Sir John Chilcot - or rather the Cabinet Office - has named the secretary (ie the head of the secretariat) to his Iraq inquiry. It will be Margaret Aldred, currently Director General and Deputy Head of the Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat in the Cabinet Office.

This secretariat took over from the Overseas and Defence Secretariat, which helped Tony Blair cook up the clever plan to take Britain to war in Iraq. It produced the March 2002 options paper and its deputy head in 2002 asked joint intelligence committee chairman John Scarlett to drop the caveats from the Iraq dossier.

So Aldred should know where the bodies are buried. Will this be a help or a hindrance to the inquiry.