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Scientist thrust into media spotlight
Last updated at 00:00am on 18.07.03Until recently, David Kelly was an anonymous scientist working behind the scenes at the Ministry of Defence.
Suddenly he found himself thrust unwillingly into the media spotlight at the centre of the bitter row between the BBC and Downing Street.
The Government were furious over a BBC story - based on information from an unnamed source - that No 10 communications chief Alastair Campbell "sexed up" a crucial intelligence dossier on Iraq.
Dr Kelly was named by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as a contact who, it believed, briefed BBC defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan about the Iraqi weapons programme.
On Tuesday Dr Kelly went in front of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and denied he was the source for the story.
He admitted he had met Mr Gilligan a week before he broadcast his story on the Radio 4 Today programme.
But he told the committee that Mr Gilligan's account of his conversation with his source was so different from their conversation that he did not believe he could be the source.
Dr Kelly is a former UN weapons inspector and now advises British ministers on weapons of mass destruction.
A top microbiologist, he visited Iraq under Saddam Hussein's regime dozens of times and is currently a Government adviser in the Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat.
He came from a background in agricultural science. He was chief science officer at Britain's Natural Environment Research Council Institute of Virology and the head of microbiology at the Chemical Defence Establishment in Porton Down from 1984 to 1992.
Dr Kelly became senior adviser on biological warfare for the UN in Iraq in 1994, holding the post until 1999.
Between 1991 and 1998 he played a key role in inspecting Iraqi weapons after the Gulf War, once saying during a lecture: "When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, little did I realise that Saddam Hussein would dictate the next 10 years of my life."
He also led all the visits and inspections of Russian biological warfare facilities from 1991 to 1994 under the 1992 Trilateral Agreement between the US, UK and Russia.
In September last year he gave evidence to a Commons committee probing the war on terrorism.
He was speaking in his role as chief scientific officer and senior adviser to the Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat of the Ministry of Defence, and the Non-proliferation Department of the Foreign Office.
When he spoke to the Foreign Affairs Committee this week, it was in very different circumstances - and under a much brighter media spotlight.
But he told the committee: "I believe I am not the main source.
"From the conversation I had (with Andrew Gilligan) I don't see how he could make the authoritative statements he was making from the comments that I made."
His disclosure prompted an angry reaction from MPs on the committee who claimed he had been set up by the MoD.
Tory MP Sir John Stanley said Dr Kelly had acted in a "proper and honourable manner" in coming forward to suggest that he may have been Mr Gilligan's source but had been "thrown to the wolves" by the MoD.
"You were being exploited to rubbish Mr Gilligan and his source," he said.
Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay said he believed Dr Kelly was "chaff", thrown up by the MoD to divert attention.
"Have you ever felt like the fall guy? You have been set up, haven't you?" he told him.
Dr Kelly replied: "I accept the process."
