PM chaired meeting to name Kelly
The Ministry of Defence’s top civil servant told Lord Hutton’s judicial inquiry Monday that Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired the meeting which decided to publicly name Dr David Kelly, the Iraqi weapons expert at the heart of the “dodgy dossier” scandal.
At the Royal Courts of Justice in London. the Hutton inquiry reconvened for one day in order that Sir Kevin Tebbitt, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, could give evidence for a second time.
The original evidence session last month was rescheduled after Sir Kevin had to undergo eye surgery in hospital.
Sir Kevin told the inquiry that No 10, not the MoD, had pushed for a statement to clarify the Government’s stance over the “outing” of Dr Kelly.
But he denied there had been a “devious strategy” to ensure Dr Kelly’s identity became public.
Sir Kevin said the decision was taken at a meeting on July 8, which the PM chaired.
‘The Government, rather than the Ministry of Defence, felt the need (to issue a statement).
‘The decision to put out a statement was one taken in Number 10,’ he said.
Michael Ancram, Tory foreign affairs spokesman, said the revelation proved the PM’s previous denial of any involvement was a “sham.”
In front of the inquiry, the PM said in August that he was present at the July 8 meeting and approved the strategy decided there.
But a month earlier, days after Kelly’s suicide, he denied authorising Kelly’s name to be media.
At the July 8 meeting, Sir Kevin confirmed, the Government agreed not to name Dr Kelly directly but to confirm his name to journalists on the proviso that they guessed correctly that he was the “mole” in Andrew Gilligan’s BBC report.
The report alleged No 10 willingly “sexed up” or doctored intelligence reports on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, to bolster the case for war against Iraq.
Sir Kevin told the inquiry that Dr Kelly was interviewed by MoD officials for the second time on Monday July 7, the day before Blair chaired the meeting.
Sir Kevin had not been at the meeting the day after but said the MoD had “concurred” with the conclusions drawn there.
Pressed by Jeremy Gompertz, QC, the counsel for the Kelly family, Sir Kevin admitted he found the UN weapons expert “a bit odd” the day before he killed himself on 17 July.
The inquiry heard that Sir Kevin, in an interview with James Robbins, a BBC reporter, had said Dr Kelly had been “off his head.”
He told the inquiry: “I volunteered that David Kelly was a bit weird and rather eccentric. It was not intended as a smear. It was in the context of ‘why would anybody do this?’.
“It was not my considered view of Dr Kelly. Had it been my considered view I would not have agreed that he should go on to pursue his career in Iraq.”
Lord Hutton planned to publish his report by December of this year but yesterday he said it might come out in January.
