The news moves so fast that few people remember what else happened that day, Tuesday 27th January 2004, or the specifics of the leak. It's ancient history as far as many are concerned, since the report was released the following day and basically cleared the government of any responsibility in the death of Dr David Kelly, pointing the finger of blame at the BBC for the turn of events that led to Kelly's apparent suicide. So here I will explain what happened, and why the report HAD to be leaked.

With a high profile death like Dr Kelly's, one must always consider the surrounding context -both events and the political and economic pressures which come into play. David Kelly was not an anonymous civil servant, he was a former weapons inspector with UNSCOM, having performed this role in Iraq and the former USSR. His activities were not insignificant, but crucial to the national security infrastructure of the western world.

It is perfectly reasonable that when a high profile individual dies in mysterious or suspicious circumstances, such as a suicide, the possibility that they were murdered must also be considered, but more importantly, investigated. From the moment that it was confirmed publicly that it was Dr Kelly's body that had been found, there was talk of only one scenario: suicide. The preponderance of evidence to the contrary has been covered by this writer and others. From day one, however, the police did not appear interested in any of this and their investigation was crafted around confirming the theory of suicide.

For many, including this writer, it was apparent that some people would benefit from Kelly's death. His communications with the BBC's Andrew Gilligan had given rise to news stories disputing the credibility of the `45 minute claim' and seriously questioned whether Downing Street was aware of its validity when it was used in the government's public relations efforts to make a case for war.

Kelly was a whistle-blower, and Gilligan's broadcasts together with Kelly's appearances before parliamentary committees indicated that he was being pressured to lie about the extent of his knowledge and understanding of who had crafted the contemporary notion of Saddam as an imminent threat. When David Kelly's life-less body was found just a few miles from his home, all hope that the truth might emerge faded along with the smile from Blair's face (as some sources have indicated, Blair did not react well to news of Kelly's death).

Lord Hutton was promptly assembled to help cover up what appeared to be a political murder. The idea of assessing who might have driven him to suicide is clearly a red herring, designed to divert public attention away from other evidence. The newspapers and television news channels were more than compliant in this regard. There was barely a squeak about the problems with the suicide scenario. A few courageous and eminent doctors put pen to paper to inform the Guardian newspaper that in their professional opinions, it was not possible for Dr Kelly to have died in the way described. Other than these letters, our media steadfastly avoided any suggestion that the circumstances of Kelly's death differed from that on the public record.

The leak of the Hutton Report was unexpected and thus caught the news media by surprise. It was brought to attention by Trevor Kavanagh, the Sun newspaper's political editor, who began doing the rounds at various TV and radio studios to let it be known that the Sun had been leaked the conclusions of the Hutton Report, and then proceeded to give some details, whilst informing the public that it would all be in `tomorrow's Sun'. When the report was released the following day and Kavanagh's details were confirmed, some analysts were surprised that for once a leak had turned out to be an accurate reflection of the material it purported to represent.

The leak of the Hutton Report, despite high security at the BBC and the premises of other interested parties, was something that would not go un-noticed. In the heat of events, however, its significance has never been explained until now. The fact that Lord Hutton was unable to identify the leaker indicates that his office never really tried rooting out the culprit. To explain why this is so, we must understand why this report was leaked and who stood to benefit from this.

Why do leaks happen ?

Leaks often occur because the powers that be don't want the information out, or not at that time. That's why it's called a leak. Leaks are used to bring an additional lever to bear on forces that may be intransigent and need a nudge to move the debate. Leaks typically serve the purpose of moving public discussion in a particular, orchestrated direction.

The Hutton report exonerated the government of responsibility in Dr Kelly's death. The debate was therefore going to shift in their favour in any case, when it was published less than 24 hours later. 
So why leak the report the night before it would be on the public record? Timing was everything.

When one newspaper runs a story, it can be ignored. When a second newspaper picks up on the story in the first one, you have some real movement. What happened on the afternoon of the leak was just such a movement, but was even more significant, since the story in question was on the front page of the Evening Standard. Drawing from the letters written to the Guardian newspaper by the group of doctors disputing the manner of David Kelly's death, the headline on the Standard's front page was `Was Kelly Murdered?'

The London Evening Standard is not a small, insignificant, country sticksville rag, it is the newspaper that most Londoners rely on for a round-up of the day's news. Perhaps more importantly, most MP's read the Standard and it thus has the potential to frame parliamentary debates.
This issue and its headline, however, was not allowed to reach saturation-point. Not long after it started selling at news-stands, the Sun newspaper announced its amazing scoop. Trevor Kavanagh then ensured that the leak was the top story on the nightly news, rather than the content of the Standard's story.

Leaks tend to be orchestrated by those who benefit from them, and clearly whoever benefited from this leak was someone who did not want discussion about Kelly's `murder' to reach public consciousness. It would be reasonable to assume those responsible for Kelly's death were also responsible for the leak.

This means that we can rule out any possibility that Kelly was murdered on the orders of a foreign government, because they would not have had the capability to leak the Hutton Report and encourage the Sun newspaper to hawk the details around the other media outlets. In fact, the leak focuses attention on Downing Street and those acting with the authority of the Prime Minister.

Any suggestion that Tony Blair may have played a part in the death of David Kelly would be very damaging both to Blair's reputation and that of the Labour Party. Yet Blair's British Neo-Conservative strategy and the activities of his former chief spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, were spotlighted by Kelly's interactions with Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan's original report suggested that Kelly had fed him info that only a Downing Street insider would know. Gilligan subsequently backed away from this point, the main reason that his earliest report was repudiated being that he had not apparently been told of Campbell's influence with the dossiers by Kelly and thus had stretched the content of his report.

Kelly publicly denied that he was the source of any of Gilligan's stories. Only once he was found dead did it emerge that he was in fact the main source for Gilligan's broadcast. So one must wonder if in fact Kelly was supplying information on the activities of Campbell and those working for Blair's communications set-up.

Whilst Kelly could not have personally seen such activities, it has been suggested that he had a source within Downing Street who was feeding him information. One scenario is that it was actually the indication of a Downing Street mole that so incensed Alastair Campbell and drove his over-the-top response to Gilligan's story and his desire to identify the mole who had been speaking to Gilligan. A leak cannot be plugged until it has been identified, and it was the inevitable slog towards identifying Kelly as Gilligan's leaker that so played on the doctor's mind.
We may never know if David Kelly did have sources within Downing Street. In fact, there is much that we cannot know about David Kelly's last few weeks. It is apparent that he lied continuously before the parliamentary committees, most likely due to political pressure from above and perhaps at the highest levels.

Alastair Campbell was quite happy to deny publicly that he had been Trevor Kavanagh's source for the inside scoop on the Hutton Report. Political players are not normally so gung-ho confident about such assertions unless they can either be sure that no-one can disprove what they are saying, or that they are actually telling the truth. In this case, Campbell was probably telling the truth for a change.

All the way through the Hutton Inquiry, Peter Mandelson remained out of the public spotlight, having twice been forced to resign from ministerial positions. Some considered him a spent force in the UK, having expended whatever political capital he once had. His career has been rejuvenated with his appointment as the new EU Trade Commissioner, the announcement coming only one day after Hutton announced the leaker remains un-known.

Mandelson has long been one of Blair's closest confidants, and is widely credited as the architect of `New Labour'. Much of Blair's media operation has been developed in conjunction with Mandelson. It is hardly a leap to suggest that Peter Mandelson may have been responsible for the leak to the Sun. One doubts, though, whether Hutton spoke to Peter Mandelson, since he never bothered to interview Trevor Kavanagh to determine who the leaker might be.

An honest analysis of events, from Gilligan's original broadcast up until the recent statement by Lord Hutton's office shows that there was never any intention of either establishing the real cause of Dr Kelly's death, nor was there any intention of identifying the players involved in the cover-up. No inquest was held.

The leak of the report was just a fire-fighting exercise in response to the London Evening Standard's bold front page that evening. Had it been allowed to set the agenda, the discussion today may have been very different.

See also:

The Hutton Report Leaves More Questions Than Answers

Kelly Pathologist Calls For Full Inquest As Doubts Grow Over Suicide Verdict
(Channel 4 News video)