BRITAIN: In his closing submission yesterday, counsel for the inquiry, Mr James Dingemans QC, said all the evidence pointed to Dr David Kelly having committed suicide.
He said it should be recorded that Dr Kelly's actions "were not foreseeable to any party, whether family, Ministry of Defence, Number 10 or the BBC".
Mr Dingemans also indicated probable areas of criticism of the government and the BBC in Lord Hutton's report. These will almost certainly include the alleged failure of the government in its "duty of care" to prepare Dr Kelly for his public ordeal, and to support him through it, and the failure of the BBC to defuse its row with the government by correcting and withdrawing its claim that the government had inserted intelligence in the Iraq weapons dossier against the wishes of the intelligence services and probably knowing it to be wrong.
Lord Hutton's interventions during the submissions of lawyers for the BBC and Mr Gilligan also threw the spotlight back on the question of whether Dr Kelly said more to Mr Gilligan and other journalists than he admitted to his MoD line managers. Attention was also focused on the complaint registered by government counsel Mr Jonathan Sumption QC that the BBC never accepted the seriousness of the allegations against the government in the original Today programme broadcast on May 29th.
The relationship between the government and the intelligence community will also exercise Lord Hutton.
Dealing with Dr Kelly's reporting of concerns among some intelligence staff about the dossier, Mr Dingemans quoted Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, a former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and now a BBC governor, telling the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee there was "a fine line between showing the evidence and making a case". Mr Sumption had said it was constitutionally proper for No 10 officials to be involved in drafting the dossier.
However, Mr Dingemans offered: "If the gist of the comments made was to make a case, that may or may not - it is a matter for your Lordship - be the other side of the line."
With the BBC and Alastair Campbell each accusing the other, Mr Dingemans said of Mr Campbell's angry Channel 4 interview: "It was perfectly apparent perspective had been lost. Your lordship will have to consider whether that loss of perspective was restricted to either side."