'I hired lawyers as chiefs turned on pressure'

A BBC journalist told today how she was forced to hire lawyers after coming under "considerable pressure" from her bosses to unmask Dr David Kelly as the source of her reports.

Susan Watts, science editor for BBC2's Newsnight, said she was so unhappy about the corporation's "misguided strategy" over the Iraq weapons furore she retained her own legal team.

She told the inquiry into Dr Kelly's death she believed she was being used as cover for controversial claims made by her colleague Andrew Gilligan.

Ms Watts's dramatic details of her clashes with her superiors came as she gave evidence to Lord Hutton's inquiry at the Royal Courts of Justice.

She told how her reports for Newsnight showed "significant differences" with those of defence correspondent Mr Gilligan - even though they had both used Dr Kelly as their source.

She told the inquiry she had come under "considerable pressure" from extremely senior BBC management, including head of news Richard Sambrook, to identify her source. She said: "I believe that the purpose of that was to corroborate Andrew Gilligan and not for any proper news purposes."

She added: "I felt there was an attempt to mould my stories, almost to the stage where they reached the same conclusions."

Ms Watts told the inquiry of a meeting in early July with Mr Sambrook in which he pressurised her to reveal her source. But she was only prepared to reveal Dr Kelly's name after he had given evidence in public to the foreign affairs committee.