Hutton must debunk myths or reveal realities

By ANDY McSMITH in London

From the day Dr David Kelly died, Tony Blair could tell from the reactions of journalists accompanying him on a tour of East Asia that his name would be dragged into the affair one way or another.

He ordered the Hutton inquiry in the hope that it would end some of the wilder accusations - including that the scientist was the victim of a Government conspiracy to hide the truth behind the Iraq war.

He can expect a partial success. Lord Brian Hutton is unlikely to imply that Blair has lied or was responsible for Kelly's death. But Downing Street is open to criticism over the dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that was presented to the British Parliament in September 2002.

On September 5, a committee chaired by Alastair Campbell, then Blair's director of communications, saw a draft of that document and decided it needed "substantial" rewriting. Twelve days later, Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, said the document "does not demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam".

He was particularly bothered by a phrase suggesting that Saddam Hussein would use these weapons only if attacked. Campbell and Blair also did not like the wording of the sections on nuclear weapons.

But when the dossier was published, on September 24, Blair claimed that it had been "established beyond doubt" that Saddam was continuing to produce weapons of mass destruction (described as no more than a probability in the draft) and was trying to produce nuclear weapons. These had been named as a potential threat in the previous version of the document. Now the threat was said to be "serious and current".

Campbell told the inquiry that the changes he and his colleagues wanted were only "presentational".

But Hutton will have considered another explanation: that Downing Street staff were putting pressure on the intelligence services to alter the September dossier to strengthen the political case for going to war.

If he concludes that this is true, it will be a victory for Andrew Gilligan, the defence correspondent for BBC Radio 4's Today programme, and an embarrassment for Blair.

Gilligan reported on May 29 last year that Downing Street had ignored the objections of the intelligence community to insert a claim into the dossier that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

Hutton has had to assess whether Blair or any of his staff were implicated in trying to leak Kelly's identity to the press or to blacken his reputation. There was a meeting in Downing Street, with Blair present, at which officials discussed the fact that Kelly had come forward and identified himself as a possible source of Gilligan's reports.

The most obvious evidence that Downing Street wanted to belittle Kelly came when his near namesake, Tom Kelly, Blair's official spokesman, described the scientist as a "Walter Mitty" character - a slur for which the press officer later apologised.

The comment was made after the death of Kelly, so could not have contributed to his suicide, but it is clear that in the last days of his life the scientist certainly feared for his reputation.

A key question has been how much the activities of people within No 10 contributed to that state of mind.

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Herald Feature: Iraq