For the first time, the Inquiry heard from the very people Dr Kelly had been describing in conversations with journalists when he talked about concerns in the intelligence community.
The evidence painted a picture of intelligence assessments being rushed, concerns being over-ridden and the normal rigour over language being thrown out the window.
The inquiry heard of a meeting held in the Ministry of Defence five days before the Iraq dossier was published.
At the War office building in Whitehall, Dr Kelly joined a meeting of several experts from the Defence intelligence staff.
It was a hastily convened meeting, called after the latest draft of the Government’s dossier had arrived on their desks. One man present at the meeting, a chemical warfare expert and weapons inspector, gave evidence to the inquiry today on an audio link - his identity has been withheld.
He said everyone present questioned the new intelligence - now inserted in the latest draft of the dossier - which claimed that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in 45 minutes. He said it begged more questions than it answered.
"The perception was that the dossier had been round the houses several times in order to find a form of words that would strengthen certain political objectives."
Dr Brian Jones, who headed a team of weapons experts which
formed part of the Ministry of Defence's intelligence service said: “We had problems about the source. What we were hearing was second hand information. The way in which the information was reported did not give us any real feel that the source knew anything much about the subject he was reporting on.
"We even wondered, in discussing the issue, whether he might be trying to influence rather than inform. The information didn't differentiate between whether these were chemical weapons or whether they were biological weapons and that is an important matter.”
“The absence of chemical weapons agent production worried us. We had not seen the weapons being produced. We had no evidence of any recent testing or field trials or things like that. So that all cast some doubts in our mind on that particular piece of intelligence.”
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