Peter Hitchins - now and from 2003

23 August 2010 6:09 PM

The David Kelly Conundrum

Although Norman Baker MP seems to think, in his book on the subject, that I am among those who doubt that David Kelly committed suicide, I never have doubted that Dr Kelly killed himself. I still don't. Back in July 2003, I wrote an article for the Mail on Sunday, under the headline " Who were the 'dark actors' threatening David Kelly? And will Lord Hutton ever be able to identify them?"

I began: "We know of no good reason why Dr David Kelly should have killed himself. This is the most worrying fact that has emerged from the events of the past week."

What I hoped to suggest was that the true reason for his suicide was not known - not that he hadn't killed himself. I've never had any doubts about that. His death was a great embarrassment to the government and served nobody's purpose. I believed - and believe - that he was put under some sort of unbearable strain. I still want to know what that strain was, and it was one of the many failures of the Hutton report that this subject was not pursued until a satisfactory answer could be found. Did someone threaten him? What did they threaten him with? Who was that person? On whose authority was he or she acting? Those are the questions that still need answers.

I reproduce the 2003 article here because it still seems to me to be a fair summary of the position.

"A man who is devoted to his work and was good at it, in excellent health, with a loving family and much to look forward to, does not slit open an artery because an MP is rude to him.

A man who has dealt face-to-face with officials of the Saddam regime does not take his life because he receives a mild reprimand.

A man who has been dealing competently with the media since 1991 does not do away with himself because he is suddenly all over the TV.

A piece is missing from the equation, an unbearable choice between doing something appalling or doing something atrocious, a pressure which he could not resist but which he also could not surrender to.

We know only that Dr Kelly wrote, in one of his last-known communications before his death, that there were 'dark actors' playing games somewhere in his life.

It is a pity that the person who received this email, New York Times reporter Judith Miller, will not discuss it.

We think we know that Dr Kelly felt he had been 'put through the wringer'. We do know that his own employers had deliberately allowed his name to become public. But what else had happened?

There have been suggestions that Dr Kelly was threatened with prosecution and the loss of his pension. It has been said that at some point he was hustled away to a 'safe house' with minders. The MoD had been giving off-the-record briefings saying this was not true.

Unconvinced by these assurances, I asked the MoD on Tuesday to give me an on-the-record denial.

On Friday, they finally said: 'In the light of continuing inaccurate media speculation, we wish to reiterate the following points: The MoD did not threaten Dr Kelly's pension, nor did it threaten him with action under the Official Secrets Act. Dr Kelly was interviewed twice. On each occasion the interview was conducted by MoD officials from the direct-line management-and-personnel chain. Dr Kelly did not spend time in a Government safe house.'

With all Governments, but especially with this one, you need to read such things very carefully. Now, on Tuesday, July 15, Dr Kelly said a very odd thing to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He explained he could not consult his diaries 'because at the moment I am pursued by the Press and I do not have access to my home'. This is the origin of the theory that he had been in a 'safe house'. So, where on earth was he when he was unable to go home?

And then it is said that the MoD did not threaten Dr Kelly's pension, nor did it threaten him with action under the Official Secrets Act. But this leaves open the possibility that these threats were made by some other part of the Government machine.

Even if no such threat was made, the authorities had other ways of pressuring him. He may have been threatened with the loss of his very high security clearance, which would have stopped him working in the only field where he had expertise.

Dr Kelly is thought to have hoped to go to the USA to work as a consultant after his impending retirement. He is also said by friends to have loved and lived for his work. He is said to have wanted to raise money for medical treatment for his wife, who has been unwell. The British state would certainly have had the power to make it very difficult for him to work as a consultant in a field which is almost entirely controlled by governments.

We can only hope that the Judicial Inquiry examines this part of the story very carefully indeed. But just how far will it be allowed to go? Its terms of reference have already expanded and contracted like a concertina. A plan to have the proceedings televised has also been vetoed, so greatly reducing the impact and the tension of the hearings.

Even so, as various members of the Blair inner circle prepare to fall on their swords to save Mr Blair, it is clear that Downing Street knows that something pretty bad is going to come out. What is it? Who are the dark actors and what games were they playing?

The row is about the fact that the Government lied to persuade this country to go to war with Iraq. There is now no doubt of this. Saddam was no threat to this country. Even if he did have gas and germ weapons, everyone in the defence world knows that they were not for use against Britain or America, but against Iraq's main enemy, Iran. The allegations that he had revived his nuclear bomb programme are now utterly discredited.

So why the enormous row over one brief radio item, Andrew Gilligan's original report on the Today programme, and his article in The Mail on Sunday which named Alastair Campbell as the person responsible for distorting the evidence on Iraq's weapons?

As it happens, we know from Mr Campbell's own mouth that he was involved - as he should not have been - in the making and drafting of suggestions to the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

This amazing revelation, in Mr Campbell's memorandum to the Foreign Affairs Committee, was spotted and seized upon by Sir John Stanley during the committee's hearing on June 25. It cuts to ribbons Mr Blair's assertions that neutral civil servants were responsible for the documents about the Iraqi threat. If the highly political Mr Campbell was involved, then the JIC was no more neutral than the Downing Street Press Office.

We also know, from Dr Kelly's evidence to the committee, that Mr Campbell's name was mentioned in his conversation with Mr Gilligan. And Mr Campbell's name comes up in a tape of a parallel interview with Dr Kelly, by Susan Watts of the BBC Newsnight programme.

As for Mr Campbell's supposed rage about Mr Gilligan's report, it seems to have appeared from nowhere during Mr Campbell's committee hearing. Two weeks after the supposedly outrageous item was broadcast, BBC chiefs went to Downing Street for a lengthy meeting with Mr Blair and Mr Campbell. But nothing at all was said about Mr Gilligan. Not a word. yet within a fortnight, Mr Campbell was boiling with indignation about it in front of MPs and then later when he stormed on to the set of Channel Four News, jabbing his finger and giving a good impression of a man at the end of his tether.

But those who were there claim that Mr Campbell ended his performance with a huge stage wink, once the cameras turned away.

As all Fleet Street knows, Mr Campbell has a well tried technique for trying to stamp out inconvenient true stories. He finds a tiny fault in them, concentrates on that to the exclusion of all else, and hopes to discredit the story and its author by doing so. It often works.

Did Mr Campbell hope to undermine the true story that the Government had lied, by finding and magnifying a small and unimportant flaw in the Gilligan report? It would fit with his past performance.

But if so, the operation seems to have gone wrong. Dr Kelly, first exposed to the Press and then put up in front of MPs, was obviously supposed to say, quite clearly, that Andrew Gilligan had grossly exaggerated his briefing.

Dr Kelly did not perform as expected. His whole appearance was a strange, unconvincing mess, which left the MPs with the false impression that Mr Gilligan had another main source. We know that Dr Kelly told at least one untruth, saying that he had not spoken to the BBC reporter Gavin Hewitt when in fact he had.

And Dr Kelly, a man who had every reason to be confident if he told the truth, spoke so softly during the hearing that the air conditioning fans had to be turned off to make him audible - a clear sign of a man unhappy with what he was saying.

What if Dr Kelly had been promised forgiveness in return for destroying Andrew Gilligan, and then found he couldn't do it because the Gilligan report was in all important respects accurate?

Some in the BBC suspect that Gilligan had embellished his own report, and perhaps he had, but what if Dr Kelly knew that those embellishments were nothing like as important as the essential truth? What if, afterwards, the pressure on him was renewed? What if he was faced with a choice between professional ruin or telling a public lie? That could drive a man to bring about his own death in a ditch.

And if you doubt this, consider the way that, following the death of Dr Kelly, the Government looked so guilty. Did Mr Blair appear so old, deflated and ashen last Saturday because he was upset at the death of a man he didn't know, or because he knew his own agents had gone too far?

And then see how, with Dr Kelly dead and beyond the reach of the unnamed 'dark actors' playing games with his life, somebody else immediately came under savage pressure. That somebody was the entire BBC, which for the past week has faced the wrath of the semi official Murdoch Press, absurdly trying to blame it for Dr Kelly's death.

On Friday, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell blatantly threatened the Corporation with a review of its Charter which would ultimately destroy its independence and its existence.

Is Downing Street publicly doing to the BBC what it privately sought to do to Dr Kelly, crudely menacing it into acting as the Government wishes? Let us hope Lord Hutton finds out."

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/08/-the-david-kelly-conundrum.html