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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector-The week ahead: Hoon expects to have to 'fall on his sword' over exposure of Dr Kelly
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By Jo Dillon and Steve Bloomfield
The Independent (UK)
17 August 2003
The Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, has told colleagues he expects to have to "fall on his sword" over the death of the scientist David Kelly.
In telephone calls last week, Mr Hoon said he now accepted he would have to take responsibility for the affair after the Hutton inquiry into the scientist's death heard that he had overruled advice from his most senior civil servant to force Dr Kelly to face a public grilling before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FAC).
Mr Hoon has privately conceded his ministerial career is over. According to The Sunday Telegraph, a friend of the Defence Secretary said: "Geoff knows you don't come back from something like this."
Mr Hoon's decision to ignore the advice of Sir Kevin Tebbit, Permanent Secretary at the MoD, and put Dr Kelly before the FAC for "presentational" reasons was one of the key disclosures in the Hutton inquiry's first week. This week, Downing Street's involvement in the dossier that formed the case for war and its role in the events leading to Dr Kelly's death will come under intense scrutiny.
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's director of communications and strategy, is among those who have been called to give evidence to the investigation into the circumstances of the scientist's death after he was named as the possible source of a BBC report claiming that No 10 "sexed up" Iraq's weapons capability to promote the case for war.
After the opening week at the inquiry shed new light on the role that the Prime Minister, Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, and the Government's most senior officials had in the Kelly affair, some key figures have been called to answer further questions.
Other witnesses include Pam Teare, head of news at the MoD, who will be asked how Dr Kelly came to be identified in the press. It was Ms Teare who confirmed Dr Kelly's name to journalists some of whom will be called to give evidence this week when asked.
The Prime Minister's official spokesman Godric Smith is expected to be asked about Downing Street's strategy in briefing the press after Dr Kelly's death. His evidence will be followed by that of his colleague, Tom Kelly, who described Dr Kelly to journalists as a "Walter Mitty" figure.
Journalists due to give evidence this week include Nicholas Rufford, a Sunday Times specialist who had known Dr Kelly for six years, Financial Times journalist James Blitz, one of three reporters who first named Dr Kelly as the BBC's source, Richard Norton-Taylor,
The Guardian's defence editor, who also named Dr Kelly, and Tom Baldwin of The Times, who is thought to have put several names to the MoD press office before alighting on Dr Kelly's.
The chairman of the FAC, Donald Anderson MP, is likely to face some difficult questions over Dr Kelly's public inquisition and his view of the evidence given to that committee's inquiry by Mr Campbell, Dr Kelly and Andrew Gilligan, defence correspondent for Radio 4's Today programme, who broke the disputed story at the heart of the affair.
In addition to Mr Campbell, Sir David Manning, Mr Blair's foreign policy adviser, and Jonathan Powell, the PM's chief of staff, can expect to be asked about No 10's involvement in the September dossier and the role of senior figures at Downing Street in the decision to name Dr Kelly as Mr Gilligan's source.
The week's final witness will be Lee Hughes, secretary to the Hutton inquiry.
At the end of a week in which the political and journalistic processes were filleted by the Hutton inquiry, David Davis, the shadow deputy prime minister, condemned the Government as willing to "attack anyone, or anything that threatens its version of the truth". Writing in The Independent on Sunday, he said the Kelly affair highlighted a "calculated approach to government that dates back to New Labour's time in opposition and which was overseen and approved by Tony Blair himself".
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