Hearing Transcripts

1 Monday, 18th August 2003
2 (10.30 am)
3 LORD HUTTON: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Mr Knox,
4 yes.
5 MR KNOX: My Lord, the next witness is Miss Pamela Teare.
6 MISS PAMELA TEARE (called)
7 Examined by MR KNOX
8 Q. Miss Teare, could you tell the Inquiry your full name
9 and occupation?
10 A. My name is Pamela May Teare and I am currently Director
11 of News at the Ministry of Defence.
12 Q. How long have you been working in the Civil Service?
13 A. I have been in the Civil Service for nearly 25 years.
14 Q. How long have you been working in the Government
15 Information and Communications Service?
16 A. Since September 1986.
17 Q. What is your current post?
18 A. My current post is Director of News in the Ministry of
19 Defence.
20 Q. When did you take that post up?
21 A. I began that post in November 2002.
22 Q. Before then, which press offices, if any, had you worked
23 in?
24 A. I had worked in press offices in the Home Office, in the
25 Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in the Department of

1
1 Trade & Industry and in the Department of Transport.
2 Q. It would be fair to say you are reasonably experienced
3 in that field?
4 A. Reasonably.
5 Q. In your current post, what do your responsibilities
6 cover?
7 A. My responsibilities cover a number of areas. I have
8 responsibility for the media operations team, which
9 plans and implements the media arrangements that take
10 place during a military operation. They also deal with
11 documentaries, approaches for documentaries on broad
12 defence issues. I deal with the press office and
13 I also -- when I say "deal" I mean I am responsible for
14 the press office and I am also responsible for the
15 network of press officers around the country.
16 Q. In broad terms what are the functions of the press
17 office?
18 A. Essentially the press office are there to deal with
19 media enquiries, to produce handling plans, to rebut
20 incorrect stories, to -- well, the normal range of media
21 activities really.
22 Q. Could you explain, what is the structure of the press
23 office and who does it report to?
24 A. The press office reports to the chief press officer and
25 there are three teams, each one led by a senior

2
1 information officer, and they are responsible for
2 particular subject areas.
3 Q. And who does the chief press officer report to?
4 A. She reports to me.
5 Q. And who, in turn, do you report to?
6 A. I report to the Director General of Corporate
7 Communications.
8 Q. Who is that?
9 A. Tony Pawson.
10 Q. In the course of your responsibilities do you talk to
11 Ministers or senior officials at all?
12 A. Yes, part of my responsibility is to advise Ministers
13 and senior officials directly on media related issues.
14 Q. Which Ministers would you expect to advise on such
15 issues?
16 A. I would certainly expect to advise the Secretary of
17 State but also the other Ministers if they were handling
18 issues that were very high profile or difficult.
19 Q. When you say the Secretary of State, that would be
20 Geoffrey Hoon?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. On a typical day what would you spend most of your time
23 doing, on a typical day in the office?
24 A. It is quite difficult to generalise, I guess, but
25 I would often have a very brief meeting in the morning

3
1 with the Secretary of State. I would then have the
2 morning meeting with all of the press office and other
3 representatives from the corporate communications
4 directorate where we would run through the press
5 cuttings, identify key issues of the day and also go
6 through the diary to see what was happening.
7 Q. When you say the diary, whose diary?
8 A. Sorry, our own diary, you know the press office diary
9 which has all the events for that day to make sure that
10 everything was in place. Again on a typical day,
11 I would often be involved in policy discussions, policy
12 meetings to advise on media aspects; and sometimes, say
13 if we had oral questions in the House, I would go over
14 to the House of Commons for that or attend Parliamentary
15 debates. It is quite difficult to pin down what
16 a typical day may be.
17 Q. You will obviously know about the piece that
18 Andrew Gilligan put out on 29th May on the Today
19 Programme. Were you in England at the time that piece
20 went out in the morning?
21 A. I was actually just leaving that morning to go on
22 holiday.
23 Q. And for how long did you go on holiday?
24 A. I returned to the office on 9th June.
25 Q. Are you able to say whether the Ministry of Defence

4
1 press office itself put out any rebuttals of the piece
2 by Mr Gilligan?
3 A. No, the Ministry of Defence did not issue a rebuttal on
4 that.
5 Q. In other words your press office did not issue any
6 rebuttals?
7 A. No.
8 Q. That, as I understand it, was done by the No. 10 press
9 office?
10 A. That is right.
11 Q. Did the Ministry of Defence press office put out any
12 rebuttals of Susan Watts' piece which appeared on
13 Newsnight on 2nd June and again on 4th June?
14 A. No, we did not.
15 Q. It is clear from various press clippings which can be
16 made available that there were a number of press stories
17 at the beginning of June, essentially focusing on the
18 dissatisfaction within the intelligence community about
19 the production of the September 2002 dossier. Were you
20 aware of those press stories by the time you got back?
21 A. Not by the time I got back, no; and in fact I think, as
22 is often the case, if you have not actually heard
23 broadcasts et cetera and been there and discussed them
24 at the time they do not perhaps make the same impact on
25 you as if you had been there. But on my return I was

5
1 briefed by the chief press officer on the interview that
2 Adam Ingram had done on the Today Programme on 28th May.
3 Q. But you were not briefed on the various articles in the
4 press or on Susan Watts' story?
5 A. No.
6 Q. We know that on 28th June Ben Bradshaw gave an interview
7 on the Today Programme and the interview, I think that
8 was John Humphrys said that Mr Gilligan's story had been
9 checked with the Ministry of Defence before it had been
10 broadcast.
11 A. Hmm, hmm.
12 Q. Did you hear that interview?
13 A. Yes, I did.
14 Q. I think we can just look up the relevant passage. It is
15 CAB/1/382. I think this is part of the interview
16 between I think it is Mr Humphrys and Ben Bradshaw. You
17 should see, fairly near the end of the page at 382, some
18 italics where JH says:
19 "Well all right, no, I bow to you on that. Clearly
20 you, you work for the BBC, you talk to people every day
21 in the BBC as I do, I fully understand that. I thought
22 you were running a bit of a Government department but
23 there we are, you are spending your time talking to the
24 BBC, that is fine. But let me just tell you that what
25 we did before the Gilligan report was published, what

6
1 Andrew Gilligan did was he checked with the Ministry of
2 Defence. You say that you -- he called the Ministry of
3 Defence and told them the story was being run so they
4 had an opportunity to rebut it."
5 Now, did you speak to anyone about that aspect of
6 the interview on 28th June?
7 A. Yes. I heard the interview. I was surprised at the
8 categorical way the presenter had said that it had been
9 checked with the MoD because I certainly was not aware
10 of it. The chief press officer then rang me to discuss
11 this; and she explained to me that, you know, it was not
12 true, as indeed I had thought. She had been involved in
13 discussions with the Today Programme on the evening of
14 the 28th May and therefore was in a position to say what
15 had happened.
16 Q. Can I just ask you: who is the chief press officer?
17 A. My chief press officer is Kate Wilson.
18 Q. Was a press statement therefore drafted on behalf of the
19 MoD to deal with this point?
20 A. Yes, it was.
21 Q. I think we can go to MoD/9/12.
22 This is an e-mail which has been shown to us. As
23 I understand it, this is the original drafting; is that
24 right?
25 A. Yes. This e-mail formed the text of the statement that

7
1 was issued by the Ministry of Defence duty press
2 officer.
3 Q. And was a press statement therefore put out on the same
4 day in exactly the same terms as you see here?
5 A. Yes, the MoD statement comprised the comments we see
6 there.
7 Q. The crucial paragraph is the second paragraph:
8 "Andrew Gilligan did not call MoD to discuss either
9 WMD or the dossier. He spoke to the MoD about an
10 interview request for the following day on a different
11 issue altogether."
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. This then was followed by some further correspondence.
14 If you go to MoD/9/13, the next page along, there is
15 a letter from Richard Sambrook to Ben Bradshaw. It
16 would seem this letter must have been copied to the
17 press office, is that right?
18 A. Yes, I think it came either into the Secretary of
19 State's office or direct to us. But on the day that the
20 MoD issued the statement we were aware that Ben Bradshaw
21 was also going to write to the Today Programme and this
22 was the response to that letter.
23 Q. The BBC here set out what they say about it. There are
24 some markings down the left-hand side of the page. Do
25 you know who made those markings? Are they anything to

8
1 do with you?
2 A. No, as I gather they were made by Kate Wilson.
3 Q. You will notice the third of the markings looks like
4 "2.30" or possibly "10.30 pm -- Chris Howard to
5 Richard -- 2 mins on WMD."
6 A. That is 10.30. That is someone, I think it is
7 Chris Howard from the Today Programme talking to
8 Richard, who was Richard Whalley, our duty press officer
9 that evening, and he just rang and said, "Can we do two
10 minutes on WMD as well as cluster bombs?" and that was
11 it.
12 Q. In other words this appears to be the marking made on or
13 about presumably 29th June by someone in the press
14 office?
15 A. I am sorry?
16 Q. This marking here, this handwritten marking would have
17 been on or about 29th June as far as you are aware?
18 A. I would not have thought so. The 29th June was a Sunday
19 so it would have been made earlier that week. Sorry,
20 early the following week.
21 Q. We know that at MoD/9/14, Mr Hoon set out a response to
22 Mr Sambrook's letter --
23 A. Hmm, hmm.
24 Q. -- when he explains the MoD's side of the story and the
25 important passage for the present purposes is at

9
1 page 15. He sets out, on page 15, what he says the
2 relevant chronology was.
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. The essence of it is he says: you did not give us any
5 advance notice of my piece on WMD accusing us of
6 tampering with the dossier.
7 A. That is right, and the point was that when the programme
8 rang just to ask if they could add in a couple of
9 minutes on WMD, the only WMD issues that we were aware
10 of at the time concerned some comments that
11 Donald Rumsfeld had made about whether or when WMD might
12 be found in Iraq, and secondly stories that had been
13 circulating about the February dossier, otherwise known
14 as the "dodgy dossier". Those were the only two issues
15 we knew were current and Adam Ingram was briefed on
16 those accordingly.
17 Q. Do you know if there are any records on the basis of
18 which this letter was drawn up, that is to say any
19 records kept by the MoD?
20 LORD HUTTON: I think Mr Ingram made some reference, did he
21 not, to a single source for the 45 minutes claim?
22 A. He did, yes.
23 LORD HUTTON: But was he briefed on that, as far as you are
24 aware?
25 A. I did not hear the interview, but my understanding was

10
1 that, as I say, we were not expecting the story that
2 Andrew Gilligan rang and therefore -- well, until we
3 heard it at -- I think it was broadcast at 6.07.
4 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
5 A. So it was only on hearing that broadcast that we were
6 aware that the Minister would have to answer a question
7 on it. I think there was insufficient time to get him
8 briefed properly and he I think just sort of drew on
9 information he had had in relation to that in his own
10 head.
11 LORD HUTTON: I see. Thank you very much.
12 MR KNOX: Looking at the information we see on page 15 of
13 MoD/9, are there any notes or contemporary records on
14 the basis of which this document was drawn up? It looks
15 as if someone has kept notes which enabled them to say
16 the various times at which things were recorded.
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. But we do not have them at the moment.
19 A. Oh, right. When press officers are on duty at the
20 Ministry of Defence out of hours they log all their
21 calls. So the two calls that the programme made later
22 in the evening to the duty press officer are logged.
23 That was one, I think, that confirmed that they wished
24 to interview Adam Ingram, and the second one that said
25 could they have two minutes on WMD at the end.

11
1 Q. When you say "logged" there will be handwritten notes,
2 will there?
3 A. It is kept on the computer, there is a log.
4 Q. If you could turn to MoD/9/18, you will see a reply from
5 Mr Sambrook to Mr Hoon, replying to the letter that we
6 have just been looking at.
7 A. Hmm, hmm.
8 Q. And you will see he says:
9 "Well, if we fell short of what we believe to be
10 acceptable, we shall say so."
11 Then Mr Hoon replies at page 17 of MoD/9, the
12 previous page. In that letter, at MoD/9/17 Mr Hoon
13 says:
14 "I was extremely disappointed with last night's
15 decision by the BBC to drop the interview with me from
16 this morning's Today Programme. You may be aware that
17 I was asked on the programme to talk about
18 reconstruction in Iraq. I agreed to do this and also
19 for the opportunity to reply to the allegation that
20 Andrew Gilligan's story of 29th May was 'checked with
21 the MoD'. I understand that having seen the letter sent
22 to you yesterday evening, the programme decided against
23 an interview with me."
24 Were you at all involved with Mr Hoon in discussing
25 this aspect of the case?

12
1 A. I think I may have discussed with Kate Wilson, and his
2 private office, the fact that we thought it was worth
3 taking up that the Today Programme had dropped their
4 interview request for the Secretary of State because
5 they were not willing to give him an opportunity on air
6 to refute the claim that the original story had been
7 checked with the MoD --
8 Q. Is this the idea that the BBC wanted to interview
9 Mr Hoon but as soon as Mr Hoon said: well, I want to
10 correct the record, the BBC then withdrew its
11 invitation?
12 A. That is right. We had indicated the Secretary of State
13 was very happy to talk about reconstruction in Iraq and
14 in doing so he would also like the opportunity to talk
15 about the allegation that the story had been checked
16 with the MoD.
17 Q. Do you know if the BBC gave any reason for withdrawing
18 the invitation?
19 A. Again, I did not speak to them directly but it was
20 either this occasion or when the same thing happened the
21 following day, the Today Programme said that they were
22 not prepared to accept Mr Hoon on that basis and they
23 only liked one subject interviews.
24 Q. Moving on to MoD/9/19, were you copied in on this
25 correspondence, the letter from the BBC to Mr Hoon?

13
1 A. Yes, I was.
2 Q. Moving over to MoD/9/20 again, were you copied in on
3 this?
4 A. Yes, I was.
5 Q. Can you just explain what the purpose of this
6 correspondence was, from your point of view; what were
7 you trying to establish?
8 A. This, again, was a follow-up letter. We had been
9 through a similar procedure to the previous day, when
10 the Today Programme had asked to interview the Secretary
11 of State and then they had turned -- they had said no,
12 because he wanted a second chance to refute the claim
13 that the story had been checked with the MoD.
14 Q. If you move over to page 21, this is a letter from the
15 BBC, this time it seems, in the fourth paragraph down,
16 effectively apologising for not having kept a clear
17 account of the BBC's dealings with the MoD; and then,
18 over the page, at 22, you will see there is a further
19 letter from Mr Sambrook referring to a meeting he has
20 had with Mr Hoon on 9th July.
21 A. I think the meeting was actually on 8th July.
22 Q. Were you copied in on this correspondence?
23 A. I am sure I was, yes. It would be clear from the top.
24 Q. And were you in discussion with Mr Hoon as to how to
25 handle the issue with the BBC at this stage?

14
1 A. Well, I mean, I think that the meeting had taken place
2 on the 8th but then we had had this subsequent letter
3 that -- and I really -- I think that we sort of felt
4 that we reached a bit of an impasse on that, as you will
5 see that Mr Sambrook there says that the position is
6 unchanged, that their team "... genuinely believed they
7 outlined some details of the allegation but do not have
8 written notes to back that up [and] your team ...
9 genuinely believe insufficient detail was given."
10 Q. What was the purpose of the meeting on 8th July between
11 Mr Hoon and Mr Sambrook?
12 A. The point of the meeting was to sort of emphasise the
13 point and to show Mr Sambrook the log, the Ministry of
14 Defence duty press officer log so that he could see --
15 Q. Mr Hoon took that with him to the meeting, did he?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And he showed it to Mr Sambrook?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. We know that Dr Kelly wrote to his line manager on
20 30th June 2003 saying effectively he had spoken to
21 Mr Gilligan on 22nd May. When did you first become
22 aware that someone had come forward with this
23 explanation?
24 A. I first became aware of it in the late afternoon of
25 Friday 4th July.

15
1 Q. And were you told Dr Kelly's name at that point?
2 A. Yes, I was.
3 Q. And who told you?
4 A. Kate Wilson.
5 Q. Had you heard any gossip on this point before this?
6 A. No, none whatsoever. Kate had been called over to the
7 permanent secretary's office earlier on that Friday and
8 was informed of these events. I had been out at
9 a seminar that morning otherwise I would have been the
10 one to go rather than her. So it was when she came back
11 from that meeting she relayed this information to me.
12 Q. And the permanent secretary's name is?
13 A. Sir Kevin Tebbit.
14 Q. And what exactly did the chief press officer tell you
15 about this letter, that had come in from Dr Kelly?
16 A. She told me that he had come forward and admitted that
17 he had had an unauthorised contact with the media,
18 namely with Andrew Gilligan, that the matter of
19 45 minutes had cropped up, and also that Dr Kelly had
20 said that he had contact with -- over a number of
21 years -- quite a broad range of journalists. There may
22 have been some other details as well but those are the
23 ones that stick in my mind, at the time.
24 She also said that he had decided to come forward
25 because a friend of his -- I think he thought that

16
1 friend was in RUSI at the time -- had recognised some of
2 the comments that Andrew Gilligan had made to the FAC
3 about the source as being the sort of comments that
4 Dr Kelly himself might make.
5 Q. Did she tell you that Dr Kelly, in his letter, had
6 denied saying to Mr Gilligan that the Government had
7 sexed up the dossier?
8 A. She certainly said to me that Dr Kelly felt he was not
9 the source for the story.
10 Q. Did the chief press officer tell you anything else
11 about, for instance, how to handle this piece of
12 information?
13 A. She told me that during the discussions that had been
14 had in the permanent secretary's office, all parties
15 concerned were worried that this information might leak
16 in some way, get into the public domain in some way over
17 the weekend and that because of that a contingent press
18 line had been agreed for use if it was required.
19 Q. And what was that contingent press line?
20 A. I think the Inquiry has a copy of it, do you not?
21 Q. If you look at page MoD/1/62, I wonder if you can help
22 us and see if this is the right document?
23 A. No, that is the Q and A material.
24 Q. Sorry, MoD/1/51. Do you have that?
25 LORD HUTTON: Sorry, 51?

17
1 MR KNOX: 51:
2 "An individual working in the MoD has volunteered
3 that he met with Andrew Gilligan on 22 May to discuss
4 Iraq in general. This was one week before Gilligan's
5 story claiming that the Iraq dossier was 'sexed up'.
6 The account of the meeting given by this official does
7 not match the account given by Gilligan of his 'single
8 source'."
9 Is this the document?
10 A. That is the document.
11 Q. Do you know who drew this up?
12 A. I understand that it was provided by Richard Hatfield
13 and Martin Howard.
14 Q. In the event, a press announcement to this effect was
15 not made that evening, was it?
16 A. No, the purpose of this statement was not to make an
17 announcement. It was purely in case some of the story
18 got into the public domain. We would then have at least
19 something to offer or something to say. It was not
20 meant for proactive use.
21 Q. Why did you not make an immediate announcement?
22 A. Well, as I say, I was not privy to the meeting; but as
23 I understand it, the feeling was that, you know, we did
24 not really have enough facts. Dr Kelly had said very
25 clearly that he did not believe himself to be the

18
1 source. There were a number of discrepancies; and
2 I think really it was a bit too early to actually take
3 a view on what to do.
4 Q. Were any arrangements made on 4th July for a question
5 and answer briefing?
6 A. There was a very rough draft prepared but it was never
7 pursued because we actually, Kate and I, in the press
8 office did not have material on which to produce
9 a comprehensive document.
10 Q. Was that rough draft ever typed up?
11 A. It was, but it had big gaps in it because we just did
12 not have the information. And it was never circulated
13 for clearance.
14 Q. I do not think it has been provided to the Inquiry.
15 Does the document still exist somewhere?
16 A. I am not sure whether the -- if you know what I mean --
17 the original original does because I think it was built
18 on -- it was an evolving, working document. It was not,
19 as I say, anything that I felt was ready for use because
20 it had not been cleared by anybody.
21 Q. Do you think it would be possible, in due course, just
22 to check whether the original draft as prepared on
23 4th July is available?
24 A. Yes, most certainly.
25 LORD HUTTON: Miss Teare, may I ask you, you said there was

19
1 concern that Dr Kelly's name might leak out.
2 I appreciate you only came into this discussion after it
3 was reported to you that the chief press officer had had
4 a meeting with the PUS when you were away at a seminar.
5 Are you able to say from what source or sources you
6 thought the name might leak? Did you give that any
7 thought? I appreciate you may not and there may have
8 been the general feeling that the name might leak, but
9 did you yourself give any thought to the possible source
10 or sources from which the name might leak?
11 A. On Friday 4th?
12 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
13 A. I think it was a combination of things. The fact that
14 a colleague had identified some of Dr Kelly's remarks --
15 sorry, recognised from Mr Gilligan's evidence to the FAC
16 some of Dr Kelly's remarks or thought they could be
17 Dr Kelly's remarks. So already in the public domain
18 there were people out there that were speculating.
19 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
20 A. And similarly because he had volunteered that he was
21 a regular contact among quite a circle of journalists.
22 So given that this was an issue of such, you know,
23 political interest, then those were the sort of things
24 I had in mind as to be worried that it might leak.
25 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you very much.

20
1 MR KNOX: On Friday 4th July did you yourself tell anyone
2 that Dr Kelly had come forward?
3 A. No, I did not. I was given the information on the
4 strict understanding it would go no further.
5 Q. We know on Saturday 5th July an article appeared in
6 The Times which is at CAB/1/487. This is an article by
7 Mr Baldwin, saying that sources from inside the BBC
8 amongst other things are preparing to admit defeat.
9 Now, just looking at this article were you aware of
10 this article at the time it came out, that is on
11 Saturday 5th July?
12 A. Yes, I was.
13 Q. And in your view at the time, did it make any difference
14 to the position?
15 A. In my view, at the time, it actually heightened my
16 concerns that Dr Kelly's name could be emerging, because
17 there are a number of pointers there that perhaps, you
18 know, it was just with a bit of knowledge that there
19 appeared more pointers than -- to, you know, the average
20 reader of The Times. It did heighten my concern that
21 there was interest in the journalistic community in
22 identifying Andrew Gilligan's source and that they might
23 actually think it was Dr Kelly.
24 Q. Was there anything in particular in this article which
25 heightened that concern? Were there any particular

21
1 details that you thought made it more likely that
2 Dr Kelly was going to be identified very soon?
3 A. I think it was in relation to that he may be one of
4 a number of specialists helping search for WMD and the
5 implication that he might be in Iraq.
6 LORD HUTTON: But when you say that it heightened your
7 concerns, now are you able to be a little more specific
8 as to what underlay those concerns? I quite appreciate
9 one speaks in general where you were concerned that the
10 name would come up. Did you have any deeper concern or
11 what did those concerns relate to or perhaps you did not
12 pursue that particular line of thought. I quite
13 appreciate you are using the term in quite a general
14 way, I fully appreciate that.
15 A. By concern I suppose perhaps I mean given this
16 development, it had implications for needing to consider
17 how we would handle this whole issue.
18 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you.
19 MR KNOX: Can I put it this way: was there any fear on your
20 part that Dr Kelly's name would come out because you did
21 not want it to come out?
22 A. Certainly my position over that weekend was that I hoped
23 that any part of this subject would not come into the
24 public domain, because I felt that we did not have
25 sufficient information ready to handle it effectively

22
1 and the statement is very bald.
2 Q. Effectively your concern was really a mechanical
3 concern, namely if the name came out then you, in the
4 press office, would be in difficulties fielding
5 questions?
6 A. Yes, essentially, at that point, that was how I viewed
7 it.
8 Q. Do you know whether or not there were any particular
9 lines of communication between No. 10 or No. 10 press
10 office and Mr Baldwin who wrote this article?
11 A. I have no --
12 Q. The reason I say it is because there have been
13 suggestions in the press that there are particularly
14 close links between Mr Campbell and Mr Baldwin. Do you
15 know anything about that?
16 A. I have no knowledge of that.
17 Q. We know on 6th July the BBC made a press announcement
18 which is at CAB/1/376.
19 This is a statement by Gavyn Davies where he deals
20 with both the Gilligan story and also the Susan Watts
21 story. If you drop down to the ante-penultimate
22 paragraph on 376 beginning:
23 "We note that an entirely separate story was
24 broadcast by an unconnected BBC journalist on Newsnight
25 on 2nd June. This story reported very similar

23
1 allegations to those reported by Andrew Gilligan on the
2 Today Programme, but the story has not been singled out
3 for similar criticism by Government spokesmen."
4 Then, going over the page, you will note the final
5 paragraph:
6 "In summary, the governor is ultimately responsible
7 for ensuring BBC upholds highest standards of
8 impartiality and inaccuracy. We are wholly satisfied
9 BBC journalists and their managers have sought to
10 maintain the impartiality and accuracy during this
11 episode."
12 Before you saw this announcement, had you yourself
13 been aware of the Susan Watts piece on Newsnight?
14 A. No, I do not think I had actually.
15 Q. No-one presumably had therefore even discussed it with
16 you in the press office before you saw this
17 announcement?
18 A. That is right. Again the position was on dealing with
19 questions arising from the Andrew Gilligan report of
20 28th May about the dossier, MoD was not the lead
21 department. So as I say, I was away for the week it was
22 broadcast and also the MoD press office was not in the
23 lead in dealing with that.
24 Q. Did the reference to a story by an unconnected
25 journalist on Newsnight on 2nd June, did that have any

24
1 significance at the time you saw this announcement on
2 your part?
3 A. It was something I asked -- I had a look at the
4 transcript of it.
5 Q. You had a look at the transcript of what?
6 A. Sorry, the Susan Watts Newsnight broadcast on the Monday
7 I think it was.
8 Q. This was Sunday. So you come in on Monday and get hold
9 of a transcript of the Susan Watts broadcast?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Does anything occur to you as a result of that?
12 A. It was a point I had in my mind, but when it did take on
13 more significance was on Tuesday 8th when, for the first
14 time, I actually read Dr Kelly's letter to Mr Wells of
15 30th June and saw, from that, that he mentioned amongst
16 other contacts with journalists that he had a regular
17 contact with Susan Watts.
18 Q. And why did, then, that seem to be significant to you?
19 A. It seemed to be significant to me, as I say, because the
20 BBC had drawn attention to the fact that there were two
21 reports on basically similar allegations; and here again
22 Dr Kelly had indicated on the one hand with
23 Andrew Gilligan he had definitely had a meeting with him
24 and also pointed to a possible meeting with Susan Watts.
25 So that was just something I noted.

25
1 Q. Did you mention this point to anyone on 8th July?
2 A. Yes, I did. I mentioned it to the permanent secretary's
3 private secretary and --
4 Q. Is that Mr Wilson?
5 A. Yes, and I mentioned it, I think, to Martin Howard.
6 Q. And did they say anything in response to that point?
7 A. No, no, they just thought it was interesting as well.
8 Q. Moving back now to 7th July. You come in on the morning
9 of 7th July. Were you kept informed of current
10 developments at all?
11 A. During that day?
12 Q. On 7th July.
13 A. Yes I was.
14 Q. What were you told in the morning?
15 A. There was not a great deal in the morning. I recall
16 that I was told that over the weekend the permanent
17 secretary had written round to Whitehall again, having
18 seen the Times article and I cannot remember exactly
19 what time it was, but I was also given an indication
20 that Dr Kelly was going to be interviewed by
21 Richard Hatfield and Martin Howard and Bryan Wells that
22 afternoon.
23 Q. Did you know, in fact, he had already had one interview?
24 A. Yes, I did.
25 Q. And what about the press announcement? Was anything

26
1 done to the proposed press announcement which you had
2 previously prepared on 4th July, just in case?
3 A. Nothing was done to that during the day -- sort of
4 morning/early afternoon. And in any case, you know,
5 I had some other bits of my job to do. I mean I was not
6 just working on this, I had other meetings and things to
7 attend to.
8 Later, after the interview with Dr Kelly, the second
9 interview, the chief press officer and I reworked the
10 original press statement to make it into a more
11 proactive statement, something that we would offer.
12 Q. Before I come to what the statement might have been,
13 because I am not sure which of the various drafts it
14 was, can I just ask you this: once you had redrafted the
15 press statement in a way that you and the chief press
16 officer were happy, what did you then do with that draft
17 press statement? Did you show it to anyone?
18 A. No, I sent it to the private secretary to the permanent
19 secretary.
20 Q. Mr Wilson again?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Do you know whether that version was then sent over to
23 No. 10 or not?
24 A. My understanding was that it had been sent over, yes.
25 Q. And you gained that understanding from whom?

27
1 A. From Mr Wilson.
2 Q. I was trying to identify the various drafts we have been
3 given so far, I was trying to identify which version of
4 the redraft yours might have been. Can I ask you to go
5 to CAB/1/48. It might be that none of them are, but
6 perhaps you can help us. CAB/1/48.
7 Now, this is a handwritten note. I am not sure who
8 it is actually handwritten by, but:
9 "FAO Wendy -- duty clerk No. 10, Peter Blake ...
10 "Two draft statements attached. One based on the
11 defensive lines prepared on Friday [that would be Friday
12 4th July]. The other reflects further discussions today
13 but requires further checking and represents a higher
14 risk approach as we cannot be sure that he is Gilligan's
15 single source.
16 "Dominic Wilson, Private Secretary to
17 Sir Kevin Tebbit".
18 Have you seen this particular document before?
19 A. No I have not.
20 Q. Then, over the page at CAB/1/49 there appears to be
21 version 1 which I take to be the rather lower risk
22 approach. Now, just take a look at this. I think you
23 will see that the first three sentences are pretty much
24 the same as the announcement you had drafted on the
25 4th July.

28
1 A. I did not draft anything on the 4th July.
2 Q. Sorry, the press statement that you and the chief press
3 officer had put together as a possible statement.
4 A. I think you mean the one that had been prepared by
5 Richard Hatfield and Martin Howard.
6 Q. I apologise, yes. You will then see about five lines
7 down:
8 "The official has told us that he made no
9 allegations ..."
10 That appears to be a new entry. Are you able to say
11 whether or not this is your version?
12 A. No, that is not my version.
13 Q. Right. And then over the page at CAB/1/50 is another
14 version, version 2. You will see, at the top of the
15 page, there is a fax marking which makes it look as
16 though it was faxed over at 10.25 on 7th July. Do you
17 recognise this draft at all?
18 A. I recognise the draft itself without the amendments.
19 I do not know who made those amendments.
20 Q. If you leave the amendments alone, is that the draft
21 that you had redrafted on the 7th July?
22 A. I believe it is. Could you just show me the whole
23 document?
24 Q. Yes.
25 A. (Pause). Yes. That is the one that the chief press

29
1 officer and I drafted.
2 Q. It looks as if, although I might have to ask someone
3 else, it looks as if you had in fact drafted what they
4 regard as the higher risk draft and they began tampering
5 with it later on that night.
6 A. I cannot really comment on high risk because I would not
7 necessarily have used that description myself.
8 Q. Were you, yourself, copied in at all on for instance
9 this version of the redraft or proposed version of the
10 redraft with all these handwritten amendments?
11 A. I do not think so. I do not recall seeing that; but
12 certainly on the morning of the 8th I went over to the
13 permanent secretary's office and there were comments
14 received and a number of discussions about the draft.
15 I think the draft that was sort of used as the basis for
16 going forward was the draft that I had originally come
17 up with.
18 Q. Are you able to help us with this: whose handwriting is
19 this? Do you recognise it at all?
20 A. I do not know.
21 Q. If one then goes over to page 52 in the same bundle,
22 again you will see a further draft.
23 A. This is the note of the meeting with Richard Sambrook.
24 Q. Sorry, CAB/1/52. Again you will see there seem to be
25 some slightly different handwritten markings on this.

30
1 You do not have any idea whose these are?
2 A. No I do not.
3 Q. Just pausing on these documents here, you will see at
4 the foot of the page in 52, as on page 50, this entry:
5 "We assume that the Intelligence Service Committee
6 will take this into account in their enquiry should they
7 so wish."
8 Is that in fact a misprint for Intelligence and
9 Security Committee?
10 A. Yes. I have to say I do not recall having that sentence
11 in my original draft.
12 Q. I was going to ask you about that.
13 A. I think I am getting slightly confused about these
14 drafts because I was not really in a position to advise
15 on appearance before committees. That is outside my
16 remit really.
17 Q. So in other words when the draft left your offices and
18 the MoD on 7th July some time in the afternoon --
19 A. I think it would have been early evening on the 7th.
20 Q. -- we know they obviously do get across to No. 10, and
21 people within No. 10 start making suggested alterations
22 in hand.
23 A. I cannot say whether those suggestions were made at
24 No. 10 or elsewhere. I do not know.
25 Q. Right. But one thing that appears -- can we take this

31
1 as read: the version you sent over, at least when it
2 left your office, did not have this last paragraph:
3 "We assume the Intelligence Service Committee will
4 take this into account ..."?
5 A. It is certainly not in my recollection. I could
6 certainly check that, but I do not recall having that.
7 Q. Had anyone made any suggestions therefore to you --
8 I take it one can draw this inference: no-one had
9 suggested to you, when you were drawing up the revised
10 press statement on 7th July, that you should mention
11 anything about the ISC?
12 A. No. But then I had not really been involved in very
13 extensive discussions during the day on that. I had
14 not -- you know, I had not been to any meetings to
15 discuss developments. I had just been kept informed
16 over the telephone.
17 Q. Were you informed of this, that it was obviously very
18 important that the press announcement was drafted in
19 such a way as to make it clear that the man who had come
20 forward could not possibly have told Mr Gilligan what he
21 was said to have told him because he simply was not in
22 a position to know? Was that one of the things that was
23 emphasised to you at all?
24 A. I mean, no-one sort of gave me instructions in the sort
25 of precise terms that you were suggesting when

32
1 I redrafted the press notice. The reason that I was
2 redrafting it on the 7th was essentially because it had
3 been reactive before, because it had been held for use
4 in case asked after the weekend.
5 I felt that the chances were that we would actually
6 have to offer something ourselves and therefore the
7 style of it needed to be changed and it needed to
8 provide a bit more detail to show this actually was
9 a substantive development, whilst at the same time
10 making it clear that the individual himself who had come
11 forward did not believe he was the source and we were
12 not in a position to judge.
13 Q. Can I ask you to look at CAB/1/227? This is part of
14 a press briefing given by the Prime Minister's official
15 spokesman on 10th July. At page 227 you will see the
16 second paragraph down. You will see the paragraph
17 beginning:
18 "Asked if it was possible that the source had lied
19 to the Government about what he had said to Mr Gilligan,
20 the Prime Minister's official spokesman said that the
21 question that mattered was whether this person was in
22 a position to have made the judgments he was reported to
23 have made in the light of the fact that we knew he was
24 not a senior intelligence source. Asked if our main
25 bone of contention was really the seniority or otherwise

33
1 of the person, the official spokesman said that it was
2 the issue which went right to the very heart of this
3 matter."
4 The point he seems to be making there is: it is
5 obviously critical this man could not possibly have told
6 Mr Gilligan what Mr Gilligan says because he just was
7 not in a position to know and that is a critical part of
8 this announcement. That is what he appears to be saying
9 there.
10 Now, going back to CAB/1/52, when you are drafting
11 this announcement -- I know it is not exactly in the
12 same form as you drafted because you do not recall
13 drafting that last paragraph. Look at the third
14 paragraph down:
15 "The individual was not 'one of the senior officials
16 in charge of drawing up the dossier' as Mr Gilligan
17 claimed his source was in his evidence to the FAC. Nor
18 is he a member of the intelligence services."
19 Then this word:
20 "Crucially, although Mr Gilligan raised the issue of
21 Alastair Campbell, since the individual was not involved
22 in the process he did not comment. He says he made no
23 allegations or accusations about any issue related to
24 the dossier, in particular that the 45 minutes
25 intelligence had been inserted by Mr Campbell or

34
1 Downing Street against the wishes of the intelligence
2 community."
3 Presumably, when you drew up this draft you did so
4 on the basis of information that was being supplied to
5 you by others?
6 A. Yes. I mean, I had -- as I say, I had read Dr Kelly's
7 letter -- no, I had not read Dr Kelly's letter of the
8 30th.
9 Q. Not at this stage.
10 A. Not at this stage, no. But I had had discussions
11 that -- because I think what I was attempting to do in
12 this statement was to say that here is someone who has
13 come forward voluntarily. They did admit discussing
14 these issues of public concern, but there were a number
15 of discrepancies.
16 Q. Yes, but obviously looking at the paragraph which I have
17 just read out, someone -- you, I take it, accept you
18 drafted something along these lines?
19 A. Hmm, hmm.
20 Q. What I am putting to you is someone must have obviously
21 told you information to this effect.
22 A. Yes, I mean since Friday 4th, that afternoon, during --
23 well not over the weekend, but on Monday 7th certainly
24 I had discussions where I found out more about what had
25 been claimed; and I think I would have discovered that

35
1 mainly from the permanent secretary's office.
2 Q. You see this is not just a piece of information. This
3 is really a bit of an argument, is it not? Presumably
4 someone really told you to put this argument in this
5 statement?
6 A. I mean, I do not really see it in terms of an argument.
7 As I say, I saw it in terms of there were several key
8 points that Andrew Gilligan had made in relation to his
9 single source. If we were to put a statement out, which
10 I felt we would be obliged to, about the development
11 within the department that an official had voluntarily
12 come forward to say he had a conversation with
13 Andrew Gilligan on these matters, then the obvious
14 questions that were going to be put to us were really
15 whether you think the official is the source or not, and
16 to be able to discuss that, it was necessary to flag up
17 where there were similarities and where there were
18 discrepancies.
19 Q. Can I ask you this: who supplied the information to you
20 on the basis of which this draft was drawn up?
21 A. I would have got the information from a number of
22 sources. I was getting more information from
23 Kate Wilson about, you know, the meeting she had had on
24 the 4th. Also I would have had information from the
25 permanent secretary's office. But it was certainly

36
1 within the department.
2 Q. So in other words you did not speak to Mr Hatfield when
3 you drafted this?
4 A. I do not recall that I did, no.
5 Q. Or Mr Howard?
6 A. I may possibly have spoken to him, but I cannot recall
7 for certain.
8 Q. Once you drafted it, did you pass it by anyone to get
9 their approval before sending it to Mr Wilson?
10 A. No, I did not, because it was quite late at night and
11 I think it was certainly recognised that this was by no
12 means a sort of final draft.
13 Q. It certainly seems to have been recognised somewhere
14 else.
15 A. Obviously a lot of people felt similarly. But this was
16 really taking the opportunity to provide a sort of
17 redraft, if you like, given that my view was that we
18 were moving from using the statement that was, if you
19 like, passive, in response to questions, to actually
20 moving to the fact that you would be obliged to make
21 a statement, to offer a statement. And the two are in
22 different forms accordingly.
23 Q. Moving to 8th July, which is Tuesday, did you do
24 anything in the morning in relation to this press
25 announcement or these issues that it gave rise to?

37
1 A. During the morning of the 8th I was called over to the
2 permanent secretary's office and there I had a number of
3 discussions about the draft statement itself.
4 Q. With whom?
5 A. With Martin Howard, with the permanent secretary's
6 private secretary because the permanent secretary was
7 out on a visit that morning, and with two people from
8 No. 10 press office.
9 Q. And who were they?
10 A. Godric Smith and Tom Kelly.
11 LORD HUTTON: Just before we proceed Ms Teare, these draft
12 statements we have been looking at refer to "an
13 individual working in the MoD", they do not refer to
14 Dr Kelly by name; and you have told us that you were
15 given Dr Kelly's name in confidence. Now, can you just
16 say, it is probably obvious, but why the reference was
17 to "an individual working in the MoD" rather than naming
18 Dr Kelly?
19 A. I think, at that point, the issue of whether Dr Kelly
20 should be named in the statement or not had not been
21 fully discussed; and certainly I was working on the
22 basis, at that time, that that was how he would be
23 referred to in a public statement, though I know from
24 papers that I have seen subsequently that the permanent
25 secretary did ask the officials who interviewed Dr Kelly

38
1 for a second time that they might actually discuss with
2 him the idea that he might be named in the statement.
3 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
4 A. But as I understand it, that discussion did not go very
5 far.
6 LORD HUTTON: Yes. But would it be right to infer that the
7 reason why Dr Kelly was not named in the drafts we have
8 been looking at was because you had been told his name
9 in confidence?
10 A. I had, at that point, yes.
11 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
12 A. And I had not pursued the idea of introducing the name
13 into the statement.
14 LORD HUTTON: No. Yes, thank you. Yes.
15 MR KNOX: It was in this conversation, presumably, on
16 8th July, in this meeting you had with, I think,
17 Mr Wilson, Mr Kelly, Mr Smith, and Mr Howard, is that
18 right, in the morning of 8th July?
19 A. It was not a sort of formal meeting; and the
20 conversations I had with those from No. 10 were on the
21 telephone.
22 Q. I see.
23 A. And I was actually sitting in the permanent secretary's
24 outer office. This all sounds rather unusual but the
25 reason for that is that my own office is not in the same

39
1 building as the permanent secretary's and the
2 Minister's. As this whole subject matter was being
3 dealt with on a very tight basis in terms of those who
4 knew about it, the simplest thing really was for me to
5 go over there. So I was sitting in the permanent
6 secretary's outer office, Richard Hatfield came in at
7 one point and Martin Howard came in on a couple of
8 occasions, one longer time, one shorter time.
9 Q. It was in the course of this meeting that you pointed
10 out the point about Ms Watts?
11 A. I pointed out the point about Ms Watts as soon as I read
12 Dr Kelly's letter of 30th June.
13 Q. What else did you discuss in this meeting?
14 A. Well, as I say, it was not one formal meeting. It was
15 a sort of series of ad hoc discussions.
16 Q. What was the gist of those ad hoc discussions?
17 A. Well, some of them were suggested amendments to the
18 press statement; and the longer discussion I had with
19 Martin Howard was I was concerned that we did not really
20 have any -- as it was seeming likely that we were going
21 to make a statement either that day or the day after,
22 but fairly imminently, that we did not have any Q and A
23 material that would provide support to that statement.
24 So Martin Howard and I actually sat down and discussed
25 the content of that material and I typed it up.

40
1 Q. Before I come on to the Q and A material, were you
2 yourself involved in any of the revised drafts of the
3 press statement that was eventually made?
4 A. I mean, I had some comments that were suggested, which
5 I do not actually recall sort of typing up as a sort of
6 finished product; but I know that the permanent
7 secretary on his return from Portsmouth then went over
8 to No. 10 for a meeting.
9 Q. Were any drafts put before your eyes on 8th July?
10 A. There was the draft we discussed and finalised when the
11 permanent secretary came back from No. 10.
12 Q. So in other words you saw the final version before it
13 went out?
14 A. Yes. When the permanent secretary came back from No. 10
15 we discussed the draft in the light of those discussions
16 and we finalised it.
17 Q. Yes. If I can just ask you to look at CAB/1/54 just to
18 confirm whether or not you saw any of these other drafts
19 because there are quite a few of them. I am not going
20 to ask you to read them all in detail. At CAB/1/54
21 there is an e-mail from Godric Smith, one of the
22 official spokesmen at No. 10, to it may be Mr Wilson,
23 I imagine?
24 A. Yes, it is.
25 Q. A revised version 2. Going over the page, one then

41
1 sees, I take it, the revised version 2. It looks quite
2 like, I think, the version you had previously drafted.
3 Do you remember seeing this at all on 8th July?
4 A. Yes, I think I did.
5 Q. Who showed it to you?
6 A. It would have been Mr Wilson.
7 Q. And did you make any comments on it?
8 A. None in particular. I mean, I suppose I would have
9 tried to get something in on the ISC, but that was not
10 really my area of specialism.
11 Q. When you say you would have tried to get something in on
12 the ISC, what do you mean?
13 A. I am not being very articulate. The last paragraph
14 there says something about the ISC. I would probably
15 have attempted to get a slightly different form of words
16 to that.
17 Q. Obviously. You yourself were not involved in redrafting
18 anything about the ISC on that day?
19 A. No.
20 Q. Then page 56 there seems to be a rather longer version
21 apparently, according to the writing at the top, saved
22 on Godric Smith's machine at 4.35 in the afternoon but
23 created at 12.35.
24 Do you remember being shown this at all?
25 A. (Pause). I mean, this looks remarkably similar to

42
1 the -- well, in parts, similar to the final. It is not
2 totally the same.
3 Q. Were you shown this or asked to comment on this version
4 at all?
5 A. (Pause). I cannot say for sure. I mean, there were
6 a number of drafts that, you know, have small
7 differences in them. I am afraid I cannot actually
8 recall how many drafts I was shown on the day and which
9 individual ones were. But I was conscious that there
10 was a fair amount of traffic on the changes to the
11 statement.
12 Q. Can you remember, in broad terms, what the concerns
13 being expressed to you were about the various drafts?
14 A. I can remember that Godric Smith raised with me the
15 point that is contained in the last paragraph.
16 Q. This is at CAB/1/56?
17 A. Yes, the one that is on screen currently.
18 Q. He raised concerns with you about that last paragraph,
19 that is:
20 "We do not know that this official is the single
21 source quoted by Mr Gilligan."
22 A. It was more about bringing in the point that
23 Mr Gilligan -- you know, we know that Mr Gilligan had
24 told the FAC he had only one source for his story and
25 that three other sources mentioned to the FAC did not

43
1 talk to him about the September dossier. We know that
2 he was interested in that point.
3 Q. What, he was concerned about that?
4 A. I do not he was concerned. I think he was saying that
5 was something worth having in the statement.
6 Q. And did you, yourself, express any concerns about
7 anything that appeared in the final draft of the press
8 statement or were you happy with it?
9 A. I was happy with the final draft.
10 Q. You have mentioned the questions and answers that were
11 drafted. Can I ask you to look at MoD/1/62? These have
12 been disclosed by the Ministry of Defence. You will
13 see, at the top "Q and A. Who is the official?" These
14 questions and answers continue for about four pages
15 until we get to MoD/1/65. There is no need to go to
16 that for a moment.
17 Are these the questions and answers you were
18 involved in drafting on 8th July?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Can I ask you to go about five lines down on MoD/1/62.
21 "Question and answer.
22 "Who is the official?
23 "The official works in MoD.
24 "What is his name and current post?
25 "We wouldn't normally volunteer a name.

44
1 "If the correct name is given, we can confirm it and
2 say that he is senior adviser to the Proliferation and
3 Arms Control Secretariat."
4 I was interested by the underlining "if the correct
5 name is given". Was that in the original draft
6 questions and answers that were drafted on 8th July?
7 A. No, I do not believe it was.
8 Q. Is that why it appears in an underlined form in this
9 eventual document we have here?
10 A. No, it is not. The position with the Q and A as drafted
11 on the night of 4th July was that it was fairly -- well,
12 to say that it was green was the understatement. It was
13 drafted by myself and Kate Wilson who by no means had
14 all the facts, hence there were big gaps in it. And it
15 was also drafted with a fear in mind that Dr Kelly's
16 letter of 30th June might have leaked. So it was
17 nothing approaching the Q and A material that was
18 eventually produced when I had more of the information,
19 which is this one.
20 The reason that that section "if the correct name is
21 given" is underlined is making the point that it would
22 only be under those circumstances that we would be
23 prepared to confirm the name.
24 Q. I understand that the question and answers you drafted
25 on the 4th did not contain this suggestion; but what

45
1 about the first draft of the questions and answers you
2 drafted on 8th July? Did they have this suggestion as
3 well or did this suggestion come later on on 8th July?
4 A. No, the sort of attempt at -- not attempt but the first
5 sort of drawing together of all the information happened
6 at lunchtime on 8th July when I ran through the
7 questions and the answers that were to be given with
8 Martin Howard. That was sort of like the first time
9 properly pulling together all the information that we
10 had and then that section was included therein.
11 Q. So you have a meeting with Martin Howard and the two of
12 you agree on the questions and answers. Did you take
13 handwritten notes and then subsequently type those
14 handwritten notes up on to a computer or did you have
15 a computer with you at the time?
16 A. No, I subsequently typed them up.
17 Q. So you have some handwritten notes from which you typed
18 these up?
19 A. Well, I had.
20 Q. You had them?
21 A. Yes, I did.
22 Q. And I take it, therefore, that it was Mr Howard who
23 suggested to you this answer:
24 "If the correct name is given, we can confirm it and
25 say he is senior adviser ...", is that right?

46
1 A. I would not say it was Mr Howard's suggestion. We had
2 formed a view -- I think there was a consensus amongst
3 those closely involved in this issue in the department,
4 really from the beginning, on two points: really that
5 ultimately the MoD would have to make a public
6 statement, would have to offer a public statement and
7 that, secondly, Dr Kelly's name was likely to come into
8 the public domain. If that is the case, which we
9 believed it to be, we had to agree an approach whereby
10 we could handle that situation.
11 LORD HUTTON: Ms Teare, may I just ask you before we go on
12 to consider the sentence "if the correct name is given"
13 when the answer is given there, "we wouldn't normally
14 volunteer a name". Would you just like to comment on
15 that? I mean, is that the general policy of the
16 Ministry of Defence, that if a question is asked about
17 an official, that normally his name would not be given
18 to the press or to the media?
19 A. The position on giving out the names of civil servants
20 is not subject to any official guidelines within the
21 Ministry of Defence and essentially it would be viewed
22 on a case by case basis. We would not gratuitously
23 reveal the name of a civil servant; but, by the same
24 token, there is no absolute presumption that a name
25 cannot be revealed particularly if it is linked to

47
1 important events. So we do not have any firm guidelines
2 and we have to look at each case both in the
3 circumstances that emerge and as those circumstances
4 continue to evolve.
5 LORD HUTTON: Yes. But the answer is: "We wouldn't normally
6 volunteer a name." Is that a correct statement as
7 regards the generality of the approach?
8 A. I think there was a -- as it makes clear, we would not
9 normally volunteer a name, offer a name, because, in the
10 majority of circumstances, the names of civil servants
11 are -- you know, they are not normally the issue.
12 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
13 A. But that is why I say in terms of the naming of
14 officials there are no clear or firm or official
15 guidelines. It is decided on a case by case basis and
16 it is an aspect on which the press office would take
17 advice from the department.
18 LORD HUTTON: Yes, thank you.
19 MR KNOX: When it says, "If the correct name is given, we
20 can confirm it ...", presumably someone suggested to you
21 that that is what you would be able to do; is that
22 right? It was not, in other words, totally your own
23 idea that you did not get any approval for?
24 A. Oh no, I had approval for this. I mean the standard --
25 Q. Can I pause there for a moment. Who then gave you the

48
1 approval to adopt this strategy?
2 A. This approach was contained in the Q and A which was
3 approved by Martin Howard and by the permanent
4 secretary.
5 Q. This approval was given on 8th July, is that right?
6 A. Yes.
7 LORD HUTTON: You say it was approved by them but I think
8 Mr Knox was suggesting to you that someone had suggested
9 that that is the answer or that was the guidance that
10 should be given. It did not, presumably, just come from
11 you. Someone must have suggested to you, or did they?
12 A. We had discussed the whole issue of handling the name;
13 and essentially Martin and I had -- and essentially
14 there were two issues. One, that it was possible that
15 Dr Kelly's name would emerge; and the second issue was
16 that during that process or at the same time as or even
17 before, there were a group of other individuals who had
18 similar backgrounds to him who might be identified
19 incorrectly and on whom the media spotlight would fall,
20 and in a case related to this particular issue, that
21 spotlight would be very strong. We agreed therefore
22 that we were not prepared to have that situation, that
23 it would be unfair on others.
24 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
25 A. So accordingly, if you decide on that policy that you

49
1 cannot have a situation whereby people are wrongly
2 identified and subjected to a lot of attention from the
3 media, it follows, therefore, that if an incorrect name
4 is put to you, that you will have to reject it.
5 MR KNOX: Is not all this a bit of a charade though, because
6 as soon as you make it plain to the press: give me the
7 right name and I will tell you if you have the right
8 answer, you are doing effectively exactly the same thing
9 by an incorrect means as what you could do directly and
10 just give the name out?
11 A. No, I think we had -- you know, we had not had
12 Dr Kelly -- the idea of Dr Kelly's name being made
13 public had not been discussed with him. The time that
14 you would have had to consider it, between when he was
15 consulted about the final version of this statement and
16 when it went out, would have been insufficient for him
17 to consider it properly and to make what other
18 arrangements he needed.
19 One of the purposes for saying to people that we
20 would be prepared to confirm the right name was going
21 back to what I have originally said, which was that we
22 were seeking to avoid the people who were not involved
23 being named in the media, and the only way we could seek
24 to do that was to make it clear to journalists we would
25 correct wrong names so they did not get into the public

50
1 domain.
2 Q. Did you tell Dr Kelly as far as you were aware you would
3 be adopting this strategy, namely confirming to
4 journalists his name if they managed to come up with it?
5 A. I did not speak to Dr Kelly at any point.
6 Q. Do you have any reason to suppose he was told this?
7 A. He was certainly told on more than one occasion, as
8 I understand, that his name was likely to come into the
9 public domain.
10 Q. I know, but was he told that this strategy would be
11 adopted by the MoD press office?
12 A. Not to my knowledge.
13 LORD HUTTON: I should make it clear perhaps to the press
14 that if I put certain questions to you that it does not
15 mean at all I have reached any conclusion on the point.
16 I have to consider a number of possibilities.
17 I understand your reasoning in saying if a number of
18 names are considered and they are not the correct names,
19 the spotlight would fall unfairly on them; and therefore
20 the thinking was: well, to avoid that, if we are given
21 names which are incorrect, we will say so. But another
22 way of looking at it is that if you adopt that approach,
23 when the press do learn the correct name the spotlight
24 falls very fiercely indeed on that particular person.
25 Let us say you have six people whose names are being

51
1 discussed in the press. People will then realise that
2 certainly it is very general speculation and the
3 individuals named may well not be the correct people at
4 all. Certainly there is no particular person who would
5 be regarded necessarily as being the actual civil
6 servant concerned. But did you give any consideration
7 to the fact that by permitting Dr Kelly's name to come
8 out, he would be subjected to very intense media
9 speculation?
10 A. Yes, I mean, there are two points I would like to make.
11 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Certainly.
12 A. The first is that whilst you might suggest that if
13 a number of names are bandied around they would not be
14 subjected to a great deal of media interest and
15 concentration, I think because the profile of this
16 subject was so large, I think actually that it would
17 have had a lot of media attention, which would have been
18 most unhelpful and most unfair.
19 The second point is, though, that we were certainly
20 concerned for Dr Kelly. It is not as if, you know, we
21 agreed this approach just because it was purely the best
22 way to avoid other people being named, and accordingly,
23 as I say, he had been made aware on two occasions that
24 we were likely to have to make a statement, his name
25 would come into the public domain.

52
1 On the evening of the 8th July, Dr Kelly was rung by
2 the chief press officer to alert him to the level of
3 media interest that had arisen following the issue of
4 our statement, to make sure that she had -- or rather he
5 had her contact number, made clear she was available to
6 offer advice 24 hours a day, and also to suggest to him
7 he might wish to consider staying with friends.
8 So we were very mindful of that, and for the reasons
9 I have given why we did not think it was fair the media
10 spotlight would fall on others, we were aware that
11 spotlight would be heavy and he would need guidance on
12 how to deal with that.
13 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
14 MR KNOX: Ms Teare, you said that earlier on, I think this
15 was on 7th July in the evening, you knew from the papers
16 you had seen that the permanent secretary did ask
17 officials who interviewed Dr Kelly that they might
18 actually discuss with him the idea that he might be
19 named in the statement, but, as I understand it, that
20 discussion did not get very far; in other words, the
21 discussion about naming Dr Kelly did not go very far.
22 Did you understand, therefore, that Dr Kelly did not
23 want to be named in the statement?
24 A. I did not draw any conclusion from that. The conclusion
25 I drew was that this was a specific area that had not

53
1 actually been explored.
2 Q. Well, putting it more generally: you were one of the
3 people involved in the drafting of the statement and
4 that statement left out his name. Was it not your
5 understanding, therefore, that he did not want to be
6 named in the statement?
7 A. No, that was not my understanding.
8 Q. So no-one said anything to you about that?
9 A. No, definitely not.
10 Q. And you did not ask?
11 A. What I had asked was to ensure that Dr Kelly had been
12 alerted to the fact that we would need to make
13 a statement and had also been alerted to the fact that
14 his name could become public, and, as I understood it,
15 he had acknowledged that.
16 Q. Now, did No. 10 Downing Street assist in the drafting of
17 the Q and A material?
18 A. No, they did not.
19 Q. Could I just ask you to go to CAB/1/59. This is an
20 e-mail from Jonathan Powell to Clare Sumner and
21 John Scarlett:
22 "I have put the answers in italics. Most of these
23 are for the MoD. I am not sure these are the right
24 questions. Godric [it must be Smith) and Tom [Kelly,
25 I think] may be able to think of better questions."

54
1 Then you will see the e-mail attachment at CAB/1/60.
2 You will see the heading:
3 "Most of these will need to be answered by the MoD."
4 There are a series of questions which are then set
5 out. Were you shown any of these questions or any
6 questions and answers along these lines?
7 A. No, I have not seen that document.
8 Q. So you have no idea what this is about?
9 A. No.
10 Q. Before the press statement went out, did you have any
11 discussions with anyone else except Mr Howard? You
12 mentioned having discussions with Mr Howard on 8th July.
13 Did you discuss the matter with anyone else, the press
14 statement itself?
15 A. About the statement itself?
16 Q. Yes.
17 A. No, other than those I have already mentioned.
18 Q. Did you discuss the questions and answers with
19 Mr Tebbit?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Did he approve them?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Did he make any suggestions on them as far as you are
24 aware?
25 A. When he returned from No. 10 we did sort of -- we spent

55
1 most of the remaining time I was there discussing the
2 statement and just sort of tweaking it. But he did
3 actually read the full Q and A and was content with it.
4 Q. And do you know if the final version of the statement
5 was cleared with Dr Kelly, as far as you are aware?
6 A. I was told that it was cleared with him by
7 Richard Hatfield.
8 Q. At what time was the press statement released?
9 A. It was released about a quarter to 6 that evening,
10 something like that, just before 6.
11 Q. I think one can see it at MoD/1/67. Is this the
12 announcement?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. What was the media response to that announcement?
15 A. After it was issued then there were a lot of media calls
16 received on it.
17 LORD HUTTON: I beg your pardon, after it was issued?
18 A. We received a lot of media calls about it.
19 MR KNOX: And when?
20 A. Immediately.
21 Q. Immediately. And did you yourself take any of those
22 calls?
23 A. Yes, I did.
24 Q. And what did you tell journalists when they rang you up?
25 A. Well, I mean, obviously some of them rang about

56
1 different aspects. They were --
2 LORD HUTTON: I realise that perhaps we should give the
3 stenographers a break.
4 (11.55 am)
5 (Short Break)
6 (12.00 pm)
7 LORD HUTTON: Yes, Mr Knox.
8 MR KNOX: Ms Teare, we were just discussing the statement
9 and the press reaction to it. Before we move on to
10 9th July, do you know if Dr Kelly was contacted at all
11 in the evening of 8th July about this announcement?
12 A. Yes, as I have already explained, the chief press
13 officer contacted him to make him aware of the level of
14 media interest, to make sure he could have a mobile
15 number to contact her at any time if he wanted advice
16 and also to suggest to him that it might be wise to
17 think about alternative accommodation.
18 Q. And do you know if he called back at all that evening or
19 not?
20 A. As I understand it, she contacted him. He said that he
21 was out at the time and could she call back in about
22 15 minutes. So she did that. She advised him of the
23 situation. He said he was still out and did not have
24 anything to write with but he did have the duty press
25 officer's number and therefore knew he would be able to

57
1 contact her through there.
2 Q. It appears that the BBC was given advance notice of this
3 press announcement in a letter from Mr Hoon to Mr Davies
4 I think on 8th July.
5 A. I think the timing was sort of pretty simultaneous.
6 I do not know the exact time it went to the BBC,
7 attached to the Secretary of State's letter, but it was
8 probably only 15 or 20 minutes either side.
9 Q. I think one can see that at page 66 of MoD/1. Do you
10 see that?
11 A. Yes, I do.
12 Q. Do you know why it was decided to send this letter to
13 Mr Davies at this time?
14 A. I do not recall actually being consulted about the
15 letter itself. But I knew it was happening, and that is
16 all really.
17 Q. On 9th July, were there any further discussions about
18 how you should handle the matter?
19 A. During the Monday -- during the morning of 9th July,
20 this was after -- two things really: after we had issued
21 our initial statement on the 8th the BBC had issued
22 a statement saying that the source for Andrew Gilligan's
23 story did not work in the BBC and that Andrew Gilligan
24 had known him for some years rather than some months and
25 also that they, the BBC, did not know whether the MoD

58
1 official, unnamed, was Andrew Gilligan's source.
2 So that was the sort of statement that they had
3 issued. And the other thing that had happened was that
4 the BBC had replied to the Secretary of State's letter
5 saying that they were not prepared to confirm or deny
6 the name if it was put to them. So --
7 Q. Were you involved in any discussions about what you
8 should then do because of that?
9 A. So in the light of those two events, discussions took
10 place on the morning of the 9th. I had my normal sort
11 of 9.15 meeting with the Secretary of State on Wednesday
12 morning. It is always pencilled into the diary for just
13 a quarter of an hour, so it is a brief meeting. So we
14 discussed there how we might follow up this position
15 with the BBC; and then during the course of the morning
16 I discussed it further with Alastair Campbell and
17 Tom Kelly and the Secretary of State's private office.
18 Q. What did you decide to do, in the light of these
19 discussions?
20 A. Well, there were sort of two basic propositions. One:
21 whether we should send a further letter asking them to
22 reconsider; or whether we should immediately send
23 a letter that actually gave them the name. Because our
24 objective in all of this was to clear the issue up. So
25 eventually the Secretary of State wrote sending them the

59
1 name.
2 Q. I think that is at MoD/1/71. Is that the letter that
3 was sent?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And I think you said the point of this letter was to
6 clear everything up. Could you clarify that a little?
7 A. Yes. The point was if it was indeed the case that
8 Dr Kelly was not Andrew Gilligan's source then, as far
9 as both he and the MoD were concerned, you know, that
10 particular matter would be sorted out. You know, would
11 be cleared up.
12 Q. Do you mean by that that it would no longer be necessary
13 to name Dr Kelly?
14 A. Well, we had no approach that was designed to name
15 Dr Kelly.
16 Q. So you would have continued regardless to confirm the
17 right name if it was put, even if the BBC had said it is
18 not the same man?
19 A. I think we may well have -- well, actually you are
20 asking me to speculate on a situation on which I have
21 taken a lot of advice so it is difficult for me to say
22 straightaway because I had not really thought down that
23 line before.
24 Q. So no-one really considered what would happen if the BBC
25 wrote back saying the man was not Dr Kelly?

60
1 A. Other than that we knew that this particular --
2 I suspect what would have happened was that when that
3 had been confirmed publicly, we would not have taken any
4 more questions in relation to our statement. You know,
5 we would have said that we consider the matter now
6 closed.
7 Q. So one can put it this way: because the BBC did not
8 reply one way or the other to this letter, you continued
9 to take calls and eventually you gave the name out when
10 the right name was put to you?
11 A. Yes, if you want to look at it in that way.
12 Q. Now, what about these calls from journalists?
13 Presumably you took some calls on this day as well?
14 A. I do not recall taking many at all actually. I did not
15 take any in the morning because really I was caught up
16 in the discussions on the follow-up letter to the BBC.
17 Q. Are you able to give an idea as to how many calls were
18 coming through to the MoD press office on this day, on
19 this point?
20 A. Well, the press office was receiving quite a number of
21 calls, not just about the name but on sort of other
22 aspects relating to the whole issue. I mean, I could
23 not tell you exactly how many. My office is down the
24 other end of the corridor from the press office. But
25 I know that they did receive quite a considerable

61
1 number, certainly in double figures, well into double
2 figures.
3 Q. Did someone eventually come forward with Dr Kelly's
4 name?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Who was that?
7 A. That was the Financial Times.
8 Q. Who was the name of the journalist?
9 A. Chris Adams.
10 Q. Who did he speak to?
11 A. He spoke to me.
12 Q. When he put the name forward, what did you say to him?
13 A. I just confirmed that as being the correct name. It was
14 a very brief conversation.
15 Q. And roughly what time of day was that?
16 A. It was around 5.30 in the afternoon, certainly no
17 earlier than that.
18 Q. Did you have any reason to suppose that he had received
19 that name from someone else as well or if anyone else
20 had received the name around the same time?
21 A. How do you mean?
22 Q. Well, you have mentioned Chris Adams got the name at
23 about 5.30. Do you know if anyone else managed to get
24 the name as well?
25 A. As I understand it, The Guardian put the correct name to

62
1 the duty press officer fairly soon afterwards. I mean,
2 I do not know how soon, but probably within half an
3 hour, something like that.
4 Q. What about other newspapers, did they all eventually
5 manage to get the same name on that day?
6 A. I know that the Daily Mail put the right name to the
7 duty press officer later in the evening, and The Times
8 and The Telegraph put the correct name to the chief
9 press officer.
10 LORD HUTTON: But did Mr Adams of the Financial Times give
11 you any indication as to how he had come to suggest
12 Dr Kelly's name to you?
13 A. No, he did not.
14 MR KNOX: Were you given any wrong names?
15 A. I know the press office were given a number of wrong
16 names, yes. And I also know that, as I have said
17 previously, the media -- one particular newspaper had
18 contacted an official who was not the unnamed official,
19 both rung him at home and sent a journalist to his
20 house. So there was a lot of activity both in names
21 being put to us and wrong people being identified.
22 Q. Do you know if there was anyone outside the press office
23 who also confirmed Dr Kelly's name to the press?
24 A. I did not know on the day but I learnt subsequently that
25 someone else within the department had confirmed the

63
1 name.
2 Q. So someone else in the department. Who was that person
3 in the department who confirmed the name?
4 A. It was the special adviser to Geoff Hoon.
5 Q. And the name of that person is?
6 A. Is Richard Taylor.
7 Q. Can I ask you to look at MoD/1/62?
8 A. I should just say at that point he told me of this some
9 days after it had taken place, but it was clear to me,
10 from that conversation, that he had confirmed it at
11 a very similar time to when I had confirmed it.
12 LORD HUTTON: That is confirmed it to a member of the press?
13 A. Sorry?
14 LORD HUTTON: Mr Richard Taylor had confirmed the name to
15 a member of the press?
16 A. Yes.
17 LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see, thank you.
18 MR KNOX: Can I ask you to look at MoD/1/62. While you were
19 fielding all these calls from the press you, presumably,
20 were acting along the general lines set out in this
21 Q and A, is that right?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. You will see at page 62, in the paragraph after "If the
24 correct name is given, we can confirm it ..." and so
25 forth, you will see another question:

64
1 "How long has he been in MoD?
2 "He has been in his current position for 3 to 4
3 years. Before that he was a member of UNSCOM.
4 "Did the official play any part in drawing up the
5 dossier?
6 "He was involved in providing historical details..."
7 Under the heading "Is he in Iraq?"
8 "No, though he visited Iraq recently for a week."
9 Would you have been giving out this type of
10 information to journalists as they had been ringing in?
11 A. If they had asked those specific questions we would have
12 done. We were not sort of taking all the material given
13 there as answers and delivering it to each caller. It
14 just depended what the journalist was seeking to find
15 out about, because, I mean, the purpose of a Q and A,
16 which is standard practice to prepare one in support of
17 any statement, is really to try to anticipate the
18 questions which journalists can legitimately ask,
19 matters of fact they can legitimately ask and supply the
20 answers, if it is deemed appropriate, so that press
21 officers, you know, can field calls.
22 Q. What it might look like is you are just providing more
23 and more hints to who this man is and therefore it gets
24 progressively easier to the press to guess his name,
25 does it not?

65
1 A. Well, my assessment was there were a number of questions
2 which journalists -- as I say, factual questions which
3 journalists could legitimately ask. For example, in our
4 statement we say that he was not a senior official in
5 charge of drawing up the dossier. So it is perfectly
6 reasonable for a journalist to say: but did he play any
7 part in drawing up the dossier? Hence you have the
8 question supplied there that says: he provided
9 historical details. I think that is a reasonable
10 question.
11 Q. It may be a reasonable question, but what I do not
12 follow at the moment is why do you not just say: I am
13 not prepared to tell you.
14 A. I do not see why there was a problem there, as I say,
15 having said in the statement he was not a senior
16 official in charge of drawing up the dossier.
17 Q. What I think might look strange is obviously you decide
18 not to name him outright but you give all these clues
19 and it is inevitable, is it not, once you have given all
20 these clues, the press are going to get the right name
21 if you have told them "I will confirm it"?
22 A. As I say, I do not accept this material was offered on
23 the basis of it offering clues. There are several other
24 points I would make. One is if, as you seem to be
25 trying to suggest or others may suggest, all we were

66
1 doing was planting lots of hints about the real identity
2 of the unnamed official, then it is surprising on the
3 other hand that (a) it took journalists 24 hours at
4 least to work it out and (b) that they were ringing,
5 putting quite a large number of names to us. So those
6 two things seem to be slightly contradictory.
7 Q. It might be thought you did not want to be thought to be
8 seen naming him directly, is that right?
9 A. No, I do not accept that. As I say, we had taken
10 a decision that he would not be named in the statement
11 and therefore we were not -- you know, we were not
12 offering anything more that would seek to undermine that
13 decision, I can assure you.
14 Q. Can I just ask you, very briefly: after 9th July, did
15 you give any more briefings to the press on the Dr Kelly
16 matter?
17 A. Did I actually talk to him, do you mean?
18 Q. Yes. Did you?
19 A. No.
20 Q. Was there much interest shown by the press with the MoD
21 press office in this issue?
22 A. No, it was noticeable that after 9th July the volume of
23 calls sharply reduced; and indeed the coverage of the
24 issue sharply reduced; and that included the following
25 weekend papers, when you might have expected the Sundays

67
1 to return to it.
2 Q. On 15th July Dr Kelly gave evidence to the Foreign
3 Affairs Committee. What arrangements did you and the
4 press office make for that, if any?
5 A. I asked the chief press officer to accompany Dr Kelly to
6 the hearing because I knew there would be a lot of media
7 there.
8 Q. We know that the Foreign Affairs Committee appeared to
9 have taken the view Dr Kelly had been poorly treated.
10 They wrote a letter to I think Jack Straw to that
11 effect. Did you arrange for a press statement to be
12 released that evening to rebut that allegation?
13 A. Yes, I did.
14 Q. I think that can be seen at MoD/1/90.
15 Were you given any indication at all as to why the
16 Foreign Affairs Committee thought that Dr Kelly had been
17 badly treated apart from what they said in their letter?
18 A. No, none whatsoever.
19 Q. Finally, Ms Teare, is there anything else you would like
20 to say about the circumstances that led to Dr Kelly's
21 death?
22 A. No, I do not think I have got anything more I can offer
23 to the Inquiry.
24 MR KNOX: Thank you very much.
25 LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much indeed.

68
1 MR DINGEMANS: Mr Powell, please, my Lord.
2 LORD HUTTON: Yes.
3 MR JONATHAN POWELL (called)
4 Examined by MR DINGEMANS
5 Q. Can you tell his Lordship your full name?
6 A. Jonathan Nicholas Powell.
7 Q. I am afraid you will need to speak up a bit. What is
8 your occupation?
9 A. I am Chief of Staff at No. 10 Downing Street.
10 Q. And how long have you had that role?
11 A. Since 1997.
12 Q. And, very briefly, what does that involve?
13 A. Acting as a conduit of information to the
14 Prime Minister, advising him and coordinating the work
15 of No. 10 Downing Street.
16 Q. Turning to the dossier, which was published, we know, on
17 24th September 2002, did you have any direct involvement
18 in the drafting of the dossier?
19 A. I did not play a major role in the drafting of the
20 dossier but I did send some comments towards the end of
21 the process.
22 Q. Can I take you to a document CAB/11/17 which is an
23 e-mail that you sent on 5th September to Mr Campbell.
24 You ask this, at the top:
25 "What's the timing on preparation of it and

69
1 publication? Will TB have something he can read on the
2 plane to the US?"
3 Now, in relation to that, you are referring to the
4 dossier there, are you?
5 A. Yes, that was the trip the Prime Minister made to the
6 United States.
7 Q. Do you remember the date of the trip?
8 A. I think it was 7th September.
9 Q. Did the Prime Minister have something to read on the
10 plane to the US?
11 A. I do not know, I am afraid.
12 Q. You cannot recall whether he got a draft of the dossier
13 at that stage?
14 A. I simply do not know.
15 Q. Because we know from other material that there was
16 a draft of the dossier dated 5th September. We have
17 seen some little handwriting in the top right-hand
18 corner. You do not know whether or not that was
19 provided to the Prime Minister?
20 A. I am afraid not, no.
21 Q. You have told us you made some other comments on the
22 dossier. Is CAB/11/69 a fair reflection of your
23 involvement in that?
24 A. Yes. That is the points that I made on 17th September
25 in the e-mail, yes.

70
1 Q. You appear to make three points, one about demonstrating
2 or not demonstrating threat; and then connections with
3 Al-Qaida and, third, how Saddam Hussein might try and
4 meet some of the allegations in the dossier.
5 A. Yes, I think the important one there which I repeated in
6 subsequent e-mails is:
7 "We need to make it clear, in launching the document
8 we do not claim we have evidence it is an imminent
9 threat. The case we are making is that he has continued
10 to deploy weapons of mass destruction since 1998 and is
11 in breach of UN resolutions. Unless we check him at
12 that stage, he will become a serious threat to all of
13 us."
14 Q. Was that, in general terms, the extent of your
15 involvement with the dossier?
16 A. There was that and a couple of other e-mails we have
17 sent to you on subsequent days, yes.
18 Q. Turning then to the circumstances in which Dr Kelly's
19 name first comes to your attention, what do you recall
20 your first involvement being?
21 A. My first involvement was a telephone call from the
22 Defence Secretary on the evening --
23 Q. That is Mr Hoon?
24 A. Yes, Mr Geoff Hoon on the evening of Thursday 3rd July.
25 Q. Right. Do you remember the time of the telephone call?

71
1 A. I know I was at home and I know that I subsequently
2 spoke to the Prime Minister so it must have been
3 somewhere around 9 or 10 o'clock.
4 Q. What did Mr Hoon say to you?
5 A. He said that an individual had come forward in the
6 Ministry of Defence who had spoken to Andrew Gilligan
7 and might possibly be the source of Andrew Gilligan's
8 story on Radio 4.
9 Q. Right. What was your reaction to this information?
10 A. I thought this was an important development and that it
11 ought to be sort of proceeded with fairly cautiously.
12 We needed to have more information about it before we
13 would rush into doing anything.
14 Q. Right. I think you said you had a later conversation
15 with the Prime Minister that evening. Did you report
16 that to the Prime Minister?
17 A. Yes, the Prime Minister was in the regional tour in the
18 US. He called me from his hotel room that evening. In
19 the course of going through other subjects, I mentioned
20 I had had this call from Geoff Hoon.
21 Q. What was the Prime Minister's reaction?
22 A. The Prime Minister's reaction was, again like mine, that
23 this was not something one should rush into and it ought
24 to be dealt with by the MoD in accordance with their
25 usual procedures for these things.

72
1 Q. That is the Thursday night, 3rd July. Were you working
2 on Friday 4th July in No. 10?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. On Thursday night were you given the name of Dr Kelly or
5 not?
6 A. No, I was not given the name.
7 Q. On Friday did you hear anything further about this
8 potential source of Mr Gilligan's story?
9 A. Yes, on Friday afternoon at around 6 pm I was summoned
10 to a meeting in David Manning's office.
11 Q. Can you just tell everyone who David Manning is?
12 A. Sorry, Sir David Manning is the Prime Minister's Foreign
13 Affairs and Defence Adviser.
14 Q. Who else was there?
15 A. David Omand.
16 Q. If you would not mind?
17 A. Sure. David Omand is the intelligence and security
18 co-ordinator in the Cabinet Office, the senior official
19 dealing with these sorts of matters, and John Scarlett
20 is the chairman of the JIC.
21 Q. So there were those three and you?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. And what was the gist of the discussions?
24 A. The gist of the discussion was David Omand said he had
25 been called by Kevin Tebbit, the permanent secretary at

73
1 the Ministry of Defence, to tell him that an individual
2 had volunteered himself as having spoken to
3 Andrew Gilligan; and it was possible that he was his
4 source. Kevin Tebbit said he would be sending a letter
5 over subsequently setting out some details on this.
6 Q. Right. And can we look at MoD/1/34? Can you tell me
7 what this is?
8 A. Yes, this is the letter from Kevin Tebbit that arrived
9 later that evening at No. 10 Downing Street. Sorry,
10 arrived with David Omand who then sent it on to
11 Downing Street later that evening.
12 Q. Did you see that, that evening?
13 A. I did not see it that evening. I had left to go to
14 Wales before that arrived in Downing Street. But
15 David Omand faxed it directly on to the Prime Minister
16 at Chequers.
17 Q. We can see from page 34 the gist of the letter is an MoD
18 official has volunteered he had a discussion, he was
19 interviewed today. Some of his questions and answers
20 are given; for example, at the bottom of page 34:
21 "Asked why it should be in the dossier, he said that
22 he replied 'probably for impact'."
23 Over the page, the personal reaction there which was
24 that he must be the single source, and three
25 possibilities set out down the page:

74
1 "(a) that Gilligan has embellished this official's
2 meeting with him, but that he is the 'single anonymous
3 source';
4 "(b) that Gilligan's source is someone else;
5 "(c) that no one 'source' exists and is in fact
6 a hotch-potch of comments from numerous individuals and
7 articles.
8 "In the case of (a), we would have the strongest
9 possible reason for publicly correcting the
10 misrepresentation made by Gilligan... However, we do
11 not have sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion
12 with any degree of safety. The official himself is
13 adamant that he is not the single source. Were we to
14 accuse Gilligan and the BBC of misrepresenting the
15 official's remarks, it would be easy for Gilligan to
16 claim that his source was someone else and that the
17 Government was pursuing a vendetta.
18 "For these reasons, I do not recommend that we use
19 what the official has told us to seek to correct the
20 public record further.
21 "I do, however, believe it necessary to have
22 defensive material available..."
23 Then over the page, at page 36 at the top:
24 "... the official has clearly breached the MoD rules
25 about unauthorised contact... There is no reason to

75
1 suspect a breach of the OSA..."
2 That I assume means the Official Secrets Act, does
3 it?
4 A. I assume so.
5 LORD HUTTON: May I ask you: you say you joined a meeting
6 with Sir David Manning, with Sir David Omand and
7 Sir John Scarlett. Those are very senior and important
8 officials, as are you. Why did these very senior
9 officials meet together to discuss this matter?
10 A. Well, I think they thought it was an important
11 development that Kevin Tebbit had called David Omand
12 about it. He had then gone to speak to John Scarlett.
13 John Scarlett had then -- both of them had come to see
14 David Manning who thought it was appropriate to summons
15 me along. I think that was appropriate, it was an
16 important issue to be discussed.
17 LORD HUTTON: Can you elaborate on its importance?
18 A. On the face of it, as we were told on the telephone it
19 would have meant that the Andrew Gilligan story was
20 indeed elaborated.
21 LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you.
22 MR DINGEMANS: At the meeting, going back to the meeting,
23 this is 6 o'clock, in whose office?
24 A. In Sir David Manning's office.
25 Q. What do you discuss?

76
1 A. Well we discuss the fact that this chap had come
2 forward. Our initial reaction was to think that perhaps
3 we ought to do something with this with the FAC. The
4 FAC, we knew, would be reporting on the Monday.
5 Q. Right.
6 A. And the thought was that we might be accused of covering
7 things up if this salient piece of information was not
8 made available to the FAC before the report was issued.
9 Q. So the discussion, you are obviously only giving
10 a summary. That was the most important thing that was
11 raised, that you were concerned about the FAC aspect?
12 A. Our concern was a piece of salient information had
13 landed on our desks, should we be passing it on to the
14 FAC. We then went on to think perhaps on the basis of
15 merely a telephone call we perhaps did not have enough
16 information. To work out what to do with it, we would
17 need to see if we had further information before taking
18 further steps.
19 Q. What was the concern, that you needed to disclose this
20 person to the FAC or this development to the FAC?
21 A. Well, if you recall, the FAC inquiry was set up on the
22 back of Andrew Gilligan's original story. They were
23 looking into this matter because it had been alleged
24 that the Government had inserted into that dossier
25 a piece of intelligence that was dodgy and that we had

77
1 made up. FAC had set up that report. The fact that the
2 person who might have been the source of that
3 information for the Gilligan story had come forward was
4 of course extremely pertinent to the FAC report.
5 Q. In relation to that, is this the general gist: that the
6 Government was trying to give every cooperation to the
7 FAC inquiry?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Can I just take you to a document? It is FAC/3/10 at
10 paragraph 6. This is an extract from the FAC report.
11 If we go down to number 6:
12 "Although that may have been No. 10's intention, it
13 seems the FAC had a different view of the matter. They
14 said this ..."
15 A. Are you reading? Sorry. Yes. Yes.
16 Q. They say this, and I hope this is a fair summary:
17 "We are strongly of the view that we were entitled
18 to a greater degree of co-operation from the Government
19 on access to witnesses and to intelligence material."
20 Then they relate the request for Alastair Campbell's
21 appearance, who then subsequently appeared, and then
22 they also talk about requiring access to JIC assessments
23 and to relevant FCO papers.
24 "That was refused, although some extracts were read
25 to us in private session. We are confident that our

78
1 inquiry would have been enhanced if our requests had
2 been met."
3 So on the face of the FAC perception, which
4 I appreciate may not have been No. 10's perception, they
5 were saying in the report they produced on the Monday:
6 well, you have not really cooperated with us very much
7 at all. Yet, as soon as this name pops up, it appears
8 from what you are saying that the overriding concern is
9 to cooperate with the FAC?
10 A. I do not think that is an entirely fair interpretation
11 of events. It is certainly true that initially we
12 thought the ISC would be the appropriate body to look at
13 this, and we made that public at the time, that we
14 thought the ISC was the right body to look at it. It
15 had the access to the intelligence that the FAC did not
16 have. The FAC pressed ahead with their inquiry anyway.
17 Initially we did not -- there is a long-standing
18 rule that officials from No. 10 Downing Street do not
19 appear before Select Committees. Therefore we said that
20 Alastair Campbell could not give evidence. We did
21 however, as the inquiry went on, waive that rule in the
22 exceptional circumstances and Alastair Campbell went and
23 gave evidence. Jack Straw did cooperate very closely
24 with them in allowing them to see intelligence material.
25 I think it is fair to say at the first we were not best

79
1 pleased they were doing the report rather than the ISC,
2 but we did cooperate with them fully as they went along.
3 Q. Which explains the comments they make at paragraph 7,
4 which is their complaint really that you are cooperating
5 more with the ISC rather than with them perhaps
6 initially?
7 A. With their rival, yes.
8 Q. So your evidence is initially that might have been
9 right, but by the time the report came to be published
10 it was different?
11 A. I think the strongest evidence of that of course is
12 Alastair Campbell going before them.
13 Q. Were you aware that the FAC had, so far as possible,
14 tried to avoid getting embroiled in the dispute between
15 Mr Gilligan and Mr Campbell?
16 A. No. I mean -- sorry, I do not understand.
17 Q. Can I take you to FAC/1/43. It is really at the top.
18 These are the chairman's notes, and effectively internal
19 documents, the decision to go to war in Iraq:
20 "If I understand correctly what this is about, I am
21 quite concerned that the Committee risks (a) getting
22 dragged deep into the Campbell-Gilligan dispute, which
23 it has very wisely avoided so far, and/or (b) exceeding
24 its brief, by taking too close an interest in the
25 Ministry of Defence."

80
1 Obviously those documents are the FAC documents so
2 you will not have seen them. Were you aware that the
3 FAC were trying to avoid getting embroiled into being
4 referees in the dispute between Mr Campbell and
5 Mr Gilligan or did you have a different understanding?
6 A. I cannot say I was very close to the FAC inquiry. It
7 seemed to me since they summonsed Mr Gilligan and
8 Mr Campbell they must have been fairly interested in the
9 subject.
10 Q. Right. So that was not your understanding then?
11 A. As I say, I was not close to it but I would be surprised
12 on the basis of what they did.
13 Q. So that is Friday evening; and your concern you have
14 identified about the FAC and why you thought this might
15 need to go further. I think you have told us that you
16 left for Wales?
17 A. Before that I did telephone the Prime Minister --
18 Q. Right.
19 A. -- on a number of issues, before I left. He was at
20 Chequers and I alerted him to the fact that we would be
21 receiving this letter later and to our discussion and he
22 confirmed the decision we had come to, which was to take
23 no further action until we had seen the letter.
24 Q. That is Friday night?
25 A. Yes.

81
1 Q. You are off to Wales and the Prime Minister is at
2 Chequers?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. You are waiting until you see the letter?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. When did you first see the letter?
7 A. It was read to me on my way to Wales.
8 Q. We have just looked at the letter.
9 A. Hmm, hmm.
10 Q. Did you do anything about it that night?
11 A. No, I did not.
12 Q. Did you do anything about it on Saturday 5th July?
13 A. On Saturday 5th July at some stage the duty clerk read
14 to me the second letter, from Kevin Tebbit, but perhaps
15 I am getting ahead of where you are on that.
16 Q. No.
17 A. I am not sure whether it was the morning or the
18 afternoon; and I had a telephone call from
19 Alastair Campbell when I was climbing in the
20 Black Mountains late morning on Saturday.
21 Q. And what was the gist of that telephone call?
22 A. The gist of the telephone call was he had been told, by
23 Geoff Hoon, about the appearance of this source; and he
24 was worried, as we had been at the meeting the previous
25 day, that we risked being accused of withholding

82
1 information from the FAC before it produced its final
2 report.
3 Q. What was the concern in this respect? That you were
4 being accused of withholding information? At this
5 stage, you had a letter which says he may or may not be
6 the source, we do not know. There are a number of
7 inconsistencies, there are a number of possibilities.
8 Why were you concerned you had to report that to the
9 FAC?
10 A. As I said, in respect of our previous discussion in the
11 meeting on Friday, this was an extremely salient point
12 from the point of view of the FAC report, and even
13 though we did not have the full details, was it right
14 not to tell the FAC that this person had come forward,
15 given that their report would be issued on Monday?
16 Q. Right. What was the thinking within where you were
17 working about the FAC report at this stage? Had it
18 assumed a great importance? Was this perceived likely
19 to determine the dispute between Mr Gilligan and
20 Mr Campbell?
21 A. Yes, it seemed extremely important and particularly in
22 that regard, yes.
23 Q. So effectively the perception -- tell me if this is
24 wrong -- within No. 10 was the FAC report was going to
25 decide whether Mr Gilligan was right or Mr Campbell's

83
1 complaints were justified?
2 A. Again I should preface my comments by saying I was not
3 that close to this process. That was not the major
4 thing I was doing at that time. I was not focusing on
5 the FAC report myself. But yes, I think there was
6 a sense that the Committee would come down one way or
7 the other.
8 Q. Then on 5th July you had this conversation with
9 Mr Campbell, is that right?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Did you at some stage read the second letter that had
12 been -- or were you told about a second letter from
13 Sir Kevin Tebbit?
14 A. Yes, I was. As I said, the duty clerk read me the
15 second letter I think -- I do not know whether it was
16 morning or afternoon of that day.
17 Q. But on the Saturday?
18 A. On the Saturday.
19 Q. Can I take you to that? That is MoD/1/38.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. This says:
22 "Since my letter to you yesterday afternoon, there
23 has been a further development which points more
24 strongly to our official as being the 'source'...
25 "Today's Times carries an article by Tom Baldwin

84
1 which contains further hints as to the informant. There
2 are three new pointers, specifically:
3 "'BBC journalists have been told that Mr Gilligan's
4 anonymous source is among the 100 British intelligence
5 and weapons specialists currently in Iraq as part of the
6 ISG'."
7 And the ISG is the Iraq Survey Group, is that right?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. 'Attempts to contact ... source in the past month to ask
10 supplementary questions has proved unsuccessful because
11 of the nature of his position'.
12 "Asked if now based abroad the executive replied
13 'Something like that'."
14 Then it goes on to say that Dr Kelly had been in
15 Iraq recently and other aspects which would tie Dr Kelly
16 in with that discrepancy.
17 Over the page to 39:
18 "There remained many discrepancies between
19 Gilligan's account of what he claims to have been told
20 by the official and the official's own version of what
21 transpired. We still cannot exclude the possibility
22 that the main source, or other sources, are elsewhere.
23 But it may be possible to explain and reconcile at least
24 some of the mismatches ...
25 "Records of the Ministry of Defence's interview ...

85
1 are still being prepared."
2 At the bottom, if I can pick it up there:
3 "There are also considerations, as we discussed
4 yesterday, whether the Foreign Affairs Committee
5 Chairman should be informed of what we know now, however
6 inconclusive, before their report is published on
7 Monday. And there is the question of whether this plays
8 into the continuing impasse between the Government and
9 the BBC."
10 I think, from what you have told us, the two issues
11 were related, relating it to the FAC, and the continuing
12 impasse was because the FAC were effectively looking
13 into that?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. So what is your reaction to this letter?
16 A. To tell you the truth, I did not make that much of it on
17 the day. Subsequently I made more of it when I was told
18 that the source of this further information about the
19 source in the MoD was in fact Mr Sambrook of the BBC,
20 who had given this information to The Times. It
21 therefore became clear that it looked more likely that
22 the source was indeed the one who had been identified.
23 Q. Who told you that Mr Sambrook had given this information
24 to The Times?
25 A. I believe I was told by Alastair Campbell.

86
1 Q. Do you know who told him?
2 A. I believe it was Mr Baldwin of The Times.
3 Q. No doubt I can ask both those persons.
4 What did you do with this letter? Did you report,
5 then, to the Prime Minister, on the Saturday?
6 A. No, I did not. I knew that the letter had gone
7 separately to him at Chequers.
8 Q. Right. Did you have any further involvement in this
9 over the weekend?
10 A. Yes. On Sunday I had a telephone call from the
11 Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, who said he had been
12 talking to Alastair Campbell and was again concerned
13 that we had not passed this information on to the FAC
14 and should we reconsider this issue again and think
15 about passing the information to the FAC.
16 Q. That was your concern?
17 A. No, sorry, that was the concern that Geoff Hoon had been
18 discussing with Alastair Campbell over the weekend.
19 Q. And what was your view on that?
20 A. I said I would consult the Prime Minister. I telephoned
21 the Prime Minister at Chequers.
22 Q. That is on the Sunday?
23 A. On the Sunday. He said he had been discussing the issue
24 with David Omand --
25 Q. Yes.

87
1 A. -- and that his view was that having seen the letters,
2 we still did not have enough information and that it
3 would not be appropriate to be passing the information
4 to the FAC at this stage.
5 Q. Right. Why is that not the end of it? There has been
6 an interview, Mr Hatfield sat in on it. He could not
7 get to the bottom of it. We know from Mr Hatfield's
8 comments that he has given Dr Kelly a telling off, he
9 says he is going to write a telling off, and should that
10 not really have been the end of it all?
11 A. Well, no, I do not think so, and if you look at the
12 original letter from Kevin Tebbit on Friday, the point
13 that you were emphasising, point (a), that if this was
14 the case it was incumbent on us to pass this information
15 on publicly. But we could only do so once we had all of
16 that information and we clearly did not have that
17 information on the basis of the first interview.
18 Q. And about this time Sir David Omand is writing to
19 Sir Kevin Tebbit. That is at MoD/1/41. It is a letter
20 of 4th July.
21 A. Hmm, hmm.
22 Q. But it is apparent from various aspects in it that it
23 has just been misdated and must have been 6th July.
24 A. Correct.
25 Q. Did you see this letter?

88
1 A. Yes, I would have seen that on the Monday.
2 Q. In this letter, Sir David Omand says:
3 "Thank you for your letter of Friday afternoon.
4 I discussed the contents with Jonathan Powell,
5 David Manning and John Scarlett that evening."
6 That refers to the meeting I think you have told us
7 about, is that right?
8 A. I think that is correct.
9 Q. "We recognised that at least part of the explanation of
10 the Gilligan story could rest on the discussion he had
11 had with the official who has now come forward. At the
12 appropriate point it would be incumbent upon us to
13 inform the FAC (and the ISC) so that they were not
14 placed in a false position."
15 This is Sir David Omand's letter so if you cannot
16 explain the phrases, just say no and I will ask
17 Sir David Omand. You were party to some of these
18 discussions. What did you understand that to mean?
19 A. I think it means the same as the point I was making from
20 Kevin Tebbit's letter on Friday, which is that if this
21 information was correct, this was indeed the source,
22 then it was incumbent on us to inform them because both
23 Committees were looking into this matter.
24 Q. Then:
25 "The Prime Minister asked for a deeper analysis of

89
1 what the official has actually said, read against the
2 account Gilligan himself has given the FAC and other
3 statements by the BBC. You agreed to put this in hand,
4 in the light of the record being prepared by
5 Richard Hatfield. When we spoke later yesterday
6 evening, we recognised that it might be necessary for
7 the individual to be reinterviewed on Monday.
8 "Your follow-up letter on Saturday has also been
9 seen by the Prime Minister, who was grateful for the
10 further information in it. He discussed the options
11 with me on Sunday morning", which is why we know the
12 date of the letter must be 6th July.
13 A. Hmm, hmm.
14 Q. "I was able to pass on to him the view of the
15 Foreign Secretary, relayed to me by the FCO Resident
16 Clerk on Saturday evening, against any immediate action
17 with the FAC in advance of the publication of their
18 report ..."
19 Had you been speaking to the Foreign Secretary at
20 all at this stage?
21 A. No.
22 Q. And then, over the page, at the top:
23 "The Prime Minister concluded that notwithstanding
24 the further circumstantial details in your second letter
25 he agreed with your recommendation that there were still

90
1 too many unknowns for us to approach the FAC now. But
2 we may need to react quickly if the meeting of BBC
3 Governors tonight or comment on the FAC report changes
4 the situation."
5 For reasons that are explained, you did not know
6 enough whether to notify the FAC, the Foreign Secretary,
7 and it is effectively the Foreign Secretary whose
8 Committee -- or reports to the FAC, is that right? The
9 Foreign Affairs Committee is effectively a committee
10 that deals with --
11 A. It is covered by the Foreign Office, yes.
12 Q. And his view, because no-one knew enough, was that the
13 FAC should not be contacted?
14 A. I did not know that, but that is in his letter, yes.
15 Q. We also know that no contact is made before the FAC
16 report is published on 7th July.
17 A. Sorry?
18 Q. No contact is made to the Foreign Affairs Committee
19 about the possibility of this source --
20 A. No.
21 Q. -- before 7th July?
22 A. No.
23 Q. We know that the report is then published on 7th July.
24 A. Correct.
25 Q. Why then is that not an end of it as far as the Foreign

91
1 Affairs Committee is concerned? No-one can now accuse
2 you of withholding information, you quite properly
3 looked at it all. You looked at all the details. You
4 decided for the reasons that are set out, perfectly
5 understandably: we cannot take this any further forward.
6 We are concerned we might be accused of suppressing it.
7 For the reasons you have given, no question of that at
8 all. Foreign Affairs Committee reports and people have
9 described it as a "score draw", whether that is
10 justified or not, but they have reported it; and is that
11 not the end of the matter?
12 A. No, I do not think so, because the Committee was set up
13 of course on the back of the Andrew Gilligan allegation
14 that the Government had put this piece of intelligence
15 into the dossier. Given that it was set up for that
16 purpose, even if the information came after their report
17 they were bound to have an interest in it.
18 Q. Well, we know later on that the Foreign Affairs
19 Committee come to look further at the new information,
20 but can I just take you to a document which is FAC/1/53?
21 What this appears to be are minutes of the Foreign
22 Affairs Committee, informal minutes. This is 10th July.
23 As a matter of chronology, Dr Kelly's name effectively
24 gets into the press that day.
25 A. Right.

92
1 Q. And the decision to go to war.
2 "The Committee noted the article in the Times
3 newspaper that day concerning the suggestion by the
4 Ministry of Defence that one of its officials,
5 Dr David Kelly, was the source ...
6 "The Committee agreed that the Chairman should write
7 to:
8 "(i) Mr Geoff Hoon ... to confirm when Dr Kelly met
9 Mr Gilligan; and
10 "(ii) Mr Andrew Gilligan, to confirm when he met
11 with the source ...
12 "It was also agreed that the Clerk would clarify
13 Dr Kelly's position and employment status ..." and they
14 would chase up a reply.
15 If you look towards the bottom:
16 "Sir John Stanley proposed that the Committee invite
17 Dr Kelly to give oral evidence ..."
18 There is a division, effectively 4/3 on that
19 proposal.
20 A. Hmm, hmm.
21 Q. Were you aware that at least as far as the Foreign
22 Affairs Committee were concerned, the decision to ask
23 Dr Kelly to come to give the evidence was not the
24 foregone conclusion that it might have appeared to
25 others?

93
1 A. No. I have never seen this document. I was unaware of
2 those votes.
3 Q. Right. We are now on 7th July.
4 A. That is Monday, is it?
5 Q. Yes. We have finished 6th July. Did you have any other
6 relevant contacts --
7 A. To complete the sequence, I then called Geoff Hoon back
8 and passed on the Prime Minister's views.
9 Q. Right. Was there any relevant comment from Geoff Hoon
10 about that?
11 A. He agreed with that and said, "That is fine".
12 Q. On 7th July what then happens? Do you have any meetings
13 relevant to this?
14 A. Yes, on 7th July we had -- well, the meeting would be --
15 it was a sort of running meeting, that the
16 Prime Minister popped into a working breakfast that
17 morning. He then came down to his office about
18 9 o'clock and asked to see David Omand and Kevin Tebbit
19 and John Scarlett. They were not immediately available
20 and a separate meeting was going on in
21 Alastair Campbell's office to discuss the Government's
22 response to the FAC report including the Foreign
23 Secretary and a number of officials.
24 Q. They were worried about putting out a press statement
25 relating to the Foreign Affairs Committee report?

94
1 A. What Jack Straw should say in response to the Foreign
2 Affairs Committee report when it was issued that
3 morning. So there was a meeting going on there with
4 them, John Scarlett came from that meeting to see the
5 Prime Minister briefly, then went back. David Omand
6 then arrived, then Kevin Tebbit arrived --
7 Q. Whose office are we talking about now?
8 A. This is in the Prime Minister's office in No. 10
9 Downing Street. So it is a sort of running meeting with
10 people coming and later the Foreign Secretary and the
11 rest of the people from the meeting with
12 Alastair Campbell came along as well.
13 Q. Right. So the meeting gets bigger as time goes on?
14 A. It gets smaller and bigger and bigger and smaller, yes.
15 Q. Were you present in the Prime Minister's Office
16 throughout?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. So you can tell us what was said at the meeting then?
19 A. As far as my memory allows me to do so, yes.
20 Q. First of all this, were any minutes kept of this running
21 meeting, as it were?
22 A. No minutes were kept of this meeting or subsequent
23 meetings we are probably going to discuss, no.
24 Q. Is that the normal course, that they are just
25 discussions and no-one is bothering to write them down

95
1 because they are free flowing, as it were?
2 A. Yes, I thought I might be asked that question because it
3 may seem odd to people from outside, so I looked through
4 the diary for the two weeks of the period we are talking
5 about and the usual pattern is about three written
6 records for 17 meetings a day is sort of the average you
7 get to because there is no purpose served by minutes
8 unless they are either recording people visiting from
9 outside, the president of Nigeria, or something like
10 that, or if they are action points that need to be taken
11 forward, something on school funding for example.
12 Q. The only documents that Lord Hutton effectively is going
13 to look at, and I think you have very kindly supplied
14 some of these over the weekend, are e-mails that people
15 sent to each other after meetings or before meetings
16 following up on discussions. We have seen one of your
17 e-mails about the dossier.
18 A. Well, no, we have tried to give you as much information
19 from different people's recollections of the meeting,
20 and indeed --
21 Q. Documentary evidence I am looking at. Obviously
22 recollections --
23 A. You mean contemporaneous?
24 Q. Yes.
25 A. No.

96
1 Q. So it is effectively only the e-mails and any documents
2 that might have been produced to --
3 A. Yes, it is the subsequent documents largely that will be
4 the case, yes.
5 Q. But there is no-one official as it were keeping a log of
6 all the conversations?
7 A. No.
8 Q. Right. Subject to those limitations and doing the best
9 you can, can you tell us what happens at this meeting?
10 A. Yes. It is a confused meeting because it was discussing
11 both the response to the FAC report and when the Foreign
12 Secretary and officials came along the Prime Minister
13 had a look at the conclusions and recommendations of the
14 FAC report and there was a discussion of what the
15 Government's response should be. Before and after
16 that -- so before with Kevin Tebbit and David Omand --
17 there was a discussion following on really from the
18 weekend telephone calls about what further to do and
19 when the larger group arrived there was a further
20 discussion of that.
21 Q. Right. In relation to the FAC report and the
22 Government's response, there is no interest at all in
23 matters insofar as they relate to anything other than
24 Dr Kelly's death, but was there any discussion in
25 relation to that: well, a possible response is now to

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1 give them Dr Kelly?
2 A. No, no. The discussion was not in that context, no.
3 Q. So it was just the press statements that were going to
4 be made and we have seen some of those?
5 A. Yes, it was what Jack Straw would say when he went out,
6 yes.
7 Q. And his comments. Was there anything, then, that was
8 said specific to Dr Kelly at this stage?
9 A. Yes, there was a discussion of that, as I said, both
10 before and after the FAC discussion. We have tried to
11 give you something that reconstructs that discussion as
12 best we can.
13 Q. Effectively because that is as it were after the event,
14 you tell me what your best recollection is now.
15 A. May I refer to ...?
16 Q. Yes of course.
17 A. This note as I say is based on the recollections of
18 everyone who was at it, not just mine, because mine
19 would be rather thin.
20 Q. Right, but you will tell us if anyone else's
21 recollection does not accord with yours, will you?
22 A. Yes, because as I say, this is based actually largely on
23 other people's recollections rather than mine. My
24 recollections are not as full as some of theirs.
25 Q. Yes.

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1 A. It is a bit sort of patchy but it reads as follows:
2 "The main purpose of the meeting was to discuss the
3 Government's reaction to the FAC report. It followed
4 a brief discussion of whether the individual Dr Kelly
5 who had come forward was indeed Mr Gilligan's source.
6 Kevin Tebbit said the individual was an expert but not
7 in the intelligence community and was not centrally
8 involved in the preparation of the dossier. Dr Kelly
9 had denied that he had mentioned Alastair Campbell to
10 Mr Gilligan. Jack Straw remembered him sitting next to
11 him at an earlier FAC hearing. There was some
12 questioning of whether we should already have given his
13 name to the chairman of the FAC, were we withholding
14 information, but it was agreed that we needed to know
15 more before deciding what we should do next.
16 "The Prime Minister asked what we knew of Dr Kelly's
17 views on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, what would
18 he say if he appeared before the ISC or the FAC.
19 Kevin Tebbit said that while he supported the war and
20 was certain that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
21 destruction and that they had been concealed from the
22 inspectors, he might say some uncomfortable things about
23 specific items on which he had views. He undertook to
24 find out more about his publicly expressed views."
25 Q. Can I just pause you there. So the Prime Minister is

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1 asking: what does Dr Kelly really think about weapons of
2 mass destruction?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. How is that likely to impact on whether or not he ought
5 to go to the FAC?
6 A. Obviously what he is going to say on weapons of mass
7 destruction would be relevant to the Government's
8 approach to the FAC and ISC.
9 Q. What, whether or not Dr Kelly will be suggested as
10 a possible witness?
11 A. No, not whether or not he will be suggested but what he
12 would say if he were before those Committees.
13 Q. Sorry, I interrupted.
14 A. "He said [this is Kevin Tebbit] we would have to face up
15 to the fact that his identity was likely to become
16 public at some point soon given the number of people he
17 had talked to. MoD was preparing contingency press
18 lines just in case. Kevin Tebbit reported that Dr Kelly
19 had come forward of his own volition and as far as MoD
20 were concerned there was no question of any offence
21 having been committed under the OSA [the Official
22 Secrets Act]. The Foreign Secretary reminded the
23 meeting of the employment rights Dr Kelly had. The
24 Prime Minister made it clear, as he had over the
25 weekend, that the MoD should continue to handle the case

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1 following whatever internal processes were normal."
2 Q. Pausing there again if I may?
3 A. Hmm, hmm.
4 Q. I do not think you were here last week but I asked
5 Mr Hatfield, who is a personnel director of the Ministry
6 of Defence, whether there were any MoD procedures to
7 deal with this situation. Obviously there are Ministry
8 of Defence procedures to deal with disciplining and he
9 had spoken about those, but he had said nothing about
10 whether or not to name an individual.
11 A. Hmm, hmm.
12 Q. Did anyone tell you that there were any such procedures
13 or not?
14 A. No.
15 Q. So when everyone was just talking about Ministry of
16 Defence procedures, it was just a general comment to
17 ensure that it was all --
18 A. Yes, it should be handled properly on the official
19 network within the MoD and done in that way.
20 LORD HUTTON: What did you understand the reference by the
21 Foreign Secretary to Dr Kelly's employment rights to be,
22 Mr Powell?
23 A. To be honest I am not sure, so I do not think I can
24 elaborate on that, sorry.
25 LORD HUTTON: I quite understand that.

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1 MR DINGEMANS: It was a comment that was made that you
2 either did not recollect yourself or did not note at the
3 time?
4 A. Someone else recollected that, not I.
5 "The Prime Minister made it clear, as he had over
6 the weekend, that the MoD should continue to handle the
7 case following whatever internal processes were normal.
8 Kevin Tebbit and David Omand should be in the lead at
9 all times and nothing should with done with which they
10 were not absolutely content. There was agreement that
11 Dr Kelly's account needed to be subject to more forensic
12 examination and that the MoD should reinterview him.
13 The meeting concluded with Kevin Tebbit agreeing to call
14 Dr Kelly back from a conference in Lincolnshire to allow
15 him to be reinterviewed."
16 Q. So that is why, as we have heard, Dr Kelly gets pulled
17 back from RAF Honnington for his second interview.
18 I think you are sent an e-mail about it. Can I take you
19 to CAB/11/8.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. It is a slightly cryptic e-mail. It says:
22 "Message from Sir Kevin Tebbit. The interview is at
23 1600 today. I am told you will know what this means!"
24 A. Correct.
25 Q. That refers to the interview that Dr Kelly was about to

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1 undergo, is that right?
2 A. Correct.
3 Q. Was there anything else that took place that morning?
4 A. I do not think so.
5 Q. And you have mentioned in that note Dr Kelly's name.
6 When was the first time you became aware of Dr Kelly's
7 name?
8 A. I believe it was the meeting on Friday with David Omand,
9 John Scarlett and David Manning.
10 Q. Even that Friday night, when I think you have said the
11 meeting was about 6 o'clock before you set off to
12 Wales --
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. -- Dr Kelly's name has been mentioned to you?
15 A. I believe that is correct, yes.
16 Q. So at that stage Sir David Omand, Sir Kevin Tebbit,
17 John Scarlett all know the name, is that right?
18 A. And of course a large number of MoD officials.
19 Q. Yes.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Did you hear the results of the second interview? Did
22 you hear about what had happened at the second
23 interview?
24 A. Later that evening, I called David Omand to ask what the
25 outcome of the further interview had been. He was in

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1 Cheltenham near the GCHQ new building. My recollection
2 is that he said that the interview appeared to have
3 confirmed the fact that this did look likely to be the
4 source; and in particular Martin Howard, I believe the
5 name is, one of the people conducting the interview,
6 seemed to be of the view that he was the source.
7 Q. Right. That is Monday evening?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. 7th July?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Is anything further done when you find out that
12 information? Did you report to the Prime Minister?
13 A. I do not think I did report to the Prime Minister
14 because I then went out that evening. The next step for
15 me was getting home and receiving two draft MoD press
16 releases on my fax at home.
17 Q. Did you comment on those?
18 A. I did not comment on those that evening, no.
19 Q. We have now finished Monday 7th July and we are turning
20 to Tuesday 8th July. Do you have any meetings on this
21 occasion?
22 A. There is a meeting in No. 10 at about 8.15 at which
23 I was not present which was a preparation for the
24 Liaison Committee.
25 Q. You will have to explain to us all what the

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1 Liaison Committee is.
2 A. Yes, the Liaison Committee of the House of Commons is
3 the body to which the Prime Minister twice a year goes
4 and answers questions. He was appearing that morning
5 before the Liaison Committee.
6 Q. I imagine the preparation is wide ranging over a whole
7 series --
8 A. It is wide ranging, it takes a long time, piles of
9 briefing and so on.
10 Q. That is the 8.15 Liaison Committee meeting. You are not
11 party to that briefing?
12 A. I had to remain at home that morning, I did not get in
13 until later, so I was not at that.
14 Q. What time do you get in that morning?
15 A. I think I get in at about 10 o'clock.
16 Q. At that stage where is the Prime Minister? He is at the
17 Liaison Committee, is he?
18 A. He is in the House of Commons before the Liaison
19 Committee.
20 Q. When did he get back?
21 A. He got back about 11.30.
22 Q. Did you have a meeting then?
23 A. Yes, the team who briefed him were there to see if there
24 were any follow-up points that he needed to run through.
25 LORD HUTTON: I think this might be a convenient time. We

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1 will sit again at 2 o'clock.
2 (1.00 pm)
3 (The short adjournment)
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