The Murder of Dr David Kelly

The Murder of Dr. David Kelly was published by Jim Rarey, a former newspaper editor and investigative reporter.

On Thursday, July 17th sometime between 3 and 3:30pm, Dr. David Kelly started out on his usual afternoon walk.

About 18 hours later, searchers found his body, left wrist slit, in a secluded lane on Harrowdown Hill.

Kelly, the U.K.'s premier microbiologist, was in the center of a political maelstrom having been identified as the 'leak' in information about the 'dossier' Prime Minister Tony Blair had used to justify the war against Iraq.

While the Hutton inquiry appears set to declare Kelly's death a suicide and the national media are already treating it as a given, there are numerous red flags raised in the testimony and evidence at the inquiry itself. Kelly's body was likely moved from where he died to the site where two search volunteers with a search dog found it. The body was propped up against a tree according to the testimony of both volunteers. The volunteers reported the find to police headquarters, Thames Valley Police (TVP) and then left the scene.

On their way back to their car, they met three police officers, one of them named Detective Constable Graham Peter Coe. Coe and his men were alone at the site for 25-30 minutes before the first police actually assigned to search the area arrived (Police Constables Sawyer and Franklin) and took charge of the scene from Coe. They found the body flat on its back a short distance from the tree, as did all subsequent witnesses. A logical explanation is that Dr. Kelly died at a different site and the body was transported to the place it was found.

This is buttressed by the medical findings of livor mortis (post mortem lividity), which indicates that Kelly died on his back, or at least was moved to that position shortly after his death. Propping the body against the tree was a mistake that had to be rectified. The search dog and its handler must have interrupted whoever was assigned to go back and move the body to its back before it was done. After the volunteers left the scene the body was moved to its back while DC Coe was at the scene.

Five witnesses said in their testimony that two men accompanied Coe. Yet, in his testimony, Coe maintained there was only one other beside himself. He was not questioned about the discrepancy. Researchers, including this writer, assume the presence of the 'third man' could not be satisfactorily explained and so was being denied. Additionally, Coe's explanation of why he was in the area is unsubstantiated.

To the contrary, when PC Franklin was asked if Coe was part of the search team he responded, 'No. He was at the scene. I had no idea what he was doing there or why he was there. He was just at the scene when PC Sawyer and I arrived.' Franklin was responsible for coordinating the search with the chief investigating officer and then turning it over to Sawyer to assemble the search team and take them to the assigned area. They were just starting to leave the station (about 9am on the 18th) to be the first search team on the ground (excepting the volunteers with the search dog) when they got word the body had been found.

A second red flag is the nature of the wounds on Kelly's wrist. Dr. Nicholas Hunt, who performed the autopsy, testified there were several superficial 'scratches' or cuts on the wrist and one deep wound that severed the ulnar artery but not the radial artery. The fact that the ulnar artery was severed, but not the radial artery, strongly suggests that the knife wound was inflicted drawing the blade from the inside of the wrist (the little finger side closest to the body) to the outside where the radial artery is located much closer to the surface of the skin than is the ulnar artery. For those familiar with first aid, the radial artery is the one used to determine the pulse rate.

Just hold your left arm out with the palm up and see how difficult it would be to slash across the wrist avoiding the radial artery while severing the ulnar artery. However, a second person situated to the left of Kelly who held or picked up the arm and slashed across the wrist would start on the inside of the wrist severing the ulnar artery first. A reasonably competent medical examiner or forensic pathologist would certainly be able to determine in which direction the knife was drawn across the wrist. That question was never asked nor the answer volunteered.

In fact, a complete autopsy report would state in which direction the wounds were inflicted. The coroner's inquest was never completed as it was preempted by the Hutton inquiry and the autopsy report will not be made public. Neither will the toxicology report.

Two paramedics who arrived by ambulance at the same time as Franklin and Sawyer (some time after 9am) and accompanied them to where the body was located. After checking the eyes and signs of a pulse or breathing, they attached four electro-cardiogram pads to Kelly's chest and hooked them up to a portable electro-cardiograph.

When no signs of heart activity were found they unofficially confirmed death. One paramedic (Vanessa Hunt) said the Police asked them to leave the pads on the body. The other paramedic (David Bartlett) said they always left the pads on the body. Both paramedics testified that DC Coe had two men with him. Curiously, both also volunteered that there was a surprisingly small amount of blood at the scene for an artery having been severed.

When the forensic pathologist (Dr. Nicholas Hunt) who performed the autopsy testified, he described copious amounts of blood at the scene. He also described scratches and bruises that Kelly 'stumbling around' in the heavy underbrush may have caused. He said there was no indication of a struggle or Kelly having been forcibly restrained.

However, the police made an extensive search of the area and found no indication of anyone, including Kelly, having been in the heavy underbrush. Strangely, none of the witnesses mentioned anything about rigor mortis (stiffening of the body) which is useful in setting the approximate time of death. Even Dr. Hunt, when was asked directly what changes on the body he observed that would have happened after death, failed to mention rigor mortis. He only named livor mortis.

Hunt set the time of death within a range of 4:15pm on the 17th to 1:15am the next morning. He based the estimate on body temperature which he did not take until 7:15pm on the 18th, some seven hours after he arrived on the scene. A forensic biologist (Roy James Green) had been asked to examine the scene. He said the amount of blood he saw was consistent with a severed artery.

Green works for the same private company (Forensic Alliance) as Dr. Hunt. A majority of the company's work is done for police organizations. The afternoon of the 18th DC Coe turned up at the Kelly residence accompanied by a man identified only as 'an attachment,' who acted as an 'exhibits officer' presumably collecting documents in behalf of some other government agency.

Detective Constable Coe and those accompanying him are somewhat of a mystery. There are no corroborating witnesses to any of his actions to which he testified (other than 'just being there' at the scene where the body was found). However, on a listing of evidence provided to the Hutton inquiry by Thames Valley Police is a reference to a document described thusly, 'TVP Tactical Support Major Incident Policy Book…

Between 1430 17.07.03 and 930 18.07.03. DCI Alan Young. It is labeled 'not for release – Police operational information.' Many of the exhibits are labeled that way or are not to be released as personal information. The police took over 300 statements from witnesses but less than 70 were forwarded to the Hutton inquiry.

Witness statements were not to be released (even to the inquiry) unless the witness signed an authorization permitting it. TVP also withheld witness interviews they did not consider 'relevant' to the inquiry. Witnesses were not put under oath so it is impossible for the public to know if their public statements are at variance with what they told police. The ‘tactical support' document must have been considered relevant to the inquiry on Kelly's death or it wouldn't have been forwarded.

So this 'tactical support' began at 2:30pm on the 17th, about one hour before Dr. Kelly left the house on his final walk. It ended at 9:30am the following morning about the time DC Coe and his men left the death scene. The obvious question is, to what was TVP giving tactical support? The name given the effort was 'Operation Mason.'

In 1984 Dr. Kelly was invited by the Ministry of Defense (MoD) to take the position of chief microbiologist at its secret facility at Porton Down. Kelly had been working in the NERC Institute of Virology in Oxford. He brought a number of scientists with him from there to Porton Down.

At the Hutton inquiry, Brian Jones testified as to Kelly's involvement, with the highest security clearance, in analyzing top-secret information regarding biological weapons of the U.K. and other governments. Jones was director of a department on the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS). That involvement, beginning in 1987, presumably continued until his death and through his several other jobs as weapons 'inspector' in Russia and (for UNSCOM) in Iraq.

It was before and during Kelly's tenure at Porton Down that it became involved with South Africa's bioweapon program named Project Coast. A cardiologist named Wouter Basson who was the personal physician of South African Prime Minister Botha headed the project.

After the apartheid government fell, there was a nearly two-year trial of Basson who was charged with numerous crimes including murder and misappropriation of project funds. During the trial several astounding revelations came out. (Basson was acquitted of all charges by a judge who would not let him take the fall for an official government program.)

Basson was said to have had entrée not only to Porton Down but the U.S. Army facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland (the U.S. counterpart of Porton Down). The two main thrusts of Project Coast were developing genetically altered diseases that would affect only groups with similar DNA characteristics, e.g. blacks, and weapons to be used in assassination of individuals. Two (as yet unidentified) scientists working at Porton Down were also paid consultants to Basson's projects.

The CIA in the U.S. contributed to Basson's efforts through Dr. Larry Ford. Ford was set up as co-president of a laboratory supposedly developing a feminine birth control device that would also protect against AIDS. The company never had a product or any sales.

According to an undercover FBI informant, Ford did develop an 'anti-black' product he delivered to an attaché of the South African government in California. Ford was later killed by a shotgun blast that was ruled a suicide. At the time he was under suspicion of involvement in the attempted assassination of his partner in the CIA front. Ford had made several trips to South Africa in connection with Project Coast.

In 1989, Vladimir Pasechnik, head of the Soviet bioweapons program at its Biopreparat facility, defected to the U.K. His revelations of Soviet activity created a diplomatic uproar over violations of the 1972 treaty banning such activity that had been pushed and signed by the U.K., U.S. and USSR.

Dr. Kelly and Christopher Davis of the U.K and U.S. microbiology experts debriefed Pasechnik. Davis, who comes out of MoD Intelligence, was at the time an employee of Veridian Corp., which has an interesting history.

According to mind control researcher David Hoffman, in 1946 Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory was founded including the 'Fund for the Study of Human Ecology.' The 'fund' was a CIA financing conduit for mind control experiments by émigré Nazi scientists and others under the direction of CIA doctors Sidney Gotttlieb, Ewen Cameron and Louis Jolyn West. Gottlieb, of course was the director of the CIA's infamous MK-ULTRA mind control program.

Cornell was later absorbed into Calspan Advanced Technology Center in Buffalo, NY . The company continued experiments in mind control and artificial intelligence. In 1997 Calspan was in turn absorbed by Veridian Corp. Veridian (Calspan) is deeply involved in artificial intelligence. In August of this year giant defense contractor General Dynamics acquired Veridian-Calspan.

Here is a strange 'coincidence.' After Timothy McVeigh left the army, he joined the Army National Guard in Buffalo . He landed a job with Burns International Security and was assigned to guard the premises of (you guessed it) Calspan. McVeigh had told friends the army had implanted a microchip in him during the Gulf war. (We now know that a number of soldiers were implanted with microchips explained as an experiment to keep track of their locations during battle.) The CIA doctors at Calspan were experimenting with merging brain cells with microchips.

Pasechnik was put to work at Porton Down where he remained until set up with his own company. Three weeks after the mailed anthrax attacks in the U.S., He died, 'apparently' of a stroke. Strangely, the death was announced by Christopher Davis. His death began a string of mysterious deaths and obvious murders of world-class microbiologists, which continues to this day. Dr. Kelly's death is one of those but not the latest.

One of the most disturbing deaths is that of Harvard scientist Don C. Wiley. Wiley was one of America's preeminent researchers into infectious diseases and HIV in particular. After years of meticulous research, Wiley had just scored a breakthrough by identifying the properties of the HIV virus that make it infectious and how it avoids destruction by the antigens in the human immune system.

In theory, the discovery has application to other viruses that cause diseases. Viruses, as opposed to bacteria, seem to be immune to treatment by antibiotics.

The dark side of the discovery, as Wiley himself discussed, is that the same information could be used to change relatively benign viruses into killers. **(See footnote on this author's three-part series on 'Anthrax, GOCO's and Designer Germs.')

In 1991, a team of U.S. and U.K scientists, including Kelly and Davis, made a trip to the USSR to inspect Biopreparat facilities at four locations. Their host was deputy chief of the program, Kanatjan Alibekov, who would later 'defect' to the U.S. and change his name to Ken Alibek. Kelly made several inspection trips to Russia.

Dr. Kelly was described by his contemporaries as an iron-willed individual who did not hesitate to challenge Russian and Iraqi authorities and scientists. However, he may have been a bit naïve concerning three individuals with whom he had extensive communications, all three women.

Judith Miller of the New York Times (NYT) exchanged numerous e-mails with Kelly. The Pulitzer Prize winner is a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and through her articles in the paper the most prominent of those warning of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The second 'confidant' of Kelly's was Olivia Bosch, a senior research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA). The RIIA, also known as Chatham House, is the U.K counterpart of the CFR. Both organizations were set up by the financial elite to work for a one-world government. Both wield inordinate influence on the governments in their respective countries. Kelly had recently joined the RIIA.

The third woman is a real-life Mata Hari. Mai Pederson met Kelly in Iraq where her cover was as a translator. She is a U.S. Army intelligence agent. Mai was instrumental in Kelly's conversion to the Baha'i faith.

The first inspection trip was dramatized in a Frontline production in 1998 entitled 'Plague War' shown on PBS in the U.S. and BBC in the U.K. Its main theme was that only Russia had violated the 1972 treaty but the U.S. and U.K. had abated their programs.

Co-author of the script for the program was Tom Mangold, a sometime author and until very recently a BBC employee (propagandist?). Mangold was one of the earliest writers to proclaim Kelly's death as a suicide and has written articles 'explaining' why Kelly killed himself. He bills himself as a 'best friend' of Kelly but had to admit to the Hutton inquiry that his contacts with Kelly had been relatively few and mostly by e-mail.

When Alibek defected to the U.S. in 1992 he underwent extensive debriefing by, among others, Davis and William Patrick ('father' of the U.S. bioweapons program and a CIA consultant). He was then rewarded with a job at BMI and became a CIA consultant. He is currently president of a subsidiary of Hadron, the defense contractor that peddled the PROMIS software to various governments (with a backdoor in the software) that resulted in an intelligence bonanza for the U.S.

According to author Gordon Thomas, Kelly maintained close communications with Alibek, Patrick and other scientists in the U.S. Thomas reports that Kelly had contacts only weeks before two of the scientists died violent deaths. One was Dr. Don Wiley.

In the months before his death, Dr. Kelly became embroiled in a shouting match between the British government and BBC. Andrew Gilligan, a reporter for BBC claimed that Kelly had given him and other reporters information that proved the government had exaggerated the Iraqi danger in its 'dossier' justifying the war against Iraq and that Kelly had not been completely honest in telling his MoD superiors what he had disclosed to them. Writer Tom Mangold (it's not clear when he left the employ of BBC) used this to reason that Kelly's loss of integrity at being exposed as a 'liar' was what led him to suicide.

Mangold was not the only one to push the suicide angle. After Kelly's death, Foreign Office diplomat David Broucher made headlines around the world when he claimed Kelly had said if Iraq was attacked he might be 'found dead in the woods.' Broucher testified the remark was made at the end of a meeting he had with Kelly in February of this year in Geneva where they discussed the WMD 'dossier.' He said he didn't think much of it at the time but in retrospect Kelly may have been considering suicide then.

When Kelly's daughter Rachel testified at the inquiry, she proved through her father's diaries that the only time he had been in Geneva, and the only time he ever met Broucher, was a year earlier in February of 2002. There was not even a draft of the 'dossier' in existence at that time suggesting that Broucher's story was fiction.

Actually, the opposite of the Mangold thesis appears to be the truth. Kelly was treated badly by MoD over the last three years of his life. He had not had a salary increase in three years as he approached retirement where his pension would be a function of salary. At one time he was told there would be reorganization within the intelligence operation and he would get a sizeable increase in salary. That didn't happen. Kelly had written several letters about his position and, according to his widow, was quite upset and frustrated about it (not despondent and suicidal).

Kelly had voluntarily disclosed to MoD his contacts with the media. To his dying day, he maintained that he had not provided all the information Gilligan attributed to him. Nevertheless, Kelly was hauled before the Joint Intelligence Committee for a grilling.

The final affront came in a mandated one-on-one session with MoD Personnel Director Richard Hatfield. MoD, with the approval of Tony Blair, had devised an orchestrated charade to 'out' Kelly as the source of the 'leak. Hatfield, head of the department that had been jerking Kelly around for three years, was supposed to get Kelly's acquiescence in the plan. Somehow, he never got around to the subject.

Subsequently, at an MoD press conference, through a series of disclosures to the press, the MoD confirmed Kelly as the leak (as previously planned) when a reporter asked if Kelly was the one.

Understandably, this treatment would have made Kelly a resentful employee. In intelligence circles, resentful employees are considered 'unstable' and security risks. Kelly had for years maintained his silence about his extensive knowledge of the bio-warfare weapons of at least four countries. Had it become imperative that the silence be made permanent?