Kelly Inquiry continues -"Suggestions of murder" ?

Updates and Transcripts at www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk and at GFP
Keynotes of Day 1+2, Witness Reports
Campbell still accused "sexing up" Dodgy Dossier

A call to arms, a troubled scientist and the unravelling of a mysterious death

Independent -Monday 11 August 2003

"...On the face of it everything seemed normal the next morning, 17 July. Dr Kelly, finished a report for the Foreign Office. And though he e-mailed a journalist on The New York Times and wrote of "dark actors" at work around him he sent up-beat e-mails to Alistair Hay, a fellow scientist, and Roger Kingdon.

"Hopefully it will soon pass and I can get to Baghdad and get on with the real job," he wrote to Mr Hay. To Mr Kingdon, his co-religionist, he wrote: "I'm hopeful things will be calming down in a week or so and I'll be going back to Baghdad."

He never did. That afternoon at 3pm - almost the exact time Mr Gilligan was again before the foreign affairs committee - David Kelly left home, telling his wife he was going for a walk. He did not return.

From the Story: Tom Mangold (TV-Journalist): "He reminded me it would take the most efficient handlers at least 45 minutes just to pour the chemicals or load the biological agents into the warheads." A precise man, Dr Kelly was irritated by inaccuracy; he believed the dossier exaggerated intelligence for effect."

...Just before midnight his wife alerted the police, and the next morning, 18 July, at 9.20, police found his body at Harrowdown Hill, a few miles away from his home. A post-mortem found the cause of death was bleeding from wounds to his left wrist. The fact that several incisions had been made - and that his watch appeared to have been removed whilst blood was already flowing, together with the removal of his spectacles - suggested suicide, experts said.

Not everyone agreed. Some doctors pointed out that slashing one wrist was an unreliable method of suicide. The fact that four electrocardiogram electrode pads were found on his chest aroused some people to suggestions of murder, though cardiologists said, most likely, Dr Kelly had earlier been wearing a portable monitor to diagnose a possible heart problem.

Two days later, on 20 July, the story took a new twist. The BBC acknowledged that Dr Kelly had been the primary source of its reportr. Andrew Gilligan came under renewed fire. Even if it was true, as seemed clear from the supporting evidence of Susan Watts and Gavin Hewitt that Dr Kelly had strong views about the "45-minute" claim, Mr Gilligan had gone further. He had quoted his source as asserting that "the Government probably knew that the 45 minute figure was wrong even before it decided to put it in". Critics pronounced that "sexed-up" was a phrase more to the taste of Andrew Gilligan than David Kelly.

Mr Gilligan was further damned a week later by a leak of the unpublished transcript of evidence he had given to the foreign affairs committee on his second appearance, after which he had been publicly criticised by Donald Anderson, the chairman. It purported to show that Mr Gilligan had admitted that Dr Kelly had not actually said Mr Campbell had inserted the "45-minutes" claim, but that Mr Gilligan had "inferred" it from their conversation. Mr Gilligan denied this was what he had meant, but it seemed the pressure had now shifted primarily onto the BBC.

Yet the twists were not over. News then broke that Susan Watts' conversation with Dr Kelly had been recorded. Richard Sambrook, the corporation's director of news, was said to have smiled broadly after listening to it. Some insiders said Dr Kelly mentioned Mr Campbell there too. The BBC has refused to say, but has passed the tape to Lord Hutton. Then came an admission from the Ministry of Defence that documents relating to the Government's media strategy on Dr Kelly had almost been incinerated.

Unofficial reports suggested the MoD police had been called by a security guard after a senior official was discovered hurriedly shredding material.

To cap it all, on the eve of David Kelly's funeral, came the tasteless and preposterous attempt by a senior No 10 official, to suggest that Dr Kelly, the Government's foremost expert on chemical and biological weapons, was a "Walter Mitty" style fantasist.

Yesterday there was yet another turn. It was reported that a two weeks ago, before Dr Kelly's apparent suicide - Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, described the man as "eccentric and unreliable."

He even went so far as to circle the side of his head, a gesture suggesting madness. And he did so at a private dinner with James Robbins, the BBC's diplomatic editor.

The Hutton inquiry takes its first evidence today. Though the story of Dr David Kelly's final days is already a lot clearer there are still plenty of questions for Lord Hutton to ask.

The whole story about Kelly incl. his connections with Baha'i faith and his doubts about the "45-minute claim" at Independent

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Check out also "Did Kelly die because of Porton Down-Anthrax knowledge?" (GFP), "The truth about Porton Down" (GFP) and "The secret of Porton Down" at Independent:

"...Ironically, the nature of Porton's highly dangerous and controversial trials work on chemical and biological warfare (strictly defensive, the MoD is at pains to stress, since 1956) which has made it such a wonderful wildlife reservoir. The estate is an outlier of the chalk grasslands of Salisbury Plain, which are botanically the richest habitats in Britain, and time stopped after it was bought by the Government in 1916, to become the secret experimental centre for chemical warfare after the Germans had begun using poison gas in the First World War trenches..."