KELLY DEATH NOT SUICIDE, SAYS MP Sunday 25 February
CONSPIRACY FILES
CONSPIRACY FILES
9pm on BBC Two
See programme preview HERE
An MP investigating the death of Dr David Kelly says he is convinced the weapons scientist did not kill himself.
Norman Baker tells BBC Two's The Conspiracy Files he has reached the conclusion Dr Kelly's life was "deliberately taken by others".
Mr Baker has also obtained letters suggesting the coroner had doubts about the 2003 Hutton inquiry's ability to establish the cause of death.
Hutton reached a verdict of suicide but a public inquest was never completed.
Dr Kelly, whose body was found in July 2003, had been under intense pressure after being named as the suspected source of a BBC report claiming the government "sexed up" a dossier on the threat posed by Iraq.
Distress
Coroner Nicholas Gardiner opened an inquest into his death in Oxford just a few days after his body was found on Harrowdown Hill.
As you will know, a coroner has power to compel the attendance of witnesses. There are no such powers attached to a Public inquiry Nicholas Gardiner, writing to Lord Falconer in August 2003
But he was ordered to adjourn it by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, as the Hutton inquiry would take over, and it was not resumed.
Lord Falconer said he wanted to minimise the distress caused to the Kelly family.
The official account given by the Hutton inquiry was that Dr Kelly committed suicide by cutting his left wrist, and taking an overdose of the painkiller Co-Proxamol.
In his report, Lord Hutton said: "There was no involvement by a third person in Dr Kelly's death."
Assassinated
Mr Baker, who has spent a year investigating the case, believes there is enough evidence to suggest that the scientist did not kill himself.
The Liberal Democrat MP said toxicology reports suggested there was not enough painkiller in Dr Kelly's system to kill him, and the method he had apparently chosen to commit suicide was not a recognised or effective one.
"I'm satisfied it was not suicide. And after that you're left with the conclusion that his life was deliberately taken by others," he tells The Conspiracy Files.
He tells the programme it has been suggested to him that the weapons scientist was assassinated.
Speaking last week on BBC Radio 5 Live, Mr Baker said he was not ready to reveal all the evidence he has unearthed, but would consider passing a file to the police in due course.
Witnesses
Mr Baker has obtained letters between Mr Gardiner and the Lord Chancellor's office from 2003, suggesting the coroner was not happy with the Hutton inquiry's ability to establish the cause of death.
The letters were given to the MP by Constitutional Affairs minister Harriet Harman and have not been revealed publicly before.
I believe that David was probably a victim of Iraqi Intelligence Service Richard Spertzel, former colleague of Dr Kelly
On 6 August 2003 Mr Gardiner wrote to the Lord Chancellor expressing concern about Hutton's lack of legal powers compared with an inquest.
"As you will know, a coroner has power to compel the attendance of witnesses. There are no such powers attached to a public inquiry," Mr Gardiner wrote.
The Oxfordshire coroner also asked to be allowed to continue with the inquest because "the preliminary cause of death given at the opening of the inquest no longer represents the final view of the pathologist, and evidence from him would need to be given to correct and update the evidence already received".
Mr Gardiner met officials from the Department of Constitutional Affairs on 11 August 2003 "to discuss the mechanics of admitting evidence from the pathologist and analyst".
Death certificate
The Lord Chancellor then accepted the coroner's need to have one further hearing.
In a letter to Mr Gardiner, dated 12 August 2003, Sarah Albon, private secretary to the Lord Chancellor, said that "the cause of death of Dr David Kelly is likely to be adequately investigated by the judicial inquiry conducted by Lord Hutton".
It said Lord Falconer accepted Mr Gardiner may want to take fresh evidence from the pathologist and analyst.
But he was "most anxious to avoid any unnecessary distress to the family, and has asked that you keep the proceedings as short as possible and, so far as the Coroner's Rules allow, take the evidence in writing".
The coroner did just that in a hearing on 14 August 2003.
On 18 August 2003 a death certificate was registered setting out the causes of death.
'Hit list'
Yet the Hutton inquiry had only just started taking evidence and its report was published a full five months later.
In March 2004, a final hearing was held in Oxford at which Mr Gardiner said he was satisfied there were "no exceptional reasons," including concerns about the Hutton inquiry's powers, for the inquest to be resumed.
The Conspiracy Files explores a number of alternatives as to how Dr Kelly might have met his end.
A former colleague of the weapons inspector, former UN weapons inspector Richard Spertzel, tells the programme he believes the scientist was murdered by the Iraqis.
Mr Spertzel, who was America's most senior biological weapons inspector and who worked alongside Dr Kelly for many years in Iraq, believes the Iraqi regime may have pursued a vendetta against Dr Kelly.
"I believe that David was probably a victim of Iraqi Intelligence Service because of long standing enmity of Iraq towards David," he says.
"A number of us were on an Iraqi hit list. I was number three, and my understanding, David was only a couple behind that.
"And none of the people on that hit list were welcome in Iraq. Immediately after David's death, a number of the other inspectors and I exchanged emails saying, 'Be careful.' "
The Conspiracy Files is on Sunday, 25 February, at 2100 GMT on BBC Two.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/6390981.stm
12 comments:
Is Andrew Gilligan still a BBC employee? What has his position been since he was exposed as an unreliable reporter?
After watching this programme on BBC, I strongly believe that Dr. David Kelly did not commit suicide!
It seems to me that it is an inside job to me. As Dr. Kelly has access to "Top Secret" files, he probably found out something that he wasn't supposed to.
That "45mins theory" was a trap, it was probably made up to cover up the "accidental" discovery that Dr. Kelly made some time ago. In other words, to fill in the gaps.
Iraq is a rather poor country, it is partially a corrupted country. It runs on the idea of communism and the government is generally poor, so I wonder where on earth would they find the money to develop such advanced technology?
From revising history, the US government insisted in encouraging democracy to the whole world. As Iraq was not a democratic country, G.W. Bush may have decided to do it by force.
Alternatively, this may well be "American greed". Due to Bush administration, the government is in large amounts of debt. To clear that, they need a huge source of income. As the oil business can generate such large revenue, so US may have decided to take-over the oil fields in Iraq to pay off their debt. And UK has no choice but to help his friend, that's why they went to war.
To conclude, I think that the whole story of weapons of mass destruction was a lie. US obviously wanted the oil fields, and the only way to do that is to take it by force, and UK had no choice but have to act as a reliable alliance. Moreover, this dragged Dr. Kelly to believe that there was the existence of dangerous weapons, so he started looking into it. This lead to his "accidental" discovery, so a ridiculous theory was made-up to cover the suspicious gaps (the 45mins theory). It seems to me that Dr. Kelly was under a threat to admit that it was his theory, as he didn't admit it so he was murdered. Because if he didn't admit it, he'd have to tell the real truth to save his reputation. Someone obviously wasn't so keen on the idea of telling the truth.
A very good show from the Beeb and you came across well.
I dislike their choice of titles in the extreme, the "Conspiracy" part, just that alone lends its self to all kinds of negatives, however the content and presentation was excellent.
Will come back for a better digest of your site at the opposite end of the day than this.
Thanks and good work.
http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/
Why no mention of Mai Pedersen? The Ba'hai link has validity.
When Kelly was found dead I considered such info as had come my way, noted the terrible crash of his morale and said to my work colleagues: "Cherchez la femme."
Within 24 hours she appeared. Then she disappeared (went to ground) and was never more mentioned. I am of the view that Kelly killed himself when Femme fatale Pederson, demolished some imagined castle he had built for two. Perhaps she will tell us in a decade or two.
I saw the show. I don't think there was any information presented that isn't already known by those who follow such things.
Still, a neat presentation and it does no harm at all to keep such issues in the public eye.
Keep up the good work
Have you actually seen any of the evidence? In particular have you actually seen the pictures of the body and asked the searchers whether this is how Dr Kelly was when they found the body?
This would constitute an argument instead of the suppositions you seem happy to bandy around without any evidence!!
I'd like to make some comments having re-viewed the BBC2 program on David Kelly just now.
I went to quite a few of the main evidence days of the Hutton enquiry, I still have the tickets to prove it. I have no involvement with any of the interested parties. I simply happened to be between work contracts and it seemed interesting.
I'd like to know how many of the people interviewed on this programme were at the enquiry, since there were only 10 seats for the public in the main court, I suspect not too many. Although the queues were big on a couple of the days, and the large overflow courts were used, I doubt too many of these so called dedicated researchers were even there.
Here's my take on the first hand testimony that I heard:
1. Andrew Gilligan came across as a rather sloppy journalist whereas Susan Watts seemed much more impressively forensic. David Kelly's taped interview with her clearly showed that he did believe that Iraq had WMD, a fact that is conveniently glossed over by many of the theorists. I believe they prefer to imply that he was likely to disprove the government's assertions about WMD. Maybe he would have, but his personal opinion was that they existed - this should not be forgotten when presuming motive for murder.
2. David's relationships in his family were quite unusual. These are almost always totally glossed over by everyone, although I wouldn't like to suggest that they would either point to suicide or not, they are worth mentioning. His mother commited suicide. The statistical likelihood of someone commiting suicide is increased if a parent also did so. He was virtually estranged from his wife and had a rather peculiar relationship with one of his daughters. It was more as if she were his confidant and almost more close to him than his wife. They had the kind of relationship where they talked most days which was interesting. These things are never mentioned - why not? they came out quite clearly at the enquiry?
3. David might well have been quite distressed about the potential threat to his pension and to retirement itself. He was due to retire in less than a year. His work was his life by all accounts, no-one examines the effect on his mental state of a threat to his financial stability in retirement and the potential damage to his legacy/reputation after the WMD affair. This could have devastated his world which was already drawing to a rapid twilight phase as far as work was concerned. He was desperate to get back to Iraq and continue the work he loved - the WMD dossier affair was quite likely to delay or potentially prevent him from doing that. He was apparently very distressed by this.
4. The search and rescue team did give a very clear account of what they found and how he was found. They also stated that they did not believe that anyone else had been at the site. The police also testified to this effect very clearly. Of course they could have all been lying but it certainly didn't seem that way to me watching them give their evidence in court only weeks after the event.
5. Alistair Campbell, well what can I say about him - what a total disgrace of a person. His ego was simply so enormous that even the death of a seemingly decent, loyal and hard working man could not stop his self-serving posturing. He may well have been telling the truth as he saw it but he just needs to know when to stop and rein himself in - his behaviour at the time of the trouble seemed very immature, as did his diary entries. I can only hope he's calmed down since this event.
5. I came away from the enquiry with the feeling that David probably did commit suicide, however I do agree that he should have had a normal coroner's inquest without mixing it in with the "he said, she said" rubbish about Campbell's fight with the BBC. It's a shame that a seemingly decent man's death should have been disrespected by focussing on whether the BBC or Campbell/government/Gilligan/security services got something wrong on purpose or accidentally.
I suspect that if David did commit suicide his reasons were probably more complex and personal than many of the players in this whole story could ever know.
I hope this was interesting for some of you who didn't hear the testimonies first hand.
Rowena out of interest why are you involved in all this? Did you know David personally? If I learnt one thing from the enquiry it was that everyone involved in these things has some personal agenda and that includes the theorists on how David died. We all have to accept that and stop pretending to be altruistically searching for a higher truth.
I would like to know what the drug is called - the one which, if on slips it into a drink, the drinker will be contemplating suicide within an hour...
Something I have never seen discussed is as follows: Early on the morning when Dr Kelly's body was found, I was listening to the radio as I worked at home. A female reporter from the BBC was talking to the first policeman to arrive at the scene. He said that Dr Kelly had a bullet wound to the back of his head, but there was no gun. She asked him if they were treating it as murder then, and he replied that they were waiting for a team from London who would make that decision.
The program then hastily went back to the studio, and the subject was never mentioned again. As soon as I heard it, I called my wife in, and she also heard it. I did this in case I later doubted my own ears. Surely we cannot have been the only people listening to the radio early on that day?
Hello!
Thank you for uploading the video at Google but it isn't working. It seems that they might be taking it down.
Will you be uploading it elsewhere?
Thank you in advance!
Does the blogger who heard the interview on the radio which said that David Kelly had been shot remember which radio station they would have been listening to...and roughly what time it would have been?
Good post.
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