"THE BBC is risking a new confrontation with Downing Street by launching an investigation into the death of David Kelly, the scientist at the centre of the storm over the “sexed up” dossier on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.
It is reopening the case less than three years after its management virtually imploded with the resignations of Greg Dyke, the director general, and Gavyn Davies, its chairman, in the wake of Lord Hutton’s report into the affair.
The corporation is filming a programme about the alleged suspicious circumstances surrounding Kelly’s death in an Oxfordshire wood.
It has told officials who carried out a post-mortem and toxicology tests on Kelly’s body that it “wants to quash conspiracy theories” about the death. But it has interviewed independent doctors who point to unexplained discrepancies in the results of Kelly’s post-mortem. They suggest that neither the wound to his left wrist nor the drugs found in his body was sufficient to kill him.
The BBC has also spoken to legal experts who say the Hutton inquiry was a poor substitute for an inquest and that a coroner should now be asked to record a verdict on how Kelly died."
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Dr Kelly investigation 're-opened'
* this via rimone:
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6 comments:
where's Simon? i lost his mail; i'd be interested in learning his take on this.
Here I am. Someone from the Beeb actually came to see me about this but he wasn't giving much away. Someone else had dropped my name to the corporation and they thought I was worth a visit. My angle is really just about the missing weapons, and I have been speculating that Dr Kelly might have had a personal viewpoint that may have been slightly different from his 'official' position that the weapons were still there somewhere in Iraq. No-one else from the British side of the inspections process has gone public about this, indeed the Hutton Inquiry failed to publish significant quantities of personal statements which were submitted to Thames Valley Police, who were the prime and original investigation agency.
I think the Beeb will follow up closely on what Member of Parliament Norman Baker has been saying. See his website. He is more concerned about the actual manner of Dr Kelly's death, rather than the circumstances that surrounded it. His and Rowena's approach is that if it wasn't suicide then it must have been murder. My own take is that there may be even more to it than this.
I have no proof or evidence to support the idea that Dr Kelly may even staged his own death to make it look like murder in an attempt to 'get back' at the Government and the MoD, but there, I've just suggested the notion. You might think that a brilliant bio-scientist might just have known of a better way to carry out such an act, even in an almost undetectable way, yet no-one has ever suggested that this may be a possible explanation.
My own take is that Dr Kelly had been forced to lie for the establishment. The bigger question is whether this was just to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee only two days before his death, or whether this went much much wider, basically in order to maintain the pressure on Saddam to reveal all and to make the case for war to remove him.
Somehow I think all we are going to get is rather more questions about the whole affair placed more firmly into the public arena. Real answers will be as elusive as they ever are.
thnx simon. fp'd.
i owe you email or two now that the election is over.
Luke,
Ta for that.
I know Rowena is trying her hardest to track down Hamish Killip. He would be the best witness of all being as he was one of the inspectors who was closest to Dr Kelly. He gave two personal statements to TVP but neither have been released.
Is Rod still willing to discuss further with us?
Reading the local news, it seems that there is high regard given to not upsetting Dr Kelly's family. I understand this, but on the other hand this approach may benefit the Government if there is other information being covered up.
Also a bit more from the local link above about the new Beeb series:
In January, the BBC is to broadcast a four-part series focusing on conspiracies, called Conspiracy Files, which will explore inconsistencies in official accounts .... During the four-part TV series, the BBC will also examine the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997; the Oklahoma Bombing of 1995 and the al Qaida attacks of 9/11.
(Have we done OKC here before? Did you know that McVeigh was one of Schwarzkopf's personal guards at Safwan where the Iraqi armistice was signed after GWI? He might therefore have overheard or known about ALL that went on during that war?)
simon - nah - we havent done OKC. i dont know a whole lot about it.
when i last emailed rod, the email bounced back - i'm not sure if that was a temporary problem or something else. i'll try again.
(ps i havent even read those pre-election emails from you - i assumed they were all rod-related.)
thank you, Simon.
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