Dr Kelly "taken aback" by Gilligan's questions

3:25pm Thursday 4th September 2003

Dr Kelly criticised Andrew Gilligan's interviewing methods in the days before the journalist's first controversial BBC broadcast, the Hutton Inquiry has heard.

Olivia Bosch, a friend of Dr Kelly and former UN inspector in Iraq, told the inquiry the weapons scientist was speaking of his much reported meeting with Mr Gilligan at a central London hotel on 22 May 2003, seven days before the radio report went out.

She said: "He was taken aback by the way Andrew Gilligan tried to elicit information from him."

According to Ms Bosch, who was in frequent contact with Dr Kelly by phone and e-mail, Gilligan asked Kelly to name an individual whom he thought may be responsible for inserting the Government's controversial claim that Iraq was capable of launching weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

Dr Kelly told Ms Bosch he had replied he could not give names.

However, Ms Bosch continued, Mr Gilligan had asked to play a 'name game', in which he would list several possible names, and Dr Kelly could confirm or deny them.

When Gilligan proposed the name Alastair Campbell, Ms Bosch said, Kelly neither confirmed nor denied it.

"He said he couldn't confirm or deny, but he thought he had to give an answer, so he said, 'Maybe,'" she said.

Olivia Bosch said Dr Kelly had spoken to her shortly after his conversation with Mr Gilligan. She said he had described the meeting as 'unauthorsied', and was concerned he would need to reassure his Foreign Office minder about the interview.

Later Ms Bosch spoke of another 'journalistic experience that irritated him'.

She said he had been enraged by the appearance of an article by Nicholas Rufford in the Sunday Times, claiming to be an interview with Dr Kelly, after he had been instructed not to speak to any more journalists.

"I have never heard David so excited and so frustrated and angry," she said.

"He said, 'How can a journalist write that?' I said, 'Well, journalists do that kind of thing.' David said, "Well I am never going to speak to him again,'" Ms Bosch told the inquiry.

Speaking of Dr Kelly's behaviour after his name appeared in newspapers, Ms Bosch said: "I began to have a sense I did not know who David was talking to about this, in terms of his own self in all of this."

Ms Bosch told Lord Hutton she had also spoken to Dr Kelly on the morning of the day he died.

On that day he was compiling a list for the MoD, according to Ms Bosch, of all the journalists with whom he had had contact.

Ms Bosch described Dr Kelly's tone of voice on that day as one of 'spite or vengefulness', when talking about the list, adding that he had said, ''I'm just going to list them all."

The vengeful tone did not last, however, and Ms Bosch said: "In a few seconds he seemed to have come away from it."

The inquiry heard the MoD had asked Dr Kelly to go back to Iraq, but that he had decided not to go.

"He needed time to clear his head, and time to prepare. It was as if the worst had passed and he was trying to move on to the next phase," Ms Bosch said.

She tried to call Dr Kelly again after the Channel 4 news that evening, around 7.45pm, but got a message saying she could not be put through.

Dr Kelly's body was found the next day in a copse of trees, three miles from his home.

Tom Mangold's evidence

Dr Kelly considered as 'risible' claims that Saddam Hussein's Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in 45 minutes.

On the last day of evidence in the first stage of the Hutton Inquiry into the weapons scientist's death, journalist Tom Mangold said Dr Kelly had made the statement during a phone conversation about the Government's disputed September dossier.

Mr Mangold said he and Dr Kelly had agreed '45 minutes' may refer to another process, or to a "communication matter".

But, he said: "He did not feel that the weapons could be deployed or activated within 45 minutes."

When asked about how he came to realise Dr Kelly was the source for the BBC's stories, Mr Mangold referred to an article in the Sunday Times of July 9 2003, in which, although the source was not named, many significant details were published.

Mr Mangold said: "You didn't have to be Plato to work out that it would be David Kelly."

"The biological world is quite a small world," he said, "Nobody spoke to the press as much as David."

Asked whether any journalist, on learning the name of the BBC's source, would not have reported it, Mr Mangold replied: "There are a number of journalists who would have recognised that the source was Dr Kelly, and would immediately have gone after him. That is the nature of the trade."

Tom Mangold also told the inquiry today that he spoke to Andrew Gilligan several times after Dr Kelly's death.

Prompted further on the conversations, Mr Mangold said they were confidential, and 'unattributable'.

"Unless he clears me to speak about them it would be indiscreet to talk about them now," he said.

Beginning his evidence, Mr Mangold described Dr Kelly as 'decent and honourable' and said he was known in New York as 'the inspector's inspector'.

He said Dr Kelly thought there was a far more complicated weapons programme going on in Iraq than was generally believed.