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So back to the late Dr. Kelly again.
From the transcript of Andrew Gilligan's statements to Lord Hutton on day 2 of the Inquiry:
LORD HUTTON: Yes, just read the note through, if that is all right.simon:
A. "Transformed week before publication to make it sexier. The classic was the 45 minutes. Most things in dossier were double source but that was single source. One source said it took 45 minutes to set up a missile assembly, that was misinterpreted. "Most people in intelligence weren't happy with it because it didn't reflect the considered view they were putting forward. "Campbell: real information but unreliable, included against our wishes. Not in original draft -- dull, he asked if anything else could go in. "Uranium from Africa -- not nuclear expert but was very suspect, documents certainly forged or forgeries. "10 to 15 years ago there was a lot of information. With the concealment and deception operation there was far less information. "It was small ...", this is the programme, I think. "It was small because you could not conceal a large programme and because it was actually quite hard to import things. The sanctions were effective. They did limit the programme. No usable weapons. "In one of the Jan", that is a reference to one of the Blix reports by Hans Blix to the UN, it said there were some "chemical reactors which had not been destroyed by UNSCOM. Glass lined chambers to promote chemical reactions. These were being used again by the Iraqis. They were recovered, they were taken to [that should be] Al-Munthanna [another plant] not properly destroyed by the UN, recovered by the Iraqis, taken to Fallujah and used for non-banned purposes." This is him discussing another thing that Blix overlooked. "The 18 chemical missiles", these were missiles with the potential for chemical tipped warheads although I do not think they actually obtained chemicals, "were reported by Blix but they were downplayed. Blix thought they were leftovers."
"I think it is 30 per cent likely that Iraq had an active chemical warfare programme in the six months to a year and likelier that there was a biological warfare programme."...
So Dr. Kelly was plainly trying to telegraph something to Andrew Gilligan about the Scuds. Hans Blix was downplaying them, why? Even if they were leftovers, they still had to be accounted for.------
Surely this is something a 'smarter and more knowledgable' reporter should have picked up on? Instead he focused on and reported on the 45 minutes claim, this (via Dr. Kelly) plainly mentioning 'a missile assembly'. Mr. Blair later claiming that he didn't know what type of weapon system this 45 minute point refered to, and the claim was later downgraded to it being about only 'battlefield weapons'.
Is there more to this than meets-the-eye I wonder?
my knowledge in this area is patchy - so it would be irresponsible to comment - but that's what i do - so it would be irresponsible not to. or something.
This piece by xymphora suggests that kelly was basically a dupe - where 'information' was channelled from the americans, via mai pederson, into the brit intel stream. We also know that Kelly was a confidant (presumably bi-directional) of Judy - and we know that Judy was an agent (either witting or otherwise) - so it's my sense that we need to be careful about things that Kelly was tellling others
My default position is that everyone in this sordid tale is compromised - wittingly or otherwise. For some reason or other, kelly thought that there was WMD in iraq before the war - and he kept his mouth shut about the sexed-up-edness until after the invasion (as did joe wilson)
If i had to bet on kelly vs blix - my money would be on blix (even though i think that kelly was probably 'honest'). ftr - one of most egregious (under-reported) crimes of the US media was when the published 'transcripts' of blix's pre-war testimony at the UN which simply left out, without notice, his destruction of powell's dodgy claims. in his UN speech. AFAIC that was much worse than even Judy's 'reporting'
more, im sure, later
5 comments:
lukery,
I'd better state from the outset that I don't have any special insider information to share here, everything I know about this comes from the same sources as have been written about elsewhere. I did for a while subscribe to the 'Kelly Investigation Group', an e-mail discussion group that speculated heavily about the possibility that Dr. Kelly had in fact been murdered. Somehow this doesn't ring true for me. I can't see either that he committed suicide for the reasons given, i.e. that it was because he had been caught out by speaking to Andrew Gilligan and Susan Watts and was ashamed that he had brought HM Government's opinions on Iraq's WMD into disrepute.
I think it is far more likely that he really did not believe in what was being claimed about the Iraqi weapons. Whilst his (expected) public position was that the weapons programmes did exist, I think that he was extremely uncomfortable about being required to actually lie in order to maintain HM Government's position.
Witness the above (to AG):
"I think it is 30 per cent likely that Iraq had an active chemical warfare programme in the six months to a year and likelier that there was a biological warfare programme."
That's only a one-in-three chance of a chemical programme. Admittedly he said there was more of a chance for the biological programme, but he has not quantified this to even indicate a parity 50/50 position in his own thinking.
The part of his and AG's conversation about the Scuds which I used above needs some deconstruction to put it into context:
This is him discussing another thing that Blix overlooked.
It's not exactly clear (as he is reading his notes to the Inquiry) whether he is refering to the preceding comment or the following, but I tend to think it is the following because the glass lined chambers were not of any consequence being as they were being used for non-proscribed activities.
"The 18 chemical missiles",
This is the WRONG number. UNSCOM documents refer to the possibility of 9 (2+7) being missing. He has in fact referred to a number that is double the true questionable quantity. Nowhere else is this exact number of 18 used. The September Dossier refers to "up to 20" and the 2002 NIE refers to "up to a couple of dozen". Was he giving something away to AG for him to further investigate?
(But AG was not clued up about UNSCOM's earlier finding):
...these were missiles with the potential for chemical tipped warheads although I do not think they actually obtained chemicals,...
This is AG making a factually incorrect statement to Lord Hutton and not anything from Dr. Kelly. UNSCOM HAD found and destroyed chemically-filled Scud warheads, so AG had not investigated the UNSCOM reports.
"were reported by Blix but they were downplayed. Blix thought they were leftovers."
Hans Blix (and before him Richard Butler) did not make much of a case about the Scuds. In light of what I have previously posted, were there attempts to keep the Scud issue under wraps? Iraq had admitted to using 93 and this figure had been used in the calculations of what was missing, but US Space Command had recorded the launch of at least 97. Why was this never brought to prominence? Also the UK MoD have indicated the possibility of the launch of 102, although they defer to elsewhere by stating that the 93 count may be more accurate. Why? Did the Rockingham cell, to which Dr. Kelly reported, not look further into these matters?
You say above "For some reason or other, Kelly thought that there was WMD in iraq before the war..."
Somehow I think this was not the case. I think that he killed himself because as a professional scientist he was unwilling to lie further for his master's causes.
If this is true he would have felt extreme guilt about not making his case earlier, before the war.
thnx again Simon
i dont really have much to add - you make a valid-ish point about the 30% thing - although there is some wiggle room about the word 'active' (and also that Kelly was speaking after the invasion)
In oct02, Kelly did say that he "was happy with the factual content" of the dossier
and there's this:
"Weapons expert David Kelly believed that Saddam Hussein was less of a threat before the last Gulf War than 10 years ago, and could only use his supposed weapons of mass destruction in "days or weeks", rather than 45 minutes, as the Government has claimed.
Dr Kelly's views were revealed for the first time yesterday in a hitherto unshown television interview with BBC's Panorama programme, which took place just a month after Tony Blair made the 45-minute assertion in his Iraq weapons dossier last September."
re his 'extreme guilt' - if that is accurate, I wish that he'd expressed it differently... and let us know who was complicit, and how, so that it doesnt happen again...
lukery,
in Oct '02/and there's this:
David Kelly had been quoted and misquoted more than once. He was paid to be more than a company man. Don't believe everything you read. I saw the Panorama programme and he didn't look very happy about what he was saying. Mr. Mangold claims to be his best friend but no-one backs this up.
Check out your own Parliament:
Chapter 4 - The Iraq Survey Group and its ability to report frankly and fearlessly
Both Mr. Barton and Dr. Gee packed it in in March 2004. So did the top Brit bod. Did this ever make the news? Did Dr. Kelly even agree with these guys? Did anyone ever notice?
(Just as an aside, Mark Rylance just won a BAFTA for playing Dr. Kelly in the C4/Peter Kosminsky dramatisation 'The Government Inspector'.)
cheers.
incidentally Barton was in the news recently when this story broke again:
"The group’s report and members of the technical team also dismissed the notion that the trailers could be easily modified to produce weapons.
“It would be easier to start all over with just a bucket,” said Rod Barton, an Australian biological weapons expert and former member of the survey group."
lukery,
Nothing about Rod Barton got into the media here. For some of us here the biggest question is - what was it John Scarlett asked Charlie Duelfer to put into the ISG report. That would prove complicity after the fact. I think Dr. Kelly realised there was complicity before the fact. I rest my case.
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