Day one: Key quotes

The Hutton inquiry into the death of government weapons expert Dr David Kelly has begun in London. Here are some of the key quotes from the first day.

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"He seemed to me to be in a normal state of mind, someone I had known for 16 years. I did not detect any discernible difference.

"He spoke about his daughter's forthcoming wedding in October, so he seemed to be in a normal state of mind bearing in mind this was about a month before this particular awful incident."

- Terence Taylor, president and executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies on his stay at Dr Kelly's home three or four weeks before the scientist's death

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"His work in Iraq was remarkably successful. He carried the inspection system through during a very difficult period.

"He was able to absorb very large amounts of information and process and analyse it in a way that was very impressive."

- Terence Taylor on Dr Kelly's work

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"I am afraid I cannot resist making this comment: I find some difficulty in squaring the press' desire to know the name of Dr Kelly with the press' criticism of us for providing it to them"

- Richard Hatfield, personnel director, Ministry of Defence, referring to the naming of Dr Kelly as the possible source of a BBC report on Iraq's weapons

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"He appears to have had on his own account two meetings with Mr Gilligan, which took place off MoD premises, with nobody having any knowledge of them and even on Dr Kelly's account of what took place at that interview, he clearly had strayed beyond providing technical information.

"My interpretation, I'm afraid, of thinking back over his history is that he could not have done that without realising he had gone outside the scope of his discretion."

- Mr Hatfield on Dr Kelly's meeting with BBC correspondent Andrew Gilligan

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"There is no security breach. My concern relates to the basic breach of confidence as to how he is supposed to behave towards his employer and the government, since he works for the government."

- Mr Hatfield on whether Dr Kelly had breached security

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"If I had to make a choice between a textual source and Dr Kelly, I would often back Dr Kelly ahead of the textual source ... such was his expertise and such was our confidence in him."

- Patrick Lamb, deputy head of Foreign and Commonwealth counter-proliferation department

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"I am only very saddened that that happy atmosphere has the shadow of Dr Kelly's death hanging over it."

- Mr Lamb on how life in his department has changed since Dr Kelly's death

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"I don't think there was a transformation a week before publication, and certainly changes such as the inclusion of the reference to 45 minutes were nothing to do with Number 10."

- Julian Miller, chief of the assessment staff, Cabinet Office

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"There was not a difference of view about whether the intelligence should be included or not, it was more about how the intelligence should be described."

- Martin Howard, deputy chief of defence intelligence, Ministry of Defence, on the government's September dossier on Iraq's weapons

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