thursday, 18th september 2003, 10.30am pam teare...
TRANSCRIPT
Thursday, 18th September 2003, 10.30am
Richard Hatfield, Personnel Director, Ministry of Defence
Pam Teare, Director of News, Ministry of Defence
MR RICHARD HATFIELD (continued), cross-examined by MR GOMPERTZ
LORD HUTTON: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Mr Hatfield, could you sit down please. Yes Mr
Gompertz.
MR GOMPERTZ: May it please your Lordship. Mr Hatfield, when were you appointed Personnel
Director of the MoD?
A. In June 2001.
Q. Before that, had your career been in personnel at all?
A. In the personnel function, no, but I had managed people for at least 20 years.
Q. I follow, as a manager or occupying managerial posts in the MoD?
A. In the MoD, yes.
Q. Because you were Policy Director of the MoD, were you not?
A. I was, for five years.
Q. Do you remember when you gave evidence on 11th August that you spoke of instructions for
dealing with the media?
A. I did.
Q. One of the things you said was that you believed that they were even annexed to Dr Kelly's
contract.
A. I was talking about the Senior Civil Service contracts at the time. As we now know, Dr Kelly did not
have a Senior Civil Service contract. However -- perhaps I -- I was going to clarify: however, the terms
of the letter of appointment which Dr Kelly would have had, as everybody below the Senior Civil
Service has, refer to the documents I was referring to, they quite specifically refer to those documents.
Q. Was there doubt in your mind when you gave evidence before as to whether Dr Kelly was a member
of the Senior Civil Service or not?
A. No, there was no doubt in my mind in what I understood to be a definition of the Senior Civil
Service. Since we were debating rather fine points about what had happened in agencies of the MoD in
the90s, I was not entirely clear on what his status inside that agency was at the time. I think the Inquiry
has had further evidence from the agency on that point.
Q. I will come back to that in a moment. When you referred to a contract, can I ask you what contract?
A. There are two possible contracts, depending who we are talking about. If you are a member of the
Senior Civil Service you have an individual contract these days, personally signed by you and
countersigned by the Ministry. If you are not a member of the Senior Civil Service you have a letter of
appointment, which calls up the standard conditions of service which you will have and will be updated
from time to time when any changes are made to those conditions of service.
Q. Because Dr Kelly's personal file certainly contained no contract, did it?
A. No, but it does contain a letter of appointment.
Q. What date is that?
A. I think the original letter is about 1984 which is when he was appointed as a permanent civil servant.
Q. No updating since then?
A. No, it would be updated as everybody else is updated by -- depending on where you are in the
organisation -- letters that are put round to everybody telling them what changes have been made to
the standard contract. The point is he did not have a personalised contract because they only exist
these days in the Senior Civil Service.
Q. Could I ask you, please, to look at MoD/2/9. This is the first page of a background note on Dr Kelly I
believe you prepared; is that right?
A. No, my staff prepared it.
Q. I beg your pardon. Did you approve it?
A. No, I submitted it.
Q. You looked at it before you submitted it, I dare say.
A. I did not approve it because it is a description of what happened in an agency which, as I explained
before, was not under my direct control. I am not therefore in a position and was not therefore in a
position to approve or disapprove the detailed facts.
LORD HUTTON: What date is this note, Mr Gompertz, can you assist me?
MR GOMPERTZ: I must confess, my Lord, I am not sure that I can answer your Lordship's question.
LORD HUTTON: Approximately when was it?
A. It was submitted with my original evidence, my Lord.
MR GOMPERTZ: It was prepared after Dr Kelly died.
A. Oh yes, indeed.
LORD HUTTON: I see. Yes. Thank you.
MR GOMPERTZ: You submitted it but did not approve it, is that what you are saying?
A. This was information provided from the DSTL file about his career. It was a factual note prepared by
my staff. Since I did not read the file I could not tell you whether the facts were exactly right or not, but
I am sure my staff got it right.
Q. Could you look at the next page, please, MoD/2/10? This refers, after paragraph 7, to the terms and
conditions of Dr Kelly's employment; right?
A. Yes, it does.
Q. What is said, as we know, is: "At the time of his death Dr Kelly was an employee of DSTL, (and
therefore subject to DSTL terms and conditions)..." Right?
A. Correct.
Q. When you gave evidence before Lord Hutton before, on I think 11th August, you will no doubt
recollect you were taken through various documents, terms and conditions of DSTL, the Civil Service
code and so on.
A. I do recollect it very well.
Q. Yes. I am not going to go through that exercise again, but I would like you, please, if you would be
so kind, to look at MoD/2/16, which is the first page of the DSTL procedure for conduct; right?
A. Yes.
Q. This is the document which governed Dr Kelly's employment; is that right?
A. That is not strictly true in the circumstances he was when he was working on secondment in MoD. I
would expect, and I believe, it to be entirely consistent with the MoD code from which it is derived and
in fact I think this is actually a rather clearer document than the MoD document. But since he was
working in MoD on secondment, he was actually subject to the MoD code, but I do not think there is
any substantial difference.
Q. I am not asking you to go back to it, but the paragraph in the summary, the background note that I
just referred you to, reads: "At the time of his death Dr Kelly was an employee of DSTL, (and therefore
subject to DSTL terms and conditions)..." Is that wrong?
A. If you read the rest of the note it also says he was on secondment to the MoD. Both are right and in
my view anyway the two codes are entirely consistent because the DSTL code is meant to be derived
from the MoD code.
Q. I would like you please, if you would be so kind, to look at paragraph 8 of the DSTL code which we
will find on MoD/2/24. The bottom of the page on/24 under the head "Extra-curricular activities".
A. Yes.
Q. It says this: "If an employee wishes to carry out any of the following types of activities ... he/she
must seek prior written consent from his/her line manager."
A. Yes.
Q. On 2/25 the second item is "Media activities".
A. Yes.
Q. Does this have any relevance with what we are concerned with in this Inquiry?
A. It has some relevance but that is a very general procedure. There are much more detailed
procedures which I also referred to about dealing with the media, which reinforce that. But that point is
actually derived from the point in the Civil Service code, in the MoD conduct code and so on. It is a
general point about anybody who wishes to deal with the media if they are not as it were following
specific procedures.
Q. Do you know whether Dr Kelly ever obtained written consent from anybody with regard to media
activity?
A. You do not require written consent if you are operating within agreed standard procedures for
dealing with the media. This is a general proposition put forward to somebody who is not as it were put
into a special position.
Q. Where do we find the general standard provisions for dealing with the media then?
A. Well, the best example is the document I referred to without naming it in my earlier evidence, which
is a Defence Council Instruction circulated in99 which goes into a great deal of detail about all sorts of
circumstances in which people might find themselves dealing with the media or in contact with the
media, for example if somebody simply comes up to them, which is clearly not meant to be covered by
asking for prior written consent.
Q. Would that document apply to someone whose specific task was to deal with the media?
A. It would apply to every single employee of the Ministry of Defence, military and civilian.
Q. Are you aware of the evidence which was given to us yesterday, I think, or was it -- very recently at
any rate, by Dr Shuttleworth?
A. I am aware in general terms. I have not read the transcript.
Q. Right. He would have closer knowledge, would he, of what happened in practice with regard to Dr
Kelly's dealings with the media?
A. I would think Dr Shuttleworth would have no knowledge whatsoever of the arrangements under
which Dr Kelly was operating during his secondment to the Ministry of Defence. He would clearly have
known about the position during which he was the line manager for Dr Kelly in DSTL or DERA as it then
was in the 1990s, but that is a very different situation.
Q. Very well. Now, is it right that Dr Kelly had had contacts with the media on behalf of DSTL, the MoD,
the FCO, UNSCOM and UNMOVIC?
A. Yes, it is right.
Q. Yes. And he had had those contacts for many years?
A. He had.
Q. There was no suggestion of any irregularity prior to the year 2003?
A. In relation to those contacts there was no irregularity at all.
Q. Thank you. Is this right: that whether on secondment to the MoD or not, in the year 2003 Dr Kelly
sought permission for press contacts from Mr Patrick Lamb?
A. That is true in relation to some contacts. The list you read out of things that Dr Kelly had previously
spoken on did not include the Ministry of Defence. Mr Patrick Lamb does not have authority to ask
anybody to speak on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.
Q. If I missed out the Ministry of Defence then I apologise, I thought I had included it, but there it is.
You are saying that it was necessary for Dr Kelly to make a distinction between the various bodies for
whom he might be acting?
A. Quite correct. It is a distinction which he himself recognised.
Q. Is it right that Mr Lamb took over responsibility for Dr Kelly's press contacts in the year 2000?
A. No, it is not.
Q. We shall perhaps hear from him. He dealt with Dr Kelly's press contacts because he was instructed
to do so; did you know that?
A. He dealt with Dr Kelly's press contacts in relation to FCO business because he was instructed to do
so.
Q. When Dr Kelly started to do more work for the MoD in the year 2003, did anyone tell him that he
should seek permission for media contacts from the MoD?
A. I believe that is so.
Q. Well, you may believe it, but did it happen?
A. I am not in a position to say what people said to other people three years ago, but I have every
reason to believe he knew that both from things he said to me and from the standing instructions in the
Ministry of Defence about talking about Ministry of Defence business.
Q. Not three years ago, this year.
A. Well, in that case let me be clear. I have referred to the Defence Council Instruction 1999 which was
circulated to everybody in the MoD including Dr Kelly, although I cannot tell you if he read it. That
makes it absolutely clear if you want to talk about defence business you must get clearance through
the MoD.
Q. So if it be the case that Mr Lamb dealt with MoD contacts as well, that would be quite wrong, would
it?
A. If he dealt with it without consulting the MoD it would certainly be inappropriate.
Q. Right. Could you look, please, at MoD/1/24?
A. I am looking at it.
Q. Thank you very much. This, of course, is your note of the interview with Dr Kelly on 4th July?
A. That is correct.
Q. We will have to look at this document again, but if you could go to the bottom of the first page, the
end of the penultimate paragraph, this is recorded: "When a journalist approached him, he usually
consulted the FCO press office, but on occasions he used his own judgment as explained in his letter.
"I asked why he consulted the FCO press office rather than the MoD. Dr Kelly said that his salary was
paid by the FCO. I said that was irrelevant -- he was seconded to MoD." Dr Kelly did not say anything
there about his practice of consulting Mr Lamb.
A. Could I ask you to read the next sentence which said: "I asked who had given him authority to
exercise his own judgment about contacts with journalists on defence related business, since this was
contrary to standing departmental instructions." We are not talking about dealing with Mr Lamb on
FCO business, we are talking about MoD business.
Q. Yes. Would you then like to read the next sentence: "Dr Kelly said that he had never read those
instructions..." I do not want you to have to take up time reading out loud the rest of the paragraph but
it comes to this, does it not, that he never answered the question about seeking to discover what
guidance existed about contact with journalists, did he?
A. He did indeed answer it. He said he had never read them or sought to read them, which I thought
was extraordinary, both because the instructions I was referring to should have been read and were
available to be read by every civil servant, and he was a man who had just told me that he had spent
10 years dealing with the press.
Q. Did he answer the first part of that double question? I asked who had given him authority to
exercise his own judgment about contacts with journalists on defence related business.
A. He answered it effectively by his silence that nobody had.
Q. So he did not answer it?
A. He was given an opportunity to tell me and he did not tell me any answer at all.
Q. Can I come back to what you said when you were present at the Inquiry on 11th August? You said
this: "There is no doubt that the instructions that Dr Kelly should have seen, and I believe they are even
annexed to his contract, provide sufficient basic guidance for dealing with the press. Unless you feel
that you have a problem which is not covered by that, in which case you can seek advice and should
seek advice." Why did you say that?
A. I said several things in that sentence. In referring to his contract I was referring to his letter of
appointment, in practice, since he does not have an individual contract; and I suppose I should have
said, technically, not annexed but they are referred to. We do not physically attach them but the
appointment letter tells you what they are and they are readily available. The detailed instructions I had
in mind were particularly what I have been referring to as the Defence Council Instruction of 1999.
Q. So you take the view, do you, that Dr Kelly should have had no contacts with journalists unless
previously authorised?
A. Or within a standing arrangement, if that had been authorised.
Q. Yes.
A. And in this case neither applied.
Q. Did you know that Dr Kelly had had such contacts and reported them ex post facto for many years?
A. Yes -- well, I knew that is what he told me and I had no reason to disbelieve it.
Q. And that was perfectly acceptable, was it not?
A. It was.
Q. Did you know that Mr Lamb and Dr Shuttleworth consider that he was scrupulous in reporting ex
post facto?
A. Well, it is quite clear that he was not from his own letter because he tells us that he had not reported
this contact or cleared it with anybody, including Mr Lamb. So in relation to the particular case it is not
true. He had previously, apparently, been scrupulous.
Q. Thank you. Did anybody ever say to him: you must not act in this way by reporting ex post facto?
A. The answer to that is yes, because as he made clear in most cases where he has the opportunity to
do so, he should actually clear his contacts in advance and record ex post facto, and in all cases you
should report ex post facto anyway not just the contact but the content of that contact.
Q. May I suggest to you that, at best, the arrangements which existed for permission to speak to
journalists on behalf of the various bodies with which Dr Kelly was concerned were a muddle?
A. No, I do not accept that. When you have had the opportunity to look at the very detailed-paragraph
guidance circulated to everybody in the MoD which is periodically drawn to their attention, I do not
think you will think they were either a muddle or unclear.
Q. Has that document been disclosed to us?
A. It has.
Q. Can I go on to another matter? When you interviewed Dr Kelly on 4th July, were you under the
impression that he had not reported meeting Mr Gilligan and Ms Watts at the end of May?
A. I was under that impression in the sense that he had not told anybody and did not tell me in the
course of the meeting anything other than that he had met, apart from Mr Gilligan, of course, other
journalists.
Q. Yes. That is not what I am asking you. What I am asking you is: were you under the impression that
he had not reported ex post facto, to somebody else, that he had had those journalistic contacts at the
end of May?
A. Let me be clear about this. I was clear that he had reported meeting a range of journalists, including
Susan Watts and Jane Corbin, in fact he lists quite a few of them in his letter. I did not know and did
not need to know for the purposes of the interview on July 4th the content of any reports he may have
made or may not have made about those because I was only concerned with what he had himself
volunteered us about his meeting with Andrew Gilligan on 22nd May. So I formed no judgment
whatsoever and I assumed that actually he had reported whatever needed to be reported about those
other contacts.
Q. Did you?
A. Yes.
Q. Would you look, please, at MoD/1/25, which is the second page of your note of the interview of 4th
July. It is in the main paragraph in the second half of the page, about perhaps 10 lines up from the end
of that paragraph: "I asked why he had not even reported the conversation afterwards, given the public
debate about the two Government dossiers. Kelly repeated that the discussion had not really been
about the dossier and he had not said anything controversial..."
A. Well, I think I have no problem with this one. Dr Kelly's letter to us acknowledges having a
substantial conversation with Andrew Gilligan which referred to the dossier, even though it did not say
that he started it or anything like that. He had not mentioned this to his line manager or to anybody in
the Ministry of Defence, despite the fact it was clearly a major piece of information relating to the
controversy which was engulfing the Government, regardless of whether he had done anything wrong
at all in talking to Mr Gilligan.
Q. We now know that he had mentioned contact with Andrew Gilligan and Susan Watts to Mr Lamb,
had he not?
A. He had mentioned contact.
Q. Yes.
A. He had not reported what had happened at that meeting and that is what he said to the ISC.
Q. Yes. Could you go to the next page, please, MoD/1/26. In the second main paragraph, again
perhaps about eight lines down, after referring to Gilligan's primary source you record: "... much of
which could have been avoided even if he had reported the contact immediately afterwards."
LORD HUTTON: I have not found that Mr Gompertz. Is it the paragraph beginning "It is very
difficult..."?
MR GOMPERTZ: No, it is the paragraph beginning: "I said that I was prepared to accept..."
LORD HUTTON: Where is that in the paragraph?
MR GOMPERTZ: About six lines down: "Even if he was not Gilligan's primary source, it had had very
awkward consequences both for him and the department, much of which could have been avoided
even if he had reported the contact immediately afterwards."
A. Yes.
Q. Do you think with what you know now that that is a fair statement?
A. I think it is a very fair statement.
Q. Do you? He did report the contact to Mr Lamb, did he not?
A. He did not report the contact in giving any description of its content and I am afraid I do not accept
just saying "I have met a journalist" amounts to, in this context, reporting the contact.
Q. He did not say "I have met a journalist", he gave the names, did he not?
A. And he did not give any indication that anything had happened in those contacts of significance to
the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Defence.
Q. So you are not prepared to make any sort of concession in this regard then?
A. No, I am not. I think it is a fundamental failing in what he did.
Q. Right. Thank you. Can I turn to another topic? You stressed in your evidence previously that Dr Kelly
was not a member of the Senior Civil Service.
A. I did not stress it. It was asked to explain whether he was or he was not.
Q. Very well. I will withdraw the word "stressed". You said it?
A. I did.
Q. Is that still your stance?
A. It certainly is.
Q. Technically, that is right, is it?
A. It certainly is right.
Q. That is so even though he had been awarded a CMG?
A. Yes.
Q. Which is normally given to the Senior Civil Service, is it not?
A. I have to correct you. At the time he was awarded the CMG, whatever the current practice is, the
Senior Civil Service did not even exist. He is not a member of the Senior Civil Service otherwise he
would have a contract which said he was a member of the Senior Civil Service, an individual contract.
He does not have one so he cannot be a member of the Senior Civil Service.
Q. Even though his pay band was within the bracket that you might expect for a senior civil servant?
A. Very much so. He was not paid in the Senior Civil Service band. It is quite true his salary was in the
range of a Senior Civil Service pay band. But that is precisely the point. If he was in the Senior Civil
Service he would actually have been in the modern pay band covering that part. He was not paid
according to that arrangement, at all.
Q. So would you adhere to the description of him as a middle ranking official?
A. Yes, I would.
Q. You would?
A. Yes, I would.
Q. This tremendous expert?
A. That is nothing to do with his rank. He is a tremendous expert, was a tremendous expert. But his
rank is quite clearly middle ranking.
Q. Or is it that it suited the Government to describe him as a middle ranking official in order to play
down his status in order to stress that Gilligan's source could not have known what was ascribed to
him by Gilligan?
A. I think that is completely false. The Government or the MoD in this context was giving an accurate
description of what he was, far from playing down his role, which does not depend on his rank at all, it
does indeed depend on his expertise which we were very willing to acknowledge from the outset and
still acknowledge. He was a very important expert in this area. That does not change the fact he is
middle ranking.
Q. There was a meeting arranged for 24th June. Did you know that?
A. I know that now, but I did not -- I think I may have been aware that a meeting had been planned
without knowing what date it was. I did not know that on July 4th.
Q. No. There is no suggestion that you were going to participate in that meeting?
A. None whatsoever.
Q. Can you help us at all as to whether Dr Kelly was told about that meeting?
A. No, I cannot.
Q. Can you help us at all as to when Dr Kelly was cleared of the leak allegation?
A. He was never -- nobody ever alleged that he had leaked. At one stage, in the process I understand
of the leak inquiry which was going on quite separately, his name was identified as somebody who
might have had access to papers; and it was subsequently established that he did not and therefore he
was eliminated from those names even being pursued. I am not sure that he would ever have been
aware of that.
Q. What I am trying to discover is when that happened.
A. I do not know. I could find out for you; but from my point of view it was simply irrelevant. It ceased to
exist before this meeting.
Q. It may be irrelevant in your view. Let me just put these matters to you: the reason for the
postponement of the meeting of 24th June, so we are told, was because of the continuance of that
leak inquiry.
A. That may well be so.
Q. And on 2nd July Dr Wells was seeing the police in connection with that leak inquiry.
A. Yes.
Q. Indeed, when Dr Kelly wrote his letter Dr Wells thought that it should be sent on or thought that it
should be considered for sending on in relation to that leak inquiry. Could you look, please, at
MoD/1/23? Do you see that?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. The last sentence in this memorandum dated 2nd July: "You may wish to pass a copy [of the letter
that is] to the leak inquiry personnel." That is 2nd July. You were asked to investigate this matter that
we are concerned with onrd July?
A. On the evening of 3rd July, correct.
Q. Indeed. I am just wondering whether, in fact, you can help us at all. When you were asked to assist
on 3rd July was anything at all said to you about the leak inquiry?
A. No, none whatsoever. I knew a leak inquiry was going on but nobody had mentioned to me that Dr
Kelly's name had been one of those which had been checked, as it were, to see if he had access to the
documents. I did not know that when I interviewed him on 4th July. There is no reason why I should
have done.
Q. I will pursue that with others, perhaps. So we come to the interview on 4th July, which you were
asked to conduct by Sir Kevin Tebbit.
A. Correct.
Q. And were you aware of Mr Howard's letter that had been written? MoD/1/17, please. I call it a letter,
it is probably a memorandum. Were you aware of this document?
A. I was not aware of this document at the time, although I was aware that the Defence Intelligence
Staff had had some sort of reminder about leaks. But I had not seen that document until this Inquiry
began.
Q. Yes. If you would like to turn to the next page, MoD/1/18, and just read to yourself, because we
have had it read out already, the last part of the letter beginning "Leaking material to the press..."
A. Yes, I have read it.
Q. It refers, does it not, to the strongest possible action being taken?
A. Correct.
Q. No doubt you went into the interview onth July with an open mind?
A. I did.
Q. Indeed, if you go back to your record of that meeting at MoD/1/24, please, you start off by -- this is
the first main paragraph: "I began by explaining to Dr Kelly that his letter had serious implications."
A. Indeed.
Q. You refer to the possibility of disciplinary action, and we know that you said various things by way of
introduction. Yet within an hour or so you had accepted Dr Kelly's account; right? You had decided that
it was not necessary that there should be any formal disciplinary process; right? You are nodding, are
you?
A. I accepted Dr Kelly's account in good faith, as it says in that document.
Q. Albeit certainly you kept the possibility of disciplinary process open if further facts emerged, and Dr
Kelly was simply admonished?
A. Correct.
Q. I am not saying that you were wrong in your conclusions, but were you reaching them in a manner in
which you normally would have done so?
A. Well, this is a very abnormal set of circumstances. I believe that I followed the correct procedure in
those circumstances very clearly.
Q. You did not conduct any sort of investigation?
A. Investigation of what?
Q. Of what Dr Kelly was telling you, other than with him?
A. I had no basis on which to do so. The only reason I was interviewing Dr Kelly was he had
volunteered an account of a meeting with a journalist. I took that in good faith. I checked, as it were, so
far as I could, what he was saying as I was listening to it. I also subsequently checked some of the
information he gave me with his line manager and particularly with Martin Howard who was more
familiar with the intelligence facts. Nothing called into question the essentials of the account that he
gave me.
Q. After the first interview you gave an oral report of the interview to Sir Kevin Tebbit?
A. Correct.
Q. Then submitted these notes?
A. Correct.
Q. Together with your memorandum of 7th July on MoD/1/28; is that right?
A. It sounds right. (Pause). Yes, that is correct.
Q. That, in turn, enabled Sir Kevin to write to Sir David Omand on 4th July. MoD/1/34, please. If you
could now be taken, please, to 1/35, the next page, the last paragraph on that page refers in the last
two sentences to: "Contingent lines have, therefore, been prepared by officials here. These are
enclosed."
A. Yes.
Q. What are those contingent lines?
A. It was a very brief draft press statement prepared against the possibility that over the weekend
somebody else would expose, in some form or other, the problem we were then wrestling with that Dr
Kelly had come forward and said he talked to Andrew Gilligan.
Q. Is MoD/1/51 the draft press statement?
A. Yes, it is, I think.
Q. Drafted by yourself and Mr Howard?
A. Yes, I think so. It was done collectively.
Q. Any Q and A material?
A. None whatsoever.
Q. You had nothing to do with drafting of any Q and A material on 4th July?
A. No, did not.
Q. Did you, at any stage, have anything to do with the Q and A material?
A. I saw very late in the day, because I was not in my office, one draft of the Q and A material that was
finally used, I think.
Q. Right. I will come on to that chronologically. So can we go back to the letter at MoD/1/44, please?
You told us, yesterday, that the second key issue at the bottom of the page was one which was read
out to you, together with the rest of this document, over the telephone?
A. Correct.
Q. Did you simply not take it on-board or what?
A. The only honest answer I can give you is I formed an impression on the basis of that of what I was
being asked to do was precisely what I expected to do in the interview.
Q. So did you ask Dr Kelly whether he was ready to be associated with a public statement that named
him?
A. I explained this yesterday. I did not ask him about his readiness to be associated with a specific
early public statement which named him because that is not how I heard the minute even if that is what
was intended. I did however discuss with him, which is what I understood it to refer to, the more
general proposition of being associated in public, I mean with his name clearly being revealed, at some
stage, in order as it were to respond to the charges about the core allegation on the 45 minutes
intelligence.
Q. So could you look, please, at MoD/1/50 which is the notes of the meeting on 7th July, prepared by
Dr Wells; right?
A. Yes.
Q. 1/50 is the last page of it.
A. Yes.
Q. Do you see paragraph 19 there?
A. Yes.
Q. Is there anything in that paragraph about what you were asked to do by the letter that we have just
looked at, in effect from Sir Kevin Tebbit?
A. That depends how you interpret that letter. That paragraph is focusing very specifically on the
statement that I expect is quite rightly -- sorry, on the sort of statement that I expect the department
may well have to make in the next 24/48 hours, whatever. It was not addressing the longer time, for
example appearances before the Foreign Affairs Committee, by which time in some form or other he
would clearly have had to be named in public by somebody.
LORD HUTTON: Well, is that paragraph an accurate note of what you said to Dr Kelly?
A. It is an accurate summary of what I was saying to Dr Kelly at that point. It is not a verbatim account.
LORD HUTTON: Yes.
MR GOMPERTZ: I wonder if you could just look, quickly, please, at MoD/5/25. That, when it comes up,
should be the first page of Dr Wells' handwritten notes of this occasion. If we can go on to MoD/5/30,
that is the last page of his notes. Do you see, if we can scroll down, please, that that comes to an end
with an entry: "[The] only person probably is Susan Watts." Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. At any rate an entry about Susan Watts.
A. Yes.
Q. There is nothing at all in those notes about what is contained in paragraph 19 of the typescript
version, is there?
A. Apparently not.
Q. Can you offer any explanation?
A. Presumably Mr Wells did not record those in his manuscript notes.
Q. Yes, Mr Hatfield, that is indeed a possibility.
A. I think it is quite likely.
Q. Yes. Would you like to address your mind to the question? Can you offer any explanation of how
that comes about?
A. I imagine he did not think it was necessary to record it in detail. We ended that meeting by actually
going through a draft press release which Dr Kelly actually specifically agreed to. We made a change at
that meeting. All that, as far as I can see, and I have never seen Dr Wells' manuscript notes until last
week, does not appear to be recorded because there is no need for it to be recorded. We reached an
agreed output.
Q. No? The paragraph 19, I suggest to you, contains some of the most important material in this
interview, does it not?
A. From the point of view of the Inquiry now going on, of course it does. From the point of view of what
we were doing at the time, it did not seem so. We were doing something perfectly ordinary in the
Ministry of Defence, discussing the terms of a statement which might have to be made in the next 24
hours which involved one of the individuals in the room. We did not need to record, in our manuscript
notes, what we could record directly, if we needed to do so. I recorded my version of that note
contemporaneously, and for the purpose that I was doing it, it was quite important.
Q. Where in that paragraph, 19, is there any reference to the statement being made in the next 24
hours? I am sorry, MoD/1/50.
A. I did not say specifically 24 hours. 24 hours or so. We did not know when we would have to make
the statement because we did not know whether it would be under our control, whether we would be
responding to something from outside, whether we would be responding to developments from the
Foreign Affairs Committee, the ISC and so on. The whole point of agreeing it is we did not know when
we might have to make it. As I explained explicitly to Dr Kelly, we would consult him if we possibly
could before making any statement, as I did. This was designed to be a statement on which we had
already consulted him and which we might have to put out in circumstances where we could not
consult him quickly.
Q. The press statement which you showed him, is that MoD/1/51?
A. No.
Q. Right. Are you able to tell us, then, what about MoD/1/67? Is that it?
A. That is it, although when I initially showed it to him it did not include the sentence which is the last
sentence of paragraph 3: "He is not a member of the Intelligence Services or the Defence Intelligence
Staff." At that meeting we added that in. It was written in after a conversation between Martin Howard
and Dr Kelly, in Martin Howard's manuscript; and at the end of the meeting everybody at that meeting
took away a photocopy of what we had been working on which included the manuscript sentence. The
version you have is the one I then circulated around the MoD where we typed up the manuscript
sentence.
Q. Apart from that one sentence, the document you showed to Dr Kelly at the end of the second
interview is identical to that which appears on MoD/1/67?
A. Correct and the one sentence was identical with what it ended up at the end of the meeting with, if
you see what I mean.
Q. Going back to MoD/1/50, please, is this accurate as to what he was told: "Hatfield said that
although Kelly was not named in the press release his identity may become known in due course." Is
that an accurate account of what was said to Dr Kelly at the end of that interview?
A. It is an understatement of the impression that he would have had; and it is actually an
understatement of the language I used.
Q. So it is an inaccurate report?
A. It is an understatement. It is not a verbatim report. It is an understatement.
Q. Have you ever sought to correct that sentence before this moment?
A. I had not actually seen that until after Dr Kelly's death.
Q. That is not the question I asked you. You have given evidence on a previous occasion, have you
not?
A. I have.
Q. And you are giving evidence today, and no doubt you have considered, carefully, the evidence that
you were going to give on those two occasions?
A. I was not asked about this, although I offered the opportunity at the end of my first evidence session
to answer other questions in relation to the witness statement I had provided. If you turn to my own
account you will find slightly different words in there.
Q. We then have --
LORD HUTTON: Sorry, your own account?
A. My own account of the same meeting I wrote at the time. In that, again I was using polite reporting
language, I think I say "quite likely".
LORD HUTTON: Can we look at that? Can you assist Mr Gompertz on that? It must be in MoD/1. MR
BEER: MoD/1/26.
LORD HUTTON: MoD/1/26. Thank you very much. This was the interview I think of 4th July. Had you
written a note of the interview on the 7th as well?
A. Yes, I did, my Lord. Immediately after the meeting, although it was sent the following morning, I went
and wrote my own if you like off the top of the head account of what had happened without the benefit
of Dr Wells' notes.
MR GOMPERTZ: That, I think you told us, does not survive.
A. No, it is my minute of the 8th July to Sir Kevin Tebbit.
Q. Ah, that is what you are talking about. We can look at that, can we not?
A. We can indeed.
Q. Let us do so. MoD/1/54. That is what you are talking about, is it?
A. It is, yes. Yes.
Q. That is dated 8th July, is it not?
A. Correct. It was drafted however in manuscript at home on the evening of 7th July.
Q. And typed up exactly as you had drafted it?
A. For all I know I corrected some of my English but there was no substantial change.
Q. I ask you that for a reason. Do you see --
LORD HUTTON: Just before that, is there any particular passage in that note or memorandum that you
wish to refer to on this point?
A. I presume that in paragraph 3: "I made it clear to Dr Kelly ... et cetera et cetera, in particular: "It was,
however, quite likely that his name would come out, not least because speculation about the nature of
the source (eg the Times of 5 July 2003) might lead in his direction. It was also possible that,
depending on further developments, the FAC might seek to call him as a witness." I had been talking to
him about that even since the first meeting on 4th July. I still cannot understand how anybody could
possibly assume you could give evidence to the FAC without your identity being known.
MR GOMPERTZ: Yes. I will come back to that paragraph. Let us just see if we can get any greater
clarity about when this note was drafted and typed. You see in paragraph 1 you say: "I saw Dr Kelly
again yesterday afternoon..."
A. Yes. It was typed on the morning of 8th July. As I say, I drafted it the evening before. I may even, in
my original draft of the evening before, have put in the word "yesterday" since it was quite clear it was
going to be sent the following day and it would not make sense to put in "this afternoon" in a
document dated 8th July.
Q. You anticipated it would be typed the next day?
A. Indeed.
Q. That, I suppose, is the explanation of the words at the second paragraph: "As I told you last night,
there was no change ...", and so on?
A. Yes.
Q. So this was being typed first thing on the morning of 8th July?
A. Correct.
Q. Did you know that at that very time, in fact at 8.07 am, a version of the Q and A material was being
submitted by Ms Teare which was highly likely to lead to the identification of Dr Kelly?
A. No, I did not know anything was being prepared like that and I did not think it was highly likely to
lead to the identification of Dr Kelly.
Q. We will look at that in a moment. In the middle of paragraph 3 you make your position quite clear, do
you not: "I said that I did not think that it would be necessary to reveal his name or to go into detail
beyond indicating that the account given to us did not match Gilligan's [and it should be 'FAC']
account, at least initially."
A. Indeed.
Q. "It was, however, quite likely that his name would come out, not least because speculation about
the nature of the source ... might lead in his direction." Right?
A. Yes.
Q. So that was the state of mind in which you left Dr Kelly at the end of the interview of the 7th?
A. At least initially, which is quite correct.
Q. Did you have anything to do with any of the Q and A material?
A. I saw one draft and I have no idea which draft it was. I should think it was, from what I have seen at
the Inquiry, it must have been a sort of middle, in time, draft; and I made two minor comments on it.
Q. We had better look at the various drafts very quickly to identify which one you are talking about.
LORD HUTTON: Mr Gompertz, just before we leave this minute, I would just like to be quite clear: are
you suggesting to Mr Hatfield that his paragraph 3 was in some way drawn up by him in bad faith?
MR GOMPERTZ: No, I am not. I am not in a position to make that suggestion, my Lord. I am merely
investigating what the position is.
LORD HUTTON: Yes, I appreciate that. Because there was a slight implication when you questioned
him about paragraph 19 of Dr Wells that perhaps that was not a genuine paragraph.
MR GOMPERTZ: I do not know is the answer to your Lordship's question.
LORD HUTTON: Very well. You are not putting that directly to Mr Hatfield.
MR GOMPERTZ: I do not think I have sufficient material on which to put that suggestion, my Lord. It
may be, let me make it plain, that that suggestion might be made in due course when the other matters
are clarified with other witnesses. But I do not think it would be right for me to put that now.
LORD HUTTON: Very well.
MR GOMPERTZ: Can you look, please, at CAB/21/3? I show you this just to eliminate it. I think that
this was produced on the evening of 4th July by Ms Teare and Mrs Wilson.
A. As far as I can recall, I have never seen this.
Q. CAB/21/5, please. This is a draft, as we can see, sent to PUS office at 8.07 on Tuesday 8th July
subject to discussion and approval.
A. I did not see this at the time.
Q. Not at all?
A. Not at all. I have seen it in the context of the Inquiry, but, I mean --
Q. Oh yes, but not at the time?
A. No.
Q. Can we look at the remaining version, MoD/1/62? This was the draft which became the material
which was approved for use; yes?
A. If you tell me it is.
Q. That is the evidence. I would like you to tell his Lordship, please, whether this is the version which
you saw?
A. This is similar to the version. It may even be identical. If I can help you: what actually happened was
I was sent by e-mail one draft, and it was a draft. I believe the e-mail probably reached my office at
about 2.30 in the afternoon of the day in question although I was not in my office. I saw it on my screen
at roughly 4.30 -- roughly the time, in fact, I was talking to Dr Kelly on the phone; and I cannot be more
accurate than that.
Q. So at the very time or at about the time you were talking to Dr Kelly on the phone, you saw a
document very similar to that which we are looking at now?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you ever tell Dr Kelly about it?
A. No.
Q. Why not?
A. Because I did not think that I needed to tell Dr Kelly about it. I am not quite sure what you think I
should have told him.
Q. Well, never mind what I am thinking, Mr Hatfield. My thoughts are irrelevant, it is yours that matter.
A. Well, first of all, may I just, again, explain that I was literally looking at this on my screen possibly
simultaneously, not having read it through with Dr Kelly for the first time. I might even have looked at it
afterwards. I cannot actually tell that because I am not aware of the precise time of the call I made to
Dr Kelly -- sorry, the call that Dr Kelly made to me. That is why I am not aware of the precise time.
LORD HUTTON: This was the call he made back to you after he had parked his car; is that right?
A. That is right. I had not seen this when I made my call to him at 4 o'clock, that I am clear of. Though it
was probably on my computer terminal, I had not found it because I had come straight back into my
office in order to call Dr Kelly. I would have expected Dr Kelly to be aware that if we were making any
statement there would be question and answer material behind it, and I did not think that would be
necessary to tell him.
MR GOMPERTZ: Even if he was aware of the practice of using Q and A material, the content of the Q
and A material would not be within his knowledge, would it?
A. Well, most of the content in that is actually drawn from the information we had already agreed with
him to be revealed at the appropriate point.
Q. What are you talking about when you give that answer?
A. Well, description of the details and so on, of what -- of him. But it is not usual to clear question and
answer material with the people being referred to in it unless there is a very specific reason to do so,
for example disclosing personal data which is not normally disclosed. I would not expect the MoD to
clear a question and answer statement about me in my role as Personnel Director with me unless there
was some very specific reason to do so.
Q. What changes did you suggest to this document?
A. I can answer that if I return to my computer but I cannot here. They were very small descriptions.
And since this is the final version, they may well have been incorporated in it.
Q. Can you not remember?
A. I can find out without -- they were very minor points of detail.
Q. So, you have talked of e-mails in relation to this Q and A material. Why have they not been
disclosed?
A. For all I know they have been disclosed. The e-mail was not a specific e-mail to me. It was an e-
mail. All the e-mail did was circulate the draft.
Q. I think you can rest assured, Mr Hatfield, that these e-mails have not been disclosed. I received that
assurance from Mr Dingemans.
A. I am sure we can disclose them.
Q. Why not?
A. You have the content of the e-mail. I mean, the e-mail is a method, in this context -- was a method
of circulating the document for comment. You have the documents. But there is no difficulty about
giving you the e-mails if you think they are relevant.
Q. Because let me put this suggestion to you --
A. I should also say there may only be one e-mail. I am only aware of one, which is the one I received.
Q. Let me put this suggestion to you: first of all, that the important material which might lead to
identification nearly all appears in this third draft, would you agree with that?
A. No, I do not agree with that because I do not think that this material does necessarily identify
somebody.
Q. I am not going to spar with you over that. Can you tell us: here you were talking to Dr Kelly about the
press statement and clearing that with him; right?
A. Yes.
Q. Almost in the next breath you are dealing with this Q and A material?
A. Can I --
Q. I have not asked a question yet.
A. Sorry. Fine.
Q. That is right, is it?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you not think that Dr Kelly had been left with, at best, a thoroughly misleading impression of
how he was being handled by his employers?
A. No, I did not because I read this Q and A as saying that we are not going to volunteer his name and
that if the correct name is given we can confirm it, which is precisely the position I thought he would be
in. The rest of the material as far as I am concerned then becomes factual material released in support
of a name.
Q. When you made your suggestions with regard to this Q and A material, to whom did you send
them?
A. I sent them back to the press office, I think. The originator of the e-mail was sending me a copy.
Q. Was there what has been described as a rolling meeting on this day, 8th July, I think in the morning
and perhaps continuing into the afternoon?
A. I only know about this from the evidence given to the Inquiry because I was not involved during this
day at all, I was dealing with other matters.
Q. So you did not concern yourself with these matters until about the time when you telephoned Dr
Kelly?
A. On this particular day, I spoke to Dr Kelly first thing in the morning; and I then spoke to him again in
the afternoon.
LORD HUTTON: What did you speak to him about?
A. At the end of our meeting on the previous day, my Lord, we agreed that he should go back to his
course overnight at RAF Honnington; but we were not completely sure whether we would need to talk
to him again the following day, partly because of the possibility of needing to make a statement, if it
had come up. And it was agreed that either he or I would ring before he actually started work at the
course in the morning by.30 to make sure that it was sensible for him to as it were go back into the
training rather than simply drive back to London. He rang me, from memory, just before 8.30 on his
mobile, I think to my mobile, though I was by that time in the office, and I confirmed he should actually
attend the training for the rest of the day and that I did not expect anything to happen, as it were,
between then and early afternoon.
MR GOMPERTZ: I am aware of the time, so can I move on to what I hope is the last topic I want to ask
you about. That is the welfare of Dr Kelly. You told the Inquiry yesterday that you thought that the
support which was provided for Dr Kelly was outstanding?
A. I did.
Q. You stand by that description, do you?
A. I stand by that absolutely.
Q. Do you think it was outstanding support by the MoD not to warn him of the Q and A material and its
contents so that he was wholly unaware of the process?
A. I do not accept that he was wholly unaware of the process. He did not know the detail of what was
going on in the press office. But I do not accept that Dr Kelly did not expect his name to come out
quite probably from the MoD, if nobody else got there first, within the next 48 to 72 hours.
Q. Do you consider it was outstanding support by the MoD not to inform him of the decision to confirm
his name if suggested by a journalist?
A. I am afraid I do not actually accept your question. I think he knew all along if we were faced with a
serious statement that they knew that it was Dr Kelly that we would have to confirm the name because
the Ministry of Defence cannot deny things that are true.
Q. Do you consider that it was outstanding support for Dr Kelly to refrain from dispatching or
attempting to dispatch a press officer to assist him until after he had been named?
A. I think we provided outstanding support from the press office in accordance with Dr Kelly's wishes.
Q. Do you think it was outstanding support to wait for something like 2 to 2 and a half hours after he
was named before telling him, before telephoning to tell him that he had been identified?
A. I think it was outstanding support to warn him 24 hours in advance that we were going to put out a
statement which could -- sorry, 24 hours was the time interval we got. It was quite clear when I finished
speaking to Dr Kelly it was only a matter of time before his name came out. We gained a lot of time by
the strategy of not revealing his name in that initial statement.
Q. It is your view, is it not, that there was no need to obtain his consent to naming him?
A. No.
Q. You told us that yesterday. Would you like to be treated like that Mr Hatfield?
A. I have been treated like that.
Q. Have you?
A. Yes, I have.
Q. In comparable circumstances?
A. In very comparable circumstances. The media have made all sorts of statements about what I did
and did not do. They have attempted to say that I am going to be moved at the end of my job. All this
is, you know, deduction from the basis of nothing.
Q. Do you agree or disagree with the Secretary of State who has said, many times, that it would have
been quite wrong to name Dr Kelly until the MoD were sure that he was Andrew Gilligan's single
source? Do you agree with that statement?
A. Without knowing the context, I have to say I do not completely agree with it.
Q. Did you not take any notice of the evidence which the Secretary of State gave when he appeared
before this Inquiry?
A. I have not read it in great detail and I am not answering for the Secretary of State; but in my view, I
would not fully agree with that sentence. I would certainly agree that it would have been very preferable
to have established, before we named Dr Kelly or even referred to an individual coming forward,
whether or not the individual was Mr Gilligan's source, because that would have made a great deal of
difference to everything. However, it was not in our power to do so although we made considerable
efforts to achieve that, with Dr Kelly's cooperation.
Q. Did the MoD take any steps to contact Mrs Kelly to enquire about how her husband was handling
the pressure?
A. I think it would have been inappropriate to ask Mrs Kelly how her husband was handling the
pressure.
Q. So the answer to my question is "no".
A. I am unaware of any such steps.
Q. Was there any counselling offered?
A. In relation to what?
Q. In relation to the stress which Dr Kelly was undergoing at the time.
A. On the basis of what we knew at the time, the only stress Dr Kelly was undergoing was the stress
associated with appearances before the FAC and the ISC and the stress induced by what had come to
be modern media behaviour. He was given advice in relation to all those things in the same way as
anybody appearing before committees would be given, and support was offered. Dr Wells, for example,
actually cancelled a visit to the United States in order to provide support to him.
Q. Hmm. Let me suggest to you that there were various other matters which were subjecting Dr Kelly
to severe stress: three interviews, two by you and one briefing interview before he went before the
Committees.
A. I do not regard any of those except the first as subjecting him to particular stress.
Q. The possibility of the question of discipline being reopened?
A. There was no possibility of the question of discipline being reopened unless something came to call
his account into question. And I made very clear I actually accepted his account in good faith.
Q. The two appearances before the Select Committees?
A. Well we gave him the support that we give to anybody in those circumstances.
Q. Most of all, perhaps, the public identification of an intensely private man?
A. The public identification followed from his own act in talking to Mr Gilligan.
Q. The very considerable media interest?
A. He was given support in relation to that.
Q. Having to go away from home at very short notice and stay in a hotel in Weston-Super-Mare?
A. I think you are putting to me the suggestion that the media put him under stress. That is a very
difficult thing for me to respond to.
Q. Not so, Mr Hatfield. What I am asking you is did the MoD and you yourself, in particular, as the head
of personnel, take any of these matters into account in order to assess whether Dr Kelly was likely to
be suffering from severe stress?
A. The answer to your question is "yes", and we believe, and on the basis of how he behaved during all
this period, that he was not suffering any stress other than the sort of stress that we commonly expect
from people going in front of committees in slightly difficult circumstances, and we gave him the
appropriate support.
Q. Last point. The Osmotherly rules.
A. Yes.
Q. You are aware of them?
A. I am very well aware of them.
Q. Yes. Did you take them into account at the time when it was being considered whether --
A. I did.
Q. -- he should appear before the Committees?
A. I did.
Q. You did, did you? You gave advice about it?
A. I did not refer to them by name but Sir Kevin Tebbit did ask me at one stage whether there were any
grounds we, as a ministry of Government, could refuse, if we wished to, a request from the Foreign
Affairs Committee and I thought very hard about the Osmotherly rules in that context, although I would
also add the Foreign Affairs Committee does not necessarily accept that the Osmotherly rules govern
their behaviour; and I do not think there is anything in the Osmotherly rules which would lead us to the
conclusion that we either could or should not, as it were, respond to a request from the FAC. They of
course do not apply to the ISC because it is not a Parliamentary Committee.
Q. Let me just ask you one question of detail about the rules: there is a provision, is there not, that in
certain circumstances a witness can give evidence in closed session before the FAC?
A. They certainly have. I have done it myself to the Defence Affairs Committee.
Q. Was any consideration given to that provision?
A. The circumstances do not seem to me to apply.
Q. Did you know that the Minister, although in fairness the letters were never sent, in draft, at any rate,
was suggesting the reverse? That the evidence should be heard in open session by both the FAC and
the ISC?
A. I am certainly aware -- sorry, I would have expected the evidence to the FAC to be given in open
session. The ISC point I was unaware of.
MR GOMPERTZ: My Lord, I apologise, I have overrun again.
LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much. I think it would be a convenient time now to take a break. Will
you be a short time? MR DINGEMANS: May I have five minutes before the break? There will be time
afterwards, but just before the break. Cross-examined by MR DINGEMANS
Q. Can I go to the 7th July meeting and the press statements you cleared with Dr Kelly. MoD/1/51 was
the first one that you were shown. This is the shorter one.
A. The very short one?
Q. Well, very short, shorter.
A. Yes.
Q. That is, I think you said to my learned friend Mr Gompertz, not the one you were dealing with on 7th
July?
A. Correct. That is the one that we drafted on the evening of 4th July.
Q. Can I take you to MoD/1/67? This is the one, subject to the addition in the third paragraph, that you
think you did discuss with Dr Kelly on 7th July?
A. Yes.
Q. But the last sentence on the third paragraph was added in after discussions between Mr Howard
and Dr Kelly?
A. Correct.
Q. How sure are you about that?
A. (Pause). Well, unless I am actually just misidentifying it, I am very sure indeed.
Q. Because the importance, obviously, is that in this second one there is a lot more detail that is likely
to assist in identifying Dr Kelly or at least accelerate the process by which the press might work it out?
A. Yes. I mean if there is any doubt whatsoever, I actually still have a photocopy of the original with the
manuscript sentence in. My understanding is that Dr Kelly's copy of that has since been found too.
Q. Do not worry about other documents. Your recollection.
A. Sorry, I am just trying to make sure that this is exactly the same document. But if this is the same
document as the one with the written manuscript sentence, which is what I think it is from just seeing
three paragraphs on here, we discussed it in great detail.
Q. Because it is particularly important, is it not, on 7th July, to let him know that the Ministry of Defence
are going to give details that any fool is going to work out is likely to lead to his identification? "Expert
on WMD", you are probably down to 20. "Advised Ministers on WMD", down to 10. "Whose
contribution to the dossier of September 2002", down to 5. That is obviously particularly important to
clear with Dr Kelly, is it not?
A. I absolutely agree with you, except that despite the relatively small number if you do your sleuth
work very carefully, I am afraid it is not true that any fool could do it. Even after we published the actual
statement, it took two very good journalists 24 hours to manage to do it.
Q. Sorry, any reasonable journalist would do it.
A. Shall we leave the adjective out?
Q. Can I just take you to one final document, TVP/3/302, because this is what was found in Dr Kelly's
possession.
A. Right. That is precisely what we discussed and agreed at the interview.
Q. Does this document have "expert in WMD"? Scroll down, please.
A. In that case I did misidentify, then, I think the previous one from the short bit you put on the screen.
Q. So your recollection --
A. I am sorry --
Q. -- was faulty?
A. No, I think I may just have misidentified which document we were referring to. This is specifically the
document that we discussed on 7th July.
Q. But you said to my learned friend it was MoD/1/67.
A. I am -- that is -- I am afraid the reference did not mean anything to me. I am just sorry, I misidentified
the document in the evidence this morning.
Q. It does not matter about the references. You were shown both documents. It suggests at the least
this, does it not: that your recollection of which document you were discussing on the Monday night is
inaccurate?
A. I am sorry, that was --
MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, I apologise for interrupting my learned friend, the witness was not shown
this document.
LORD HUTTON: Very well.
MR DINGEMANS: Was not shown this document, no, but you were shown MoD/1/51.
A. I was shown a chunk of MoD/1/51 because that is all that was shown on the screen. I am afraid I
misidentified it as being the typed up version of this, and I am sorry about that.
Q. But MoD/1/67, which you were shown, has in the "weapons of mass destruction" bit; we looked at
that, with the extra paragraph. Do you want to go back to that?
A. Yes.
Q. MoD/1/67. That has in the critical, I suggest to you, third paragraph which reasonable journalists are
going to use to work out his name.
A. Yes. That statement -- this is actually the statement that was issued, in fact, is it not?
Q. Yes.
A. Right. Sorry. That statement I cleared with him on 8th July, paragraph by paragraph. I am sorry, I just
-- what I mixed up was which days we were talking about on. That was cleared with him specifically
but not on the 7th, it was cleared on the 8th.
LORD HUTTON: When you spoke to him on the telephone?
A. When I spoke to him on the telephone.
MR DINGEMANS: We will come back to that. Let us go back to the one you did look at on 7th July.
A. Yes.
Q. That is TVP/3/302. That is very similar to MoD/1/51. A little bit more, but very similar, yes?
A. Yes, though it does include one or two very specific additional things, including the manuscript
sentence.
Q. "He is not a member of the Intelligence Services or the Defence Intelligence Staff."
A. Yes.
Q. That is excluding aspects. Could you show me, because I may have missed it, those bits that would
help reasonable journalists identify him?
A. I am assuming that the reasonable journalists are also drawing on the various other clues in the
public domain already: from Mr Gilligan's appearance at the FAC, what he said in the various articles,
the Baldwin article on the 5th July. Putting all those together, you would not get straight to him but you
would get to a small group, just as we had already got to on 5th July. Some of us -- not me -- thought
that the Baldwin article almost certainly identified him.
Q. And just at the end of my five minutes before the short break, the transformation from this, on 7th
July, to 8th July, some very clever people are working on the press statement. We have heard Sir Kevin
Tebbit, John Scarlett, Jonathan Powell, Alastair Campbell, Mr Godric Smith, all drafting away in Mr
Godric Smith's office. How long was your conversation with Dr Kelly on the telephone clearing the
changes?
A. I do not regard them as changes, in the sense -- it clearly was changed but I was clearing this
specific statement. The answer is I do not know for certain, although no doubt his mobile record will tell
you. My recollection would be that there were three calls that are relevant: a very brief one in which I
simply told him I wanted to clear a statement with him, but did not go into the content because he was
driving. He then rang me back. My recollection, and I cannot be sure exactly how long, but I would say
it was about a 10 minute conversation. Then the third conversation, which was after I had reported the
clearance to him -- sorry, back to Sir Kevin Tebbit's office -- incidentally, I noticed in my transcript last
night somebody had mistranscribed rather importantly, I did not report it to the PMOS, which is the
Prime Minister's spokesman; it was the PUS's office, Sir Kevin Tebbit's office. I rang him back to say
that the statement was now in the process of being released, as it were. So those three --
Q. So the critical part, you say, is about 10 minutes when you go through that statement?
A. Yes.
Q. You were tasked to deliver his consent to that statement. After all, these people had spent their time
drafting, they obviously did not want Dr Kelly coming back with suggestions, did they?
A. I was asked to clear it with Dr Kelly. That is precisely what I did. Had he objected to anything which
referred to him in ways which I thought reasonable, I would certainly have brought that back. Had he
asked me for extra time for any particular reason, I would certainly have tried to get it for him.
Q. Who asked you to clear it with Dr Kelly?
A. Sir Kevin Tebbit's office.
Q. Who?
A. From memory it was Dominic Wilson.
Q. He said: please clear this statement with Dr Kelly?
A. Yes. There were probably a few more words than that, but yes.
Q. Was Dr Kelly given any real chance to object to any part of it?
A. Yes, he was. I went through each paragraph with him and asked him whether he was content with it,
and I asked him at the end whether he was content with the whole statement.
Q. Did you draw his attention -- he obviously did not have it in writing before him and it is difficult
enough when you have flashing it up on screens -- to critical changes which made it more likely that
reasonable journalists would identify him?
A. I drew his attention to the fact that it was a more substantial statement than we had produced the
day before. In the course of the three conversations, I made it very clear to him that I expected that
whether directly as a result of this statement or indirectly, because other people would come forward, it
would lead to his identification. But I did not predict when.
MR DINGEMANS: Perhaps we will come back to those aspects. Thank you, my Lord.
LORD HUTTON: Any re-examination?
MR DINGEMANS: I had not finished. I thought you wanted a short break, my Lord.
LORD HUTTON: Very well. I will rise for five minutes. (11.55 am) (Short Break) (12.00 pm)
MR DINGEMANS: Mr Hatfield, can I just clarify a couple of things, if I may. The Government were
asking Mr Gilligan about the press statement issued yesterday by the BBC about where Dr Kelly was
working. Can I just ask now, if I may, for definitive answers. In May 2003, who employed Dr Kelly?
A. He was employed by DSTL, an agency of the Ministry of Defence. He was on secondment to the
main part of the Ministry of Defence and his post, but not his salary, was paid for by the FCO.
Q. Who was his line manager?
A. His line manager was Bryan Wells.
Q. Because we have heard Dr Scott volunteering for the position as well.
A. No, he was not his line manager, he was his personnel manager. That reflects the fact that his parent
organisation was DSTL.
Q. So he was employed by DSTL and on secondment to MoD?
A. Correct.
Q. And who was responsible for his media dealings generally?
A. Well, in the case of Dr Kelly it is complicated by the fact that he does appear to have been dealing
with the media on three separate subjects at different times: UNSCOM, in which case we had no
responsibility, whatever arrangements he had with UNSCOM were a matter between him and
UNSCOM. In relation to the subject matter dealt with by the FCO, it had clearly been agreed, although I
did not know this until Dr Kelly told me, that in relation to that subject matter he consulted normally the
FCO press office, which was a very unusual arrangement given he was working in MoD. And in relation
to anything else, anything that related to the his Ministry of Defence activities, it was quite clearly the
Ministry of Defence. His line manager and the press office, if they had become involved.
Q. And weapons of mass destruction, are those Foreign and Commonwealth Office or Ministry of
Defence?
A. Well, if we are talking about in relation to the September dossier, I think it is quite clearly the Ministry
of Defence. If we are talking about what he had done previously for UNSCOM, or the history of
UNSCOM or something like that, then it might well have fallen under the FCO umbrella.
Q. If he had gone, whatever he actually said, but if he had gone to discuss Iraq with Mr Gilligan,
whatever he ended up discussing, then that would have been Foreign Office, is that fair?
A. No, I do not think so.
Q. Why not?
A. Well, I am not quite sure what you mean when you say "discussing Iraq".
Q. Well Dr Kelly told I think you in interview, and in his letters suggested he was going to Mr Gilligan to
talk about Iraq. He was interested that Mr Gilligan had been there and he was going out.
A. In that context I would have expected him to go to the MoD. Had he gone to the FCO, I would have
expected him to have either got the advice to talk to the MoD or simply told that he should not do so.
Q. You mentioned a 44-page document dealing with?
A. 44-paragraph.
Q. 44-paragraph. Can I take you to MoD/34/4, DCIs, Defence Council Instructions.
A. Yes.
Q. Is this the document to which you are referring?
A. Yes.
Q. Which says this, it is difficult to read the middle left, 26th November 1999.
A. Yes.
Q. A bigger box: "DCIs are automatically cancelled after one year."
A. Yes.
Q. This is a document we got during the course of the week, from which I infer it is the latest one, is
that right?
A. I think it is the latest time a Defence Council Instruction has been issued as a reminder in that form.
However, this is itself only a reminder for the procedures which I have already referred to elsewhere.
Various parts of the organisation may well have had reminders since, and I am certainly aware that the
Defence Management Board, which is the level below the Defence Council, have recently issued a
minute -- sorry last October I think it was, drawing attention to the contents of this document.
Q. But in fact this DCI was cancelled in November 2000 automatically.
A. All DCIs automatically cancel. Let me be clear, this is not the authority, this is the reminder. Indeed
the very first paragraph of it draws attention, the very first substantive paragraph, draws attention to
the document on which it is all based.
Q. That is paragraph 2?
A. That sounds about right.
Q. Is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. So to the extent that the 44-paragraph document is that document, that finishes in November 2000;
is that right?
A. The document itself finishes but the contents do not come out of date. The DCI is simply a reminder,
bringing together, in one place, all the information that is available. I think it was probably issued at the
time as a result of some other leak or something like that and we wanted to remind everybody yet
again of all the existing rules and indeed provide extra guidance. But the fact that the DCI is cancelled
does not change the content of it at all. Indeed, as I say there was a minute last November drawing
attention to it as a very good description of all the procedures.
Q. This is fair, is it not: Dr Kelly had a number of different sources to go to, to clear his media contacts?
A. Yes.
Q. And there was no one document that was ever drawn up assisting Dr Kelly in that respect?
A. If he had followed the procedures in this, I do not think he would have had a problem, because it is
very clear who he should go to.
Q. There was no one document dealing with UNSCOM, Iraq, FCO, MoD and DSTL?
A. No, can I be very clear about this? UNSCOM is nothing to do with the Government, so that
arrangement, you know, has to be between him and the UN. I would not -- and I would not expect
anything that we wrote to say what he could say about when he was working for the UN. That would
be between him and the UN. Apart from that, this gives clear guidance to everybody in the MoD of
what they are supposed to do. If he was in any doubt he should go to the MoD, there is no doubt about
that, because that is who he is working for.
Q. 3rd July. You have a conversation with Sir Kevin Tebbit. You said last night it was a short
conversation. What did he say to you?
A. He basically asked me to conduct the interview with Dr Kelly the following day which had I think
originally been planned for Bryan Wells.
Q. Did he suggest to you there should be either a disciplinary process or a management process by
which the public record could be corrected?
A. What he suggested to me is that the thing I had to do on 4th July was establish whether or not there
should be a formal disciplinary process, and if I concluded that there should not, could I begin to
explore with Dr Kelly whether or not, having, as it were, admitted to us that he had spoken to Andrew
Gilligan, he might be the single source or not.
Q. On 4th July, when you interviewed him, afterwards you produced a table comparing his evidence
and Mr Gilligan's evidence?
A. Yes.
Q. One significant point that Mr Gilligan had made to the Foreign Affairs Committee, and he made it in
evidence and he had made it before, and this appears to be a principal plank on which he relied, was
that his source had been right about two important things. First of all, that the 45 minutes source,
claim, call it what you will, came in late and secondly that it was single sourced. Were you aware of
that?
A. On 4th July I was aware in broad terms of that, but not as specifically as you put it. On 7th July I was
aware much more closely of that because in the interval I had spoken to Martin Howard about the
background of the dossier, of which I was completely unaware, apart from what I had read in the
media.
Q. Let us then go to 7th July. A critical point to determine then, was it not, was how Mr Gilligan had got
this information?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you ever determine that with Dr Kelly?
A. On the basis of what Dr Kelly said to us, it was, in my mind at least, very doubtful whether Dr Kelly
could have been responsible for all the information in relation to those points although he could
certainly have been responsible for quite a lot of it.
Q. But just concentrate on those two bits -- late single sourced --
A. Dr Kelly told us on 7th July that he had not been aware of the fact that it was a single source. Dr
Kelly told us on both occasions that he had not been involved in drawing up the intelligence portion of
the dossier and did not know what had happened to it at a late stage.
Q. If Mr Howard concluded that Dr Kelly was in fact the source, and that is what Mr Howard has told
us, after the interview, he must have concluded that Dr Kelly, on that part of the interview, had been
misleading him?
A. No, I do not follow -- I do not agree with that.
Q. How else could he have got the 45 minute point?
A. Well, Dr Kelly certainly said things about the 45 minute conversation because he said so himself.
That could have provided quite a lot of that. There was also -- I think, throughout this, there was a
difference of opinion between myself and Martin Howard about whether Dr Kelly was likely to be the
single source. We both thought that he was a source of a significant amount of the material, either
confirming or supplying it for the first time. But there were elements of Dr Kelly's account which did not
match and, in my view, could not be made to match Mr Gilligan's account unless one or both of them
was misleading us. There still seemed to be considerable doubt about some of the detail of what
passed between the two of them, but that was unresolveable. The essential point from Dr Kelly, as far
as I was concerned, was that he was not in a position, on the evidence he had given us, to have said
that.
Q. If you had known -- if you had known, you obviously did not at the time, that he had been in the
DIAS, making comments about growth media which were reported on on 10th September in an e-mail
and at a meeting on 19th September where strong views are expressed about the dossier, would you
then have thought that there was a need to issue a press statement?
A. If I had known what I think I have discovered from reading the evidence to this Inquiry about the
meeting on the 19th September, I would have wanted to -- I think I would probably have wanted to
institute formal disciplinary proceedings in order to try to get to the facts, because I did not -- if that is
accurate, I do not find that squares with the account that Dr Kelly told us about what he could have
known.
Q. So, Dr Kelly has been told by you, you have told us this, on the Friday evening, that no disciplinary
proceedings unless further information comes to light?
A. Which caused us to call into account the account.
Q. His account?
A. In some substantial way, yes.
Q. If you had then known what you appear to have found out from reading the transcripts, that Dr Kelly
had spoken to Mr Gilligan and had discussed the 45 minutes claim and had said, correctly, that it was
single source, and correctly that it came in late, you would have wanted to discipline him, would you?
A. No, I would have wanted to start proceedings.
Q. Start proceedings, sorry?
A. In order to have a proper investigation of all the facts in a way that was not possible without that.
Q. And Dr Kelly is likely to have worked that out for himself?
A. He might have done if he knew things that I did not know.
Q. On 7th July Q and A material has already been prepared, we have heard that from Mrs Wilson. Had
you seen the Q and A material at that stage?
A. No, I had not.
Q. When was the first time you saw Q and A material?
A. The first time I saw it, the only time I saw it, until the Inquiry, was the passage I was referring to
earlier when a draft arrived on my computer terminal on the afternoon of the -- sorry, I think 8th July.
Q. 8th July, the day that the press statement is issued?
A. Correct.
Q. When you suggested two changes, was that by telephone or e-mail?
A. I think it was by e-mail.
Q. So we will get those as well, will we?
A. Yes. There is no problem about that.
Q. And your conversations with Dr Kelly onth July were after you had seen the Q and A material?
A. No, I cannot actually establish that, at least not without being told precisely when I had the -- sorry,
the first conversation I had at 4 o'clock or just before 4 o'clock, I had not seen the material.
Q. Yes.
A. By the time of the middle conversation, when I was clearing the statement with him, I might even
have had it on my screen at that moment.
Q. But not concentrated on it?
A. But I cannot even tell that without knowing the exact time of the call.
LORD HUTTON: Mr Hatfield do you know where Dr Kelly was travelling from and where he was
travelling to when you had those conversations?
A. The understanding I formed from the conversation was he was driving home from RAF Honnington.
LORD HUTTON: I see. Thank you.
MR DINGEMANS: He pulled in shortly after your call to return your call; is that your recollection?
A. The time lag can be established. Yes, he pulled in or got to some convenient point.
Q. But the third time you spoke to him on 8th July you had seen the Q and A material by then?
A. Yes, I had.
Q. The Q and A material has three drafts, you know that now?
A. I know that now, yes.
Q. The first draft: we are not going to give his name at all.
A. Apparently so.
Q. The second draft: we are not going to give you a name until we have confirmed it with him.
A. Again, apparently so.
Q. Third draft: if you give us the right name, we will confirm it.
A. Yes.
Q. Why did you not confirm with Dr Kelly that he was happy for his employer to give out his name?
A. Because as I explained yesterday, I do not think we actually need his explicit consent to give out his
name in the circumstances that we are talking about. There would be circumstances in which we did
need to give out his explicit consent. Moreover, I understood -- I took it as understood between me
and Dr Kelly that once the statement was out, that at some stage very soon, fairly soon, his name
would come out. I also took it as understood that he was likely to appear before the FAC and/or the
ISC later in the week, by which time again we would have had to have, if you like, announced his name
if it had not already come out from other sources.
Q. I am not going to take you to the passage on 7th July but that concludes with saying "likely". Your
note says "quite likely".
A. Yes.
Q. I am not going to ask you about the differences between that, but it is perfectly clear Dr Kelly is
saying: well, yes, I suppose it may do. My friend in RUSI -- in fact she was at Chatham House -- knew
the connection. So there he is thinking privately: oh well, Olivia is not going to shop me. He also knows
he has spoken to Susan Watts, he knows and trusts her. He has spoken to Tom Mangold. Tom
Mangold has given evidence: I would not have identified him. Mr Rufford went down, he did not print a
story the next day in relation to the name. These are people that he thinks, rightly or wrongly, are not
likely to identify him. So he is hoping perhaps against hope that his name will not come out. There is
the world of difference, is there not, between the name coming out and your employer saying: we will
confirm the correct name if given, and then confirming the correct name; do you not think there is a
difference between the two?
A. I think there is a development, but I do not actually accept that he was under the impression --
though I agree he may well have been hoping against hope, and indeed there was one possible hope
perhaps if he had been established as not being Gilligan's source that it might not have come out or
would have come out in a very different way. But I feel, myself, I have always felt from the moment he
wrote that letter to us he must have been expecting his name to come out in one way or another. It is
not possible, in my view, to write a letter to your employer saying: I have done something which is quite
significant, and expect that the employer will simply ignore it.
Q. Before your employer ignores it, before your employer confirms the name, do you not think it is at
least fair to tell him that you are going to do that?
A. I think that if there was the opportunity to warn him that the name is actually about to come out now,
we should do it. But that is not the same thing as saying that you have to do that. He could have been
anywhere when the name came out. We did not know when it was going to come out or from what
source.
Q. You told us last night that you were astonished you got 24 hours, that was your evidence; yes?
A. Yes.
Q. So part of the reason you were going to be astonished was because you were issuing a press
statement far more detailed than the one you go through on 7th July and you are issuing Q and A
material far more detailed than anything that has been discussed with him?
A. But we are not issuing Q and A material, but in a way you are precisely right. I did not expect once
we had made a statement of that sort, even without the detail -- let us leave that to one side -- it would
take very long, given all the other clues, people speculating about Dr Kelly already inside the MoD and
outside the MoD, for somebody to say, either from a good guess or from deduction, they thought it
was Dr Kelly. And at no point did I think that it would be possible for us to deny that Dr Kelly had come
forward and said to us what he had said to us, which is precisely why we did clear exactly what he said
to us with him.
Q. One of the answers you gave to my learned friend Mr Gompertz this morning was this: It would have
been wrong to do anything other than confirm the name, once it had been put to us.
A. In a credible manner. I mean --
Q. But the first draft of the Q and A did not confirm the name. Is that right or not, yes or no?
A. I do not know what circumstances that draft was being drawn up in --
Q. Did it confirm the name, yes or no?
A. Well, I am told that it did not but --
Q. And the second draft did not confirm the name. It said: we will have to go back to the person
concerned.
A. Yes.
Q. So what was wrong with doing that with the third draft?
A. Well, you will have to ask those who drew it up, but I imagine that they took the view that it would
not necessarily be possible to go back and confirm the name in some circumstances.
Q. If it is not possible to go back and confirm the name, you are the person speaking to him about the
press statement, you are the person speaking to him about what is going to come with it. What is
wrong with telling him: we will confirm the name if it is given?
A. Had I known that we were going to have this Inquiry focusing on that point, I would have of course
done so explicitly. I thought that somebody who had been involved with the media for several years,
who had been discussing the prospect of his name becoming public, for example in the FAC hearing,
had agreed the statement, would realise, especially since he had agreed the content of that final
statement, would realise that his name was going to become public very quickly. Indeed, the whole
point of what I said to him about the need to contact the press office and his line manager for support
was because it would become public very quickly, although I could not predict how long it was going
to be. There would have been no point in me telling him to contact the press office for assistance if I
thought we were going to be able to maintain his anonymity.
Q. We have heard that Dr Kelly, rightly or wrongly, perceived that he had been betrayed, as Mrs Kelly
told us, by the Ministry of Defence. Do you think the fact that his employer had not told him they were
going to confirm the name may have contributed to that sense of betrayal?
A. I do not know what his sense of betrayal or otherwise was, apart from what he said in public to the
Foreign Affairs Committee and what he said to people in the Ministry of Defence. I was very surprised
to hear that he thought we, if that means the people dealing with him in this crisis, betrayed him
because I think we gave him a lot of support.
Q. Do you know anything about those who contacted journalists after the name had been confirmed to
brief them on various other identities, or various other details of the story: Mr Blitz, Mr Baldwin; do you
know anything about that?
A. No, and if Mr Blitz or Mr Baldwin were able to identify any sources inside the Civil Service I would
regard those sources as having behaved in a totally improper manner.
Q. I suspect, having heard that, they are less likely to identify them now.
A. I am sure.
Q. With hindsight, hindsight, not foresight, do you think there is anything that the Ministry of Defence
should have done differently in these unusual circumstances?
A. With hindsight I think I probably should have stopped the interview after about 15 minutes/half an
hour on 4th July and initiated formal disciplinary proceedings; and with hindsight I would probably --
with hindsight, I emphasise that, with what has come out since or appeared to come out since, I think I
would probably have been forced to suspend Dr Kelly with no prejudice to the outcome, simply
because much more serious matters appeared to have been called into question by evidence which
has been produced since, of which I was totally unaware and was unlikely to be aware since I could not
call the sort of witnesses that this Inquiry has had.
Q. Mr Campbell told us this on 19th August, page 152: "Look, if you are in this kind of situation you do
have to have some element of control over the process here. You cannot just let this sort of dribble out
in a way that you are not clear how it is then going to unfold." Do you agree with that point?
A. Ideally, yes, it is much better to have control than not to have control.
Q. Was not an essential vice of the Q and A material that you were never going to have control over
when he was named?
A. We were never in control because he could have been named before we made a statement anyway,
we know that. We could have -- the only way we could have taken control at that point is of course by
putting his name in the first statement, and I personally believed, and even with hindsight, I have
thought about this very hard, believe it was right not to put his name in the initial statement.
Q. One final point: his appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee. Why did no-one accompany
him to give evidence with him?
A. Well, my understanding is that he was offered somebody to accompany him and sit at the table. He
was of course accompanied behind the table. The main reason nobody else could give evidence is
because nobody else had knowledge of the matters on which he was giving evidence. My
understanding was that Bryan Wells in particular offered to sit alongside him at the table and Dr Kelly
declined it.
Q. Because questions that he referred to the MoD could of course have been dealt with by somebody
else.
A. They could have been, indeed.
Q. And he was pressed on those questions by Mr Mackinlay.
A. Yes, although Mr Mackinlay was going outside the agreed scope in doing so, but you are quite right.
I would have preferred to have seen somebody sitting alongside him to do exactly that but it was Dr
Kelly's decision, is my understanding.
Q. One final point: it is clear from the evidence from Mrs Kelly that on 9th July there is Dr Kelly
bumbling around in his garden, no idea of the media storm apparently about to engulf him, and yet he
is told by Mr Rufford, he then rings the MoD or the MoD ring him and he packs his bags within 10
minutes. That suggests, suggests, that he was not aware of what was about to happen, do you agree?
A. I find that evidence, and I am sure it is true, astonishing because the evidence also shows that he
has not done anything apparently to prepare anybody for what may be coming in some form or other
since at least 4th July.
Q. Because he may have been hoping against hope, he knows the people out there, they are not going
to shop him; he came to you because Olivia Bosch had told him she recognised some pieces of
evidence. Does it not really come to this: there is the world of difference between your employer doing
it for you and other people finding out?
A. Well, I do not accept that. First of all, he had been almost shopped to the FAC it now appears.
Secondly, I had spoken to him earlier that evening and I am in no doubt whatsoever that if he had been
under any illusions or any hopes before that, he now knew, at.10 if not before, and I think it is well
before, that his name would be coming out regardless of whether he thought we should be doing it or
not; and he did not take any opportunity, at any time whatsoever, to suggest that we should not hold
his name out in any of these discussions. Had we wished to withhold his name, we would have needed
to agree with him how he was going to do it, since we would have had to agree with him what he
would say in answer to any questions, bearing in mind the whole thing from our of point of view starts
with him coming forward and saying somebody, who we now know to Mrs Bosch, had already drawn
the inference that it might be him.
Q. He did not say "please withhold my name", did he?
A. At any stage.
Q. But he did not say "please confirm my name", did he?
A. No, he did not.
MR DINGEMANS: Thank you, my Lord.
LORD HUTTON: Mr Lloyd-Jones, do you have any re-examination?
MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, I have no re-examination.
LORD HUTTON: Yes, thank you.
MR LLOYD-JONES: Thank you, Mr Hatfield.
LORD HUTTON: Mr Hatfield, just wait a moment. You said you have thought back on the question
whether it would have been right to name Dr Kelly in the statement which was issued. I appreciate you
have already given reasons for that, but I would be grateful if you would just be good enough to
summarise, to me, why you take that view now.
A. The reasons that I had in mind at the time were, first of all, that I did not want to put Dr Kelly under
any pressure sooner than was necessary from the press; secondly, I had already told him, on several
occasions, that I hoped and expected that it would probably not be necessary to name him in the initial
statement, although I kept my options open very clearly to him and therefore he would have known that
one possibility was that we would wish to name him in the first statement. Nonetheless, that is what I
told him and I did not want to change that unless I had to, particularly at the last moment. The other
very strong reason at the back of my mind was, indeed, the thought that we would gain some interval,
however long or short, between making our statement and the name being identified. As I said
yesterday, I was astonished it was as much as 24 hours. My personal guess is we would get away with
it overnight. That would actually give both him and the MoD some time to make any preparations that
we might want to make, he might want to make. It would also give us time to make an assessment of
whether the media reaction was, if you like, at one end of the spectrum: the MoD have just identified
somebody who talked to Andrew Gilligan but he is nothing to do with this source which is sort of what
the FAC concluded. Or: this is the single source. All of that would have affected the handling and the
pressure very much. I even had a hope that the BBC might either confirm or deny whether he was the
source. So that was my personal reasoning then. In relation to some of the evidence I have seen at the
Inquiry, particularly Alastair Campbell's, I have thought very hard, with hindsight, about whether,
despite that, it was a mistake. Alastair Campbell's point, as I understood it, was taking control has
already been brought out, and that we would have removed the chance of anybody else being put
under pressure, which was one of the reasons why we eventually confirmed the name. I think, with
hindsight, that that is outweighed by my original considerations; and above all, the reason I think with
hindsight was the fact that Dr Kelly, from Mrs Kelly's evidence, did not appear to have given her any
preparation at all for what was coming or might be coming. Therefore, had we put the name in that
statement, the press would have been on his doorstep that evening.
LORD HUTTON: Yes. Evidence was given by Mrs Kate Wilson that on the evening of Tuesday 8th July
she spoke to Dr Kelly and said that the statement had been issued; and she had said to him he should
think about alternative accommodation. Had you said that to him at any stage?
A. No, what I had said to him is he should talk to the press office about any help or advice he might
want because I did not think it was my place to give him detailed advice on press handling. But that is
the sort of thing that I expected the press office to consider.
LORD HUTTON: Yes. If the Ministry of Defence had decided, when it issued the statement, to name Dr
Kelly and had told him of that, and had shown him a draft which named him but which had decided to
delay the issuing of the statement for 24 hours, would that not have meant that Dr Kelly would have
had more time to prepare himself, perhaps to go to alternative accommodation? I say that against -- I
recognise evidence has been given that he was told to think about alternative accommodation on the
evening of the 8th. If a statement had been issued in that way naming him and he had been told, let us
say 24 hours in advance, that it would be issued a day later, looking back at it in hindsight, would that
not have been a better method to adopt?
A. I am not sure, my Lord, because -- I am not quite sure because I was not involved in the substance
of the issue, what was driving the timing of making a statement at all that evening.
LORD HUTTON: Yes.
A. Certainly if there was no need to make a statement or we could hold off for another 24 hours, that
could have been an alternative strategy. Indeed, if Dr Kelly had asked for more time, I would have
attempted to get it although I do not know whether I would have been able to because I did not know
at the time what was driving the need to make a statement that evening. I am not sure that the
substance of what happened would necessarily have been very different because he did get 24 hours,
even though I did not expect him to get that long.
LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much Mr Hatfield.
A. Thank you my Lord.
LORD HUTTON: Yes Mr Lloyd-Jones.
MS PAMELA MAY TEARE called, examined by MR LLOYD-JONES
Q. My Lord, Ms Teare, good morning. Is your full name Pamela May Teare?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. Are you the Director of News of the Ministry of Defence?
A. Yes I am.
Q. Have you previously given evidence in phase 1 of this Inquiry?
A. That is correct.
Q. I want to ask you first about the nature of Q and A briefings. Is there anything unusual about the
production and use of Q and A briefings in Government departments?
A. No, far from that. The production of Q and A material is standard practice across Whitehall. The Q
and A tries to anticipate the sort of questions that the media may ask the press office on a given issue
and to provide factual information in answer to those.
Q. So what are they intended to achieve?
A. Essentially they are to provide or to enable -- they are to enable press officers to handle media
inquiries on a specific subject particularly when they may not be familiar with that subject. They also
ensure consistency of approach. But the material is not deployed by the press office unless it has been
cleared by the policy officials concerned; and you know they are used in a reactive way. They are not
issued in their entirety in any way. So if a journalist asks a specific question, then that specific part of
the Q and A will be used. But they are not issued as a whole.
Q. I was going to ask you about authorisation for use. Would they normally be drawn up or drafted by
the press office or by the relevant policy officials?
A. It can be either way.
Q. If they are drafted by the press office, is it necessary, then, to obtain some sort of clearance?
A. Most certainly, yes.
Q. How is that done?
A. The draft would be sent or discussed with the appropriate policy officials, then not until it had been
agreed would it be available for use by the press office.
Q. So could the press office draw up and use a Q and A briefing on its own authority?
A. No.
Q. Are the Q and A briefings themselves issued to journalists?
A. No.
Q. Are they ever read out in their entirety to journalists?
A. No.
Q. So is it right that before a journalist could acquire all of the information in a Q and A brief, he would
have to ask all the right questions?
A. That is correct.
Q. Turning to the particular specific matters with which this Inquiry is concerned, we know that on the
afternoon of Friday 4th July Mr Hatfield and Mr Howard produced a first draft of a press statement.
A. (Nods).
Q. Did you have any part in drafting that statement?
A. No, I did not.
Q. Were you aware at the time that they were drafting it?
A. No, I only learnt subsequently that that had taken place.
Q. Did you know why it was considered necessary, at that time, to produce a statement?
A. As I understand it, it was thought likely that on a number of counts there was a worry that the story
might break over the weekend; and that was largely because journalists were continuing to try to
identify the single source for Andrew Gilligan's story; they were working on that aspect. And Dr Kelly,
as I understand it, had quite a wide range of contacts among journalists, so he was well known in
certain circles; and also that a friend of his at the time he thought worked at RUSI had actually
identified some of his comments as maybe those that Andrew Gilligan referred to at the FAC. But all of
this I only found out subsequently when the Chief Press Officer reported it to me. But that is what I
understand to be the reasoning why a contingent press statement had been prepared for the weekend.
Q. Was that statement, the statement produced on 4th July, supported by a Q and A document?
A. The statement was, as I understand it, prepared by Martin Howard and Richard Hatfield in the
Permanent Secretary's office and was agreed there. The Chief Press Officer and I recognised that
should we need to deploy this over the weekend, and it would only have been on a reactive basis, we
would need --
LORD HUTTON: Sorry, I think it is clear but if you could explain a bit more what you mean by a reactive
basis.
A. Sorry my Lord.
LORD HUTTON: It is quite clear. I just want it for the sake of the record to be clear.
A. We would not have volunteered that statement. It would have only ever been used in whatever form
if the story itself had broken in the media over the weekend.
LORD HUTTON: Yes.
MR LLOYD-JONES: So it is a reactive statement in that sense, does it need Q and A material?
A. If it got to the circumstances where it had to be deployed then, as is the norm, we would have to
have some Q and A materials because inevitably we would be asked questions related to the
statement. So yes, we would need to have some material.
Q. Was any Q and A material drawn up during the 4th July?
A. Yes, the Chief Press Officer and I did draw up a draft.
Q. The Chief Press Officer is Mrs Kate Wilson; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. You drew up a draft. What was the source of the material in the draft?
A. The source of the material in the draft was the information that she had obtained from the meeting in
the PUS's office she had attended earlier in the day. But the draft that we came up with was very raw,
very green.
Q. Could I ask you: would it normally have been Mrs Wilson's responsibility to attend at the PUS's
office in those circumstances?
A. No, it would not. It would normally have been myself that would have attended but I was out of the
office all morning at a seminar. So she attended in my place.
Q. I stopped you. You were going to say something about it being a raw material or in raw condition.
A. Yes, the Q and A draft that we produced was very raw. It had a lot of gaps in it. We just did not have
that much information available to us. It was based on Kate's recollection of the meeting in the PUS's
office. So, in putting it down on paper all we were doing really was so that if something happened at
the weekend when the statement had to be issued, we would not exactly be starting from scratch but
that material was not given to the duty press officer, none of this was discussed with him; and indeed
we were very clear that none of the material could have been deployed by anyone to the media without
it being cleared by senior policy officials.
Q. Could we have on the screen please CAB/21/3? Can I ask you to perhaps scroll down slowly. Ms
Teare do you recognise that document? In fact it goes to the second page.
A. Yes, I believe that was the draft.
Q. The draft which was produced on 4th July; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. In what circumstances would that draft or might that draft have been used by the press office?
A. It would only have been used if the full contents had been cleared by policy officials; and it would
only have been used as well if, in the first place, we had been in the position where we had to issue the
contingent press statement. So it would not have been used (a) without the statement going out and (b)
without being fully cleared.
Q. And you have described it as in a raw condition. Would it be necessary to take any other steps
before this draft could have been used?
A. Well, we did need to fill in some of the blanks; but, you know, more importantly, we needed to make
sure that senior officials were content with the contents.
Q. Over the weekend which followed, who had copies of the Q and A brief?
A. The Chief Press Officer and I.
Q. Anybody else?
A. No.
Q. So what would have happened if the news had broken over the weekend and there were queries to
the press office?
A. Then the duty press officer would have telephoned either myself or the Chief Press Officer.
Q. What would you have done?
A. I would then have contacted senior officials to try -- well, first of all, I would need to have a look at
the way in which the story had broken and then I would have had discussions with officials as to how
we should react. There are so many ways in which it could have broken, it is difficult for me to predict
and say exactly what we would have done, but I would have had consultations with them before
proceeding.
Q. We move on to Monday 7th July. On that day, were you working on this matter during the day?
A. Not really. I had a number of other things that I was involved in, as is the normal way in running a
press office. I was kept informed of developments by the Permanent Secretary's office and then later in
the day, when it seemed to me that there seemed to be an increasing likelihood that the Ministry of
Defence would have to issue a statement, then Kate Wilson and I again --
Q. Before we move on to that, can I ask you this: is it right that the Secretary of State usually has a
briefing meeting in the morning?
A. Yes, he does.
Q. Did you attend the briefing meeting with the Secretary of State on Monday 7th July?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Was anything said about this matter, at that meeting?
A. No. The matter was not discussed.
Q. Right. I am sorry, again I interrupted you. You were about to say what happened later in the day
when you returned to this particular matter.
A. Yes. We redrafted the contingent press statement. The form that it was in originally was not suitable
because it was designed to react to a situation. So we redrafted it.
Q. You say "we", who was involved in the redraft?
A. The Chief Press Officer and I redrafted it and we sent it to the Permanent Secretary's office for him
to have a view; and then I gather it was amended and sent on to No. 10.
Q. What was this redraft intended to achieve, the second draft intended to achieve?
A. Well, we felt that the draft that was already in existence was very brief and in some respects it sort of
raised more questions than it actually answered. So we needed to put in -- we needed to reformat it
accordingly and to put in a bit more information.
Q. Could we have on the screen, please, MoD/17/2? Perhaps we could scroll down slowly so that Ms
Teare can look at that. Do you recognise that document, Ms Teare?
A. Yes, I believe that to be the document that I sent to the Permanent Secretary's office on the evening
of the 7th.
Q. Do you know what the Permanent Undersecretary's office did with that when they received it?
A. I understand that they amended it in some way; but I have only discovered that subsequently. I did
not know at the time.
Q. Did they do anything further with it, so far as you are aware?
A. They sent it to No. 10, I understand.
Q. At this time, we are on Monday 7th July, did you hold any view as to the likelihood of Dr Kelly being
identified by the media had the Ministry of Defence made no statement concerning him?
A. I did have a view. I did feel that there was quite a strong likelihood that Dr Kelly's name would enter
the public domain. That was, as I say, largely because he was already known to a number of journalists
already.
Q. Still on 7th July, was anything done, at this stage, to the draft Q and A brief?
A. Yes. Similarly the draft Q and A brief was reworked. These documents, they were never sort of
finalised in any way, the early drafts; and they were essentially work in progress. So what they actually
denote is the sort of state of understanding and information at the point that they are actually
compiled. So the information that we had was greater now on Monday than it had been on the Friday
night; and we had also actually had some more time to consider the implications of the situation with
which we were contending.
Q. Was it a complete document by the evening of 7th July?
A. No, it was not a complete document. It still had blanks in; and it -- you know, it purely reflected my
advice and my views on the current situation. It was not a final document in any way, because it is not
for me to finalise documents in that way.
Q. So far as you were aware, at that time, had anyone suggested that Dr Kelly should be identified in
any statement?
A. No, they had not, at that time. We are talking about the evening of the 7th.
Q. Still on 7th July.
A. Yes. No, they had not, to my knowledge.
Q. So what line was the draft Q and A brief intended to support?
A. The line that the Q and A was intended to support was that, as I understood the policy at the time,
we were not prepared to volunteer Dr Kelly's name; but also, as I say, I had had time to consider some
of the implications of the situation of when names were actually put to us, which I felt was, you know --
it would be impossible to escape if a statement was issued, because I felt that journalists would
immediately work very, very hard to try to identify the person who was unnamed in the MoD statement.
So we had to consider there what was the best way of trying to -- and indeed the fairest way of trying
to deal with the situations when names would be put to us. We felt it was possible that people who
were not involved in this could wrongly be identified by the media. So we were seeking to prevent that
happening. I think that that position is reflected in that second draft.
Q. Please could we have on the screen CAB/21/5? Again, could we scroll down? Before we scroll
down, do you recognise the handwriting?
A. That is mine.
Q. When did you write that on?
A. I wrote that on when it was being sent to the Inquiry, so that they would understand exactly which
document it was. So I think that was supplied to the Inquiry on -- I do not know, was it -- either the
Friday after I gave evidence or the following morning.
Q. It looks from the fax header as though it is 21st August. Is that the second draft of the Q and A
document to which you have been referring?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. If we scroll down slowly, we see the question: "Is it X (ie the wrong name)? "No. "Is it X (ie the
correct name)? "If the correct name is put to us from a number of callers, we will need to tell the
individual we are going to confirm his name before doing [so]." So if I had phoned up the press office
and asked is it Mr Jones, I would have got the answer: no. Is that right?
A. As I say, this document represented my advice. It was subject to agreement and approval before it
could have been used.
Q. If the document had been authorised for use, and had been issued to the press office --
A. Hmm, hmm.
Q. -- and then applied in the way contemplated by the document, if I had phoned up and incorrectly
identified Mr Jones, let us say, I would have got the answer: no?
A. (Nods).
Q. If I had said is it Dr Kelly, what would I have been told?
A. Well, as we were setting it out there we would have had to have said to the journalist: I will have to
call you back. I think that that --
Q. Would that not have disclosed the identity of the person concerned?
A. I think that is a very good example of the real difficulties in trying to deal fairly with a situation where
names are being bandied around. I mean it is probably one of the most difficult situations that press
officers have to handle.
LORD HUTTON: Ms Teare, may I just ask you, looking at that question: "Is it X (ie the correct name)?"
Then below that: "If the correct name is put to us from a number of callers, we will need to tell the
individual we are going to confirm his name before doing sp."
A. I think that is just a typographical error.
LORD HUTTON: I see. I thought it might mean something special. The lines below "is it X (ie the correct
name)?", that is simply advice to the press officer. He is not going to say to the caller: I will obviously
have to tell the individual we are going to confirm his name.
A. This is where it all gets a bit academic when you look at it on the screen like that, away from the
practicalities of deploying the material.
LORD HUTTON: May I interrupt you: do I gather from your answer to Mr Lloyd-Jones that if that
question had been put on that draft, the press officer would have said words to the effect: "well, I will
call you back"?
A. Well, he would have had to have had some indication. You know, he would have had to put the call
on hold in some way in order for there to have been time. I think, looking back at this again, again that
reflects that this document was very much a work in progress one.
LORD HUTTON: Yes.
A. Very much.
LORD HUTTON: Is my understanding, is this correct: what that draft is telling the press officer is if the
correct name is put to you, you cannot confirm it until you have told the particular person that his name
may well be revealed to the press, but then it is for the press officer to do the best he can to field off
the question until he has informed, in this case, Dr Kelly?
A. Yes. In practice, the press officer would have probably said, you know, that they would need to
speak to myself or to Kate Wilson.
LORD HUTTON: Yes. I see. Yes.
MR LLOYD-JONES: Ms Teare, let me make clear I was not suggesting or asking you to address a
situation in which someone in the press office would say, in response to the correct name being put: I
will have to tell the individual concerned before I confirm it.
LORD HUTTON: I was not suggesting you were.
A. No.
MR LLOYD-JONES: My question really related to this: I do not want to labour the point, but putting the
wrong name
would be met with an instant denial?
A. Hmm, hmm.
Q. Putting the correct name would not. If I at different points put different names to you, one correct
and one incorrect, I would know, would I not?
A. Yes, I think you would. But again trying to find an equitable way to handle situations when journalists
are putting names to the press office is actually one of the most difficult aspects of the work, as I say,
to find a fair way to do it.
Q. We move on Tuesday 8th July. What did you do with this second draft of the document?
A. I did not do anything with it that evening. In the sort of early morning of the 8th I sent it to the
Permanent Secretary's office.
Q. Was there a regular morning briefing of the Secretary of State that morning?
A. Yes there was.
Q. Were you at that meeting?
A. I was at at it.
Q. Was the case of Dr Kelly discussed?
A. No, it was not.
Q. Where did you work that day?
A. That day I spent quite a significant part of my time actually working in the Permanent Secretary's
outer
office.
Q. Were you there all day or part of the day? Can you give us some idea of your movements during the
day?
A. Yes, after the meeting with the Secretary of State I went to the Permanent Secretary's office; and I
stayed there, I think, probably until around 2.30, when I went back to my own office which is in a
different building; and then I was summoned to return about an hour later. Then, after some further
time, I went back to the press office.
Q. When you were in the Permanent Undersecretary's office on the morning of Tuesday 8th July, did
you speak with anyone concerning the draft statement?
A. I must have had some discussions with Dominic Wilson who is the Permanent Secretary's private
secretary.
Q. Did you -- sorry.
A. I recall I had some conversations with Tom Kelly and Godric Smith from No. 10 over the telephone.
Q. Do you have any recollection of what was discussed in those conversations?
A. I cannot actually recall the individual points of detail that were being discussed, other than I recall
Godric actually wanting to insert within the statement a reference to the fact that when he gave
evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee, Andrew Gilligan had said
that he had had four sources on WMD related matters, but only one of them was the source for his
broadcast on 29th May.
Q. Were any changes made to the draft statement at that stage?
A. I think there may have been. I was not conscious that I had a sort of master copy that I was sort of
taking copies in on at all. I think there were drafts going around. But I did not feel that I had charge of
the drafting process.
Q. Who did have charge of the drafting process, at that stage?
A. I have to say I am not quite sure.
Q. Was it anybody in the Permanent Undersecretary's office?
A. No, I do not -- I think comments were coming in and I think drafts were being considered at No. at
the same time that they were being considered at the MoD.
Q. While that was going on, was anything happening in relation to the Q and A material?
A. Not till towards lunchtime. I was conscious that it was certainly appearing more likely that a
statement would be issued; and I did not want the preparation of the Q and A material to be lost sight
of. So Martin Howard had popped into the Permanent Secretary's office earlier that morning --
Q. Before we move on to that, you had no involvement with the Q and A material at that stage during
the morning of the 8th?
A. No.
Q. Is that right?
A. Hmm, hmm.
LORD HUTTON: Would this be a convenient time?
MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, could I mention I am almost at the limit of my permitted time.
LORD HUTTON: Yes.
MR LLOYD-JONES: There are a number of other matters I should, with your Lordship's permission,
canvass with Ms Teare. I hope it will be of assistance to your Lordship if I did that.
LORD HUTTON: Certainly, by all means. We will proceed after lunch. You would not like to do it now?
MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, no, if I could do it this afternoon I would be very grateful.
LORD HUTTON: Very well. Thank you very much.
1.02pm, the short adjournment