Thursday, August 03, 2006

The anthrax letters

21 MR NICHOLAS RUFFORD (called)
22 Examined by MR KNOX
23 MR KNOX: My Lord, the next witness is Mr Rufford.
24 LORD HUTTON: Yes.

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65
3 Q. Did Dr Kelly ever communicate with you by e-mail?

A. Yes, he did.

Q. And roughly how frequently?

A. Perhaps once a month.

Q. Since when?

A. I think that in all he probably sent me about 20 e-mails, between the periods of 1998 and 2002.

Q. And would these be in reply to e-mails or questions you had asked or would they sometimes be unsolicited?

A. They were almost always in reply to questions which I had asked him, but occasionally they were about subjects which he knew I was interested in.

Q. What type of subjects would these e-mails be about?

A. Again usually about bio-weapons. He had some interest in the hunt in the United States for the person who had sent the letters containing anthrax. I believe he had been consulted about that by the Americans because he was an expert on that particular subject. And he occasionally sent me e-mails regarding that, but they would usually be a copy of an article that had appeared in the New York Times or the Washington Post, so it was information already in the public domain that he was simply drawing to my attention.

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http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/transcripts/hearing-trans16.htm

1 Comments:

Blogger Andrew Simon said...

Emptywheel (also posted at your place),

Hindawi does get plenty of mentions in the ISG final report. He was, according to Joby Warrick (or possibly Walter Pincus) of the Washington Post, US trained. Supposedly it was him who first suggested use of disease agents in the Iran/Iraq war. He was not exactly the 'father' of the BW programmes, as a microbiologist he was later just an advisor to Taha Rihab. He had denied that there were US/UK trained virologists working in Iraq and supplied information to suggest Hussein Kamal had intended to restart the BW effort after the sanctions had been lifted. He also supplied details of conversations he claimed to have had with Amir al-Saadi. My guess is that he might even have been a US plant from the very beginning. I'm sure Amir would be happy to tell us the truth about him if they would let him. I personally rank Nassir Hindawi alongside Khidhir Hamza, rather than the seemingly far more honest Imad Khadduri.

3:36 AM  

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