Kelly assassinated ?

[faceless]

Cheers again Luke - this is such an important story.

[Mandy]

[luke]

[faceless]

Did two hired assassins snatch weapons inspector David Kelly?
By NORMAN BAKER -
22nd October 2007

Weapons inspector David Kelly was the decent man apparently hounded to suicide after exposing Tony Blair's lies on Iraq. But the crusading MP Norman Baker felt sure there was something more to his death - and gave up his front-bench role to investigate the case. In the Mail he revealed extraordinary evidence that he believes proves Kelly did not take his own life and was instead murdered by Iraqi dissidents. Here, he reveals how the murder may have been carried out . . .

While investigating the death of Dr David Kelly I have made many strange discoveries, not least some disturbing parallels with the case of a young American journalist named Danny Casolaro. Mr Casolaro made himself deeply unpopular with elements in the murky world of U.S. defence by probing too deeply into their activities. One morning in August 1991, he was found dead in a hotel room near Harpers Ferry in Virginia. He was in the bath, naked, with his wrist slashed. There were no signs of bruising or other marks on the body and the police concluded that he had committed suicide. But this was totally false according to Dr Christopher Green, who was the CIA's chief forensic pathologist for decades.

Dr Green participated in Casolaro's autopsy and last year he told veteran White House reporter Sterling Seagrave that the young journalist had been killed before being stripped, put in a full bath, and his left wrist cut in precisely the same manner as Dr Kelly's. And as with Dr Kelly, there was remarkably little blood, bar a small amount smeared on the edge of the tub, suggesting that the wrist wound had been inflicted after the heart had stopped pumping.

This compelling demonstration of how effectively a murder can be disguised as suicide drove me on in my search for the truth about Dr Kelly, who was found dead in an Oxfordshire wood on July 18, 2003, having apparently taken his own life. Before Danny Casolaro died, the journalist had been investigating the activities of America's private security companies which, according to Sterling Seagrave, are linked to the 'Grey Ghosts' - an army of professional killers commissioned by the Pentagon to carry out assassinations.


Norman Baker at the spot where David Kelly was found dead

The similarities between the two men's deaths led Seagrave to suggest that Dr Kelly might also have fallen victim to these shadowy figures. After all, he was the source behind a BBC report that the British government had 'sexed up' intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. This can hardly have been well received by the White House.

As I explained in Saturday's Mail, my own information strongly suggests that those behind Dr Kelly's death were Iraqi dissidents opposed to Saddam Hussein's regime and angry at Dr Kelly for undermining the case for toppling him. A well-placed source also told me that the British police or security services had been warned of a likely assassination attempt but were not in time to stop it. Did they then try to disguise the murder as suicide for reasons of political expediency? To understand what may have happened, we must return to Thursday, July 17, the day

Dr Kelly disappeared. That morning he was at home with his wife Janice in the village of Southmoor and it must be said that none of his behaviour fits the profile of a man about to commit suicide. In her evidence to the Hutton inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, his wife said he was 'tired, subdued, but not depressed'. Indeed, it seems it was Janice Kelly, not her husband, who was more seriously under par.

During phone calls that morning, Dr Kelly told a colleague that he was basically 'holding up all right', but that his wife was having a difficult time, both physically and mentally, under the pressure of long-standing ill health and the political storm that had engulfed them. At lunchtime she went to bed with a nauseous headache and arthritis pains. He, on the other hand, appears to have carried on working normally, eaten some lunch and taken the trouble to go upstairs to check on his wife, shortly before 2pm, to see how she was feeling. Given his obvious concern, it hardly seems likely that he would want to exacerbate matters for her by committing suicide that day.

Dr Kelly told his wife he would be going out for one of the regular walks he took to help his bad back. These were normally short affairs lasting no more than 25 minutes. Mrs Kelly estimates that her husband left the house shortly after 3pm. With him, we are led to believe, he had the knife later found by his corpse and three packets of the painkillers his wife took for arthritis. These would later be discovered in his jacket pocket - empty but for one of the 30 tablets.

According to the Hutton inquiry, Dr Kelly set out on that walk intent on killing himself. But, if so, why does he appear to have waited so long before doing it? Since the pathologist inexplicably failed to take Dr Kelly's body temperature when he first arrived on the scene the following day - a standard procedure which would have helped give an accurate time of death - we have to make our own deductions about when he died. The pathologist offered a wide window of between 4.15pm on Thursday and 1.15am on Friday. But there is every reason to think this window is far too wide.

The Hutton inquiry heard that after Dr Kelly's body was found on Friday morning, two paramedics moved his arm away from his chest at about 10am so that they could attach electrodes and confirm that he was dead. Clearly, rigor mortis - the stiffening of the body - had not yet fully set in. Since it is generally accepted that it reaches its peak after 12 hours, we can assume that Dr Kelly most likely died at some time after 10pm on the Thursday night, and quite possibly much later.

What then happened to him in the missing hours - at least seven of them - between leaving home and supposedly killing himself? The last person known to have seen Dr Kelly alive was his neighbour, Ruth Absalom, who met him about three-quarters-of-a-mile from his home. They passed the time of day briefly before going their separate ways. Dr Kelly's parting words were: "See you again then, Ruth." According to Ms Absalom, he was heading towards the nearby village of Kingston Bagpuize. That would be consistent with a circular half-hour walk back to his house - but in quite the wrong direction to reach Harrowrecords-down Hill, the lonely area of woodland where his body was discovered.

One of the few clues to what happened next is that Dr Kelly's phone was switched off when a colleague from the Ministry of Defence tried to call him between 5pm and 6pm. This was odd. Dr Kelly himself would tell friends that his mobile was always on and, given that he had been in regular contact with the MoD that morning, and that the furore surrounding him was developing from hour to hour, it seems unlikely that he would have turned it off or let the battery run down.

If he did indeed intend to commit suicide, turning off his phone could be seen as a preliminary step. But for reasons I have made clear, I do not believe suicide is a credible explanation for his death. This leaves us with an alternative possibility. Did someone else turn Dr Kelly's phone off so that his movements could not be traced via signal kept by the phone company? In other words, was he forcibly abducted?

If he headed in the direction Ms Absalom described, his walk would probably have taken him along Appleton Road, a quiet and rather empty stretch with only sporadic development alongside. From there he is likely to have turned right into Draycott Road, which is even more deserted. A no-through road with some derelict buildings part-way down, it peters out into a footpath at the end. On either of these roads it would certainly have been relatively easy for determined abductors to have forced the 59-year-old weapons inspector into a van without anyone seeing.

According to the information I have been given, the murder itself was carried out by a couple of not very well-paid hired hands. As to the method used, I am told that they gave Dr Kelly an injection in his backside, which perhaps points to the use of succinylcholine, a white crystalline substance that acts as a muscle relaxant. For less beneficent purposes, it can be used to induce paralysis and cardiac arrest and frequently goes undetected in post-mortems. I asked Thames Valley Police whether the body had been checked for the presence of this or a similar substance. They told me that they did not know.

If this was not the substance used then, alarmingly, there appear to be a large number of other ways in which Dr Kelly might have been killed that would be difficult or even impossible to trace. For this we can no doubt partly thank the work of Project Coast - a highly unpleasant chemical and biological warfare programme run by the South African government from 1981 onwards to develop exactly such capabilities. With aims including the creation of a biological weapon designed to attack the black population while leaving whites unscathed, its prime mover was Dr Wouter Basson, variously described as 'the South African Mengele' and 'Dr Death'.

Ironically, in the week before Dr Kelly died, it is alleged he was due to be interviewed by MI5 about his links with Dr Basson, who in 1985 had visited the Porton Down research centre, where Dr Kelly was then head of the Chemical Defence Establishment. This visit had happened at a time when Mrs Thatcher's government claimed that the South Africans were developing biological and chemical weapons solely for defensive purposes.

Only later was it revealed that they were working on chemicals such as parathion, an organophosphate that can be introduced into the body through hair follicles, perhaps under the arm or around the crutch. This causes vomiting - evidence of which could be seen on Dr Kelly's body - and leads to a respiratory attack. It is extremely difficult to detect traces of such a chemical in the body, unless you know what you are looking for.

When I tracked down Wouter Basson at his home in the Western Cape earlier this year, I asked him if he thought Dr Kelly had been murdered. He paused, as if choosing his words carefully, then replied that Dr Kelly 'didn't seem the sort to commit suicide'. He was also in no doubt that the UK, and indeed other Western countries, have a capacity for assassination.

Other possible methods of killing Dr Kelly included the use of saxotoxin, found in some shellfish and known as the CIA Shellfish Toxin, after its alleged use by that agency to kill one of their targets. Even a tiny amount is effective seconds after injection and is completely untraceable after autopsy. One private detective even suggested to me that Dr Kelly's killers might have made gruesome misuse of the equipment employed by undertakers in embalming, placing a tube into an artery and forcibly pumping the blood out of the body. This would cause unconsciousness and then death, and reinforce the assumption that the victim had lost a lot of blood through a cut - the conclusion reached by Lord Hutton in Dr Kelly's case.

The detective told me that this process did not need access to a main artery like the jugular, but could be achieved through, say, the ulnar artery. This was the one slashed with a knife in Dr Kelly's wrist. Was that incision an attempt to cover up the artery's previous use? Another ghastly suggestion came to me from someone who signed themselves only as 'Nemesis'. Their letter alleged that he or she had been told by a 'member of the non-English diplomatic corps' that air had been introduced into Dr Kelly's bloodstream through a needle in a vein. Apparently, if present in sufficient quantities, air in the major organs will kill and leave no scar. 'Nemesis' was in no doubt that this was how Dr Kelly's life had ended. "His heart and lungs were full of air," the letter said.

We know that the pathologist did retain one of Dr Kelly's lungs and some blood to test for substances such as chloroform but Assistant Chief Constable Michael Page, who gave evidence at the Hutton inquiry, revealed that the tests to the lung had not actually been carried out. This was, he said, because no suspicious substances had shown up in the blood tests.

Whatever method might have been used to murder Dr Kelly, we have to wonder why those responsible did not kill him immediately. There would have been no insurmountable obstacles to doing so, after all. Perhaps his kidnappers wanted an opportunity to take him into the woods at Harrowdown Hill under cover of darkness to minimise the chances of being spotted or disturbed. It certainly would not have been difficult to have given him a shot to render him temporarily unconscious until his assailants forced him to walk to the spot where he would be killed and found the next day.

If they drove him there, the closest they could have got by road was about half a mile from where his body was found. That walk is rather a public one, but there is another route and one seemingly not investigated by the police. This path runs from a remote reach of the River Thames, about 500 yards away, up through a field and into the woods. With no houses or other dwellings nearby, anybody walking here is unlikely to be seen, particularly in the dead of night.

Intriguingly, this area was searched the following morning by Louise Holmes and Paul Chapman, the two volunteers who eventually found Dr Kelly's body. They told the Hutton inquiry that some time after beginning their search at 8am they came across a group of three or four people in a boat and had a brief conversation with them. Who they were, and what they were doing on the river at that time of the morning, has never been established. They could, of course, have been holidaymakers. But was the truth more sinister?

---------------------

[faceless]

Travesty of the truth: Was the Hutton Inquiry into David Kelly's death just part of the cover-up?
By NORMAN BAKER MP
23rd October 2007

Even before I published the results of my investigation into the death of David Kelly, I knew what the reaction of senior politicians and commentators would be. "Not another conspiracy theory!" they always cry when confronted with anything that challenges the orthodox explanation of events. Such things don't happen in Britain."

Of course not. After all, it's not as though a Bulgarian dissident could be murdered at a London bus stop with a ricin-tipped umbrella, an Italian with close links to the Vatican be left hanging from Blackfriars Bridge, or a Russian dissident be poisoned with radioactive - polonium-210 at a sushi bar in Piccadilly, is it?

Those who seek to discredit my year-long inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, and my belief that he was murdered, will no doubt point to the findings of the Hutton Inquiry. Costing £1.68million and hearing evidence from nearly 100 witnesses — from members of Dr Kelly's family to Tony Blair — this confirmed the official view that the scientist's death was suicide. Yet, as we will see, the truth was hardly like to come out in this travesty of a process. It was highly unconventional — not least in the way it was instigated.

At the time the body of the UK's leading weapons inspector was found in a wood on Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire on the morning of July 18, 2003, the Prime Minister was aboard an aeroplane en route from Washington to Tokyo. Yet by the time he touched down in Japan, he had already announced there would be a inquiry into the circumstances of the death, led by Lord Hutton, formerly Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. This, no doubt, took the heat out of a very difficult situation for Mr Blair but, even so, the speed of the appointment startled many. Government wheels normally grind slowly.

According to journalists accompanying the then Prime Minister, he turned for advice during the flight to two of his closest allies: Charlie Falconer, the recently appointed Lord Chancellor, and his old Svengali, Peter Mandelson. Mr Mandelson would certainly have been well acquainted with Lord Hutton from his stint as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. And yet when I tabled a Parliamentary question about his involvement in the appointment, I was told simply: "Mr Peter Mandelson played no part."

As this was completely at odds with the recollections of a number of journalists I had spoken to, I requested the background material used to draft this answer. Noticeably absent from this material was any record of Mr Mandelson having been contacted to ask him for his recollections. So it is unclear how the answer that he "played no part" could be quite so definitive.

Whoever was behind the decision, Brian Hutton was the ideal appointment for those looking to help the Prime Minister out of a dangerous spot. He had only ever chaired one public inquiry — into the diversion of a river — but in his career as a judge he had always shown himself supportive of the forces of law and order and sympathetic towards the authorities. On his appointment, he said that the Government had promised him "full cooperation".

But the hearing was compromised from the start. Unlike a full statutory inquiry — the setting up of which would have required Parliamentary debate, something the Government was keen to avoid — Lord Hutton's inquiry had no formal powers. The Lord Chancellor argued that its informal nature would give Lord Hutton "flexibility of form" in conducting the inquiry as he felt appropriate.

That might better be described as the abandonment of procedures and safeguards essential in establishing the truth. Witnesses could not be compelled to attend, and — since no one was required to give evidence under oath — they could not be found guilty of perjury if they lied. Moreover, Lord Hutton had sole control over which witnesses were called, what documents were or were not produced and, to a large extent, what questions were asked or left unasked. This was all the more alarming since Lord Hutton's inquiry took the place of a properly constituted coroner's inquest.

What did Nicholas Gardiner, the independent coroner in whose jurisdiction Dr Kelly's body was found, think of this very unusual departure? Not much, the evidence suggests. Mr Gardiner had opened an inquest into Dr Kelly's death on Monday, July 21 — three days after the body was found. Subsequently he was told by the Lord Chancellor that it should be adjourned to "prevent duplication" because Lord Hutton would now be looking into the matter, effectively supplanting him.

Clearly concerned about the informal status of the Hutton inquiry, Mr Gardiner wrote to the Lord Chancellor on August 6, suggesting that he might continue with his own inquest. His letter, which I have seen, makes plain that he was unhappy at the way he was being marginalised. "As you will know a coroner has power to compel the attendance of witnesses. There are no such powers attached to a public inquiry. If I do adjourn, I would be unable to resume, if at all, until after the public inquiry has been concluded and thus would not be in a position to assist Lord Hutton."

This was indeed the position, but it seems not to have worried Lord Hutton, who throughout his inquiry appeared unconcerned about what Mr Gardiner might or might not be doing or thinking. Mr Gardiner's protests seem not to have been well received by the Lord Chancellor, who wrote back in blunt terms, insisting that he adjourn the inquest and not resume unless "an exceptional reason" arose.

It was reluctantly agreed that Mr Gardiner could first take evidence from the pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt and the forensic analyst Alex Allan, but he was asked to "keep the proceedings as short as possible" and take evidence in writing "so far as the Coroners' Rules allow". The coroner was, it seemed, being bundled off the case. More to the point, he was effectively being asked to cut corners in his own procedures.

Such pressure from a Government minister on a coroner is highly unusual. On the basis of this truncated inquest, the coroner concluded that Dr Kelly had committed suicide by slitting his wrist and taking an overdose of coproxamol painkillers. It is surely troubling that such a conclusion could have been based on this rushed process — especially as Alex Allan would later tell the Hutton Inquiry that Dr Kelly did not have enough coproxamol in his body to kill him. This meant that one of only two witnesses at this peculiar inquest would presumably disagree with the contents of the death certificate that arose from it.

As for Dr Hunt, his appointment as pathologist was curious from the outset. Given that this was an extremely high-profile death commanding front-page headlines, Mr Gardiner might have been forgiven for employing the most experienced person he could find. Instead he chose Dr Hunt, who had been on the Home Office's register of approved forensic pathologists for only two years. And whatever assessment of the cause of death he gave when the coroner originally opened his inquest on July 21, he clearly had a change of heart in the days that followed.

In his letter of August 6 to the Lord Chancellor, Mr Gardiner says that "the preliminary cause of death given at the opening of the inquest no longer represents the final view of the pathologist". We are not subsequently told in what way the pathologist had changed his mind. Nor was Dr Hunt asked about this when he appeared before the Hutton Inquiry the following month. Worryingly, the pathologist was not subject to any cross-examination, despite the curious aspects of the case. Nothing is mentioned about the onset of rigor mortis, for example, though this is surely a key indicator for ascertaining time of death. Nor do we learn whether a full battery of tests were done on the lungs, the blood, the heart or the soil — all vital in determining whether Dr Kelly might have been over-powered and poisoned, or whether he really could have bled to death after cutting his wrist, given the small amount of blood at the scene. On that last question, it would surely have been helpful to know how much blood was left in Dr Kelly's body — but Dr Hunt's report does not even provide a measure of this.

These are all crucial pieces of forensic evidence that are simply missing. Why were they not produced, and why did neither Lord Hutton nor James Dingemans, the inquiry QC, seek to elicit them? And why, when Dr Hunt himself made interesting observations were they not followed through, but instead left hanging in the air?

At one point, for instance, he was asked if there were any signs of a third-party involvement in Dr Kelly's death. His answer was intriguing. "The features are quite typical, I would say, of self-inflicted injury, if one ignores all the other features of the case." What were these other "features"? We do not know because Dr Hunt was not asked. Instead, Mr Dingemans asked him if there was anything further he would like to say on the circumstances leading to Dr Kelly's death. "Nothing I could say as a pathologist, no," he replied. Again, it was an enigmatic answer. Did no one think to ask him what he meant by this remark?

If Dr Kelly's death was indeed murder, covered up to resemble suicide, not many need have known the truth. But some in authority may have suspected. Very much against etiquette, Dr Hunt broke ranks on Channel 4 News in March 2004 to call for the coroner's inquest to be reopened. It is possible to surmise that perhaps Lord Hutton was told the truth, and was asked to go along with the cover story for the sake of the country, although there is, of course, no evidence to this effect.

Certainly, I challenge anyone to say that the suicide verdict was settled "beyond reasonable doubt" on the basis of the evidence presented to Lord Hutton's inquiry. On the contrary, the most sensational death of the year, and one of the most politically sensitive deaths in recent British history, was investigated to a less rigorous standard than would have been applied to any sudden or violent death subject to a normal inquest.

Lord Hutton himself does not accept that criticism. Judges rarely comment on cases over which they have presided, but — perhaps stung by criticism of his performance — Lord Hutton has done so. In a letter to me, he asserted: "You are under the misapprehension that my inquiry was not a rigorous investigation into the cause of Dr Kelly's death and into the question whether it was suicide or murder. "The question was fully and thoroughly investigated."

Yet this assurance is brought into significant doubt by Lord Hutton's own hitherto little-noticed contribution to a highly specialist legal publication, The Inner Temple Yearbook for 2004/5. In it, he wrote: "At the outset of my inquiry it appeared to me that a substantial number of the basic facts in the train of events which led to the tragic death of Dr Kelly were already apparent from reports in the press and other parts of the media. Therefore I thought that there would be little serious dispute as to the background facts… I thought that unnecessary time could be taken up by cross-examination on matters which were not directly relevant."

In other words, Lord Hutton appears, to a large degree, to have made up his mind in advance. This perhaps explains why so many aspects of evidence appear to have been overlooked throughout the inquiry, not least when it came to the conduct of the police. Anyone reading the transcripts of their evidence is left with a feeling of dissatisfaction, even unease.

After Dr Kelly's death, for example, the Daily Mail received a number of letters and telephone calls reporting that there were men in black clothes on Harrowdown Hill early on in the morning, significantly before Dr Kelly's body was officially found. After plotting the positions of his officers, Assistant Chief Constable Michael Page told the inquiry he was satisfied that the men in question were police officers, but we are not told their names or what they were doing there. As to the officers who gave evidence, they seemed unable to agree on such basic details as how many of them were at the scene, and their testimony also conflicted with that of civilian witnesses.

Earlier in this series, I described how two members of the search party that first found Dr Kelly said that he was sitting propped up against a tree. They made no mention of a knife. Yet by the time we come to the testimony of the police officers, we are told that he was lying on his back and that there was a knife beside him. Clearly someone was mistaken or some adjustment was made to the scene.

This supports my view that someone wanted to make Dr Kelly's death look like suicide — but Lord Hutton seemed unperturbed by these anomalies. He suggested in his final report that where the police officers disagreed among themselves, this suggested that they were honest because otherwise they would have colluded beforehand to produce identical stories. Had their accounts been consistent, would Lord Hutton then have concluded that the officers were, therefore, not revealing all they knew? Clearly not.

The implication of such an approach is that, no matter what the police said, Lord Hutton was going to believe it. When his final report was published, it was its political conclusions that captured the headlines. These would, of course, provoke widespread derision and anger, as he cleared the Government of virtually everything, and came down like a landslide on the heads of the BBC.

In all the fuss, the question of whether Lord Hutton had properly investigated the death of David Kelly was completely overlooked. Clearly, though, Thames Valley Police were happy with the result. When Assistant Chief Constable Michael Page retired last year, the eulogy at his farewell dinner was given by none other than Lord Hutton himself. I learned of this from a police officer who declared himself very surprised that Lord Hutton should have been in attendance. I asked Lord Hutton for a copy of what my contact had described as his "long and fulsome" speech but he was unable to provide me, with one, telling me that his comments had been impromptu.

Lord Hutton himself has also retired. His inquiry into the death of David Kelly was his last major endeavour and is what he will always be remembered for, but it must not be allowed to be the last word on the subject. David Kelly was a good man and we owe it to him to set aside the farce of the Hutton Inquiry, and create a new process that examines this matter officially, openly and with the rigour we are entitled to expect.

[faceless]

Campbell, that dodgy dossier and the lies that cost David Kelly his life
By NORMAN BAKER
23rd October 2007

To the organisers of the auction to raise money for Labour Party funds, it probably seemed a good idea at the time. Why not ask Cherie Blair to autograph a copy of the 750-page document which saved her husband's political career and offer it as one of the lots? A copy was organised, Mrs Blair duly signed it, and the special souvenir edition of the Hutton report went for £400 at the event in London's Mayfair last year, with various Labour luminaries in attendance. At no point did anyone seem to reflect that treating an official document about the death of a respected civil servant as some sort of novelty item might have been in bad taste. But then, for Tony Blair and his colleagues, what was owed to Dr David Kelly in the way of decent treatment had never been much of an issue.

In the weeks before he was discovered dead in a wood in Oxfordshire on Friday, July 18, 2003, he was treated as a pawn in the Government's game against the BBC. Even after he died, no one seemed particularly chastened. With his body barely cold that weekend, the Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon was photographed enjoying VIP treatment at Silverstone, and Blair's director of communications, Alastair Campbell, was working the phones to friendly Fleet Street editors to shore up his own position.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister's press spokesman Tom Kelly (certainly no relation) was busily advising journalists that the world-respected weapons inspector had, in fact, been a Walter Mitty character who had contributed to his own downfall. Comparing the late Dr Kelly to a character famous for living in a world of fantasy was outlandishly cruel to his memory, given that it was his very passion for the truth that led to him becoming so ensnared in controversy in the final weeks of his life.

The scientist's only crime was to speak to BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan and voice his concerns, widely shared among his colleagues, that the facts on weapons of mass destruction were misrepresented in the notorious 'September dossier' produced by the Government to justify the invasion of Iraq. Reading the transcript of Gilligan's broadcast today, the most striking aspect is the accuracy of the allegations he was reporting.

In the weeks before he was discovered dead in a wood in Oxfordshire on Friday, July 18, 2003, he was treated as a pawn in the Government's game against the BBC. Even after he died, no one seemed particularly chastened. With his body deserve to have the world fall in on its head, as happened when the Hutton report was published in 2004. With Alastair Campbell fanning the flames, the furore led to the resignations of the BBC's chairman and director general and forced its vicechairman Lord Ryder to make a public apology to the Government of such capitulation that I wanted to throw up when I heard it.

Yet during my investigation into Dr Kelly's death, I have obtained a secret report showing just how right he was to question the Government's integrity when he spoke to Andrew Gilligan. It reveals the true extent to which Alastair Campbell misled MPs about his role in the whole affair.

At the end of June 2003, both Gilligan and Campbell found themselves called before the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee which was investigating the basis on which we had gone to war against Iraq. Campbell appeared on June 25 and he went on the offensive, accusing the BBC of 'lies' and demanding an apology. Later, his diary recorded his satisfaction with his work that day. He felt a lot better for having 'opened a flank' on the BBC, yet it seems that at the very time he was accusing others of dishonesty, he was being less than forthcoming himself.

Some months later, the FAC carried out a confidential analysis showing that when asked what role he had played in shaping the dossier, there were notable differences between the account he gave them and the one he later presented to the Hutton inquiry. The report was never released but, though it was made available only to those MPs who were on the committee and my official request for a copy was refused, I managed to obtain one through other means. Running to some 14 pages, this paper shows, for example, how Campbell told the committee that the draft dossier had said that Saddam Hussein had sought to secure illicit uranium and that he had asked if any had actually been obtained. Yet the memorandum from Mr Campbell to John Scarlett, the spy chief nominally in charge of the dossier, revealed that, as one of many suggested drafting changes proposed by Campbell, he had written: "Can we say he has secured uranium from Africa?"

This was transparently not an inquiry about the facts but a request for a change in the wording. Most crucially, the document showed that Campbell failed to tell the MPs of the pressure he applied on the so-called '45-minute claim'. In the draft dossier, the relevant sentence read: "The Iraqi military may be able to deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so." It was Campbell who suggested changing the cautious 'may be able to deploy' to the definitive 'are able to deploy'. This was hugely significant.

Strangely, Tony Blair had assured the Commons earlier that month that there was no attempt by any member of Downing Street staff to override the intelligence judgments of John Scarlett and his colleagues. "That includes the judgment about the so-called 45 minutes," he said. Very plainly, that assurance was, as the quaint language of the Commons might put it, at variance with the facts.

These were far from the only changes made to the dossier at Campbell's suggestion. In just one memorandum, he requested 16 changes in all, of which 13 called for a strengthening of the language used, implicitly making judgments on intelligence matters far beyond his remit. This was utterly unacceptable but around half of these suggestions were accepted by Mr Scarlett. No wonder Lord Hutton suggested that the spy chief may have been 'subconsciously influenced' by political considerations.

Tony Blair's foreword, written by Campbell and signed off by Scarlett, has some of the most assertive and hence most unjustified language in the dossier, and here, too, the editing is key. How extraordinary to remember that, in the first draft, this foreword had Blair saying: "The case I make is not that Saddam could launch a nuclear attack on London or another part of the UK (he could not)." This vitally important point, putting the claim in context, was removed from the final version.

The fact that the 45-minute claim related only to battlefield munitions, rather than long-range missiles of mass destruction, was obscured, and indeed Tony Blair, somewhat incredibly, claimed he only found out about it in the summer of 2004. This was later contradicted by Robin Cook, his former Foreign Secretary. He was clear that before the invasion of Iraq he had been briefed by John Scarlett that the weapons in question were only battlefield ones.

Mr Cook had discussed the matter with Blair so he was understandably 'mystified' to hear Blair say that he hadn't understood the distinction. 'Given that the Prime Minister was justifying war to the nation on the grounds that Saddam was a serious threat to British interests, he showed a surprising lack of curiosity as to what that threat actually was,' Mr Cook said.

The implication is clear. Both Blair and John Scarlett did indeed know that Saddam had no long-range WMD capability, but chose deliberately to use language that allowed a contrary impression to be formed. The Government's lack of remorse about this was apparent when Geoff Hoon was asked at the Hutton inquiry about the newspaper stories which had greeted the publication of the dossier in September 2002.


Former Prime Minister Tony Blair denied 'leaking' Dr David Kelly's name

'BRITS 45 MINS FROM DOOM' and '45 MINUTES FROM ATTACK - dossier reveals Saddam is ready to launch chemical war strikes' were typical of the headlines. None of this was remotely true, of course, and it is clear that nobody in the intelligence services or at the top of Government believed that it was.

One might have thought that they would have wanted to correct these very misleading stories. Instead, they seemed happy for this alarmist picture to be painted, as a supremely indifferent Geoff Hoon demonstrated to Andrew Caldecott, counsel for the BBC at the Hutton inquiry. The exchanges are worth recalling in full.

Caldecott: "Why was no corrective statement issued for the benefit of the public in relation to those media reports?"

Hoon: "I have spent many years trying to persuade newspapers and journalists to correct their stories. I have to say it is an extraordinarily time-consuming and generally frustrating process."

Caldecott: "But Mr Hoon, you must have been horrified that the dossier had been misrepresented in this way. It was a complete distortion of what it actually was intended to convey, was it not?"

Hoon: "Well, I was not horrified."

After a few more such exchanges, the BBC's counsel pointedly asked: "Do you accept that on this topic at least you had an absolute duty to try to correct it?"

"No, I do not," replied Hoon.

I said that Hoon was supremely indifferent. Actually, it was worse than indifference. It was contempt. Contempt for the inquiry process, for the questioner and, most of all, for the public. The reason there was no enthusiasm to correct the stories is, of course, because they were exactly what the Government wanted to see as it pursued a foreign policy which positioned Britain firmly on the back wheel of President Bush's pennyfarthing. But this particular deception cannot be laid at Bush's door. The U.S. administration was quite happy to flout international law and talk brazenly of regime change in Iraq. It was only in order to satisfy British sensitivities that the convoluted, complicated and essentially dishonest talk of WMDs was generated.

In return for telling the truth about all this, David Kelly found himself 'outed' as Gilligan's mole in a manner that, I believe, made him a target for assassination by aggrieved Iraqi opponents of Saddam. After his death, Tony Blair said it was 'completely untrue' that he had authorised the leak of Dr Kelly's name. He was asked why the Ministry of Defence had confirmed the name to journalists. "That's a completely different matter once the name is out there," he said. Yet the name was not out there at all until the ministry released a series of clues clearly implicating Dr Kelly.

Blair made much the same defence on the issue at the Hutton inquiry, although it was an unusually hesitant and uncertain performance. Julia Quenzler, the freelance court artist who covered the inquiry from start to finish for the BBC, told me that Blair, normally such a polished performer, was the most nervous of all those who gave evidence before Lord Hutton. He was clearly very uncomfortable for some reason. For his part, Geoff Hoon insisted that his department had 'made great efforts to preserve Dr Kelly's anonymity'. Presumably this included the instruction to confirm his name to journalists if it was offered.

It was Hoon's decision to force Dr Kelly to appear in public before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, July 15, 2003. In this, he overruled Sir Kevin Tebbit, the senior civil servant at the MoD, who felt it would be inappropriate. According to reports, Hoon pulled rank in a rather unpleasant way, telling Sir Kevin that he would have to 'consider his future' if he refused to allow Dr Kelly to appear.

The FAC hearing - televised and taking place in the full glare of publicity - conjured up images of a Soviet show-trial. Here was a witness, clearly intimidated and ill at ease, with his ministry minders sitting behind him. Three days later Dr Kelly was dead. Those who believe that he committed suicide suggest he may have buckled under the pressure of this appearance - but that is to ignore the fact that he was smiling as he left and was in good form before the Intelligence Committee the next day. For reasons outlined throughout this series, I believe that he was murdered. Not that the Government showed much sign of caring either way.

Within days of Dr Kelly's death, the Prime Minister and his wife had hit the headlines during a trip to China. Their need to enjoy themselves clearly came ahead of any remorse for the death of one of Britain's most distinguished scientists. While there, Mrs Blair astonished reporters when she took the microphone for a public rendition of The Beatles' When I'm 64. Those watching could have been forgiven for wondering what her husband's choice of song would have been. P. J. Proby's I Apologise would have seemed more than appropriate.

-----------------------------

[luke]

norman baker was on andrew 'muppet' marrs show today, you can watch the archive here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/andrew_marr_show/default.stm

its 30 mins or so in

[luke]

[faceless]

David Kelly post mortem to be kept secret for 70 years as doctors accuse Lord Hutton of concealing vital information
By Miles Goslett
23rd January 2010

Vital evidence which could solve the mystery of the death of Government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly will be kept under wraps for up to 70 years. In a draconian – and highly unusual – order, Lord Hutton, the peer who chaired the controversial inquiry into the Dr Kelly scandal, has secretly barred the release of all medical records, including the results of the post mortem, and unpublished evidence.

The move, which will stoke fresh speculation about the true circumstances of Dr Kelly’s death, comes just days before Tony Blair appears before the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War. It is also bound to revive claims of an establishment cover-up and fresh questions about the verdict that Dr Kelly killed himself.

Tonight, Dr Michael Powers QC, a doctor campaigning to overturn the Hutton findings, said: ‘What is it about David Kelly’s death which is so secret as to justify these reports being kept out of the public domain for 70 years?’ Campaigning Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who has also questioned the verdict that Dr Kelly committed suicide, said: ‘It is astonishing this is the first we’ve known about this decision by Lord Hutton and even more astonishing he should have seen fit to hide this material away.’

The body of former United Nations weapons inspector Dr Kelly was found in July 2003 in woods close to his Oxfordshire home, shortly after he was exposed as the source of a BBC news report questioning the Government’s claims that Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, which could be deployed within 45 minutes.

Lord Hutton’s 2004 report, commissioned by Mr Blair, concluded that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting his wrist with a blunt gardening knife. It was dismissed by many experts as a whitewash for clearing the Government of any culpability, despite evidence that it had leaked Dr Kelly’s name in an attempt to smear him. Only now has it emerged that a year after his inquiry was completed, Lord Hutton took unprecedented action to ensure that the vital evidence remains a state secret for so long.

A letter, leaked to The Mail on Sunday, revealed that a 30-year ban was placed on ‘records provided [which were] not produced in evidence’. This is thought to refer to witness statements given to the inquiry which were not disclosed at the time. In addition, it has now been established that Lord Hutton ordered all medical reports – including the post-mortem findings by pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt and photographs of Dr Kelly’s body – to remain classified information for 70 years. The move will stoke fresh speculation about the true circumstances of Dr Kelly's death

The normal rules on post-mortems allow close relatives and ‘properly interested persons’ to apply to see a copy of the report and to ‘inspect’ other documents. Lord Hutton’s measure has overridden these rules, so the files will not be opened until all such people are likely to be dead. Last night, the Ministry of Justice was unable to explain the legal basis for Lord Hutton’s order.

The restrictions came to light in a letter from the legal team of Oxfordshire County Council to a group of doctors who are challenging the Hutton verdict. Last year, a group of doctors, including Dr Powers, compiled a medical dossier as part of their legal challenge to the Hutton verdict. They argue that Hutton’s conclusion that Dr Kelly killed himself by severing the ulnar artery in his left wrist after taking an overdose of prescription painkillers is untenable because the artery is small and difficult to access, and severing it could not have caused death.

In their 12-page opinion, they concluded: ‘The bleeding from Dr Kelly’s ulnar artery is highly unlikely to have been so voluminous and rapid that it was the cause of death. We advise the instructing solicitors to obtain the autopsy reports so that the concerns of a group of properly interested medical specialists can be answered.’

Tonight, Dr Powers, a former assistant coroner, added: ‘Supposedly all evidence relevant to the cause of death has been heard in public at the time of Lord Hutton’s inquiry. If these secret reports support the suicide finding, what could they contain that could be so sensitive?’

The letter disclosing the 70-year restriction was written by Nick Graham, assistant head of legal and democratic services at Oxfordshire Council. It states: ‘Lord Hutton made a request for the records provided to the inquiry, not produced in evidence, to be closed for 30 years, and that medical (including post-mortem) reports and photographs be closed for 70 years.’

Nicholas Gardiner, the Chief Coroner for Oxfordshire, confirmed that he had seen the letter. Speaking to The Mail on Sunday today, he said: ‘I know that Lord Hutton made that recommendation. Someone told me at the time. Anybody concerned will be dead by then, and that is quite clearly Lord Hutton’s intention.’ Asked what was in the records that made it necessary for them to be embargoed, Mr Gardiner said: ‘They’re Lord Hutton’s records not mine. You’d have to ask him.’ He added that in his opinion Lord Hutton had embargoed the records to protect Dr Kelly’s children.

News that the records will be kept secret comes just days before Mr Blair gives evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Friday. To date, Dr Kelly’s name has scarcely been mentioned at the inquiry. One source who held a private meeting with Sir John Chilcot before the proceedings began said that Sir John had admitted he ‘did not want to touch the Kelly issue’ .

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: ‘Any decision made by Lord Hutton at the time of his inquiry was entirely a matter for him.’ A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said yesterday that it would not be possible to search their records during the weekend. The Mail on Sunday was unable to contact Lord Hutton.

-------------------------

There's definitely nothing conspiratorial about this - no way, Jose.

[Brown Sauce]

Bloody conspiracy theorists. I'd string 'em all up. They have absolutely no respect for authority.

[luke]

Tories ready to reopen Dr David Kelly suicide inquiry

The investigation into the death of weapons inspector David Kelly is likely to be reopened, it has emerged.

The case has 'concerned' Attorney General Dominic Grieve and - as the highest ranking law officer in England - he is considering an inquiry to review the suicide finding, Whitehall sources say.

At the same time, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke is considering a request from campaigning doctors to release medical files relating to the death.

Lord Hutton, whose inquiry into the death was denounced as a whitewash, has indicated the papers should be kept secret for 70 years.

Medical experts have repeatedly questioned whether Dr Kelly could have taken his own life in the circumstances described by Lord Hutton.

The re-opening of the case is understood to have the backing of several other Government members, including Transport minister Norman Baker, who believes Dr Kelly was murdered.

Dr Kelly's body was found in woods close to his Oxfordshire home seven years ago next month. Although a coroner's inquest was set up to examine the 59-year-old's death, it was suspended.

In its place the Government established the Hutton Inquiry. Unlike a coroner's inquest it had no statutory powers and did not require witnesses to give evidence under oath.

Hutton concluded that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting his left wrist with a blunt gardening knife after he was named as the source of a BBC news report questioning the Blair government's grounds for invading Iraq.

But the Hutton Report, published in January 2004, was dismissed by experts as a whitewash for clearing the Government of any blame, despite evidence it had leaked Dr Kelly's name to smear him.

From the time Dr Kelly's body was found, on 18 July 2003, questions have been raised about the nature of his death. A group of leading doctors who are campaigning for a coroner's inquest to be held spent a year compiling their own medical report.

It disputes that Dr Kelly, a Ministry of Defence employee and the world's leading weapons inspector, could have died from haemorrhage, as Hutton concluded.

The doctors said it was not possible he would have died by severing the ulnar artery in his left wrist, as Hutton thought, because it is so small and difficult to access.

It also emerged after the Hutton Inquiry that no fingerprints were found on the knife Dr Kelly is alleged to have used, and that he was not wearing gloves when his body was found.

In January, it came to light that Lord Hutton secretly classified vital evidence relating to Dr Kelly's death, including all medical and scientific records, the post-mortem report and photographs, for 70 years - until 2073.

This information was not included in the Hutton Report. Mr Grieve's willingness to re-examine how Dr Kelly died comes three months after he wrote to Michael Powers QC, who has been working with the doctors to secure an inquest.

In the letter Mr Grieve said: 'I am aware of the work of the doctors' group on challenging Lord Hutton's findings.

'They have made an impressive and cogent case.'

A source confirmed his position has not changed since he entered the Government and he is exploring a way to reopen the inquiry.

As Attorney General he would be the final arbiter in any decision to apply to the High Court for a full inquest.

In January, the doctors applied to the Ministry of Justice to see Dr Kelly's post-mortem report and records. So far the MoJ has not released them.

Mr Baker told the Daily Mail: 'It's astonishing that such a high profile death has not yet been subject to a proper inquest. If the Attorney General is seeking to correct this I welcome it.'

70 years of secrecy

Lord Hutton has been criticised for ordering that medical records relating to the death of Dr David Kelly should be kept secret for 70 years.

A 30-year ban was placed on 'records provided which were not produced in evidence'.

This is thought to refer to witness statements given to the inquiry which were not disclosed at the time.

But Lord Hutton ordered all medical reports - including the post-mortem examination findings by pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt and photographs of Dr Kelly's body - to remain classified information for the seven decades.

This usually only applies in cases of murder.

The normal rules on post-mortem examinations allow close relatives and 'properly interested persons' to apply to see a copy of the report. They can also 'inspect' other documents.

The precise legal basis for Lord Hutton's order has puzzled experts.

The most likely source is a rule which states that medical reports and post-mortem reports can be classified by the Government until the deceased's youngest child is aged 100.

Dr Kelly's youngest daughters were 30 when he died. Classifying the papers for 70 years would take them to the age of 100.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1284116/Tories-ready-reopen-Dr-David-Kelly-suicide-inquiry.html

[luke]

Dr David Kelly: The damning new evidence that points to a cover-up by Tony Blair's government

The official story of Dr David Kelly is that he took his own life in an Oxfordshire wood by overdosing on painkillers and cutting his left wrist with a pruning knife. He was said to be devastated after being unmasked as the source of the BBC’s claim that the Government had ‘sexed up’ the case for war in Iraq. A subsequent official inquiry led by Lord Hutton into the circumstances leading to the death came to the unequivocal conclusion that Kelly committed suicide.

Yet suspicions of foul play still hang heavy over the death of the weapons expert whose body was found seven years ago next month in one of the most notorious episodes of Tony Blair’s premiership. Many believe the truth about the manner of Dr Kelly’s death has never been established properly. Some even fear that the 59-year-old, the world’s leading expert in biological and chemical weapons, was murdered. Of course, it would be easy to dismiss these sceptics as wild conspiracy theorists — but for the fact they include eminent doctors and MPs.

The blanket of secrecy thrown over the case by the last Labour Government has only fuelled the sense of mystery. In January this year, it emerged that unpublished medical and scientific records relating to Dr Kelly’s death - including the post-mortem report and photographs of his body - had been secretly classified so as not to be made public for 70 years. Lord Hutton, who had been appointed by Blair, was responsible for this extraordinary gagging order, yet its legal basis has baffled experts accustomed to such matters. Against this shadowy background, we have conducted a rigorous and thorough investigation into the mystery that surrounds the death of David Kelly. And our investigation has turned up evidence which raises still more disturbing questions.

Our new revelations include the ambiguous nature of the wording on Dr Kelly’s death certificate; the existence of an anonymous letter which says his colleagues were warned to stay away from his funeral; and an extraordinary claim that the wallpaper at Dr Kelly’s home was stripped by police in the hours after he was reported missing - but before his body was found.

Until now, details of Dr Kelly’s death certificate have never been made public. But the certificate was obtained by a group of leading doctors who have spent almost seven years investigating the case; doctors who believe it is medically implausible that he died in the manner Hutton concluded and are alarmed at the unorthodox way the death certificate was completed.

Near the top of all British death certificates is a box headed ‘Date and place of death’, in which a doctor or coroner should declare the exact location of a death, if it has been established. Dr Kelly’s certificate gives his date of death as July 18, 2003. It then states in reference to place of death: ‘Found dead at Harrowdown Hill, Longworth, Oxon’. Why was the word ‘found’ used? Why was the crucial question of ‘place of death’ not answered? The death certificate should be precise about the time, cause and location of death. The doctors who have investigated the case believe the failure to answer this question leaves open the possibility that Dr Kelly died somewhere other than Harrowdown Hill, the wood where his body was discovered. If this was the case, they are concerned the law may have been subverted over Dr Kelly’s death.

Any such irregularity would inevitably add to the pressure to reopen the case. Indeed, earlier this month it was revealed that Justice Secretary Ken Clarke and Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who have the power to undo Hutton’s 70-year gagging order and demand a coroner’s inquest into Dr Kelly’s death, are poised to re-open the case.

To this day, the location where Dr Kelly died remains a mystery — yet it is surely the most basic requirement of an investigation into any violent or unexpected death. Nor was the question of the location of death raised at the Hutton Inquiry. Amazingly, Chief Inspector (now Superintendent) Alan Young of Thames Valley Police, who headed the investigation into Dr Kelly’s death, did not even give evidence to the Hutton Inquiry. Significantly, it emerged via a Freedom of Information request in 2008 that a police helicopter with heat-seeking equipment which searched for Dr Kelly on the night he disappeared did not detect his body.

At 2.50am on July 18, 2003, the helicopter flew over the exact spot where Dr Kelly’s body was found by a search party less than six hours later, at 8.30am. Yet the pathologist who took Dr Kelly’s body temperature at 7pm on the day his body was found determined that Dr Kelly could still have been alive at 1.15am on July 18 — just 95 minutes before the helicopter flew over the patch of woodland. If that was the case, the body would have been warm enough to be picked up by the helicopter’s heat sensors. Why didn’t the helicopter pick it up? Was it because Dr Kelly did not die where his body was found?

A full coroner’s inquest, which, by law, must be held following any sudden, unexpected or violent death, would have addressed these discrepancies. But no full inquest was ever held. Oxfordshire Coroner Nicholas Gardiner opened an inquest on July 21. But on August 13 the then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, Tony Blair’s former flatmate, ordered it to be adjourned indefinitely. Falconer used an obscure law to suspend proceedings, and for the first time in English legal history he replaced an inquest with a non-statutory public inquiry to examine a single death, seemingly without any public explanation.

When we tracked Mr Gardiner down, he refused to say whether he was ‘either happy or unhappy’ about this decision, but he did admit: ‘Public inquiries of this sort are very rare creatures. I think this was only about the third there had ever been.’ In fact, it was the fourth. Using a public inquiry to replace a coroner’s inquest - under Section 17a of the Coroner’s Act - in order to examine a death has only ever happened in three other cases. And in each case, it was where multiple deaths have occurred.

These were the incidents in which 31 people were killed in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash in 2000; the 311 deaths connected with Dr Harold Shipman; and the 36 deaths associated with the Hull trawler Gaul which sank in the Barents Sea in 1974 and whose case was re-opened in 2004. The public was led to believe that the death of Dr Kelly would be investigated more rigorously by the Hutton Inquiry than by a coroner. But it is now clear that the opposite was in fact true - for Hutton lacked the powers of a coroner. He could not hear evidence under oath; he could not subpoena witnesses; he could not call a jury; and he could not aggressively cross-examine witnesses.

Astonishingly, on August 18, less than three weeks into the Hutton Inquiry, which opened on August 1, Dr Kelly’s death certificate was mysteriously completed and the cause of his death officially registered as haemorrhage. Put another way, five weeks before the Hutton Inquiry ended on September 24, 2003, and while the judge was still taking evidence about Dr Kelly’s death from witnesses, the official record of the cause of death was written and the case effectively closed. Misleadingly, the death certificate states an inquest did take place on August 14 - even though we now know no inquest actually happened. And extraordinarily, though it bears the signature of the registrar, it is not signed by either a doctor or a coroner as every death certificate should be.

Dr Michael Powers QC, a former coroner and an expert in coroner’s law who is working to secure a full and proper inquest, said: ‘This death certificate is evidence of a failure properly to examine the cause of Dr Kelly’s death. It is evidence of a pre-judgment of the issue. In a coroner’s inquest the cause of death would not be registered until the whole inquiry had been completed. As we see here, the cause of death was registered before the Hutton Inquiry had finished. ‘This is remarkable. To my mind it is evidence that the inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death was window-dressing because the conclusion had already been determined.’

Since January 2004 a group of doctors has worked unstintingly for a fresh inquest to be held into David Kelly’s death because of the blatant shortcomings of the Hutton Inquiry. They are radiologist Stephen Frost, trauma surgeon David Halpin, vascular surgeon Martin Birnstingl, epidemiologist Andrew Rouse and internal medicine specialist Christopher Burns-Cox. Their investigations have raised many doubts about the widespread assumption that Dr Kelly killed himself. A letter they wrote to the Press in January 2004 marked the first time anyone had raised the possibility in the mainstream media of Dr Kelly’s death not being a suicide.

In 2009 they spent almost a year researching and writing a medical report which disputes Hutton’s assertion that Dr Kelly died from haemorrhage after severing the ulnar artery in his left wrist. The doctors argued that the wounds to Dr Kelly’s left wrist would not have caused him to bleed to death. In January this year they discovered that Lord Hutton made the extraordinary 70-year gagging order. Since then they have asked via their lawyers Leigh Day & Co to see the classified records, but under the last Labour Government, the Ministry of Justice - the department which holds them - repeatedly denied them access in the run-up to the last General Election. No reason was given.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who in 2007 wrote a book suggesting that Dr Kelly was murdered, used the Freedom of Information Act in January to apply to the Ministry of Justice to see the records. His request was also denied. Using section 41 of the Act - known as an ‘absolute exemption’ - the ministry said it was not obliged to reveal the information. Mr Baker, now a transport minister in the coalition government, has appealed against this decision. But he and the group of doctors are not the only ones who harbour suspicions about a cover-up of Dr Kelly’s death.

Only last month one of the doctors, David Halpin, received an anonymous and carefully worded letter from someone claiming to be a relative of a former colleague of David Kelly’s at the Ministry of Defence. The correspondent said Kelly’s colleagues were ‘warned off’ attending his funeral - presumably by MoD officials, although this is not made explicit. Similarly, in his recently published book ‘The End Of The Party’, the political commentator Andrew Rawnsley (who has close links with the Labour high command) claims that Geoff Hoon, Defence Secretary at the time of Kelly’s death, was so furious about being removed by Tony Blair as Leader of the House of Commons in May 2006 that he wrote out a resignation statement.

According to Rawnsley, ‘he planned to make a speech about the [David] Kelly affair that he told friends could trigger the instant downfall of the Prime Minister’. Frustratingly, there are no more details in Rawnsley’s book about what Hoon was referring to - but Hoon visited Dr Kelly’s widow shortly after his death and has never publicly denied this explosive charge. Equally inexplicable is the attitude of Dr Nicholas Hunt, the forensic pathologist who attended the scene when Dr Kelly’s body was found on Harrowdown Hill.

Dr Hunt’s duty as forensic pathologist is to help uphold the rule of law. In March 2004, after the Hutton Report was published, Dr Hunt contacted Channel 4 News and said he thought a full coroner’s inquest should be held. Yet mysteriously, he says now that - despite contacting the TV station - he has ‘maintained a silence on this [matter] on behalf of the [Kelly] family for a very long time’.

Adding further to the case for a proper inquest is a new fascinating claim by a woman who has also worked closely with the doctors and helped Norman Baker with his book. Rowena Thursby, a former publishing executive who became fascinated with the case and started looking into it, told us that Dr Kelly’s widow, Janice, admitted to her that on the night Dr Kelly was reported missing in July 2003 - but hours before his body was found -Thames Valley Police asked her and her daughters to leave their house and wait in the garden.

It later emerged that while the Kellys were outside, officers stripped wallpaper from their sitting room. Why would they have done that? Could they have been ‘sweeping’ his property for listening devices? It is certainly a possibility. Despite the fact that the Labour government patronisingly dismissed him as a ‘Walter Mitty character’ and nothing more than a middle ranking official in the Ministry of Defence, Dr Kelly was arguably the world’s pre-eminent expert on biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. We have established that he had access to the highest levels of the security services and was cleared to see the most highly classified intelligence. The claim that police removed wallpaper from his house has never been confirmed or denied by Thames Valley Police — they refuse to make any comments about the Kelly case.

All these new revelations add weight to the list of unanswered questions surrounding Dr Kelly’s death, such as why were no fingerprints found on the knife with which he allegedly killed himself — even though he wore no gloves. As with the extraordinary details of the helicopter search, this vital information was only obtained using the Freedom of Information Act almost five years after the Hutton Inquiry ended. It was not heard at the inquiry.

The doctors insist that concern about Dr Kelly’s death will continue to deepen until a full coroner’s inquest is heard. If one is finally granted, many will expect Tony Blair and Lord Falconer to be called to explain under oath why they went to such lengths to avoid the normal, rigorous and respected course of this country’s law. Until this happens their reputations will continue to suffer, as will the reputation of the British legal system. The unavoidable conclusion must be that a full coroner’s inquest is the only way the whole truth about the Kelly affair, however uncomfortable, will emerge.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1289692/Dr-David-Kelly-The-damning-new-evidence-points-cover-Tony-Blairs-government.html#ixzz0rwvXlOy7

[major.tom]

Whatever the motives of the current British gov't, it's very encouraging if they are pushing for a full and open inquest into Dr Kelly's death. There have been many contentious episodes in the so-called War on Terror, but this event surely stands out as one of the most troubling.

To put it even stronger, I wish Obama had taken similar steps upon taking office that the Tory/LibDems coalition is taking. Perhaps he's waiting for his 2nd term which, at the present rate, may not even come to pass.

[luke]

Dr Kelly 'couldn't have slit his wrist as he was too weak'

Dramatic new testimony has heaped pressure on ministers to reopen the investigation into the death of Dr David Kelly.

A female colleague claims that the UN weapons inspector could not have committed suicide as claimed, as he was too weak to cut his own wrist.

Mai Pedersen, a U.S. Air Force officer who served with Dr Kelly's inspection team in Iraq, said a hand and arm injury meant that the 59-year-old even 'had difficulty cutting his own steak'.

Dr Kelly was found dead in woods near his home in 2003 after the Government exposed him as the source of a BBC report questioning Tony Blair's government's case for war in Iraq.

In a letter to the new Attorney General Dominic Grieve through her lawyers, Miss Pedersen also said Dr Kelly had difficulty swallowing pills, casting serious doubt on the Hutton Inquiry conclusion that he swallowed 29 painkillers before slitting his left wrist.

Campaigners hope her extraordinary intervention will convince ministers of the need for a new investigation. Mr Grieve has already indicated that he believes the case could merit a further inquiry.

Had she testified at the Hutton Inquiry, Miss Pedersen would have revealed that in the months leading up to his death Dr Kelly was unable to use his right hand for basic tasks requiring any strength such as slicing food because of a painful elbow injury.

Miss Pedersen says he would therefore have had to be a 'contortionist' to have killed himself by slashing his left wrist, as Lord Hutton concluded in 2004.

She called for a 'formal, independent, and complete' review of the case at the earliest opportunity, saying it was the only way to achieve 'closure'.

The letter said the absence of a full coroner's inquest into Dr Kelly's death and 'perpetual secrecy' meant it was ' crying out' for further scrutiny.

Dr Kelly, who worked for both the UN and later the Ministry of Defence, was found dead seven years ago next month in an Oxfordshire wood.

He was said to be deeply upset after being exposed as the source of a controversial BBC news report questioning Britain's grounds for going to war in Iraq.

The report, by journalist Andrew Gilligan, stated that Tony Blair's press spokesman Alastair Campbell had 'sexed up' the case for war for political reasons.

But, unusually for a death of this nature, no full coroner's inquest has ever been held. Instead, Tony Blair appointed retired judge Lord Hutton to chair a non-statutory public inquiry into the circumstances leading to his body being discovered.

Witnesses, who included Dr Kelly's widow, Janice, and Tony Blair, were not questioned under oath.

Lord Hutton concluded that Dr Kelly died by haemorrhage after slashing his left wrist but, as the Mail reported last week, his death certificate was officially registered before the Hutton Inquiry ended and it was not properly completed.

It was not signed by a doctor or coroner and does not state a place of death, as all death certificates should if this information can be established. This leaves open the possibility that he died somewhere other than where his body was found.

To further deepen the mystery, all evidence relating to the post-mortem has been classified for an incredible 70 years.

Miss Pedersen's view is significant because she knew Dr Kelly so well, both personally and professionally.

The pair worked together in Iraq in the 1990s and remained close friends until his death, although Miss Pedersen, 50, has always that she and Dr Kelly were not romantically involved.

She was initially asked to give evidence to the Hutton Inquiry in 2003 and agreed to do so, but was not called. This was because, it is claimed, the inquiry would not allow her to testify in private.

Her letter to Mr Grieve, dated June 10, states: 'We understand you have indicated a willingness to consider possibly reopening the investigation into the continuing controversy into the death of Dr Kelly.

'Given the absence of any coroner's inquest and the perpetual secrecy surrounding the post-mortem examination, it is painfully obvious that this matter continues to cry out for a formal, independent and complete review. Ms Pedersen fully supports and adds her voice to such an effort.

'The passage of time [does] not diminish either the public's interest or the government's responsibility to ascertain the full truth, whatever that might be.'

The Hutton Report failed to allay suspicions of foul play in Dr Kelly's death. On the morning of July 17, Dr Kelly mysteriously told a friend by email that there were 'many dark actors playing games'.

In 2007 it was discovered, through a Freedom of Information request, that the pruning knife he is said to have used to cut his wrist had no fingerprints on it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1291019/Dr-Kelly-slit-wrist-weak.html#ixzz0sPiGewV2

[faceless]

I'm not sure if you can compare cutting a steak with slitting your wrists... but then again, the knife was pretty blunt from what I remember.