Shadow of death falls on Blair

Hours after the body of Dr David Kelly, a former United Nations weapons inspector, was found in woodland near his family home, friends confirmed previous government assertions that he was the main source of BBC claims that the Iraq dossier had been "sexed up" by Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s communications chief.

The cause of Dr Kelly’s death was not immediately disclosed, but Downing Street promised to commission a judicial inquiry into the circumstances - to be headed by the law lord Lord Hutton - despite having strenuously opposed previous demands for just such an inquiry into how it handled the intelligence used to justify the case for war.

Mr Blair was told of Dr Kelly’s death as he flew from Washington to Tokyo on the latest leg of his diplomatic marathon. He was said to be distressed by the news and spent much of the flight in urgent conversation with Mr Campbell and other officials in London.

Dr Kelly, who had worked as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq, had been under intense scrutiny since he was identified by the Ministry of Defence, his employer, as the likely source of the BBC report.

He told the MoD that he met Mr Gilligan in a London hotel but could not understand how his comments could have been used as the source of Mr Gilligan’s claims that the government had hyped up its intelligence to justify the case for war and that Mr Campbell had inserted the claim that weapons of mass destruction could be ready for use within 45 minutes.

Under intense questioning by the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, he stuck to his view that he did not think he could be the source. But on Thursday afternoon, shortly after Mr Gilligan was recalled to give further evidence to the committee, he left home and did not return.

Yesterday, friends revealed that Dr Kelly’s wife, Janice, had said he had been deeply unhappy and furious at how events had unfurled. Tom Mangold, a television journalist and close friend, said: "She told me he had been under considerable stress, that he was very, very angry about what had happened at the committee, that he wasn’t well, that he had been to a safe house, he hadn’t liked that, he wanted to come home.

"She didn’t use the word depressed, but she said he was very, very stressed and unhappy about what had happened, and this was really not the kind of world he wanted to live in."

And Mr Mangold shed new light on the row between the government and the BBC, revealing that - contrary to previous reports - Dr Kelly believed that he was the main source of Mr Gilligan’s report.

"I guess he couldn’t cope with the firestorm that developed after he gave what he regarded as a routine briefing to Gilligan," he said.

"He felt he was Gilligan’s major source. As I recall it, Andrew Gilligan said the man he spoke to was an expert on weapons of mass destruction and they met at a London hotel. If that’s true, that sounds to me like Dave Kelly."

He said that Dr Kelly had regarded the joint intelligence committee’s assessment of the situation in Iraq as "a little bit hyperbolic".

But he added: "At the same time, he certainly told me he never mentioned 45 minutes and he knew nothing about that."

The BBC’s board of governors has stood by its reporting, but yesterday, Dr Kelly’s local Conservative MP, Robert Jackson, said that if he had committed suicide, the corporation was to blame.

"I am obviously very concerned about this, and I think the responsibility of the BBC should not go unmentioned," he said.

"The pressure [on him] was significantly increased by the fact the BBC refused to make it clear he was not the source."

Dr Kelly was reported missing by his family after he left his three-storey, 18th century farmhouse in the village of Southmoor, Oxfordshire, in a heavy rainstorm with no coat.

The bearded and bespectacled 59-year-old microbiologist told his wife he was going for a walk, but when he failed to return, she alerted the police. His body was discovered yesterday morning at Harrowdown Hill, about five miles away. Yesterday afternoon, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said that the MoD would hold an independent judicial inquiry into the circumstances leading up to the death.

The Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, welcomed the announcement but called on Mr Blair to cut short his trip and return home.

"We have been calling for one for a very long time," he said. "I am only sad it takes a tragedy like this to finally get the government to accept that."

The MoD said that Dr Kelly had at no point been threatened with suspension or dismissal as a result of his admission that he had spoken to Mr Gilligan.

It was made clear to him at the time that he had broken civil service rules by having unauthorised contact with a journalist, but "that was the end of it", said a spokesman. The death of Dr Kelly has also raises fresh questions about the future of Mr Campbell, who left Mr Blair’s diplomatic trip in Washington to fly back to London on Thursday night, and of Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, who faces questions about how the MoD named one of its own officials as a possible mole.

And there was mounting pressure on the BBC. A corporation spokesman said it would not be appropriate to comment in detail before the body had formally been identified: "We are shocked and saddened to hear what has happened, and we extend our deepest sympathies to Dr Kelly’s family and friends."

Dr Kelly’s daughter. Ellen, who lives on the outskirts of Torryburn, in Fife, yesterday declined to talk about the death of her father.