BBC NEWS
Kelly death 'changes everything' BBC News
Sat Jul 19 16:01:31 2003
208.152.73.53

Kelly death 'changes everything' BBC News
http://news.google.com/url?q=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3080699.stm

Controversial British Weapons Expert's Death Deemed a Suicide
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=AD26FCEC-7B3A-4CF4-B34C24D0C277715E

British police have confirmed that a Defense Ministry weapons expert, embroiled in a controversy over intelligence about Iraq, took his own life Friday.

Police in London said 59-year-old David Kelly died after slashing his left wrist as they provided formal identification of the body. Speaking in Tokyo, at the start of his Asian tour Saturday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the death Mr. Kelly a terrible tragedy as he implored the media and politicians to end speculation and allow a judicial inquiry to take its course.

Mr. Blair declined to answer a blunt question about whether the death weighed on his conscience and whether he, or any members of his government, might resign.

Meanwhile, the New York Times quotes the widow of the British weapons expert as saying her husband had been under enormous stress, but had given no hint that he was considering suicide.

Mr. Kelly appeared before British lawmakers Tuesday to deny being the source of a controversial report aired by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The report said the government had exaggerated intelligence about Iraqi weapons to strengthen the case for war. Mr. Kelly did admit having met BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, who aired the report.

His body was found near his home northwest of London Friday after he failed to return from a walk.

Mr. Gilligan appeared before the committee for two hours Thursday, but refused to divulge his source. Members of Parliament said he had backed off some of his allegations, but the journalist denied that, saying the grilling he was given amounted to an ambush.

The original report generated a sharp political dispute between the BBC and the British government, which accused the broadcaster of setting aside its standards of impartiality because of an anti-war agenda. The BBC says it stands by its report.
===========================================


"He is not used to the media glare, he is not used to the intense spotlight he has been put under"
CLICK FOR MORE OF THE STORY AND UPDATES:
http://www.apfn.org/APFN/DKELLY.HTM

Blair in trouble
Fri Jul 18 14:08:49 2003
202.68.150.4

Friday, July 18, 2003

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR

There is no way; Tony Blair can assuage people’s horror at the death of Dr. Kelly as being a by-product his government’s tireless efforts to put a lid on the ongoing scandal ready to explode, now that the bogus intelligence cited by Blair and company has turned out to be a fraud perpetrated on the British public. Dr. Kelly had appeared before the parliamentary enquiry denying that he was the source to alert BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, about the spin doctoring of intelligence reports to sex up the case to invade Iraq. More than even Bush, Blair fought both a skeptical nation and his own divided party to persist in going to war by declaring the Saddam can deliver his WMD within 45 minutes. At least Bush has the Jewish cabal to take the heat for imposing a self-serving agenda on the willing Bush coterie. The public in Britain should be wondering as to who was blackmailing Blair to take such a politically suicidal course.

In the event this has turned out to be very ugly. And criminal. Nothing will save Blair now, even if he is personally not involved in any way with the death of Dr. Kelly. Blair had gone on a limb to support America’s illegal war and much before Bush will reap the bitter harvest of his own perjuries coming to haunt him, Blair will be lucky, if he can wiggle out of this mess.

GHULAM MUHAMMED, P.O.BOX: 16685, BANDRA WEST, MUMBAI - 400 050
ghulam_muhammed2@yahoo.co.in

Analysis: Death of WMD expert hounds Blair
By Peter Almond
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20030718-062530-2334r.htm

LONDON, July 18 (UPI) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair's triumphal glow following his speech before the U.S. Congress has lasted just over 24 hours. But the mysterious death of one of Britain's top experts on weapons of mass destruction -- possible source of a massively contentious spat between the British Broadcasting Corp. and government that lies at the heart of his own credibility -- has once again plunged him back into a domestic firestorm of doubt and recrimination.

It may not be known until after a post-mortem late Saturday how ex-weapons inspector David Kelly came to die, and even longer to determine why he went for a walk at his home in Oxfordshire on Thursday and was found dead by searching police at the edge of a wood little over a mile away the next day.

But the implications for Blair's government are deep and serious, as the prime minister already appears to acknowledge. It was Kelly, government officials believe, who may have been the main source for BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan's May story about Blair's communications director Alistair Campbell "sexing up" intelligence information that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. The claim is a central plank in Blair's declaration that the threat of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq was so immediate that military action had to be taken urgently.

Informed on his flight from Washington to Tokyo that Kelly was missing, and later that a body probably was him, Blair and his travelling staff reportedly spent much of their 14-hour journey on the phone back to London. Unusually, Blair said practically nothing to reporters on his plane, and he looked tired and sombre when he and wife Cherie arrived in the Japanese capital. A scheduled press conference with Japanese Premier Junichiro Koizumi Saturday was expected to be dominated by questions on Kelly.

The major question is whether Kelly was put under intolerable stress by Ministry of Defense or Downing Street officials determined to prove one way or another that the BBC lied in saying Campbell was to blame for "sexing up" the first of two intelligence dossiers. Together with the second dossier -- the "dodgy dossier" -- Blair's rationale for the war is under strong attack and has prompted the British public to give him its lowest approval rating in six years of power.

Downing Street has announced an inquiry, headed by an impartial judge, will be held into Kelly's death. But even that is under political attack by opposition Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, who said it was too narrowly focused and should be widened to include Blair's use or misuse of intelligence in the rationale for war -- a consistent opposition theme that has considerable cross-party support.

"If I was the prime minister, I would cut short this visit and return home," said Duncan Smith, who has made political capital recently by declaring to Blair's face in the House of Commons that "nobody believes a word you say any more."

"There are very many questions that will need to be asked over the coming days," he said.

According to his closest friends and associates Friday, Kelly, a former U.N. Special Commission -- UNSCOM -- inspector in Iraq and an adviser to both the defense and foreign ministries, was a quiet, precise man of high integrity who appears to have conscientiously informed his line manager at the Ministry of Defense that he had unofficially met the BBC's reporter and had talked to him about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was after Campbell had vehemently denied "sexing up" Blair's intelligence dossier and as the Commons foreign affairs committee was holding hearings into the rationale for war.

The Ministry of Defense then put out an unprecedented press release saying it knew who at least one of Gilligan's sources was and that he had not said what Gilligan said he had said. It declined to publicly name him, but suggested the BBC resolve the issue by confirming the name officials had.

Outraged at this apparent attempt to force it to reveal journalistic sources, the BBC declined. By the end of the day, mysteriously, political journalists at Downing Street had Kelly's name.

Kelly was then asked to appear before the Commons committee last Tuesday, stepping into a political firestorm he was emotionally ill-prepared for, according to his long-time friend and former BBC journalist, Tom Mangold. With one committee member asking whether he wasn't the "fall guy" or "chaff" for the government in trying to deflect criticism of the reasons Blair went to war, Kelly felt under heavy pressure.

"What happened to him was despicable," said Mangold, who also blamed the BBC.

Kelly had agreed he had told Gilligan that there was only a 30 percent chance Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but the rest about Campbell he didn't recognize as coming from him. The committee finally agreed Kelly probably wasn't Gilligan's main source.

Blair hasn't even had time to waft the warm and hugely grateful applause of the U.S. Congress and Bush administration back home and around the world. Friday's front-page headline on the speech in the conservative Daily Mail was "Blair Moves the Goalposts." "Weapons may not be found but we were still right."

Scenting blood, former Tory Cabinet Minister Malcolm Rifkind wrote in the Daily Telegraph that Labor at last looks beatable, and suggested four ways for the Tories to do it.

And from other side of the popular press, an editorial in the left-leaning Daily Mirror said: "When he returns from his ticker-tape reception in Washington, the prime minister will find a party and a country massively underwhelmed and increasingly enraged.

"Mr. Blair said that if he is wrong, then he believes history will forgive him. We do not share his belief. If weapons of mass destruction are not found soon in Iraq, then no amount of hero worship in America may be enough to save Mr. Blair back home."

While the conservative Daily Telegraph praised Blair in America, and blasted parts of the left for being anti-American, a headline over a column by Polly Toynbee in the leftist Guardian said of Blair's speech: "Iraq was a grave error. But worse is Blair's apparent determination to be a Tory prime minister, not a Labor one."

Further damage from the left of the Labor Party comes from the New Statesman magazine, owned by a friend and supporter of Blair's political rival Chancellor Gordon Brown. Its editorial this week describes Blair as looking "a rather dangerous, unpredictable figure." And an article by the magazine's political editor described Blair as a "psychopath capable of reinventing himself with remarkable dexterity, like an actor."

Although the magazine has only a small circulation, the highly sensitive Downing Street press machine felt obliged to issue a rejection of the charges.

And this is all before David Kelly's reported death.

• EXCELLENT HIGHLIGHTS ON DR KELLY'S COURAGE AND TOUGHNESS. — PAUL, Sat Jul 19 22:33
• Oral evidence - DR DAVID KELLY, Special Adviser to the Direc — BBC, Sat Jul 19 16:36