The Corruption of New Labour: Britain’s Watergate?

[John Simkin]

I think it is also important to take stock of the smaller scale but much more widespread corruption in schools that has occurred since local financial management was introduced by the Education Reform Act 1988.

Failure to properly tender for services, misappropriation of school budgets through cronyism, ineffective auditing, lack of effective local authority control are all depressingly common features of many state schools.

Although we can scarcely blame Mr Blair for the ERA it is undeniable that he has created a climate where such practises are seen as the acceptable norm for the "charismatic leaders" who now lead schools.

Blair can be blamed for not removing the legislation brought in by the Tories that made it possible for this corruption to take place.

The link between loans, donations and benefits could be broken very easily. A law should be passed stating that no individual or corporate body should be able to tender for a contract or receive any public benefit (incluiding honours) if they have loaned or donated to a political party.

[John Simkin]

Good article on this subject in today's Guardian:

Peter Wilby

Wednesday July 19, 2006

The Guardian

What really changed the Labour party was not Tony Blair's election as leader in 1994 or his later success in ditching clause 4, or even the first astonishing landslide in 1997. It was the 2001 election. Then, for the first time, the majority of Labour's vote came from what political scientists call the middle classes. Even more important was another first: campaign donations from business exceeded donations from the trade unions.

This was the fulfilment of Blair's ambition. He wanted to free Labour from its historic obligations to the unions, which in his view were unpopular, backward-looking and selfish. The arrest of Lord Levy, in connection with the police inquiry into cash-for-honours, and the allegations of sleaze that now surround Downing Street are only the most headline-grabbing results of that Blair project.

Big capital now controls the British state more effectively than the big union battalions ever did, even under a Labour government. It is deeply unfashionable to suggest there was anything to be said for the old system, where the unions financed one big party and business the other. But why is it an improvement for business to support all the major parliamentary parties? The Scottish Nationalists alone thought the selling of honours might be a matter for the police. Why is it more acceptable for a Bernie Ecclestone or a Lakshmi Mittal or a Gulam Noon to wield influence than it was for one of the union barons of old, such as Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon? The union influence, unlike the influence of capital, was transparent and accountable. The unions' donations and loans were never secret - they could not be, because they had to tell their members how they were spending their money - and nor were their meetings with ministers.

The selling of honours may be a criminal offence but, in the larger scheme of things, it is a fairly minor matter. True, business people value a title because it always looks good on the company notepaper, particularly overseas. Peerages enhance the brand, the most precious asset of any modern business. But employers didn't throw in their lot with New Labour just so they could all wear ermine; they could have got that from the Tories. They saw two significant advantages in supporting the Blair project.

The first was that they headed off any prospect of a government that might come to power on a programme of high company taxation and regulation, and repeal of anti-union legislation. A business-friendly Labour government is preferable to a business-friendly Tory government - even if a Labour one isn't quite as friendly - because it removes any threat of power falling to a hostile party. For all new Labour's travails, that holds as true now as it did in 1997. It's unlikely that Gordon Brown will be as red as some Labour MPs hope; a more realistic prospect is that Labour, back in opposition, returns to anti-business, pro-union type. Safer, then, to keep New Labour in power and close off options to the left.

The second reason for supporting New Labour is its commitment to expansion and modernisation of public services. This sounds paradoxical; business usually favours a small state. The Tories, if they had spent long enough in power, might have moved towards outright privatisation of, for example, education and health services. Schools and hospitals would have been run as independent commercial enterprises, with the state's role confined to handing out vouchers that allow parents and patients to "buy" services.

That sounds good for business; it could make profits from public services, which tend to occupy areas where growth is most likely over the coming decades. In reality Labour, mainly through private finance initiative (PFI) projects, has developed far more attractive channels for private capital to invest in the public sector. In return for building hospitals or schools, companies are offered, in effect, a guaranteed income stream for running services over 20 or 30 years.

So lucrative and risk-free are these deals that many companies that entered early PFI contracts could refinance their borrowings at much lower rates of interest, thus boosting profits to stratospheric levels. In some cases, according to the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, shareholders enjoyed returns of more than 100%. They could not have dreamed of such rewards if they had set up and run schools in a genuinely open and competitive market, with all its risks of failure.

Moreover - as shown in David Craig's Plundering the Public Sector, published in the spring - New Labour has virtually handed over management of the public sector to private consultants. The NHS, the Benefits Agency, magistrates courts and other arms of the state have been "modernised" under the supervision of consultants, with dubious results and at an estimated cost of £70bn. No wonder that, just before the 2005 general election, a top consultant, writing in his trade magazine, advised colleagues to follow their wallets and vote Labour.

Given how New Labour has turned the public sector into a cash cow for private companies, there was never much need to sell peerages. The Blair governments have offered rich rewards to big business, rewards that are far greater than their Labour predecessors offered to the unions. The idea, propagated by sections of the press, that union paymasters dictated to Labour governments is a myth. True, trade unions had a big voice in legislation, particularly in employment legislation; but again, why is it all right for, say, Rupert Murdoch - who is not even a British citizen - to dictate government policy, but not acceptable for the representatives of millions of employees to be heard?

The unions, in any case, delivered to the last pre-Blair Labour government an extraordinary period of pay restraint which, in a period of high inflation, saw the average worker's purchasing power fall by 7% in two years. The then permanent secretary at the Department of Employment called it "the most severe cut in real wages in 20 years". Pay restraint collapsed - and with it James Callaghan's government - only because Labour tried to push it a stage too far.

No pay restraint has ever been delivered by, or demanded of, big business. Year by year, company executives award themselves substantial pay bonuses of 10%, 20%, 30% or more, while their employees struggle by on 2% or 3% rises. There is nothing anybody can do about it, because unions are so weakened by the Tory legislation of the 1980s, which Labour has largely failed to reverse, and nobody now would dream of an incomes policy.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Brown has failed to reverse significantly the rising inequalities of income and wealth. Pre-tax differentials are widening faster than the chancellor can adapt the tax and benefit system to compensate. The balance between bosses and workers has been tilted decisively in favour of the former. And the balance will not be corrected as long as business has the two main parties (and increasingly the third as well) firmly under its thumb.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...1823808,00.html

[John Simkin]

Under the City Academy scheme, public assets (land, buildings paid for by public funds, an income stream) are handed over to private entities to run schools. There is no choice, there is no competition, there is no market. It is unclear how the government can get this assets back. I suppose we will be told, like the railways, water, etc., that we can't afford to bring them back into private ownership. Much of the land is high value land in inner city areas. Not a bad investment for £2 million plus a small donation to party funds!

[John Simkin]

I see that Lord Levy's secretary, Jean Cobb, was awarded a MBE when she retired. You can just imagine what was said at the interview: "I'm afraid the pay is not very good but the staff benefits are excellent. Do you fancy an MBE instead of a gold watch when you retire."

[John Simkin]

It seems that this will cause the biggest problem of all for Tony Blair:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...amp;in_a_source

Why I believe David Kelly's death may have been murder, by MP

By DAN NEWLING, Daily Mail

David Kelly did not commit suicide and may have been the victim of a murder and subsequent coverup, according to a campaigning MP.

Norman Baker has spent six months investigating the death of the Government weapons expert, found dead in an Oxfordshire wood three years ago.

Mr Baker - who stepped down from the Liberal Democrat front bench to carry out his investigation - published his preliminary results and called for a new public inquiry.

His concerns begin with the method of Dr Kelly's supposed suicide, cutting a minor artery with a blunt gardening knife.

He would have been the only person that year to have successfully killed themselves that way in the UK.

The scientist's family and friends insist he had shown no sign of feeling suicidal. Emails and the minutes of meetings he attended also showed him behaving perfectly normally - and he was looking forward to his daughter's wedding.

Mr Baker also questions the painkillers Dr Kelly is said to have taken, not least because the levels found in his stomach were incompatible with his supposed consumption.

There are also basic questions about the police investigation - including the appearance beside Dr Kelly's body of a bottle of water, knife and watch which the people who found him say they did not see.

On the Hutton Inquiry itself, Mr Baker - whose conclusions were outlined in the Mail on Sunday - says Lord Hutton was completely out of his depth.

He had never chaired such an important inquiry and had a history of making pro-Government decisions as a judge. The MP claims Hutton was personally selected for the job by Tony Blair's close friend Charles Falconer, the Lord Chancellor.

The tragic story began in May 2003 when BBC radio journalist Andrew Gilligan alleged that the Government had deliberately 'sexed up' a dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion.

The Government went on the offensive and eventually exposed Dr Kelly as the BBC man's source, a move which thrust the publicity-shy scientist into a media storm.

Days later, the 59-year-old father of three was found slumped under a tree five miles from his home in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

'More than enough cause to reopen the inquest' - Baker

The Government immediately set up an inquiry under Lord Hutton to investigate the death. The two-month probe concluded that the scientist had taken his own life.

Mr Baker has consistently been a thorn in the Government's side. He previously revealed former minister Peter Mandelson's links to the Hinduja brothers, who were granted British passports shortly after investing money to the Millennium Dome.

He claimed that since the Hutton Inquiry concluded, there has been 'growing public disquiet' about Dr Kelly's death.

He said: "Any reasonable person looking at the evidence would, at the very least, agree that further investigation is necessary.

"If it wasn't suicide, then clearly Dr Kelly was bumped off. My aim is to find out exactly what happened. Frankly, there is more than enough cause to reopen the inquest."

Mr Baker's investigation comes after three senior doctors claimed the official cause of death - a severed ulnar artery in the wrist - was extremely unlikely to be fatal.

David Halpin, Stephen Frost and Searle Sennett said: "Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss."

Mr Baker said that, according to the Office for National Statistics, Dr Kelly was the only person in 2003 to kill themselves that way. He says a scientist would have cut a larger artery, ensuring a swift death.

Although Dr Kelly was facing intense pressure over his exposure as the BBC source, Mr Baker produces evidence that he did not appear depressed.

Two days before his death, he made jokes at a Government committee meeting. On the day he disappeared, he spoke of returning to Iraq in the future.

He was a member of the Baha'i faith, which forbids suicide, and one of his daughters was about to marry. Dr Kelly's sister Sarah Pape, a consultant plastic surgeon, told the Hutton Inquiry: "In my line of work I deal with people who may have suicidal thoughts, and I ought to be able to spot those even in a phone conversation.

"But I have gone over in my mind the two conversations we had and he certainly did not betray to me any impression that he was anything other than tired.

"He certainly did not convey to me that he was feeling depressed and absolutely nothing that would have alerted me to the fact that he may have been considering suicide."

An inquest into Dr Kelly's death was opened, but never concluded as the Hutton Inquiry was deemed to have served the same purpose. Mr Baker criticises this decision, arguing that, unlike an inquest, the Hutton Inquiry did not have the power to subpoena witnesses or make them give evidence under oath.

He says: "What was the point of setting up an inquiry to look into the circumstances of Dr Kelly's death when the facts had, it appeared, already been decided?"

Peter Jacobsen, solicitor for Dr Kelly's widow, said the family would not comment.

[John Simkin]

I have just heard the Jeremy Vine interview with Norman Baker. The evidence he presented made it clear that David Kelly had not committed suicide. Vine asked him who had a motive to kill Kelly. Baker replied that he suspected that Kelly was murdered because he had more information to reveal concerning the cover-up. The three possible organizations behind the murder were listed in the following order:

1. US intelligence agencies.

2. The UK government.

3. The UK intelligence agencies.

[John Simkin]

You can read more information on the David Kelly case here:

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/category.asp?id=40

[John Simkin]

Will we ever be told the truth about the death of Dr David Kelly?

by MELANIE PHILLIPS

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...ticle_id=397340

24th July 2006

Everyone knows, don't they, that most untoward events generally have banal explanations such as muddle, incompetence or sheer blind chance.

To believe otherwise is to run the risk of being branded a 'conspiracy theorist', a small step away from being lumped together with the kind of people who think that crop circles are designed by visitors from Mars or that Princess Diana was murdered by MI6.

The death of the weapons inspector Dr David Kelly in 2003 triggered a political firestorm of the highest order. His apparent suicide put the Government under enormous pressure following his unmasking as the source of the BBC's claim that the Government had 'sexed up' the case for war in Iraq.

All attention focused on the epic battle between Alastair Campbell and the BBC over this claim, and the treatment the Government meted out to Dr Kelly.

Even though the inquiry into the affair by Lord Hutton exonerated ministers and officials of virtually all charges, merely rebuking them for not having warned Dr Kelly that his name was about to be made public, the Government was still widely blamed for driving him to his death.

Right from the start, however, there were many who were not convinced Dr Kelly had taken his own life at all. Many aspects of the story just didn't seem to add up. First was the character of the man and his demeanour on the day he died.

Although he was under intense pressure, he was known to be a strong character and belonged to the Baha'i faith, which prohibits suicide.

Those closest to him (such as his sister), and even neighbours he met on his last walk, said that on the day he died he had shown no signs of depression.

The Hutton inquiry, and the experts it called, dismissed out of hand any idea that Dr Kelly had not killed himself. But the suspicions wouldn't go away, and developed a life of their own on the internet.

Claims were made that Dr Kelly's body had been moved from its original prone position on the ground, and propped up against a tree. Items said to have been found near his body had not been seen by the paramedics who first found him. And so on.

Such claims were given considerably more authority in 2004 when three medical specialists wrote in a letter to the Press that they did not believe the official finding that Dr Kelly died either from haemorrhaging from a severed ulnar artery in his wrist, or from an overdose of coproxamol tablets, or a combination of the two.

Such an artery, they said, was of matchstick thickness and severing it would not lead to the kind of blood loss that would kill someone. They also pointed out that, according to the ambulance team at the scene, the quantity of blood around the body was minimal — hardly what one would expect if someone has just haemorrhaged to death.

Even stranger, although Dr Kelly was said to have swallowed 29 coproxamol tablets, only one-fifth of one tablet was found in his stomach, and the level found in his blood was far less than a fatal dose.

Despite the expertise of these sceptics, their claims went largely unnoticed. The implications seemed too far-fetched to be taken seriously. After all, if Dr Kelly did not commit suicide, and clearly didn't just drop dead of natural causes, he must have been killed.

Who could have done such a deed? The Iraqi secret service? Our own? Shadowy terrorists lying in wait in the Oxfordshire woods armed with undetectable poisons and an array of evidence to lay a false trail and bamboozle everyone?

No, this kind of thinking properly belonged in the pages of John Le Carre's fiction.

But now, it has not only been taken up within Parliament, but the original charges of inconsistency have been embellished with much more evidence which can no longer be ignored.

The tenacious Lib Dem MP Norman Baker gave up his front-bench job to investigate these claims. What he has uncovered is remarkable and poses questions which demand to be answered.

Mr Baker has not only found experts who confirm the analysis of the three doctors about the discrepancies and scientific improbabilities in the official account.

He has also discovered that only one person in the UK was said to have killed himself by slitting his ulnar artery that year — and that was Dr Kelly.

This is hardly surprising since this is just about the most improbable way to commit suicide, made even more difficult by the inappropriate knife that Dr Kelly is said to have used.

More explosively still, however, are Mr Baker's discoveries (published in yesterday's Mail on Sunday) about the behaviour of the police and the coroner.

The normal practice in such circumstances would be for the coroner to issue a temporary death certificate pending the official inquiry into such a death.

But in this case, the coroner issued an unprecedented full death certificate, just one week after the inquiry started into the circumstances of Dr Kelly's demise — and after the coroner had held a meeting with Home Office officials.

What on earth could have been the point of such a meeting at such a sensitive time, except for the Government to direct the coroner in some unspecified and possibly improper way?

As for the police, their behaviour appears to have been even more bizarre.

According to Mr Baker, their operation to investigate Dr Kelly's death started around nine hours before the weapons expert was reported missing. What astounding prescience! With such psychic powers among the police, one wonders there is any crime at all.

Many of these curiosities surfaced in evidence to the Hutton inquiry, only to be batted away. Lord Hutton's brief was simply to inquire into 'the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly'. Clearly, he could have investigated the manner of his death, but he chose not to do so.

Instead, he took it as a given that Dr Kelly had taken his own life — and stated that he was satisfied by claims which we are now told were scientifically impossible, that Dr Kelly killed himself by slitting his left wrist and that his death was hastened by the number of coproxamol tablets he had taken.

Mr Baker claims that Lord Hutton was chosen at speed by a cabal around the Prime Minister because he was inexperienced and could be relied upon to toe the line.

When his report exonerated the Government, he was rounded upon as a patsy by those who were certain that it had Dr Kelly's blood on its hands. But maybe, just like Lord Hutton himself, such critics missed the fact that he had asked the wrong questions altogether.

Now, it has taken just one terrier-like MP to unearth all this information.

Why has no official body asked the same questions about all these obvious peculiarities? Why has no one given a straight answer to those who have raised them?

What is the point of going to the expense and public performance of a high-profile official inquiry, only to find that the most basic of questions about evidence that is either contradictory or doesn't stand up to scrutiny haven't even been asked?

In the light of all this, the coroner's decision not to resume the inquest into Dr Kelly's death because there were 'no exceptional circumstances' appears totally unsustainable. A full inquest is now imperative to get to the bottom of this disturbing mystery once and for all.

[John Simkin]

Will we ever be told the truth about the death of Dr David Kelly?

by MELANIE PHILLIPS

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...ticle_id=397340

24th July 2006

Everyone knows, don't they, that most untoward events generally have banal explanations such as muddle, incompetence or sheer blind chance.

To believe otherwise is to run the risk of being branded a 'conspiracy theorist', a small step away from being lumped together with the kind of people who think that crop circles are designed by visitors from Mars or that Princess Diana was murdered by MI6.

The death of the weapons inspector Dr David Kelly in 2003 triggered a political firestorm of the highest order. His apparent suicide put the Government under enormous pressure following his unmasking as the source of the BBC's claim that the Government had 'sexed up' the case for war in Iraq.

All attention focused on the epic battle between Alastair Campbell and the BBC over this claim, and the treatment the Government meted out to Dr Kelly.

Even though the inquiry into the affair by Lord Hutton exonerated ministers and officials of virtually all charges, merely rebuking them for not having warned Dr Kelly that his name was about to be made public, the Government was still widely blamed for driving him to his death.

Right from the start, however, there were many who were not convinced Dr Kelly had taken his own life at all. Many aspects of the story just didn't seem to add up. First was the character of the man and his demeanour on the day he died.

Although he was under intense pressure, he was known to be a strong character and belonged to the Baha'i faith, which prohibits suicide.

Those closest to him (such as his sister), and even neighbours he met on his last walk, said that on the day he died he had shown no signs of depression.

The Hutton inquiry, and the experts it called, dismissed out of hand any idea that Dr Kelly had not killed himself. But the suspicions wouldn't go away, and developed a life of their own on the internet.

Claims were made that Dr Kelly's body had been moved from its original prone position on the ground, and propped up against a tree. Items said to have been found near his body had not been seen by the paramedics who first found him. And so on.

Such claims were given considerably more authority in 2004 when three medical specialists wrote in a letter to the Press that they did not believe the official finding that Dr Kelly died either from haemorrhaging from a severed ulnar artery in his wrist, or from an overdose of coproxamol tablets, or a combination of the two.

Such an artery, they said, was of matchstick thickness and severing it would not lead to the kind of blood loss that would kill someone. They also pointed out that, according to the ambulance team at the scene, the quantity of blood around the body was minimal — hardly what one would expect if someone has just haemorrhaged to death.

Even stranger, although Dr Kelly was said to have swallowed 29 coproxamol tablets, only one-fifth of one tablet was found in his stomach, and the level found in his blood was far less than a fatal dose.

Despite the expertise of these sceptics, their claims went largely unnoticed. The implications seemed too far-fetched to be taken seriously. After all, if Dr Kelly did not commit suicide, and clearly didn't just drop dead of natural causes, he must have been killed.

Who could have done such a deed? The Iraqi secret service? Our own? Shadowy terrorists lying in wait in the Oxfordshire woods armed with undetectable poisons and an array of evidence to lay a false trail and bamboozle everyone?

No, this kind of thinking properly belonged in the pages of John Le Carre's fiction.

But now, it has not only been taken up within Parliament, but the original charges of inconsistency have been embellished with much more evidence which can no longer be ignored.

The tenacious Lib Dem MP Norman Baker gave up his front-bench job to investigate these claims. What he has uncovered is remarkable and poses questions which demand to be answered.

Mr Baker has not only found experts who confirm the analysis of the three doctors about the discrepancies and scientific improbabilities in the official account.

He has also discovered that only one person in the UK was said to have killed himself by slitting his ulnar artery that year — and that was Dr Kelly.

This is hardly surprising since this is just about the most improbable way to commit suicide, made even more difficult by the inappropriate knife that Dr Kelly is said to have used.

More explosively still, however, are Mr Baker's discoveries (published in yesterday's Mail on Sunday) about the behaviour of the police and the coroner.

The normal practice in such circumstances would be for the coroner to issue a temporary death certificate pending the official inquiry into such a death.

But in this case, the coroner issued an unprecedented full death certificate, just one week after the inquiry started into the circumstances of Dr Kelly's demise — and after the coroner had held a meeting with Home Office officials.

What on earth could have been the point of such a meeting at such a sensitive time, except for the Government to direct the coroner in some unspecified and possibly improper way?

As for the police, their behaviour appears to have been even more bizarre.

According to Mr Baker, their operation to investigate Dr Kelly's death started around nine hours before the weapons expert was reported missing. What astounding prescience! With such psychic powers among the police, one wonders there is any crime at all.

Many of these curiosities surfaced in evidence to the Hutton inquiry, only to be batted away. Lord Hutton's brief was simply to inquire into 'the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly'. Clearly, he could have investigated the manner of his death, but he chose not to do so.

Instead, he took it as a given that Dr Kelly had taken his own life — and stated that he was satisfied by claims which we are now told were scientifically impossible, that Dr Kelly killed himself by slitting his left wrist and that his death was hastened by the number of coproxamol tablets he had taken.

Mr Baker claims that Lord Hutton was chosen at speed by a cabal around the Prime Minister because he was inexperienced and could be relied upon to toe the line.

When his report exonerated the Government, he was rounded upon as a patsy by those who were certain that it had Dr Kelly's blood on its hands. But maybe, just like Lord Hutton himself, such critics missed the fact that he had asked the wrong questions altogether.

Now, it has taken just one terrier-like MP to unearth all this information.

Why has no official body asked the same questions about all these obvious peculiarities? Why has no one given a straight answer to those who have raised them?

What is the point of going to the expense and public performance of a high-profile official inquiry, only to find that the most basic of questions about evidence that is either contradictory or doesn't stand up to scrutiny haven't even been asked?

In the light of all this, the coroner's decision not to resume the inquest into Dr Kelly's death because there were 'no exceptional circumstances' appears totally unsustainable. A full inquest is now imperative to get to the bottom of this disturbing mystery once and for all.

Rixon Stewart has argued that this article is an example of a "limited hangout". The term was first explained by CIA agent, Victor Marchetti in an article he wrote in 1978:

A few months ago, in March, there was a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., the plush home of America's super spooks overlooking the Potomac River. It was attended by several high-level clandestine officers and some former top officials of the agency.

The topic of discussion was: What to do about recent revelations associating President Kennedy's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, with the spy game played between the U.S. and the USSR? (Spotlight, May 8, 1978.) A decision was made, and a course of action determined. They were calculated to both fascinate and confuse the public by staging a clever "limited hangout" when the House Special Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) holds its open hearings, beginning later this month.

A "limited hangout" is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting - sometimes even volunteering some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.

Rixon Stewart argues that "Melanie Phillips quickly reveals herself to be the sort of journalist regularly used by Britain’s security establishment to do their dirty work." Stewart claims that the purpose of Phillips' article is to the “Iraqi secret service” for the murder. As everyone knows, in the past, Phillips has been a strong supporter of the crimes committed by the Israeli government.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=4860

[John Simkin]

The Murder Of Dr. David Kelly

Medium Rare

By Jim Rarey

10-14-3

This first part lays out the case from the evidence presented in the Hutton inquiry why the death of Dr. David Kelly was not by suicide. Part two will show the reasons, in this writer's opinion, Dr. Kelly was killed.)

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 UK'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 coronerâs 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 19th, 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 ãnot 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 part two of this report, we will lay out some of the reasons (that you won't see in the national media) Dr. Kelly could not be allowed to live.)

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its entirety.

http://www.rense.com/general43/kelly.htm

The author is a freelance writer based in Romulus, Michigan. He is a former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs administrator and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S. Constitution.

[John Simkin]

An email from someone who has taken an interest in this case:

A contact of mine, a former MI6 spook, was speaking about the circumstances of Kelly's death. He said he's been taught how to "make anything look like anything" and said that there must have been some kind of struggle at the scene of Kelly's death. He said it was sloppy work that Kelly's body was found with enough pills for an overdose but hadn't ingested them, he said that should have been removed from the scene under normal procedure. He added "You can slit someone's wrists and make it look like suicide easily but it's a lot harder to make someone swallow tablets." He also said the heart monitor pads found on Kelly's chest were "simply there to make sure he was dead." He also said those should have been removed and suspects the agents involved were disturbed by someone in the process of the killing.

[John Simkin]

You can see a video of Norman Baker discussing the death of Dr. David Kelly here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4780290451650428491

Also see Tom Mangold's interview afterwards.

Norman Baker's Mail on Sunday's article can be read here:

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=4852

[John Simkin]

Here are some passages from Norman Baker's article that I want to discuss:

(1) The weeks leading up to Dr Kelly's death in 2003 had been charged and eventful. In mid-March, British and American forces had invaded Iraq. Saddam Hussein was deposed and on May 1, US President George Bush declared 'mission accomplished', a claim that rings rather hollow now. Then, on May29, came the allegations, broadcast by the BBC, that the intelligence information about Iraq, which in an unprecedented move the Government had decided to release, had been 'sexed up' to make the case for war stronger, particularly with the assertion that Saddam could have chemical or biological ready to fire within 45 minutes.

No 10's director of communications, Alastair Campbell, went ballistic and launched a blistering attack on the BBC, determined in particular to wreck the career of Today programme reporter Andrew Gilligan. David Kelly had provided Mr Gilligan and others in the BBC with much of the ammunition for the claim that the dossier released by the Government to justify war had been presented in a way that stretched the available intelligence to breaking point. He, along with others in the know, was deeply unhappy about the added spin.

In the end, to further the Government's vendetta with the BBC, the Ministry of Defence and No 10 acted to ensure Dr Kelly's name became public. He was thrust into the unwelcome glare of publicity and made to appear in a Soviet-style televised appearance before the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

(2) The standard explanation then was that Dr Kelly, a very private man, felt humiliated by this process and let down by the MoD, and he recognised that his actions in speaking to journalists would bring his career to an effective end. They would certainly prevent him from returning to Iraq to do what he did best and enjoyed most uncovering hidden weapons and weapons programmes, so making the world a safer place. And so, according to this view, he left his cottage in Southmoor, walked into the woods and took his own life through a combination of wrist injuries and an overdose of the painkiller co-proxamol. A personal tragedy but nothing more. Case closed.

Except I never subscribed to this conclusion. There were too many unanswered questions, none of which was resolved by the Hutton Inquiry As time has gone by, those questions have gnawed away at me. And I am not alone. In January 2004, three doctors - David Halpin, a specialist in trauma and orthopaedic surgery, Stephen Frost, a specialist in diagnostic radiology, and Searle Sennett, a specialist in anaesthesiology - voiced their doubts about the suicide verdict in a letter to The Guardian. They said Dr Kelly could not have killed himself in the way described to the Hutton Inquiry. Now, having resigned my frontbench role for the Lib Dems earlier this year, I have found the time to conduct my own investigation.

The first problematic area concerns the severed artery in Dr Kelly's wrist. Those who are familiar with the human body will, if they choose to die this way, make an incision the length of the inside forearm because this leads to a very large loss of blood. Those unfamiliar with the body may cut across the wrist, thereby severing the radial artery. Instead, we are asked to believe that Dr Kelly managed to completely sever the ulnar artery, a minor artery of matchstick thickness to be found deep in the wrist on the little finger side of the hand, and protected by nerves and tendons.

It is difficult to believe Dr Kelly would have made this cut. It would have required unusual force to cut through the nerves and tendons, particularly with the gardening knife he had, and the process would have been painful. Even if he did somehow cut this artery himself; it is quite clear that this would not have killed him. I spoke to David Halpin, the former senior orthopaedic and trauma surgeon at Torbay Hospital and The Princess Elizabeth, Exeter. He told me that even the deepest cut here would not have caused death. He also told me that 'a completely transected [severed] artery retracts immediately I and thus stops bleeding, even at a relatively high blood pressure'.

Then there is the evidence of the ambulance team who attended the scene where Dr Kelly was found. They told the Hutton Inquiry that the amount of blood found at the site and on Dr Kelly's clothing was minimal and surprisingly small.

I contacted Dave Bartlett, the ambulance technician who, with paramedic Vanessa Hunt, formed the team that attended the scene. He told me last month that the two of them 'stand by what we have already said 100 per cent'. Vanessa Hunt has said that, in her view 'it is incredibly unlikely that he died from the wrist wound we saw'.

Could Dr Kelly nevertheless have died from the blood he lost? I tracked down Dr Sennett and his response was clear:

'For a man the size of Dr Keily to die from haemorrhage, he would have to lose at least three litres of blood. I suggest that it would be impossible to lose a lethal amount of blood from an ulnar artery which had been cut in the manner described for Dr Kelly.'

(3) There is also the knife allegedly used for the purpose. This was a blunt gardening knife with a concave blade, a singularly inappropriate weapon to use. To cut through nerves and tendons with such a knife must have been difficult. Dr Kelly, with his scientific background and knowledge of the human body, could without doubt have found an easier way to commit suicide had he wished to do so.

It might be argued that this was a spontaneous suicide and that all he had with him was this particular knife, which he often carried. But that is contradicted by the presence of the coproxamol tablets, which, according to the official explanation, demonstrate premeditation. This circle simply cannot be squared.

Evidence presented at the Hutton Inquiry invites us to conclude that Dr Kelly removed three blister packs of these tablets, each containing ten tablets, from his house. The police say that they found 29 out of 30 tablets gone, implying therefore that Dr Kelly had consumed these. It strikes me as odd that Dr Kelly should apparently leave one of the 30 tablets in its place. Surely someone set on suicide will take the maximum dose available, not leave one? Of course this remaining tablet did present the police with a rather obvious clue.

Furthermore, Alexander Allan, the forensic toxicologist at the inquiry, considered that the amount of each drug component found in the blood was only a third of that which would normally be considered fatal. All that was found in Dr Kelly's stomach was the equivalent of the fifth of one tablet. His stomach was virtually empty, which suggests that even if he did swallow 29 tablets, much would have been regurgitated, making it even less likely that these contributed in any significant way to his death.

(4) Of course, these were difficult times for Dr Kelly. He was under enormous pressure, had been thrust into the glare of the public spotlight, and had had a torrid time in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee on July 15, just two days before he went for his last walk. That much is known. Less well known is that his good humour and confidence had at least partly returned on July 16, when he gave evidence in private to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I have read the transcript of that meeting and it shows Dr Kelly laughing and even making jokes.

Then there are the e-malls he sent on the morning of July 17, the day' of his disappearance. These were generally upbeat and talked enthusiastically about returning to Iraq.

So apparently were his phone calls, for after one to the Ministry of Defence, a flight to lraq was booked for him for the following week. One e-mail, however, did refer to 'dark actors playing games'. Who they were, and what games they were playing, has yet to be established. Another factor that mitigates against the suicide theory is that one of Dr Kelly's daughters was due to be married shortly and he was obviously looking forward to that.

Lastly, it should not be forgotten that Dr Kelly was a practicing member of the Baha'i faith, which strongly condemns the act of suicide.

Yet within 24 hours of the e-mails being sent, David Kelly was dead. We had lost the man who had probably done more than anyone else to reduce the threat to the world from biological and chemical weapons.

[John Simkin]

An email from someone who has taken an interest in this case:

A contact of mine, a former MI6 spook, was speaking about the circumstances of Kelly's death. He said he's been taught how to "make anything look like anything" and said that there must have been some kind of struggle at the scene of Kelly's death. He said it was sloppy work that Kelly's body was found with enough pills for an overdose but hadn't ingested them, he said that should have been removed from the scene under normal procedure. He added "You can slit someone's wrists and make it look like suicide easily but it's a lot harder to make someone swallow tablets." He also said the heart monitor pads found on Kelly's chest were "simply there to make sure he was dead." He also said those should have been removed and suspects the agents involved were disturbed by someone in the process of the killing.

I think this is unlikely. If they wanted David Kelly to appear like he had died of natural causes he would have been found dead of a heart attack. The murder was botched but that was done for a purpose. For example, On 8th November, 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen, a journalist working on the assassination of JFK case, was found dead in her bed. The police reported that she had died from taking a cocktail of alcohol and barbiturates. The manuscript she was working on was never found.

Most of her friends believed Kilgallen had been murdered. Marc Sinclaire was Kilgallen's personal hairdresser. He often woke Kilgallen in the morning. Kilgallen was usually out to the early hours of the morning and like her husband always slept late. When he found her body he immediately concluded she had been murdered.

(1) Kilgallen was not sleeping in her normal bedroom. Instead she was in the master bedroom, a room she had not occupied for several years.

(2) Kilgallen was wearing false eyelashes. According to Sinclaire she always took her eyelashes off before she went to bed.

(3) She was found sitting up with the book, The Honey Badger, by Robert Ruark, on her lap. Sinclaire claims that she had finished reading the book several weeks earlier (she had discussed the book with Sinclaire at the time).

(4) Kilgallen had poor eyesight and could only read with the aid of glasses. Her glasses were not found in the bedroom where she died.

(5) Kilgallen was found wearing a bolero-type blouse over a nightgown. Sinclaire claimed that this was the kind of thing "she would never wear to go to bed".

Earlier that night she had been drinking with Ron Pataky. He was a fellow journalist who had been supposedly helping her with the book on Kennedy. We now know that Pataky was a CIA asset.

The reason why they botch up these murders is they use them as warnings to others. They are letting people how powerful they are. Not only can they kill you, they also have the power to cover it up as well.

[John Simkin]

The reason why they botch up these murders is they use them as warnings to others. They are letting people how powerful they are. Not only can they kill you, they also have the power to cover it up as well.

This seems to me the most plausible analysis of the rationale for the Kelly death.

I call it 'narrowcasting'.

The broad masses follow the media circus of the time with little awareness that it is a contrivance. The minority who take a real interest in the case see that justice is obviously not being done and take note that could be their fate too.

I believe that some, seemingy anomalous so-called media 'exposes' fall into a similar category - and I argued elsewhere in this forum, for example, that the December 2001 Fox News series about Israeli spying on the USA and the Israeli backdoor into US relecommunications surveillance can be explained in similar fashion.

In that case, the broad masses simply overlooked the story, because there was no systematic media follow-up. Those 'in the know' took note that Israel probably has tabs on their private communications and could blackmail them at will.

In both cases, the key take home message, narrowcasted to those paying attention, is to follow the 'official' code of silence.

I remember seeing Tony Blair's face on TV at the time the Kelly death first hit the headlines. It was the face of a man way out of his death. He looked frightened and cowed - someone who saw little alternative than to enter deeper into the quagmire of lies, cover-up and complicity in murder set out for him by his masters.

David Shayler claims that Blair was an MI5 stooge since the 1980s, if not before. It probably began with a quite innocent commitment by Blair to "do something good for the country". In return for a political leg up the young Labour MP may have had to provide a few details to the spooks about some of his CND buddies. Nothing too excacting. But over the years, the price extracted for smoothing Blair's path to the top has become higher.

Blair has probably rationalised to himself all the good he can do from a position of power, such as modernising Britain's social services, speaking out about global warming and 'saving starving Africa'..

But every now and again he is reminded who is really in control - and of the price he must pay for their continung support so he can stay in power (and out of jail). The Kelly death - and Blair's task to order a cover up - was one such case. Blair was offered full mass media support if he played his appointed role in the cover-up. The alternative was to face the abyss of exposure. He chose the path of deeper and deeper complicity in the crimes of his murdering Zionist controllers.

I suspect that the CIA has something on Blair. This is why he has been so willing to follow Bush’s foreign policy. I expect the CIA murdered Kelly to apply pressure on Blair. They will leak information linking the murder with the Blair administration if he refuses to slavishly follow Bush’s foreign policy.

There is another link with the JFK assassination. We know from the released LBK phone tapes that he covered up the assassination of JFK. He told friends that he had to convince the US public to believe it was a lone gunman because if it got out it was Castro who ordered the killing, he would have to invade Cuba and this could led to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. A lot of nonsense of course but he had to explain why he had to accept Oswald’s guilt.

The real reason was that the fingerprints of a man called Malcolm Wallace was found in the Texas School Book Depository. Wallace had worked for LBJ for many years. In 1951 Wallace was having an affair with LBJ's sister, Josefa Johnson. Josefa was also having a relationship with John Kinser, the owner of a golf course in Austin. Kinser asked Josefa to approach her brother for financial help.

According to Barr McClellan, the author of Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK, Kinser asked Josefa if she could arrange for her brother to loan him some money. Johnson interpreted this as a blackmail threat (Josefa had told Kinser about some of her brother's corrupt activities).

On 22nd October, 1951, Mac Wallace went to Kinser's miniature golf course. After finding Kinser in his golf shop, he shot him several times before escaping in his station wagon. A customer at the golf course had heard the shooting and managed to make a note of Wallace's license plate. The local police force was able to use this information to arrest Wallace.

Wallace was charged with murder but was released on bail after Edward Clark arranged for two of Johnson's financial supporters, M. E. Ruby and Bill Carroll, to post bonds on behalf of the defendant. Johnson's attorney, John Cofer, also agreed to represent Wallace.

On 1st February, 1952, Wallace resigned from his government job in order to distance himself from Lyndon B. Johnson (he had got him the job in 1950). His trial began seventeen days later. Wallace did not testify. Cofer admitted his client's guilt but claimed it was an act of revenge as Kinser had been sleeping with Wallace's wife.

The jury found Wallace guilty of "murder with malice afore-thought". Eleven of the jurors were for the death penalty. The twelfth argued for life imprisonment. Judge Charles O. Betts overruled the jury and announced a sentence of five years imprisonment. He suspended the sentence and Wallace was immediately freed. Betts was clearly under the control of LBJ.

This does not of course mean that LBJ arranged for Wallace to murder JFK. As a result of his record, Wallace would have been the last man LBJ would have recruited for this job. However, it is unlikely the rest of the world would have seen it that way. Therefore, LBJ had no option but to cover up the assassination. He was virtually blackmailed by the real murderers to do that.

I expect the same thing has happened to Tony Blair over the Kelly case.