An Inconvenient Death Read online

  Realizing that the temperature was rising, on 30 June Dr Kelly volunteered his involvement in the row in a private letter to Dr Bryan Wells, his line manager at the Ministry of Defence. With the benefit of hindsight this was, at best, ill advised. Dr Kelly cannot have realized that by doing so he was entering a lion’s den.

  Dr Kelly revealed to Wells that he had met Gilligan the previous month and discussed the forty-five-minute claim. His letter said that he had told Gilligan the claim was there for ‘impact’. But he did not endorse the suggestion about Campbell’s involvement, saying that Gilligan had mentioned Campbell’s name first, rather than him feeding it to the reporter. In his written clarification, Dr Kelly also categorically denied having alleged that Campbell had exaggerated the September dossier. He said his conversation with Gilligan about Campbell was ‘essentially an aside’. Dr Kelly wrote:

  I did not even consider that I was the ‘source’ of Gilligan’s information until a friend in RUSI [the Royal United Services Institute think-tank] said that I should look at [Gilligan’s] oral evidence provided to the Foreign Affairs Committee on 19th June because she recognised that some comments were the sort that I would make about Iraq’s chemical and biological capacity. The description of that meeting in small part matches my interaction with him, especially my personal evaluation of Iraq’s capability, but the overall character is quite different. I can only conclude one of three things. Gilligan has considerably embellished my meeting with him; he has met with other individuals who truly were intimately associated with the dossier; or he has assembled comments from both multiple direct and indirect sources for his articles.

  Dr Kelly’s letter was passed to Sir Kevin Tebbit, the MoD’s most senior civil servant and Dr Kelly’s ultimate boss. He requested that Dr Kelly be interviewed by Bryan Wells and Richard Hatfield, the MoD’s Personnel Director.

  On 3 July, after a two-hour conversation with Dr Kelly, Wells and Hatfield decided that he was not the source of the most serious allegations advanced by Gilligan relating to Campbell and the forty-five-minute claim. They also decided he would face no penalty despite, as they saw it, his having broken departmental guidelines by speaking to a journalist without seeking the necessary authorization. (In fact, Dr Kelly’s terms of employment did not forbid him from having discussions with reporters.) Bolted onto the MoD’s conclusion, however, was the condition that a fuller inquiry into Dr Kelly’s conduct could be launched if new information came to light.

  Tony Blair and his Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, were both told that day that an official had come forward to admit having spoken to Gilligan. Blair and Hoon were apparently not given Dr Kelly’s name at this stage but John Scarlett, the Chairman of the JIC and the government’s chief intelligence adviser, was told it.

  Inevitably, newspaper reporters were still on the case. On 5 July Tom Baldwin, then a reporter on The Times, wrote a story which dropped heavy hints as to the identity of Gilligan’s source. Who can say where his information came from? It remains unclear who knew Dr Kelly’s identity at this point.

  With what seem to be good intentions, Sir Kevin Tebbit warned Downing Street that Dr Kelly was in danger of being compromised, so on Monday, 7 July Scarlett suggested that Dr Kelly should take part in ‘a proper security-style interview’ to find out if he really was Gilligan’s only source. It was agreed at a meeting chaired by Tony Blair that day that the interview of Dr Kelly would go ahead.

  Far from receding, after his admission to Bryan Wells a week earlier the seriousness of the situation was growing for Dr Kelly. On 7 July he was at RAF Honington in Suffolk on a training course in preparation for a forthcoming trip to Iraq where, ironically, he was intending to carry on searching for weapons of mass destruction. He was told to be in the London office of Richard Hatfield by 4 p.m.

  During this interview, Dr Kelly reportedly said that he ‘might have been led on’ by Gilligan. Four days after initially clearing him, the MoD then decided that Dr Kelly probably had been Gilligan’s source, but that Gilligan might have exaggerated what he had been told. In effect, Dr Kelly was found half guilty, but again the official decision was that no action would be taken against him.

  Dr Kelly was also advised that it was likely that the press would persist in wanting to know who had briefed Gilligan ahead of his BBC broadcast, however, and therefore that his name might come out.

  Alastair Campbell was clearly rampantly keen on the idea of Gilligan’s source being identified as is evidenced by his diary entry for 4 July – three days before Dr Kelly was re-interviewed. It noted that Geoff Hoon told him that day that a possible source had come forward. Campbell did not name Dr Kelly in his diary and, officially, he did not know his identity, but he appears to have known what he did for a living because he described the source as ‘an expert rather than a spy or full-time MoD official’. The source’s comparatively lowly status as a mere expert and not a spy would, Campbell believed, reflect badly on the credibility of Gilligan’s story. Campbell’s perception was that Gilligan’s source was simply not high up enough to know exactly what he was talking about. Indeed, with what seems considerable force, the spin doctor wrote that he and Hoon ‘agreed that it would fuck Gilligan if that was his source.’

  It is also possible that he wrote this sentence in his diary with a sense of triumph or relief, for it would have been disastrous for the government if Gilligan’s real source had turned out to be someone very senior such as, say, Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary.

  Campbell’s personal animosity towards Gilligan seemed to have infected his professional judgement to such a degree that he would be happy to use Gilligan’s source in whatever way necessary for victory in his clash with the BBC. And his diary entry for 6 July confirmed that he did view the situation in combative terms, in that he wrote that he was lusting after ‘a clear win not a messy draw’.

  On 8 July another news story about the affair appeared in The Times, again written by Tom Baldwin, revealing more details about Dr Kelly’s identity but still falling short of naming him. His perceived status as just an ‘expert’ was being held up as a reason to cast doubt on Gilligan’s claim.

  That morning’s papers also carried the news that the FAC had cleared Campbell of exerting ‘improper influence’ in the drafting of the September 2002 dossier, which claimed that Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons could be launched at forty-five minutes’ notice. Campbell was off the hook, though many in Westminster found the committee’s decision convenient because Labour MP and committee Chairman Donald Anderson had had the casting vote in clearing him.

  On the afternoon of 8 July the Ministry of Defence published a press release, with Dr Kelly’s agreement, confirming only that an individual had come forward and admitted to being Gilligan’s source. It did not name Dr Kelly, and Dr Kelly never sanctioned the release of his name. A short time afterwards, however, the MoD press office was instructed by officials to confirm Dr Kelly’s identity to any journalist who guessed it correctly. Dr Kelly was unaware of this astonishing breach of the agreement he had understood he and the MoD had reached.

  The meeting at which the decision was taken for this ‘name game’ to go ahead was chaired by Tony Blair in Downing Street on 8 July. Dr Kelly had no idea that he was at risk of identification, but the rules of the game allowed journalists an unlimited number of guesses, and a crib sheet with biographical information about Dr Kelly was even prepared for the MoD press office to assist any reporter who rang in with a question.

  The government was helping reporters hungry for the hottest story in Westminster at the time but, crucially, in such a way as to allow anyone involved at an official level to claim that, technically, the government had not actively provided Dr Kelly’s name to the press.

  At 5.30 p.m. on 9 July James Blitz, a Financial Times reporter, was the first to guess Dr Kelly’s name correctly. Not long after, The Times followed suit.

  AN EARLY VISITOR

  As Fleet Street’s political correspondents w
ere trying to work out what Gilligan’s source was called, Sunday Times reporter Nick Rufford set off from London by car for the village of Southmoor, near Abingdon, to call on Dr Kelly at home.

  At this point in his career Rufford, a respected journalist who has worked on the newspaper since 1987, mainly wrote stories about the world of intelligence. Dr Kelly was a trusted contact and source who had been furnishing him with reliable information since 1997. The pair had met by arrangement at least twenty times previously, either for lunch in Dr Kelly’s local pub, or at Dr Kelly’s house, or at restaurants in London. They had also spoken by telephone fairly frequently and exchanged emails. Their professional relationship was nothing if not friendly.

  On this occasion, however, the purpose of Rufford’s visit was entirely different to previous encounters. Not only was it unannounced, but the story on which he was working was about Dr Kelly himself – specifically whether he was the source of Gilligan’s recent Radio 4 broadcast alleging that the British government had taken the country to war with Iraq on the basis of a lie.

  No doubt having read the reports in The Times written by Tom Baldwin, Rufford speculated that Dr Kelly might be at the centre of the political skirmish by being Gilligan’s source. To his mind, the seventy-mile trip to the Oxfordshire countryside which he made that afternoon was by no means a fishing expedition.

  In fact, earlier in the day Rufford had tried to test his theory via the less awkward method of contacting Dr Kelly at home by telephone, to no avail. When he rang, the phone was answered by Dr Kelly’s wife, Janice, who told him her husband was working in London. So, having discussed it with his news editor, Charles Hymas, Rufford decided to turn up in person unannounced at Dr Kelly’s house, estimating that by the time he got there Dr Kelly would have returned.

  On arrival in Southmoor at about 7.30 p.m. he parked in the Waggon and Horses pub car park. It was directly opposite Dr Kelly’s house, an attractive five-bedroom Victorian property set in half an acre which reflected Dr Kelly’s steady but financially unremarkable three-decade civil service career. Between 1997 and 2000, the Ministry of Defence failed to give Dr Kelly an annual salary rise, meaning he remained on only £51,071 – hardly the sort of money befitting a man of his stature and reputation. In 2003, months before he died, his pay was finally increased to £63,496 – but only because Dr Kelly had complained more than once.

  As he got out of his car Rufford saw Dr Kelly standing in his driveway. He waved. Dr Kelly acknowledged him and waited while Rufford crossed the A-road that separated them. They began to chat while Janice Kelly was some distance away watering flowers. She was aware of Rufford’s arrival but played no part in their ensuing conversation and was, by her own admission, unable to hear much of it.

  Dr Kelly volunteered to Rufford that he had just been updated on the consequences of the ‘name game’ that MoD officials had decided to play. He said he had been contacted by the MoD and told that he would be named as Gilligan’s source in national newspapers the following day. This put Rufford in a frustrating position familiar to many Sunday newspapermen: he was a reporter who couldn’t report. He had some rights to the scoop but, as it was only Wednesday, he was going to be beaten to the punch by the daily papers.

  The MoD – acting under orders from Downing Street – had taken the very unusual step of throwing Dr Kelly to the wolves by thrusting him into the limelight against his will. His name would be plastered all over Thursday’s papers as the man at the centre of the row, likely leaving the Sunday titles no more than some scraps three days later.

  This was bad news for Rufford professionally but, showing some genuine concern for Dr Kelly, and calculating that he could perhaps persuade him to write about the row in the next edition of The Sunday Times, he kept the conversation going.

  He asked Dr Kelly whether the MoD had offered him advice and support, or whether they had volunteered to send anybody to be with him. He also asked whether the department had advised him to leave home and stay with friends or in a hotel. On hearing that no such advice had been given, Rufford told Dr Kelly that The Sunday Times could help by finding him a hotel if need be.

  Dr Kelly asked Rufford what, in his experienced opinion, might happen next. The unpalatable answer Rufford supplied was that he was likely to be besieged by reporters. Unsurprisingly, Dr Kelly looked perplexed at the prospect.

  Rufford then took the opportunity to ask Dr Kelly about his contact with Gilligan. Dr Kelly confirmed he had met the BBC journalist at the Charing Cross Hotel in May and, when Rufford asked him whether their conversation had been reported accurately in subsequent media coverage up to that point, replied: ‘I talked to him about factual stuff, the rest is bullshit.’

  Rufford was surprised by this uncharacteristic choice of language. It surely indicated the anger and stress which Dr Kelly felt – and prompted questions about the accuracy of Gilligan’s reporting. The scientist then confided in Rufford that the twists and turns of the preceding few weeks meant that he felt he had been ‘through the wringer’. Now, having been told just half an hour earlier by the MoD that his name was about to be published, he seemed genuinely shocked. More positively, though, he did volunteer to Rufford that he was looking forward to returning to Iraq the following week to carry on with his work there as a weapons inspector for the British government.

  Realizing that time was running out for this impromptu chat and keen not to return to London empty-handed, Rufford asked Dr Kelly whether he would write an article for The Sunday Times. Dr Kelly said he would happily do so – but would need the blessing of the MoD press office. A quarter of an hour had passed, and Rufford sensed that since he was not going to be invited into Dr Kelly’s house, the conversation had reached its natural conclusion. They parted perfectly amicably, he felt.

  He returned to his car and immediately rang his news editor, Hymas, to let him know that the next day’s papers were going to name Dr Kelly as Gilligan’s source. Next, he made detailed contemporaneous notes of his conversation with Dr Kelly – everything which he considered had been said to him on or off the record – and included his own observation that the scientist had appeared ‘pale and tired.’ It would have been second nature for him to record the encounter as thoroughly as he could, knowing that The Sunday Times would probably want to include in its next edition at least part of what had been said to its man by Dr Kelly. Within half an hour Rufford also rang the MoD press office and spoke to a senior member of staff, Pam Teare, asking whether Dr Kelly might be allowed to write a piece for his newspaper putting across his side of the story about the row. He was told that this was unlikely, but that if the situation changed he would be the first to know. Rufford then began to drive home, unaware that he would never see Dr Kelly alive again.

  What happened next is the subject of some debate, as shall become clear. The official story is that, immediately after Rufford left the Kellys’ house, Dr Kelly was again rung by the MoD and advised to leave home straight away in order to avoid having to speak to any other reporters.

  Mrs Kelly is then said to have told her husband about a friend’s house in the West Country which they could use as a hiding place. They quickly packed a bag each and at about 8 p.m. Dr Kelly went over the road to the Waggon and Horses pub. There he asked Leigh Potter, a barmaid, to pass on a message to the publican, Graham Atkins, that he was going away for a few days because the ‘press were going to pounce’. Bemused, Miss Potter agreed to do so and within thirty seconds Dr Kelly had gone.

  The Kellys then apparently got into their car and headed for the motorway. They are said to have broken the journey that night in a hotel in the Somerset seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, about eighty-five miles away, and the next morning, Thursday, 10 July, continued driving south, arriving in the Cornish fishing village of Mevagissey at about midday.

  Supposedly, they passed the weekend quietly, visiting a couple of tourist attractions – the Lost Gardens of Heligan and the Eden Project – in between dealing with the fallout from Dr K
elly having been named by the MoD as Gilligan’s source. This included Dr Kelly being told by his boss, Bryan Wells, over the phone that the following week he would be required to go to Westminster to give evidence to the FAC, which was still conducting its inquiry into Britain’s invasion of Iraq. He would also be required to appear before the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).

  It was Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, who ultimately decided these appearances must take place, even though senior MoD staff including Sir Kevin Tebbit opposed the idea. Bryan Wells was merely the bearer of the bad news.

  The FAC inquiry was to be televised, a fact which apparently upset Dr Kelly greatly while he was in his Cornish bolthole. He was powerless, however, to argue with the Defence Secretary. The Kellys agreed it would be best if Dr Kelly returned to Oxfordshire to stay with his soon-to-be-married daughter Rachel, who lived in Oxford, using her house as a secret base in order to dodge prying reporters. From there, he could reach London easily.

  PALE AND TIRED

  On Sunday, 13 July Dr Kelly awoke keen to begin the 230-mile car journey from Cornwall to Oxfordshire as soon as possible. Mrs Kelly tried to delay him from setting off too early because he seemed extremely tense and she was worried about him driving on the motorway in such a state. It had already been agreed between the couple that she would remain alone in Cornwall until the committee hearings in Westminster had concluded, three days later.

  Before Dr Kelly set off, he and Mrs Kelly went into Mevagissey that morning to buy some newspapers, including a copy of The Sunday Times. Dr Kelly wanted to see what, if anything, Rufford had written about him as a result of their doorstep chat in Southmoor four nights previously.

  The 600-word story Dr Kelly read, positioned unhelpfully on the front page, is said to have made him fume. The second sentence contained the words: ‘In his first public comments since the row blew up, Dr David Kelly said the government’s position on Iraq was credible and factual.’ This was a piece of journalese which to the untrained eye would leave readers with the idea that Dr Kelly had entered into a formal conversation with The Sunday Times, when in fact he had given no such interview. His off-the-cuff comments were simply plucked from the chat he and Rufford had had in Dr Kelly’s garden a few evenings previously. Such are the tricks of the trade.