Day 14: Key points

Here are the key points of Day 14 of the Hutton inquiry into the death of government weapons expert Dr David Kelly:

Toxicologist Richard Allan

• Tests on Dr David Kelly showed he had taken an overdose of about 30 tablets of Coproxamol - the painkiller his wife used for her arthritis

Assistant Chief Constable Michael Page

• He called in special branch after Dr Kelly went missing because he knew of the circumstances surrounding the weapons expert

• Special branch from the Metropolitan Police seized items from Dr Kelly's London offices - they visited three offices

• "I would not say I launched a murder investigation, but the investigation was of that standard"

• Special branch involved in search of Dr Kelly's home in case secret documents were there

• Photograph suspected to be of Dr David Kelly with Andrew Gilligan in Moscow in 1993 turned out not to be of Mr Gilligan

• Vast amount of computer equipment taken from house - memory was equivalent to a "pile of paper twice as high as Big Ben"

• They searched every disc with key words such as "suicide", "despair" and "Iraq"

• They seized one tower PC, a Palm PDA, a Toshiba laptop, a Dell Laptop, another Dell laptop, a card-style laptop which was faulty, one unused hard drive. From the MoD they seized a tower PC

• "I am as confident as I can be that there was no third party involvement at the scene of Dr Kelly's death".

• "I remain confident that he met his death at his own hands"

• Number of e-mails found which were sent the day Dr Kelly disappeared included one to Judith Miller saying: "Judy I will wait until the end of the week before judging - many dark actors playing games. Thanks for your support. I appreciate your friendship at this time"

• He had investigated the comment about dark actors but remained confident Dr Kelly took his own life

Steven MacDonald

• He is responsible for day to day security for all staff at the MoD in London

• Received a phone call on Sunday 20 July from the director of security and safety to say a burn bag had been found in the Metropol building - a burn bag is a paper stack with confidential information in it which have a security classification for disposal and are placed in a bin prior to safe disposal

• The burn bag was found on the third floor and had been left unsecured and unlocked. Burn bags are not normally left out in offices but locked away

• David Kelly was mentioned in the burn bag and because of the recent press profile they decided it merited the attendance of the MDP (MOD police). They sealed the room and took the burn bag into safe custody

• Metropolitan Police advised them there was nothing significant all likely to be significant to the Hutton inquiry in the bag

• "I can confirm that there was never any suggestion of any official, senior or otherwise, shredding documents that were relevant to the inquiry... and I have received no other reports of any documents relating to David Kelly being destroyed."

Brian Jones

• Dr Jones is part of the Defence Intelligence Service, responsible for all aspects of the management of scientists and engineers whose duty it is to analyse intelligence of interest to the MoD

• Dr Kelly was given from 1989 onwards access to sensitive information and they arranged it so he could regularly go into the DIS secure area

• Weapons of mass destruction was a term sometimes used too loosely to represent all nuclear chemical and biological weapons

• Asked about Joint Intelligence Chairman John Scarlett's evidence that Dr Kelly may have been confused about the difference between missile delivery of chemical weapons and artillery delivery in terms of WMD, Dr Jones said: "I think I would struggle to describe either as a true WMD"

• Changes were suggested to the dossier by the expert scientists and passed on to the intelligence assessment staff but they were not accepted

  My concerns were that Iraq's chemical weapons and biological weapons capabilities were not being accurately represented in all regards in relation to the available evidence Brian Jones

• Dr Jones said his chemical weapons expert "was very concerned" about this

• Dr Jones said his concerns were about language and the tendency "in certain areas from his point of view, to, shall we say, over-egg certain assessments, in relation, particularly, to the production of chemical weapons agents"

• Dr Jones said there was an impression that No 10 communications people were involved in some way

• He was asked if people were unhappy about this but he said "the task was being done in what appeared to be an entirely reasonable way at that stage"

• On the 45 minutes point, he said: "My concerns were that Iraq's chemical weapons and biological weapons capabilities were not being accurately represented in all regards in relation to the available evidence"

• Concerns included that the source was reporting what someone had told them so it was "second hand information"

• Dr Kelly was certainly aware at that time or shortly afterwards that there were concerns over the 45 minute claim from contact with Dr Jones and people in his branch

• Other concerns included an element of doubt in their minds whether there was a motivation that the source might have been trying to influence rather than inform with the 45 minutes claim

• A final concern was that the information in the dossier did not differentiate whether these were chemical or biological weapons

  Another example supporting our view that you and I should have been more involved in this than the spin-merchants of this administration "Mr A"

• At no stage did they argue this evidence should not be included in the dossier. They thought it was important. He thought the words used in the dossier that intelligence indicated was a bit strong but he could live with it

• Dr Jones called a meeting on 19 September 2002, five days before the dossier was published, in the Defence Intelligence Service building

• He said "it was a rushed little meeting" called at suggestion of one of his staff because Dr Kelly thought it a good dossier and some of his staff had said it was not completely good

• The meeting resolved that split, as it turned out Dr Kelly did not know about the latest intelligence and had meant the historical parts were good

• No comments were passed up as a result of the meeting but several comments by his chemical weapons expert were passed up several times during the dossier preparation and his expert remained unhappy that his comments were not incorporated

• Asked if there was a full Joint Intelligence Committee meeting to sign off the final dossier, Dr Jones replied: "I am not aware that there was one, but I am not sure that there was not one."

• Dr Jones said he had written a minute to his director making clear there were problems with the JIC process of reviewing the draft - a document from 19 September says "the intelligence we have seen indicates rather than shows Iraq has been planning to conceal its WMD capabilities"

• Dr Jones said he had only written a minute like this on one or two occasions in 15 years of dealing with this process of a JIC product

• Dr Jones said he had written the letter on 8 July 2003 referring to the fact that the most senior and experienced intelligence official working on WMD was concerned about the manner in which intelligence assessments were being used

• Dr Jones said Dr Kelly was involved in the whole dossier process to the extent he saw the complete drafts of the dossiers but did not contribute to analysis of the latest intelligence

• Dr Jones said people working directly with him were "concerned and unhappy"

Mr A

• Mr A is a casually employed civil servant in the counter proliferation and arms control department

• He gave evidence via an audiolink

• Mr A said Dr Kelly suggested 12-14 changes - of a technical nature - to the final dossier draft at the 19 September meeting

• Mr A was concerned about the government making an issue about the Al-Qa'qa plant which made phosgene.

• Mr A said Dr Kelly believed the dossier as a whole was a "reasonable and accurate reflection of the intelligence that we had available to us at that time"

• Mr A said they all touched on the 45 minute claim in one way or another "it was a statement which seemed to rather beg more questions than it answered"

• Mr A said "if your assessment causes you to immediately ask questions then we felt that it was not perhaps a statement that ought to be included" but discussion about it was general, and no one person felt it should not be included

• Mr A said he sent Dr Kelly an e-mail on 25 September 2002 providing background material on the phosgene plant. In the e-mail he says that Dr Kelly would remember him saying the plant was too small to be interesting "you will recall..... (name blanked out) admitted they were grasping at straws"

• Mr A said he made some notes on the draft and that .....(name blanked out) was keen to relieve him of possession of the dossier at the end of the meeting

• In the last paragraph of the e-mail he said: "Another example supporting our view that you and I should have been more involved in this than the spin-merchants of this administration"

• Asked about the reference to spin merchants, Mr A said the perception was that the dossier had been round the houses several times in order to try and find a form of words which would strengthen certain political objectives

• Their view was the dossier as a whole was quite decent, but included some points which could have been left out

• Mr A said Dr Kelly had visited his house in Swindon on 10 July but that he had not wanted to talk about work, which was unusual

• Mr A said he had talked to Dr Kelly about retirement. In the autumn of 2002 Dr Kelly had wanted to continue working in the field but in the summer of 2003 he had said the recent events had made him think seriously about whether his previous ideas were realistic and maybe he ought to just draw a line under the whole experience when it was over

• Mr A said Dr Kelly got frustrated dealing with people who were not "fully aware of the issues"

Forensic biologist Rory Green

• Mr Green was involved in the investigation after Dr Kelly's death

• About 50 items were sent to his laboratory for analysis and Mr Green said that process was still continuing and that the inquiry would be informed of his conclusions