Kelly/Hutton redux

Why do I find the Hutton Inquiry so addictive? Is it because I wish so much we had something similar here in the US?
My engagement with it is a bit episodic. Like, late at night when I’m too tired to get on with the work I should be doing. But anyway, it strikes me that some really interesting things have been happening this week, though the Inquiry has not been sitting in public session. Lord H decided to take a week’s hiatus from that, in order to plan his endgame, the details of which will be announced tomorrow (Friday) morning.
So today– or yesterday?– the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) suddenly, and belatedly, decides to make available to Lord H the transcript of a closed session it held July 16 with David Kelly testifying.
The day before DK killed himself…
I gather that somehow the text of the transcript had gotten leaked someplace, so then shamefacedly (or who knows, maybe brazenly?) the ultra-hush-hush ISC folks told Lord H, oh hey, you might just want to take a look at this transcript we have??
Weird-oh. I mean, Lord H has shown his determination to get to the bottom of Kelly’s death. he’s subpoenaed all kinds of internal spooks’ email, etc etc., not to mention calling Tony Blair and Defense Sec Geoff Hoon to appear in person…
But the ISC sat on this stuff for all these weeks??
Hutton to his immense credit– I jjust love these senior judicial types once they git the bit between their teeth– immediately posted the transcript on the Inquiry’s website. It’s in PDF, so I can’t easily reproduce a lot of it here. Below here is one key portion that I quickly keyboarded: in it, DK is admitting that, yes, he did express doubts to Beeb reporter Andrew Gilligan about the veracity of the infamous “45 minute” claim regarding Saddam’s alleged CBW readiness.
In another portion, DK admits that he told numerous people–including Gilligan– that he thought that while he was 100% sure that Saddam’s people had CW programs, he was only 30% sure that they had the actual chemicall weapons.
Actually, the transcript is worth reading for lots more details as well as the general atmospherics that it reveals.
The ISC, by the way, is a committee of folks appointed by the PM and reporting to him, rather than to Parliament (which the Foreign Affairs Cttee reports to). So the political dynamic at the ISC is, ahem, not necessarily one of open accountability to the people’s elected representatives, to say the least.
Anyway, here’s the small portion of the transcript that I just keyboarded:

This was when the ISC people were grilling him about a meeting he held with Gilligan in May:

DK: No, I think I may well have said that the forty-five minute mention was there for impact, yes, because it came out of a conversation, not about the dossier, but about Iraq, ‘why weapons had not been used and why they had not been found subsequently’ and then the question was ‘well if you have something that is available in forty-five minutes surely it would have been used’ and then, I can’y identify such a system that you could use within forty-five minutes and then the question was ‘why would it be included’ and I can’t give an answer as to why it would be included?
Q: So if you might have said that it was there for impact, you can’t be firmer than that as to whether you did or did not say that it was there for impact?
DK: No I’m pretty sure I said it was there for impact, I’ve acknowledged that.
Q: As opposed to being factually correct?
DK: It depends on how you would interpret what I’ve said. I have said that I don’t, I can’t identify a weapons system that could be used within forty-five minutes of deployment.
Q: To Gilligan?
DK: Yes, I’ve said it to many people, but to Gilligan, yes…
Q: So might Andrew Gilligan have said, did Andrew Gilligan say ‘why was it there?’ and then did he say ‘was it Campbell who put it on?’
DK: I mean that’s the sequence that occurred, I mean the exact phrasing I regret I cannot remember…
Q: But if he had said ‘was it Campbell who put it in’ what do you think you would have said in reply?
DK: Well I would have had no knowledge of that…