Full list of witnesses published
by Chris Ames
The full list of 20 witnesses for the opening batch of hearings, beginning on 24 November, has now been published on the Inquiry website.
The webpage lists the witnesses against the role in respect of which they will be questioned. The formatting seems to have gone a bit wrong, so that the roles of the many witnesses begin a line above their names.
One notable addition to the list reported in the media is Desmond Bowen, “Deputy Head of Defence and Overseas Secretariat at the Cabinet Office 2002-2003″. On 11 September 2002, Bowen wrote a memo to John Scarlett, suggesting that the Iraq dossier would be better without the caveats that would appear in an “authentic” paper by the Joint Intelligence Committee.
The Inquiry has also stated what the subject of the first four hearings will be. For example, on Thursday Christopher Meyer, who was Britain’s Washington ambassador and told Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy secretary of defense in March 2002 that “We backed regime change”, will be quizzed about “The Transatlantic Relationship”.