Consider this: several senior doctors write to a newspaper to take issue with
the official explanation of how David Kelly died. John Scurr, an expert in
vascular surgery, concludes: “Frankly I don’t believe that simply cutting an
ulnar artery will cause death.” The first paramedics to attend Kelly’s body
on a wooded hillside near his Oxfordshire home note that the small amount of
blood does not seem consistent with fatal bleeding.
There’s more. The pathologist who pronounced the cause of death later has a
change of heart. Then it emerges that police found no fingerprints on the
knife that Kelly supposedly used to kill himself or on the water bottle
lying next to the body. And why did Operation Mason, the police
investigation into his death, start nine hours before Kelly was even
reported missing?
If this were the start of a detective novel the reader would quickly suspect
foul play. As a weapons scientist, Kelly had access to sensitive
information. Among his more intriguing discoveries was Saddam Hussein’s
dirty bomb. While working in Iraq in 1995, Kelly found the site where the
bomb had been tested eight years previously. The radiological weapon had
spread contaminated dust across the desert. Yet this seemingly crucial
information was never included in the government’s weapons dossier. Why not?
After all, at the time Downing Street was trying to ramp up the case for
going to war and the fact that the tyrant had a radiation weapon was surely
its strongest card? Unless...Britain helped Saddam develop the bomb back in
the 1980s when ministers were selling weapons to Iraq in breach of
sanctions. It’s certainly an interesting theory.
Enter Norman Baker, a Lib Dem MP who has already proved his sleuthing
abilities. His probing led to Peter Mandelson’s resignation over the Hinduja
affair. He brought to light MPs’ profligate expenses. Campaigning on
everything from animal vivisection to persecution in Tibet, he has probably
done more than any other MP in recent years to expose abuses of power. Along
the way he has made enemies who would like to see him dismissed as a madman
or a fantasist. He is neither.
In The Strange Death of David Kelly, Baker is a latterday Sherlock Holmes,
examining all the evidence and uncovering omissions and inconsistencies that
cast doubt on the conclusions of the £1.7m Hutton inquiry. Nearly a quarter
of 1,000 British adults questioned for a recent BBC poll said they thought
Kelly had not killed himself. More were unsure. So Baker has hit on a case
ripe for investigation.
Frustratingly, though, he has not solved it. Instead, sifting through
testimony from parliamentary inquiries, which he combines with his own
research, Baker exposes – more thoroughly than ever before – a government so
determined to build a case for going to war that it either lied or was
unable to distinguish truth from fiction. It had to cross a legal threshold
of proof before our own armed forces would agree to fight. Hence Downing
Street summoned up “intelligence” that was little more than hearsay or
downright bogus. The now-infamous 45-minute warning of a chemical attack
came from a dubious single source. The claim that Saddam was shopping for
yellowcake uranium in Niger was based on forged documents. Saddam’s mobile
smallpox laboratories turned out to be trailers for filling hydrogen
balloons, part of an artillery system sold by Britain to Iraq in 1987.
Remarkably, as Baker reminds us, the protagonists are still in office. John
Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, has been
promoted to chief of MI6; Geoff Hoon is now chief whip; Jack Straw, the
justice secretary and lord chancellor; and, perhaps most gallingly, Tony
Blair is now a peace envoy. Meanwhile, the Hutton inquiry skewered men who
were largely innocent. Greg Dyke, Gavyn Davies and Andrew Gilligan left the
BBC.
All this is flawlessly argued by Baker. A shame then, that his conclusion
about Kelly’s fate strains credibility. To kill without a trace is
difficult, as Baker acknowledges. Therefore, he hints at an Establishment
cover-up involving Thames Valley Police which carried out the official
investigation into Kelly’s death. It is hard to conceive of crime-scene
officers and detectives committing a crime themselves by colluding with
senior police and members of the intelligence services, not to mention the
coroner and his staff. Even if it were true, would not one honest soul have
blown the whistle, or sold their story?
Baker rightly identifies holes in the suicide verdict. He finds no shortage of
people who knew Kelly to say he was not the suicidal type. As one of them, I
agree; he was almost always jovial and composed. But in suggesting that
Kelly died at the hands of a shadowy Iraqi group whose crime was
“subsequently covered up by the government”, or that “a tiny cabal within
the British Establishment commissioned assassins to undertake [Kelly’s
murder]”, Baker is offering an even shakier explanation than suicide. The
most likely sequence of events is one Baker himself admits is “plausible”.
On the morning of July 17, Kelly received a number of calls from the Ministry
of Defence that unsettled him. At his initial interview with his MoD bosses
10 days previously, he had been told no action would be taken against him
over his contact with journalists, but that might change if further
information came to light. Since then, Kelly had given evidence in public to
the Foreign Affairs Committee, trying to balance honesty with an attempt not
to incriminate himself. “It was a juggling act that proved too difficult,”
observes Baker. During the hearing, a committee member read part of a
transcript of an interview Kelly had given to Susan Watts, a BBC Newsnight
journalist. Kelly did not know at that stage that the conversation had been
taped. He denied saying the words and, in doing so, misled a parliamentary
committee.
Kelly was asked again about his contact with Watts in the July 17 calls from
the MoD. Baker describes the following scenario: “Kelly, having thought the
worst was over, suddenly realised that his careful attempt to pick his way
through the minefield had blown up in his face. He realised that the game
was up. Moreover, he would be exposed as having been less than truthful,
something that went strongly against his personal ethic.” Baker concludes:
“This is certainly a plausible explanation for suicide, if that is what it
was. Indeed it is the most plausible.” As a reader you’re forced to agree
and then wonder, why look for a more complicated explanation?
There are still unanswered questions, of course. Thames Valley Police has yet
to explain the absence of fingerprints, though it has commented on why
Operation Mason started nine hours before Kelly was reported missing. It
says the start time of the operation was fixed retrospectively to reflect
the period of interest. The pathologist did change his view as to the
precise cause of Kelly’s death, but his revised conclusion didn’t persuade
him or the coroner that foul play was involved. The medical experts who
wrote to a newspaper questioning the official cause of death have been
countered by others who say that blood loss, exacerbated by an undiagnosed
heart condition and combined with an overdose of painkillers, would have
been sufficient to kill Kelly.
As to why the government didn’t declare Saddam’s dirty bomb in its Iraq
dossier, well, that’s a question the government has yet to answer. When
Baker tabled a Commons question he was stonewalled with a written reply from
John Reid, then defence secretary. Reid confirmed that the government was
indeed aware that Iraq “carried out tests on a radiological device (dirty
bomb)”, but gave no further comment.
At least half the readers of this book will suspect Kelly was murdered; for
them, Baker provides plenty of support. For those who share my scepticism,
however, it’s still an important work. You don’t need to be a conspiracy
theorist to conclude that something murky was going on behind closed doors
in Whitehall. Hutton’s remit was too narrow ever to get to the bottom of it.
As an exploration of what happens when politicians bend the evidence to fit
their aims, hoping that the end will justify the means, Baker’s book is hard
to beat.
THE STRANGE DEATH OF DAVID KELLY by Norman Baker
Politico’s £9.99 pp400
The British public were led to believe, by the Government and the mainstream media, that the cause of Dr David Kelly's death would be better investigated by Lord Hutton's inquiry than by a coroner's inquest, when the exact opposite was the truth.
Suicide, including intent to commit suicide, must be proved to a criminal level of proof ie beyond reasonable doubt; that is a very high level of proof, and proving suicide is consequently, in the absence of a "suicide note" (as in the Kelly case), notoriously difficult. If suicide cannot be proved, and foul play and natural causes have been excluded, the correct verdict is an "open verdict".
The British public were led to believe that Lord Hutton heard evidence under oath. He did not. In fact, he possessed none of the statutory powers normally available to a coroner. So, because he could not hear evidence under oath, he could not prove anything, let alone suicide.
A fresh inquest is required.
Stephen Frost, Colwyn Bay, United Kingdom
A cautious, if encouraging, review. David Kelly's death -- with Norman Baker's NO FINGERPRINTS revelation now making it apparent murder, instead of the government's "apparent suicide" -- is Britain's elephant in your living rooms.
My own thanks to your British doctors, like David Halpin and Stephen Frost, for their professional integrity, personal courage, and patriotism in pursuing the call for a genuine, independent coroner's inquest. As to who done it, there are many possibilities, all of which should be examined.
My opinion of The Times has risen, reading this review.
Lou Coatney, Macomb, Illinois
Mr Rufford speculates and avoids the following conclusion. This unnatural death has not been investigated rigorously as our law demands. Due process has been subverted.
My Lord Hutton was charged with 'inquiring into the circumstances of Dr Kelly's death' ie not the CAUSE of his death. Consider this for rigour:-
Q. You have already dealt with this, I think, but could you confirm whether, as far as you could tell on the
examination, there was any sign of third party
25 involvement in Dr Kelly's death?
A. No, there was no pathological evidence to indicate the involvement of a third party in Dr Kelly's death.
Rather, the features are quite typical, I would say, of
self inflicted injury if one ignores all the other
features of the case.
This last and remarkable statement was not met with questions!
All those who respect our laws and yearn for truth demand that the inquest be re-opened immediately and that it be punctilious. Idle and ill informed speculation must cease.
David Halpin FRCS , newton abbot, Devon UK
In Mr Bakers desire to draw some conclusions he puts forward suggestions that Kelly death was possibly at the hands "a shadowy Iraqi group", or perhaps assassins commissioned by “a tiny cabal within the British Establishment†or that maybe Kelly after all did have a motive for suicide, less obvious to all but those with deep insight to the ethics of the man.
Showing happened to cause the death of Dr Kelly is not the matter of importance and indeed serves as a distraction from it. The point should be to demonstrate that we still do not know what really happened with reasonable and correct certainty because the circumstances of Kelly's death were not correctly examined by Lord Butler and yet his inquiry was used to supplant the process of the corners inquest, which was the correct mechanism but was not allowed to draw a conclusion. Butler usurped the inquest and then acted upon a prejudicial conclusion of suicide as though such a finding had already been correctly drawn.
Richard Tobin, Wellingborough, UK
"As to why the government didn't declare Saddam's dirty bomb in its Iraq dossier, well, that's a question the government has yet to answer."
Let me have a stab. After tests, Iraqi scientists considered a dirty bomb to be a wasteful and ineffective weapon. Foreign powers concluded similarly. Therefore the British Government had no interest in declaring such a fact - especially when MI6 had leaked details to the mainstream media of (clueless) al-Qaeda operatives who hoped to get their hands on one. Boo!
I consider all evidence and look forwad to reading Norman Baker's book.
smb1971, Liverpool, England
A man's life so conveniently ended. "You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to conclude that something murky was going on behind closed doors in Whitehall"
Jane Fleming, Whittlesey, CAMBRIDGESHIRE
In Mr Bakers desire to draw some conclusions he puts forward suggestions that Kelly death was possibly at the hands "a shadowy Iraqi group", or perhaps assassins commissioned by “a tiny cabal within the British Establishment†or that maybe Kelly after all did have a motive for suicide, less obvious to all but those with deep insight to the ethics of the man.
Showing what happened to cause the death of Dr Kelly is not the matter of importance and indeed serves as a distraction from it. The point should be to demonstrate that we still do not know what really happened with reasonable and correct certainty because the circumstances of Kelly's death were not correctly examined by Lord Hutton and yet his inquiry was used to supplant the process of the corners inquest, which was the correct mechanism but was not allowed to draw a conclusion. Hutton usurped the inquest and then acted upon a prejudicial conclusion of suicide as though such a finding had already been correctly drawn.
Richard Tobin, Wellingborough, UK