THE editor who oversaw the BBC report that led to Dr Kelly being named professed to being ''deeply affected'' by the events he set in motion, documents published by the Hutton inquiry reveal.
However, Kevin Marsh, editor of the Radio 4 Today programme, defended his decision to broadcast Andrew Gilligan's report on the government's Iraq weapons dossier, based on the briefing of the government scientist, ''given the state of our knowledge at the time''.
Three days after Dr Kelly was found dead on July 18, Mr Marsh wrote to Stephen Mitchell, the BBC's head of radio news, claiming Mr Gilligan's report was corroborated by an intelligence source of his own.
However, a separate e-mail to Mr Gilligan shows he was dissatisfied with an article by Mr Gilligan in the Mail on Sunday assessing political reaction to his original story.
Recommending changes, Mr Marsh argues it is ''a question of tone and the extent to which you seem to be enjoying the attention''.
In the July 21 e-mail, he wrote: ''Obviously, I'm finding this extremely difficult: whatever the state of the current argument, whatever other people's roles in all of this and however composed one has to appear in public, I'm still deeply affected by the knowledge that a very good man is dead as a result of a series
of events that, in the end, I set
in train.''
But he added: ''I find it hard to believe that I - or anyone else - would, could, or should have acted differently, given the state of our knowledge at the time or that my assessment of the processes that got it to air was flawed.''
It also emerged yesterday that Mr Gilligan's attempts to brief members of the Commons foreign affairs committee may have been approved by senior BBC executives.
An e-mail from the Today reporter on July 3, copied to Richard Sambrook, the BBC head of news, details a conversation that he had with a
Conservative member of the
committee.
However, it is unclear whether Mr Gilligan's superiors knew of the briefing he gave MPs on the day before Mr Kelly faced the committee.
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