Swimmers, scanning the sea for signs of danger, look beyond what breaks the surface. It is by the slight but unexpected troubling of the waters that hidden peril is often best located. Where something jagged lurks beneath or where two currents collide, a sudden agitated choppiness in a small patch of sea may tell us more than the great, regular rollers which we know how to breast.
Most people seem to think that as regards the David Kelly affair, the Prime Minister himself is out of the roughest water; that Lord Hutton’s evidence-taking has somehow ‘cleared’ Downing Street — or at least that lesser figures are conveniently placed to take the rap. I too expect Mr Blair to escape. But a curious perturbation on the media waves last Sunday morning should have reminded us how tricky the position remains for him, and how much logic-chopping and evasion may lie in store early next year, before we finally tire of the story and (as Mr Blair regularly urges us) ‘move on’.
On his regular Jonathan Dimbleby programme on LWT, a rather well-armed Mr Dimbleby was interviewing the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon. Dimbleby had been studying the evidence offered quite recently by the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, Sir Kevin Tebbit, in his second evidence-giving — an episode completely overshadowed by the Conservative party’s latest ructions.
Dimbleby turned to the way in which Dr Kelly’s name had reached the press. You will recall that immediately after Kelly’s death a Daily Mail journalist asked Tony Blair, on an aeroplane, whether the decision to ‘out’ the scientist had been his. No, replied Mr Blair. In that case, asked the journalist, had he authorised the decision? ‘Emphatically not’, replied the Prime Minister.
The decision to ‘out’ Kelly was what Dimbleby wanted to discuss with Mr Hoon.
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