Kelly ‘named Campbell to two journalists’

A SECOND BBC journalist disclosed she was told by David Kelly that Alastair Campbell had been responsible for inserting the controversial ‘45 minute claim’ into the British government’s Iraq weapons dossier.

Susan Watts, science editor of BBC2's Newsnight, told the inquiry into Dr Kelly's death that he had made the claim about the Downing Street communications chief two weeks before he spoke to the Today programme journalist Andrew Gilligan who broke the original story.

Ms Watts said that she had initially treated his remark as a "gossipy aside" but later realised that it was an indication of Dr Kelly's "extraordinary access" to the official information behind the dossier.