Intelligence

Failings at the MoD 'added to stress felt by Kelly'

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

By Michael Evans, Defence Editor

THE Ministry of Defence was criticised by Lord Hutton in his report yesterday for failing to warn David Kelly of the agreed Whitehall procedure under which his name might become public.
However, Lord Hutton did not accuse either Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, or Sir Kevin Tebbit, the Permanent Secretary, or any other MoD officials of failing in their duty of care towards Dr Kelly.

He said that there were mitigating circumstances and he also absolved Mr Hoon of telling untruths during evidence that he gave to the inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death.

In two appearances at the inquiry Mr Hoon was questioned closely about how much he knew in advance of the procedure adopted by the MoD press office in dealing with the media after it was announced that an official had admitted to briefing Andrew Gilligan, the BBC’s Today reporter, about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

In his first appearance Mr Hoon gave the impression that he had not seen the Question and Answer briefing notes drawn up by the most senior press officers, which provided extra details about Dr Kelly without actually naming him.

However, Lord Hutton confirmed for the first time that in his written, unpublished, evidence to the inquiry, Mr Hoon admitted that he had been told of the approach the MoD press office would use.

“Therefore, I consider that Mr Hoon was not untruthful . . . (and) I do not consider that he was seeking in his evidence to conceal his knowledge of this approach,” Lord Hutton said.

However, Lord Hutton focused on the fact that Dr Kelly was never told that the MoD would confirm his name to journalists if they came up with his identity.

Lord Hutton concluded that the MoD and Downing Street were telling the truth when they denied having a “devious” strategy to put Dr Kelly’s name into the public domain. “There was no dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous strategy by the Government covertly to leak Dr Kelly’s name to the media,” Lord Hutton said.

However, he added that there were a number of defects in the way that the MoD had dealt with the weapons scientist.

“The sudden information from Dr (Bryan) Wells (Dr Kelly’s line manager at the MoD) that his name had been confirmed to the press by the MoD’s press office without any explanation as to why this had been done must have been very upsetting for him and must have given rise to a feeling that he had been badly let down by his employer,” Lord Hutton said in his report.

The MoD should have set up a procedure to let Dr Kelly know immediately that his name had been confirmed to the press. Yet the MoD allowed a period of 90 minutes to elapse before Dr Wells rang Dr Kelly to tell him what had happened.

Lord Hutton acknowledged fully that Dr Kelly had been told on a number of occasions, notably by Richard Hatfield, the MoD personnel director, that it was likely that his name would become known, and that the weapons scientist had appreciated this fact.

The law lord also concluded that there were a number of mitigating circumstances: the exposure that Dr Kelly subsequently faced from press attention, “whilst obviously very stressful”, was only one of the factors placing him under great stress; MoD individuals did try to support Dr Kelly with offers of help in dealing with the media; and that, “because of his intensely private nature, Dr Kelly was not an easy man to help or to whom to give advice”.

Lord Hutton said: “It is also right to emphasise that no one, including the officials in the MoD, could have contemplated that Dr Kelly might take his own life.”

However, Dr Kelly must have felt “great shock” to be told in a brief, and often crackly, mobile telephone call from Dr Wells on the evening of July 9 — the day before he was identified in three newspapers including The Times — “that the press office of his own department had confirmed his name”.

January 28, 2004 at 08:26 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home