the newspapers the following day, did he say anything to
20 the effect that he would have to leave home?
21 A. No, he did not say that but I did ask him whether he had
22 been advised or counselled by the Ministry of Defence on
23 how to handle press calls, whether they were sending
24 anybody to chaperone him or whether he had suggested
25 hotel accommodation or staying with friends and he said

160
1 they had not.
2 LORD HUTTON: Did he say when it was that he had been
3 contacted and told by the MoD that he would be named in
4 newspapers the following day?
5 A. I beg your pardon?
6 LORD HUTTON: Did he indicate to you when he had received
7 this information from the MoD that he would be named the
8 following day? Did you understand it was a recent call?
9 A. Yes, he said "I have just had a call". That was at
10 about 7.30.
11 LORD HUTTON: I see. Yes. Thank you very much. Very well.
12 Thank you very much Mr Rufford.
13 A. Thank you.
14 MR DINGEMANS: Professor Hawton, please, my Lord.
15 PROFESSOR KEITH EDWARD HAWTON (called)
16 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
17 Q. Can you tell his Lordship your full name?
18 A. Keith Edward Hawton.
19 Q. And your qualifications?
20 A. Doctor of Science, Doctor of Medicine, Fellow of the
21 Royal College of Psychiatrists, Diploma of Psychological
22 Medicine, Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.
23 Q. You have given evidence to the Inquiry on 2nd September.
24 Had you, before you gave evidence, interviewed
25 Mrs Kelly?

161
1 A. I had.
2 Q. And had she provided information to you to the effect
3 that Dr Kelly had confided in her his belief that his
4 mother, who had suffered a stroke, might have committed
5 suicide although an open verdict had been recorded at
6 the inquest?
7 A. Yes, she did.
8 Q. That was not adduced in your oral evidence to
9 the Inquiry on 2nd September. At that stage, what was
10 your view about its possible relevance?
11 A. I think the relevance of that fact was extremely
12 uncertain and would have been speculation to have put
13 forward.
14 Q. Have you since you gave evidence on 2nd September
15 received further information?
16 A. I have.
17 Q. And what is that further information?
18 A. I have received three items of information. One is
19 a copy of a letter that was sent by Martin Hemming,
20 legal adviser to the Ministry of Defence, to the
21 solicitor for the Inquiry on 22nd September. Another
22 piece of information was a copy of the register of
23 Dr Kelly's mother's death, the register entry I should
24 say, and the third was a copy of an entry by a general
25 practitioner in Leeds on Dr Kelly when he was a --

162
1 presumably a student at Leeds University in 1964.
2 Q. Turning first to the letter from the legal adviser to
3 the Ministry of Defence. What relevant information does
4 that disclose?
5 A. I will read what it says. It says:
6 "I enclose two extracts from Dr Kelly's vetting file
7 which were prepared based on a report prepared by the
8 investigating officer handling his initial positive
9 vetting clearance in 1985. The first records an
10 interview on 20th November 1985 with Dr Kelly in which
11 he referred to his mother's death."
12 The relevant passage, quoting from the letter,
13 reads:
14 "'Dr Kelly said his mother died by her own hand in
15 1964, never having remarried. For many years prior to
16 her death she suffered from depression and he has little
17 doubt that the verdict of the coroner at the inquest
18 into her death that the balance of her mind was
19 disturbed was correct.'"
20 Q. Was there any other information in the letter?
21 A. Yes, there is a -- as follows:
22 "The second extract --
23 LORD HUTTON: I think there should be no reference to
24 anyone's name, Professor Hawton, or to any particular
25 locality.

163
1 A. I understand. The second extract reports an interview
2 on 28th November with a friend of Dr Kelly who had known
3 him for many years, who he had nominated as one of his
4 character referees. I am quoting here. The relevant
5 passage seems to be as follows:
6 "The main incident in their lives that had brought
7 them ..."
8 Sorry:
9 "He thought that the main incident in their lives
10 that had brought them closer friendship was that their
11 mothers each took their own life within a short period
12 of each other. They were in many ways able to give each
13 other encouragement and help following these tragedies,
14 which helped them to develop a closer bond of friendship
15 between them."
16 Then another following extract:
17 "He recalls the death of his mother [here one
18 assumes he is referring to Dr Kelly, Dr Kelly's mother],
19 which occurred at a time during his student days at the
20 University of Leeds and was known to be engrossed in his
21 studies and whilst the tragedy distressed him, he
22 appeared to ride the period well and at no time when
23 [they] were together did he display any mental reaction
24 to this unfortunate matter. In fact, the referee said
25 'he can be considered a well balanced person'."

164
1 MR DINGEMANS: Turning to the second piece of information
2 which I think you have told us was entry on the death
3 register. Can you identify any relevant and only
4 relevant extracts?
5 A. This concerns, as I said earlier, Margaret Kelly's
6 death, that is Dr Kelly's mother's death, on
7 13th May 1964, and the cause of death is stated as
8 bronchopneumonia, that is a chest infection due to
9 barbiturate poison, and an open verdict was given.
10 Q. So it was an open verdict?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. And the final piece of information, I think you referred
13 to some GP records.
14 A. Yes, there is a GP record just dated May 1964, the
15 specific date is not given. I think one can deduce it
16 was following Dr Kelly's mother's death. It reads as
17 follows: "Insomnia following death of mother". Then
18 there is an indication that a tranquilliser was
19 prescribed.
20 Q. In what ways might this further information be relevant?
21 A. I think it is uncertain whether this adds anything
22 further to the information that I had already had at the
23 time of my previous appearance at the Inquiry.
24 Q. Are there three possible ways in which suicide in
25 a family can potentially be relevant?

165
1 A. Yes, indeed. The first way is fairly clear, and that is
2 through transmission through generations, in other words
3 from parents to children, of severe mental illnesses
4 which are known to be associated with risk of suicide,
5 and the evidence suggests this is largely a genetic
6 transmission. The sorts of illnesses one is referring
7 to here are manic depressive illness, for example,
8 severe depression, alcoholism and so on.
9 Q. From what we have heard about Dr Kelly there does not
10 appear to be any evidence of that, is that right?
11 A. No, I do not think this applies. There is certainly no
12 evidence that he had significant mental illness, either
13 at the time of his death or previously.
14 Q. The second way in which it might be relevant?
15 A. Well, the second way -- and we get on to slightly less
16 certain ground here -- is through transmission of --
17 through generations of certain personality
18 characteristics which might increase the risk of
19 suicide.
20 Q. In the past you told us that those characteristic traits
21 would be, for example, aggression, impulsiveness.
22 A. Hmm.
23 Q. Is there any evidence that Dr Kelly had those
24 personality traits?
25 A. Absolutely not, and indeed the reverse I would say.

166
1 Q. So we come to the third possible way. What is that?
2 A. Well, this gets into a much more uncertain area and this
3 is whether having a suicide in a family can affect an
4 individual within that family's attitude towards
5 suicide. There is virtually no research on this
6 somewhat for obvious reasons, in that it is difficult to
7 ascertain attitudes particularly in people who have died
8 by suicide themselves. But one can speculate that this
9 could have an effect on an individual but it might work
10 in one of two possible ways.
11 Q. What are those two ways?
12 A. Well, the first might be that if a person is in
13 a situation in which they are faced by apparently
14 insurmountable problems and are feeling hopeless and
15 suicidal, having had a family member commit suicide
16 might possibly make them somewhat more comfortable with
17 the idea of suicide. On the other hand, such a person
18 is likely to have intimate knowledge of the terrible
19 impact that suicide very often and usually has on
20 families, which may indeed actually serve to decrease
21 the likelihood of suicide in that individual.
22 Q. So in the light of those matters, can I relate those
23 back to your previous conclusions and ask you now, in
24 the light of all the evidence, to state your conclusions
25 or the summary of factors that you believe may have

167
1 contributed to Dr Kelly's death?
2 A. Well, I stick with the conclusions that I presented when
3 I appeared before. Firstly, that I think one major
4 factor was the severe loss of self esteem that he had
5 from feeling that people had lost trust in him and from
6 his "dismay" was the word I used before, maybe that was
7 an understatement, at being exposed in the media. And
8 I think the fact, as I think has now been generally
9 acknowledged, that he was a very private person made his
10 being in the media all the more stressful for him.
11 The second factor, I believe, was that he probably
12 was coming to fear that the prospects for continuing his
13 previous work were diminishing and it is possible that
14 he feared he would lose his job altogether, perhaps
15 particularly when he saw some of the communications that
16 he had received on the morning of his death.
17 And thirdly I think the effect of this on him would
18 have been to have filled him with a profound sense of
19 hopelessness. I think another very relevant factor, as
20 I said when I appeared before, was his private nature,
21 his dislike of sharing personal problems and feelings
22 with other people; and according to several accounts, he
23 had become increasingly withdrawn during the -- into
24 himself during the period shortly before his death which
25 meant that I think he became even less accessible or

168
1 less able to discuss his problems with other people.
2 Q. And those remain your conclusions?
3 A. They do.
4 MR DINGEMANS: Thank you, my Lord.
5 LORD HUTTON: Mr Lloyd-Jones, do you have any questions?
6 MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, no.
7 LORD HUTTON: Thank you. Thank you very much indeed
8 Professor.
9 MR DINGEMANS: My Lord as my learned friend Mr Gompertz has
10 negotiated an extension, that concludes the evidence for
11 today.
12 LORD HUTTON: Very well.
13 MR DINGEMANS: I am completely wrong, I am sorry, it is
14 Mr Hatfield.
15 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
16 MR DINGEMANS: Sorry, my Lord.
17 LORD HUTTON: I think perhaps this will be a convenient time
18 for us to take a break. Thank you very much.
19 (3.25 pm)
20 (Short Break)
21 (3.30 pm)
22 MR RICHARD PAUL HATFIELD (called)
23 Examined by MR LLOYD-JONES
24 Q. Mr Hatfield, is your full name Richard Paul Hatfield?
25 A. It is.

169
1 Q. Are you the Personnel Director of the Ministry of
2 Defence?
3 A. I am.
4 Q. Is it right you have given evidence to the Inquiry on
5 I think three previous occasions?
6 A. Yes, it is.
7 Q. Mr Hatfield, did you receive, yesterday, a log of
8 telephone calls made by Dr Kelly on 8th July?
9 A. I did.
10 Q. Were you then able to compare that log of calls with
11 technical records that were available to you?
12 A. Yes, I was.
13 Q. And as a result of that, did you obtain a more complete
14 picture of the sequence of events leading up to the
15 release of the press statement on 8th July?
16 A. Yes, I was able to produce a more complete and detailed
17 picture of that afternoon.
18 Q. As a result, did you produce a new witness statement?
19 A. I did.
20 Q. And was that witness statement volunteered to
21 the Inquiry this morning?
22 A. It was.
23 Q. Can you assist us as to where you were in the early
24 afternoon of 8th July?
25 A. I was on a tour of one of my directorates in the

170
1 building in which I work.
2 Q. Did you have any contact with Dr Kelly earlier that day?
3 A. Yes, I had spoken to him on my mobile -- he had called
4 me on his mobile to my mobile at 8.30 that morning from
5 RAF Honnington.
6 Q. What was the purpose of that call?
7 A. That was following up the conversation we had at the end
8 of the meeting the previous afternoon, and we had agreed
9 he should go and complete his training but before he
10 started it on the morning of the 8th he should check
11 that there is no reason why he should not go ahead, that
12 I did not need to recall him to London for a meeting or
13 something like that.
14 Q. In the early afternoon you were at one of the
15 directorates, and what happened?
16 A. I was called back by my secretary from this tour at some
17 time just after 3.30 in the afternoon.
18 Q. What did you do then?
19 A. I had been summoned back by the Permanent Secretary's
20 office and the first thing I did was to ring that office
21 and talk to Dominic Wilson who explained to me it was
22 expected that MoD would need to make a statement about
23 Dr Kelly, although unnamed at that stage, that evening
24 and I was going to be asked to clear the text with
25 Dr Kelly when it was available.

171
1 Q. Did you see the text at that point?
2 A. No, I did not see the text at that point although
3 Dominic read over to me what I think was probably the
4 text as it had come back from a meeting in No. 10,
5 although it was not the final draft.
6 Q. Did you then make contact with Dr Kelly?
7 A. I did.
8 Q. Do you know what time that was?
9 A. The MoD records tell me it was precisely 15.58. I rang
10 him hoping to catch him before he left RAF Honnington,
11 since it would be easier to talk to him if he was not on
12 the road. In fact I got his mobile voicemail at 15.58
13 and left a message on it.
14 Q. What was the message?
15 A. Well, the message was, in substance, that I wanted to
16 talk to him as soon as possible about the possible
17 release of a statement and talk to him about the text of
18 that statement.
19 Q. Now that you have seen the record of Dr Kelly's mobile
20 phone, do you know what happened after that?
21 A. Yes, the mobile phone record that was disclosed to me
22 yesterday shows he called his voicemail at 16.12 and
23 then called me back at 16.14 again on my mobile,
24 although I was in my office.
25 Q. What did Dr Kelly say?

172
1 A. Dr Kelly first of all told me that he had been driving
2 down a fast road, I think he said a dual carriageway, it
3 might have been a motorway, when his mobile had gone off
4 15 minutes earlier and he had to get to somewhere where
5 he could stop in order to return my call.
6 Q. What did you have to say to him?
7 A. I then essentially repeated the basic message I had
8 given him on the voicemail and told him that although
9 I did not have the text at the moment, the statement was
10 likely to be slightly longer than the one we had
11 discussed as a contingency text the day before because,
12 in particular, I had noted that it was going to say
13 a little bit more about what he had told us he had said
14 to Andrew Gilligan, and that was what I wanted to talk
15 to him about in particular.
16 Q. Did you say what the Ministry of Defence was proposing
17 to do with the statement?
18 A. I said that I was expecting it to be issued that
19 evening. At this stage I did not know anything more
20 precise than that.
21 Q. Did you have a draft at that stage?
22 A. No, I did not have a draft at that stage.
23 Q. What did you say to Dr Kelly you proposed to do about
24 it?
25 A. I said that we would need to talk again in half an hour

173
1 or so; and he suggested that by then he ought to be
2 getting to somewhere where it would be much more
3 convenient for him to talk, and we agreed to make
4 contact again in half an hour or so.
5 Q. At that stage, by the time of that telephone
6 conversation, had you already seen the Q and A document?
7 A. At the time of that telephone conversation I had not
8 seen any Q and A document. Immediately after that
9 conversation I saw a draft, which I think the Inquiry
10 has had for a long time, which had been circulated
11 earlier that afternoon, amongst other people to me, that
12 had been sitting on my computer while I was out of my
13 office, and I passed two comments on minor questions in
14 that back but as it happens they were not taken into the
15 final Q and A.
16 Q. Do you know what time you sent those comments back?
17 A. Yes, I do. That was 16.35.
18 Q. When did you receive the final version of the statement?
19 A. I now know that I received it at 16.57.
20 Q. And in what form did you receive it?
21 A. Well, as a result of Pam Teare's evidence last Friday we
22 realised that it was sent by e-mail and eventually found
23 it on a terminal in my office and in the PUS's office.
24 Q. Was that version sent to you for amendment?
25 A. It was not sent to me for amendment but I did in fact

174
1 propose an amendment to it.
2 Q. To whom did you make the proposal?
3 A. I proposed the amendment initially to Dominic Wilson in
4 the PUS's office and he took it back into the PUS.
5 I suggested reinserting a reference which had been in
6 the draft which I had used the previous day, saying that
7 the meeting with Andrew Gilligan was unauthorised; and
8 that had been omitted in the draft that had been worked
9 up by the PUS.
10 Q. So that change was not in the typed copy which you had
11 received by e-mail?
12 A. It was not in my typed copy, no. I wrote it in in
13 manuscript.
14 Q. Did Dr Kelly ring you back?
15 A. I now know that actually I rang him back. I think by
16 this stage there was a certain degree of anxiety that
17 I should make contact. So I rang him to see whether he
18 was now available. The MoD records show that I got
19 through at 17.10.
20 Q. What did you say to him on this occasion?
21 A. On this occasion I essentially picked up where I left
22 off, said I now have the text. I read it through to
23 him, paragraph by paragraph. He said very little at
24 all, but each paragraph he indicated he had not got
25 a problem. When I finished running through the text, he

175
1 confirmed that he was content with it. I said to him
2 that --
3 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, may I just ask you: when you read the
4 statement to him, did you include the amendment that you
5 had suggested?
6 A. Yes, I did, my Lord, I included my manuscript amendment.
7 LORD HUTTON: Had that already been approved?
8 A. Yes, it had.
9 LORD HUTTON: I see. Was there just the one amendment that
10 you proposed?
11 A. I did talk about another one but we never made it.
12 MR LLOYD-JONES: I think your evidence was that you
13 initially proposed two amendments.
14 A. That was to the Q and A brief.
15 Q. That was the Q and A brief?
16 A. In fact I did discuss with Dominic Wilson another
17 possible change to the statement but we agreed it was
18 not worth making. I do not think he even put it to the
19 PUS. So that just dropped out of the reckoning.
20 Q. So you then propose two amendments to the statement, one
21 which was accepted?
22 A. That is right.
23 Q. It was that which was written in manuscript by you?
24 A. Correct.
25 Q. And you read that to Dr Kelly?

176
1 A. To Dr Kelly.
2 Q. Did you say anything to Dr Kelly about what was likely
3 to happen after the statement was released?
4 A. Yes. Yes, I did. Now that I am clear on the timing,
5 I can say that I did not make a general sort of
6 observation that I thought it would come out quite soon.
7 At 17.10 I knew that as soon as I reported a statement
8 had been agreed with no suggested amendments, the
9 process would begin absolutely immediately. So I told
10 him that it would go out very fast and I said to him
11 that I was certain it would be out by 7 o'clock.
12 I guessed, I think probably wrongly in the event, that
13 it would not make the 6 o'clock news.
14 Q. Was anything else said in that conversation?
15 A. I cannot remember anything else specific in that
16 conversation, although either in that one or in the one
17 at 16.15 I told him that when we put the statement out,
18 he should talk to the press office and to Bryan Wells
19 about support which, as I have mentioned in previous
20 evidence, I could not actually say which of the two
21 conversations I actually did that in.
22 Q. After that conversation, Mr Hatfield, did you take any
23 further action?
24 A. I reported straight back to the Permanent Secretary's
25 office within minutes and I have been told that the text

177
1 that I agreed with Dr Kelly was sent out from the
2 Permanent Secretary's office to the press office not
3 necessarily for release -- I am not sure about that, but
4 it was e-mailed to them at 17.18. And that was the end
5 of my involvement.
6 Q. Now your original account in your evidence to this
7 Inquiry was that you had reported to Sir Kevin that you
8 had cleared the statement with Dr Kelly before
9 5 o'clock.
10 A. That was my strong memory that we had completed the
11 process just before 5 o'clock. I had, effectively,
12 conflated the call at 10 past 5 with the one at quarter
13 past 4; and until we discovered when the text arrived
14 I did not realise that I had done that.
15 Q. Are you satisfied now that the account that you give,
16 with the benefit of the records, of the times of the
17 telephone calls is an accurate account of what occurred
18 that afternoon?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Could I very briefly raise one other matter with you?
21 You may have been in court earlier this afternoon when
22 Professor Hawton gave evidence in relation to some
23 information in DV files?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Can I just ask you about DV files? Are those personnel

178
1 files?
2 A. No, they are not personnel files, they are security
3 files.
4 Q. What is the difference between them?
5 A. They are held very separately, and under almost no
6 circumstances are they released to personnel
7 organisations because the information that is disclosed
8 in a positive vetting, or in modern parlance develop
9 vetting interviews, is meant to be on a very
10 confidential basis, for reasons that I think are fairly
11 obvious given the example this afternoon.
12 Q. Do you as Personnel Director have access to those DV
13 files?
14 A. Under normal circumstances, no. As my job also includes
15 overall responsibility for security and one of my
16 subordinates is the Director General of Security and
17 safety and the Defence Vetting Agency works for me using
18 my security line, I could, under exceptional
19 circumstances, have access to the files but I have not
20 ever had access to a file in this job.
21 Q. When did the information which has been referred to by
22 Professor Hawton this afternoon, that is the information
23 from the DV files, come to your attention?
24 A. The first information I had, and I do not have all the
25 information referred to this afternoon, was on

179
1 15th September in the early evening when --
2 Q. How did it come to your attention?
3 A. I understand that the file, which is normally held in
4 York at the Defence Vetting Agency, had been brought to
5 London to be held by the London based security
6 organisation working for me in case it was required or
7 information was required for this Inquiry. I believe
8 the Inquiry had separately directly approached the
9 agency to confirm that Dr Kelly's vetting status was
10 still extant at the time of his death. That is why they
11 brought it to London, just in case it was required.
12 The individual holding the file in London naturally
13 wanted to familiarise himself with the file in case
14 information was required, and also to familiarise
15 himself with the procedures if we needed to disclose
16 information from such a sensitive personal file. In
17 doing so, he came across the information that
18 Professor Hawton referred to this afternoon.
19 Q. Have you read the file?
20 A. No, I have not read the file.
21 Q. Were you aware of this information in July of this year?
22 A. In July I was completely unaware of it.
23 Q. Could any of the other Ministry of Defence witnesses to
24 this Inquiry have been aware of this information in July
25 of this year?

180
1 A. I do not believe so.
2 MR LLOYD-JONES: Thank you very much. I am grateful.
3 LORD HUTTON: Do you have any questions Mr Gompertz?
4 MR GOMPERTZ: Just a very few, my Lord, with your Lordship's
5 leave.
6 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
7 Cross-examined by MR GOMPERTZ
8 Q. Mr Hatfield, can you tell us first to what grade in the
9 MoD does DSTL grade 9 equate?
10 A. It does not equate to any existing grade. There are
11 three -- the modern MoD has two grades at band B, B1 and
12 B2. Between them I think they cover DSTL 9, 8 and 7.
13 Obviously because they are three to two, they do not
14 match exactly.
15 Q. Are you aware that in October 2002 Dr Kelly was promoted
16 to DSTL grade 9?
17 A. I am.
18 Q. Are you also aware, as Dr Shuttleworth told us, there
19 only twelve such persons in grade 9 in DSTL?
20 A. I am aware from Dr Shuttleworth's evidence of that, yes.
21 Q. Thank you. Can we come to the evidence about telephone
22 calls on 8th July? When you were last in the witness
23 box, may I summarise your evidence as follows: at
24 3.58 pm you called Dr Kelly in order to read the
25 statement to him. At about 4.30 Dr Kelly called you

181
1 back on his mobile and you read the statement, paragraph
2 by paragraph, to him over the course of about 10
3 minutes, and then at 5.10 pm you called Dr Kelly again
4 to say that the button had been pressed. Is that a fair
5 summary of what you were saying last time?
6 A. Not quite, but it is close. The timings were much
7 vaguer than that and, as you may remember, one of the
8 problems I was having was placing the only time of which
9 I had precision, the 16.35 Q and A in relation to my
10 telephone call.
11 Q. You had your own telephone records last week, did you
12 not?
13 A. I had my own telephone record last week, which is why
14 the 17.10 call appears. If you look at my original
15 evidence, it is not mentioned at all.
16 Q. Yes. I am talking about last week.
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. You had your telephone records so that you could time
19 the calls at 3.58 and 5.10?
20 A. My problem, last week, was I had been trying to obtain
21 the records of the matching phone calls for some time
22 without success. Therefore I was unable to give you the
23 complete sequence.
24 Q. Did you have records which showed calls at 3.58 and
25 5.10?

182
1 A. I did.
2 Q. Thank you. This week, today, you tell us that at 3.58
3 you called Dr Kelly and left a message; right?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. At 4.14 he called you back and the statement was not
6 read to him then but you said you would read it as soon
7 as you got it?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Right. And at 5.10 the statement was read; correct?
10 A. Correct.
11 Q. Is it because of the e-mail that has been discovered
12 that shows that you only got the statement at 4.56 pm
13 which has caused you to alter your evidence?
14 A. It is a combination of getting the e-mail and finding
15 out the details of the intervening phone calls which
16 I had had a problem with. If you actually refer to my
17 original evidence, and on the very first day of
18 the Inquiry you will find that I was having some
19 difficulty in placing that middle call between 16.15 and
20 16.45.
21 Q. You have now seen Dr Kelly's telephone bill, have you
22 not?
23 A. I have.
24 Q. Showing the second call to be only 1 minute and
25 8~seconds?

183
1 A. Indeed.
2 Q. Is it that that has jolted your recollection so
3 dramatically in this regard?
4 A. No. As I explained, I do not think it is dramatic at
5 all. My problem is I did not know when I had received
6 the text. When I found the text, it was actually rather
7 later in my memory on an exceptionally busy afternoon,
8 it was quite clear that I could not have read it to him
9 before I got it, if you see what I mean.
10 Q. It is also now quite clear, is it not, that there was no
11 call lasting 10 minutes?
12 A. No.
13 Q. There was one --
14 A. It is clear, yes.
15 Q. Yes. There was one lasting about 3 minutes?
16 A. No, there were actually three telephone calls. There is
17 one in which I leave a message, a quite substantial
18 message on his voicemail; there is a conversation at
19 16.14 in which I tell him that we are going to have
20 a statement and the gist of what has changed, and then
21 there is a conversation lasting almost 4 minutes in
22 which I read through a short statement to him, which add
23 up in total to not far short of 10 minutes. As I say,
24 I conflated the two.
25 Q. If we had not been able to check your evidence against

184
1 electronic records, the Inquiry would have been misled?
2 A. If I had not been given Dr Kelly's records I would not
3 have been able to complete the record. I have been
4 trying to get them for some time.
5 MR GOMPERTZ: Thank you.
6 Cross-examined by MR DINGEMANS
7 Q. Mr Hatfield, can I just pull up MoD/40/1, the e-mail you
8 received at 16.56? This is timed 16.56.
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. And it is from PUS PA, who is that?
11 A. That is one of the secretaries in Sir Kevin Tebbit's
12 office.
13 Q. Right. And it is to the Personnel Director.
14 A. It is actually to -- addressed to my private secretary.
15 Q. Right, "Personnel Director-PS".
16 A. One of the reasons why we took so long to discover it is
17 he was on leave that day so we were not looking in the
18 right place, if you like. It was sent -- it was read by
19 my personal secretary and brought in to me although
20 I think not the covering sheet, just the attachment, and
21 therefore we were looking in the wrong place when we
22 were looking for e-mails earlier.
23 Q. That shows that you did not have the press statement at
24 16.15.
25 A. Well, that is not conclusive. That was one of our

185
1 problems because until it was drawn to my attention that
2 it might have arrived by e-mail, I thought it might well
3 have arrived by fax in which case it could have arrived
4 considerably earlier. But we do not think it did arrive
5 by fax.
6 Q. You had had it or had had the latest version read out to
7 you at about, I think you say, 3.30-ish or something?
8 A. No, it would have been just before I called Dr Kelly at
9 4 o'clock, between 3.30 and 4 o'clock.
10 Q. Now, you left a message on Dr Kelly's voicemail?
11 A. I did.
12 Q. Do you know how long that message was?
13 A. The telephone records show it was I think 1 minute
14 16 seconds.
15 Q. Okay. What did you say on that voicemail?
16 A. I said who I was, that I was trying to contact him
17 because the MoD -- I had been told that the MoD needed
18 to make a statement that evening and that I wanted to
19 talk to him about the content of that statement.
20 Q. Did you say why the MoD needed to make a statement that
21 evening?
22 A. I do not think I did in the voicemail.
23 Q. Because we have seen the interview notes on 7th July and
24 although there is discussion about a possible press
25 statement --

186
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. -- no reasons are given, as it were.
3 A. No, because on 7th July it was against any sort of range
4 of reasons.
5 Q. Absolutely.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Then you have a telephone conversation at 16.14?
8 A. Correct.
9 Q. And if we call up FAM/11/2, this is redacted extracts of
10 the mobile phone bill, and the telephone conversation
11 appears to last 1 minute 8 seconds.
12 A. That is how I read it too although my copy was very
13 indistinct.
14 Q. You know what the numbers are, I do not. In relation to
15 that -- it does not look like we are going to get it --
16 what did you discuss in that 1 minute 8 seconds?
17 A. First of all, as I explained, Dr Kelly told me why he
18 had not been able to speak to me 15 minutes earlier.
19 I repeated, though no doubt more briefly since he had
20 already heard it, the general message of why I was
21 calling and I told him that the statement would be --
22 looked as if it would be slightly different and slightly
23 longer than the one we had discussed the day before.
24 And my memory, because this is something I discussed
25 with Dominic Wilson when he read it to me, was I had

187
1 been struck in particular by the fact that we wanted to
2 give more of his account of what he had told us about
3 his meeting with Andrew Gilligan.
4 Q. With Andrew Gilligan. So during that conversation,
5 1 minute 8 seconds, you do not explain the reason that
6 the MoD are going to issue the press statement?
7 A. No, because I am not even sure that I am entirely clear
8 of the reason myself. I mean, I was, as it were,
9 clearing the statement.
10 Q. No, no, I appreciate your job was to clear the
11 statement. No-one told you why they were going to issue
12 this press statement?
13 A. Not precisely.
14 Q. Do you know now why?
15 A. My understanding was that it was linked to the need to
16 say something before particularly ISC hearings -- not
17 involving Dr Kelly, but because the ISC was going to
18 hear matters the following day and it was felt the
19 Government had to say something before that. But since
20 I was not involved in the ISC business, it was not
21 entirely clear to me.
22 Q. So you did not discuss the reasoning with Dr Kelly?
23 A. I may have offered him the explanation I just gave you
24 but it would have been my assumption, not what I had
25 been specifically told.

188
1 Q. Obviously qualified because you did not really know, you
2 were not in the loop on that?
3 A. Correct.
4 Q. Do you recollect whether Dr Kelly said anything about
5 the reasoning or you cannot recollect?
6 A. No, my recollection of this whole sequence of
7 conversations was essentially, if you like, reluctant
8 acceptance of the inevitable starting to happen, but we
9 never discussed exactly why because Dr Kelly never asked
10 me, to be honest.
11 Q. No, so his attitude was reluctant acceptance of the
12 inevitable?
13 A. That is how I read it over a telephone call, yes.
14 Q. From what he was saying?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. The main difference you highlight at 16.14 is the fact
17 that the discussion with Mr Gilligan is going to be
18 longer, because that is what struck you?
19 A. That is what struck me when I had not seen the text, but
20 I had it read to me.
21 Q. Then you get it at 16.56, we have seen that on the
22 computer.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. You have another conversation with him at 17.10?
25 A. Correct.

189
1 Q. How long does that one last?
2 A. That one appears to last, from the record, for 3 minutes
3 and 49 seconds.
4 Q. Reading through MoD/1/67, which is the statement as
5 issued, that was almost the statement that had been read
6 by Mr Wilkins to you, I think there was one change that
7 you suggested that was accepted; is that right?
8 A. When he read it to me I am not sure exactly what it
9 looked like because that was the draft, I think, before
10 they had finished working on it in the office.
11 Q. Right. But it was pretty close to this then or you
12 cannot --
13 A. The general shape was very much the same. If this is
14 the published statement, it is exactly the same as the
15 text that was sent to me except for the insertion of the
16 words "it was an unauthorised meeting" and the change of
17 grammar that follows at the beginning of the next
18 sentence.
19 Q. To read this, how long do you think it takes to read
20 this?
21 A. The honest answer --
22 Q. Have you tried?
23 A. I have of course tried. The honest answer is if I was
24 reading it normally I would do it in probably under
25 2 minutes, because I speak very fast. I slowed down on

190
1 this occasion, and I am sure that I would be well within
2 3 minutes and 49 seconds.
3 Q. Now, when you had read the text, broadly similar to
4 this, whatever changes might have been made, what had
5 struck you was that the bit about Mr Gilligan's contact
6 had been extended from the one you had been discussing
7 the night before?
8 A. That was the most obvious thing that struck me.
9 Q. Indeed you shared that impression with Dr Kelly,
10 perfectly properly?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. As a consequence, Dr Kelly himself might well have
13 formed the view that the main difference between the
14 press statement he was shown on 7th July and the one
15 that was going out on 8th July, the main difference was
16 likely to be the contact with Mr Gilligan was more fully
17 explained?
18 A. He might well have done. Indeed -- I think whether or
19 not it is the main difference, I think it probably is
20 the most important difference.
21 Q. Certainly so far as the Government is concerned; but as
22 far as --
23 A. Sorry, I was going to say in relation to clearing the
24 statement I think that is the most important, because we
25 would be attributing to Dr Kelly words that he had said

191
1 to us and that is one thing that I do think we require
2 his explicit consent for. That is why I said it is the
3 most important. So I would have very specifically
4 wanted Dr Kelly to be content that we described him in
5 the way that he found -- described what he said to us in
6 a way that was acceptable.
7 Q. So in the 3 minutes 50 seconds, I cannot recollect, you
8 say you had the conversation with, or the records say
9 you had the conversation with him?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. That was the most important thing to confirm with
12 Dr Kelly?
13 A. That was the single most important thing because that
14 was -- as it is essentially reported speech of Dr Kelly
15 and therefore he has an absolute right to agree to that.
16 Q. Did you point out to him or comment on the fact that
17 once you read paragraph 3, have a bit of time to read it
18 rather than have it dictated on the telephone, it
19 obviously includes particulars that are likely to assist
20 the press in identifying you?
21 A. No, I did not say that to him although I did draw his
22 attention to it because since I am not or was not then
23 an expert on Dr Kelly's career, I wanted to make sure
24 that it was accurate. So he did have his attention
25 drawn to it but not, I admit, in the sense that you

192
1 suggest, but it was specifically drawn to his attention.
2 Q. Because now we have been able to tidy up timings in the
3 light of all the records, what we have seen from the
4 interview, and we have been through it again with
5 Dr Wells this afternoon, is on 7th July it said you may
6 need to make a press statement; at that stage you do not
7 know why.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. For perfectly understandable reasons.
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. And that his name might come out. Dr Kelly is recorded
12 as saying: I know it might come out, Olivia Bosch
13 recognised some of my words. At that stage, one gets
14 the impression of a person about whom a press statement
15 may be made and who has the view that his name may or
16 may not come out because people may or may not recognise
17 him?
18 A. That is not quite, I think, what I said in my previous
19 evidence. I think you are quite right to say that he
20 had a view that a statement might or might not be made
21 and it might or might not be made in various
22 circumstances. However, I have said previously that
23 I am confident that he thought that it was very likely,
24 possibly even more than that by the end of that
25 interview, that in some form or other his name would

193
1 come out not least because it was becoming increasingly
2 likely he would appear before a Select Committee; but
3 I agree it was not necessarily going to come out in the
4 form of a statement.
5 Q. Not in a statement nor through, you know, the way in
6 which Q and A material is used, perfectly properly, by
7 press officers to answer questions, nor indeed through
8 the Ministry of Defence confirming your name?
9 A. Well, all those were possibilities, but it depended on
10 what actually happened on the Monday afternoon. On the
11 Tuesday afternoon I was telling him that things had
12 moved on; and that was the purpose of the call.
13 Q. We now know the timings more specifically, and we now
14 know that you had had, at least on your screen, the
15 Q and A, and indeed I think you have made a couple of
16 comments on it by this time?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Are you able, now, to be sure whether or not you
19 mentioned the Q and A material to Dr Kelly?
20 A. I cannot be absolutely sure, but I do not think that
21 I did.
22 Q. Finally, and I am sorry really to use you for these
23 purposes, but these are documents that have come to us
24 yesterday from the Ministry of Defence from further
25 e-mails. Can I just show you MoD/44/15? I am not going

194
1 to ask you to comment on it because it does not go
2 through you, but it is a document that has been
3 disclosed. It is from SOFS PA3. You are in a much
4 better position than I to tell me who that is.
5 A. Yes, that is one of the secretaries in the Secretary of
6 State's office.
7 Q. Right. To D News CPO?
8 A. That -- I should just emphasise these are actually going
9 to terminals, it does not necessarily mean that certain
10 people are there. D News CPO, I think would be
11 Kate Wilson.
12 Q. I rather inferred that because we see "Kate" at the top.
13 A. Ah, yes.
14 Q. Then:
15 "We spoke. Herewith draft letter to Gavyn Davies.
16 Is this consistent with the Campbell suggestion this
17 morning?"
18 We have also seen a letter that has been e-mailed
19 from Mr Campbell from the Garden Rooms to the Ministry
20 of Defence:
21 "Jonathan Powell has separately suggested to
22 S of S..."
23 I imagine that is Mr Hoon; is that right?
24 A. Yes, that is.
25 Q. "... that we should simply name our man, but left the

195
1 decision to Mr Hoon who has not yet reached a final
2 view."
3 That is 9th July at 10.24 in the morning.
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. I am sorry, as it were, to introduce it through you.
6 I do not imagine that anyone mentioned that e-mail to
7 you at the time?
8 A. No, I have never seen it before.
9 MR DINGEMANS: Thank you very much, my Lord.
10 LORD HUTTON: Do you have any re-examination Mr Lloyd-Jones?
11 MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, no, thank you very much.
12 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Hatfield.
13 A. Thank you, my Lord.
14 LORD HUTTON: Mr Dingemans, that concludes the evidence.
15 MR DINGEMANS: This time I am right, my Lord.
16 LORD HUTTON: Then we will hear Mr Gompertz tomorrow morning
17 as the first submission, is that the position? Yes,
18 very well.
19 MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, if we start at 10.15 and if people
20 keep to the timetables they have promised we will still
21 finish by 4.30.
22 LORD HUTTON: Yes. We will hope to do that. I should say
23 that we will sit tomorrow morning at 10.15 and rise at
24 12 noon and sit again at 1.15. Whilst I hope the
25 submissions will be concluded tomorrow, these are

196
1 important matters and if anyone feels it essential to
2 exceed their time limit I will understand that, but
3 I hope very much that counsel -- I think the times have
4 been discussed with them -- will be able to keep to the
5 timetable.
6 On that basis, ladies and gentlemen, we will adjourn
7 now and sit again at 10.15
8 (4.05 pm)
9 (Hearing adjourned until 10.15 am the following day)
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

197
1 INDEX
2 PAGE
3 MR GAVYN DAVIES (called) ....................... 3
4
5 Examined by MR CALDECOTT ..................... 3
6
7 Cross-examined by MR SUMPTION ................ 11
8
9 Cross-examined by MR DINGEMANS ............... 49
10
11 MR PATRICK LAMB (called) ........................ 59
12
13 Examined by MISS LIEVEN ...................... 59
14
15 Cross-examined by MR GOMPERTZ ................ 75
16
17 DR BRYAN HARRY WELLS (called) .................... 90
18
19 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 90
20
21 Cross-examined by MR GOMPERTZ ................ 116
22
23 MR JAMES HARRISON (called) ....................... 143
24
25 Examined by MR KNOX .......................... 143

198
1
2 WING COMMANDER JOHN CLARK (called) ............... 151
3
4 Examined by MR KNOX .......................... 151
5
6 MR NICHOLAS RUFFORD (called) ..................... 155
7
8 Examined by MR KNOX .......................... 155
9
10 PROFESSOR KEITH EDWARD HAWTON .................... 163
11 (called)
12
13 Examined by MR DINGEMANS ..................... 163
14
15 MR RICHARD PAUL HATFIELD (called) ................ 171
16
17 Examined by MR LLOYD-JONES ................... 171
18
19 Cross-examined by MR GOMPERTZ ................ 183
20
21 Cross-examined by MR DINGEMANS ............... 187
22
23
24
25

199

<< Back