Weapons expert's widow says he felt `betrayed' by government leak.(Chicago Tribune)

Byline: Tom Hundley

LONDON _ The widow of weapons expert David Kelly said her husband felt "betrayed" by his bosses at the Ministry of Defense when they leaked his name to reporters as the source of a controversial BBC story claiming the government had exaggerated the threat of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons.

Janice Kelly, testifying Monday at the inquiry into her husband's apparent suicide, said that after her husband came forward and told his bosses that he had spoken to a BBC reporter, they assured him his name would not become public.

But with a go-ahead from Prime Minister Tony Blair's office, which at the time was locked in a ferocious battle with the BBC, Kelly's bosses devised a "naming strategy" that enabled reporters to guess his identity.

"He said several times over coffee, over lunch, over afternoon tea that he felt totally let down and betrayed," Janice Kelly said. She testified via video link from an adjacent room in the Royal Courts of Justice in order to shield her from the news media.

She also said that her husband "was ballistic" when he learned that he was to appear before a televised parliamentary hearing into the matter.

On July 17, two days after the hearings, a despairing Kelly went for a walk in the woods near his Oxfordshire house. His body was found the next day, the left wrist slashed and a pocketknife nearby.