|
David Kelly (1944-2003) |
ou would
think a journalist whose BBC career was ruined by the death of Dr
Kelly would be terrier-like in his determination to get at the
truth. Not so Andrew Gilligan. Baker and the conspiracy theories are
wrong' he states in his 24 July 'Evening Standard' article
‘Those who say Kelly was murdered are so wrong‘. But as no one
has put up any 'theories', how can they be 'wrong?'
He's 'pretty sure' that
David did commit suicide. But one man's 'pretty sure' is not good
enough. Suicide, according to the law, must be proved beyond
reasonable doubt. And this is one high-profile 'suicide' that leaves
room for a disturbing amount of doubt.
A Motive for Murder
|
Andrew Gilligan (b.
1968) |
Gilligan
maintains there was no real motive for anyone to murder Dr Kelly.
MI5 and MI6, he says, don't 'pop off their citizens whenever they
feel like it'. But maybe, when pushed, they do pop off the odd one
or two. Given that the security services work on a highly
compartmentalised, need-to-know basis, it is perfectly credible that
cabals within MI5 or MI6 make 'rogue' decisions and then organise
the dirty work. Kelly's death 'didn't do them much good' says
Gilligan. Well actually, it did. The
Hutton Inquiry
provided a marvellous distraction from the fact that no weapons of
mass destruction were ever found. After it was over and Kelly was
out of the way, top spook John Scarlett could go on
weaving his lies about WMD more or less unchallenged. Ten months
after Kelly’s death he was promoted to head of MI6.
Privy to highly sensitive
information as Head of Microbiology at Porton Down from 1984 to
1992, and as Senior Advisor on Biological Weapons to UNSCOM from
1994-99, Dr Kelly was subject to a rigorous vetting procedure. We
know he was
being vetted in the months prior to his death, so it is likely
that his every move was being watched. In a whispering campaign, a
spokesman for the Prime Minister dubbed him a
‘Walter Mitty' figure and a 'fantasist', while Sir Kevin Tebbit
of the MoD called him
'eccentric and unreliable'. But in reality the most dangerous
quality to figures in power was his fierce regard for the truth.
Two lies were pivotal to the
invasion of Iraq: one was that the mobile laboratories found in Iraq
were evidence of WMD, and the other was that WMD could be launched
from Iraq at British bases in Cyprus within 45 minutes. Kelly
demolished them both. It was he who had
leaked to the Observer that the mobile laboratories were not for
WMD, and it was he who had
expressed deep unhappiness with the claim that WMD could be launched
from Iraq in 45 minutes. Kelly was one of the most senior and
highly-respected weapons inspectors. His return to Iraq on 26 July
2003, a date that was confirmed by the MoD the day before he
disappeared, would have risked his being able to demonstrate
conclusively that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Strong Medical
Evidence
If he were genuinely
interested in the true medical cause of Dr Kelly's death, Gilligan
would have taken a close look at the objections raised to the
official line.
Rather than interrogate the
nine medical members of the Kelly Investigation Group (KIG), two of
them vascular surgeons, he tries to counter the main arguments
against suicide by selecting the dismissive
blusterings of Professor Chris Milroy, a forensic pathologist
with no access to the post mortem report, yet who asserted with
confidence that Dr Kelly had taken 'a substantial overdose'.
True, there was considerably
more than a therapeutic dose of co-proxamol in Dr Kelly's blood, but
according to Richard Allan, the forensic toxicologist reporting to
the Hutton Inquiry, nowhere near enough to kill him. According to
the actual blood tests, Dr Allan declared the amount of co-proxamol
in Dr Kelly's blood was a quarter to a third of what is normally a
fatal amount.
It has largely been assumed,
that because 29 tablets of the painkiller co-proxamol were missing
from the three blister packs in Dr Kelly's pockets, that he took all
29. Even if that were so, he could not have assimilated them all,
because he regurgitated a large part of his stomach contents.
Attempting to gauge how much
of a particular drug a person took before their death is not an
exact science. One of Milroy's colleagues at the University of
Sheffield, forensic toxicologist Professor Robert Forrest, has
helpfully pointed out that drug concentrations in the blood increase
markedly over time. Since Dr Allan did not analyse Dr Kelly's blood
for around 30 hours, the concentration of
co-proxamol components may have increased up to tenfold. So while at
the time of testing, Dr Allan judged the amount of co-proxamol in
the blood to be only a third of what is normally a fatal amount,
this could mean that the actual amount ingested by Dr Kelly 30 hours
earlier, was far less than a third of a fatal amount - possibly as
little as a thirtieth.
