At first the calls were tactful approaches from specialist reporters, many of whom Dr Kelly had spoken to unofficially over the past 10 years for guidance on the issue of arms control, to ask whether he was the "senior British official" cited by the BBC.

By early this week, the media maelstrom had become so intense that Dr Kelly moved to a secret address. To add to his discomfort, newspapers on Wednesday were full of reports lampooning his performance before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and pointing out his resemblance to Britain's most prolific murderer, Harold Shipman.

For the media, the notion of a mole within the higher echelons of Whitehall with the power to damage the Government was impossible to resist. Within hours of the original BBC report by Andrew Gilligan on 29 May a race was on to find the latterday "deep throat". One part of the story is a bit puzzling to me, because the information I've read about it seems to be rather contradictory. One article notes that Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of Defense and Kelly's boss, had said that Kelly had come forward to report that he'd had an unauthorized meeting with Gilligan, but that he had not mentioned Campbell in his interview. It then goes on to say that "[t]he BBC has not denied that, but did say that its source did not work for the Ministry of Defense", and notes that the "Oxford-educated microbiologist, Kelly, 59, has been the senior adviser to the Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat in the Ministry of Defense for more than three years", which would seem to exclude Kelly as the source for Gilligan's story.

As noted above, however, another article says that Downing Street was confident that Dr. Kelly was the source of the report, but that "...Mr Blair's spokesman said the person who had made himself known to the MoD "did not work for the MoD . . . but was a technical expert who had worked for a variety of government departments, including the MoD, with whom he was currently working. His salary was paid by another department."

At any rate, Dr. Kelly ended up having to testify before a Parliamentary committee, something that seems to have been very difficult and very upsetting for him.

A soft-spoken civil servant in the Defense Ministry accustomed to working behind the scenes, Kelly was pressed repeatedly by committee members to say whether he was the "fall guy" in the bitter dispute that has pitted the government against the BBC.

The implication of the committee's questions was that the scientist had been set up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications and security director, Alastair Campbell, to rebut BBC reports about possible government manipulation of intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Tom Mangold, a journalist for the British news network ITV and a friend of David Kelly's, said that he had spoken on Friday morning to Jan Kelly, who said her husband had been "very, very angry about what had happened at the committee" on Tuesday.

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