THE DEATH OF DR DAVID KELLY - A SUMMARY OF MILES GOSLETT'S NEW STUDY

For starters, the background:

David Kelly (1944-2003)

Scientist

David Christopher Kelly CMG was a Welsh scientist and authority on biological warfare, employed by the British Ministry of Defence, and formerly a weapons inspector with the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq. He came to public attention in July 2003 when an unauthorised discussion he had off the record with BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan about the UK Government's dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was cited by Gilligan and led to a major controversy. Kelly's name became known to the media as Gilligan's source and he was called to appear on 15 July before a parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee investigating the issues Gilligan had reported. Kelly was questioned aggressively about his actions. He was found dead two days later.

And so to Miles Goslett and his new book. 

Miles Goslett is an award-winning journalist. His book An Inconvenient Death: How the Establishment Covered up the David Kelly Affair was published in May this year. My judgement on the book is very positive. The reviewer in The Times - David Aaronovitch - was very negative. Indeed, so hostile that it seems legitimate to suggest that his review is a further ploy in an



Establishment cover-up. Here is a link to Miles Goslett's response to that hostile Times review - press here. 

Here is my summary of the main points in Miles Goslett's book that provides, in the words of The Observer's positive review: '... a compelling, authoritative insight into possibly the most controversial death in Britain this century'.

• The timeline of events associated with the death of Dr David Kelly raises profoundly disturbing questions. From an aeroplane flying over the Pacific, the PM - Tony Blair - ordered Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, to set up a public inquiry - led by Lord Hutton - into David Kelly's 'suspected suicide' when neither man had any accurate knowledge as to how he had died. A body had only just been discovered. 

• The Hutton Inquiry was designed to avoid the legal requirement for a Coroner's Inquest. It seems difficult to resist the conclusion that the aim of Hutton was to produce a report that found that Dr Kelly took his own life. No coroner, after a full examination of the evidence heard under oath, is likely to have concluded that David Kelly left his home on the afternoon of 17 July 2003 with the sole intention of taking his own life and then did so. 
• It seems implausible that David Kelly who had a sound knowledge of human anatomy would have chosen one of the least effective methods of killing himself by cutting a minor artery in his wrist with a blunt instrument.
• The Hutton Report left unresolved questions about how much blood Dr Kelly lost, how many pills he allegedly swallowed, and when he died.

• If Dr Kelly did not commit suicide, he was either murdered and the scene where his body was found was set up to look as if he had taken his own life; or he died of a natural cause like a seizure or heart attack; or he did not die at all, but was 'disappeared' and went to live elsewhere under a new identity. Miles Goslett is not speculating on these alternatives. He is putting the case for a full coroner's inquest. 
• Cover-ups happen. Alastair Campbell and his colleagues pretended that the 'dodgy dossier' produced in February 2003 was the product of their own hard work. The 2012 investigation into the 1989 Hillsborough disaster in which 96 football fans died showed shocking evidence of a police cover-up that led to a new inquest between 2015 and 2016. There were those in positions of power who covered up the abuses of Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith.

• Andrew Rawnsley, the political commentator, wrote The End of the Party in which he stated that Geoff Hoon - the Defence Secretary who oversaw the Ministry of Defence's treatment of Dr Kelly in those days before his death - was so furious about being removed by PM Tony Blair as Leader of the House of Commons in May 2006 he wrote out a resignation statement in which he planned to reveal details about the Kelly affair that - so he told friends - could trigger the instant downfall of Tony Blair.
• Carne Ross, a former British diplomat and friend of David Kelly who had lunch with him in New York shortly before his death, was warned shortly before he was due to give evidence in the Iraq Inquiry, chaired by Sir John Chilcot, in July 2010 not to speak about Dr Kelly.
• In an earlier book on the David Kelly affair, Norman Baker drew attention to the oddness that among the thousands of documents on the Hutton Inquiry website there was only one that seemed a screwball piece of nonsense, alleging as it did a link between Dr Kelly's death and 'The World's Worst Paedophile Ring'. A very senior BBC executive suggested to Miles Goslett that a leading figure in the Hutton inquiry process was known by the Government to have had a paedophile past well away from London. Was the singular inclusion of this particular document a way of reminding him to "do his duty"?

Dr David Kelly at a parliamentary hearing days before his death

• Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's loyal advisor, wrote in his diaries in 2012 about how the day that David Kelly's body was found was perhaps the worst in his life. Those who have watched BBC One's Andrew Marr Show first broadcast in February 2011 will have seen Campbell suffer from sudden shortness of breath live on air while attempting to explain how the 'intelligence' surrounding Weapons of Mass Destruction had come about. The interview was temporarily halted. In life, Dr Kelly was betrayed by those such as Campbell who saw to it that he was publicly humiliated by being named as Andrew Gilligan's source, a charge which Dr Kelly always denied. 
• In 2003, Hutton recommended that all the records relating to Dr Kelly's death should be secretly classified for seventy years.
• In 2017, Dr Kelly's remains were exhumed at night from the churchyard where they had been buried and his headstone removed. It seems, according to a Daily Mail newspaper article written by the same Andrew Gilligan who had been the journalist at the start of the 2003 story, that the body was then cremated. Who was Gilligan's source?

Dr David Kelly's exhumed grave with headstone removed - 2017 - Daily Mail photo

• On the last page of his book, Miles Goslett outlines a remarkable account of somebody who told him that they spoke to David Kelly at length during the month he was found dead, a fact Goslett has been able to confirm independently. Dr Kelly told this anonymous source something about his work which had shocked them so profoundly that now with the gift of hindsight they wished they had gone straight to the police to report his claim. There seems to them a likelihood that what he told them has some link to his death.  

         I have heard no mention of Miles Goslett and his book on the death of David Kelly in any media other than in the Observer review and the reference I found online to the Times review and Miles Goslett's response. Is there a conspiracy to silence further debate through acting as if nothing has happened, no new book has been published, revealing more detail and asking searching questions? The Establishment fears the truth and the sword of justice in this David Kelly affair - the evidence for such a claim seems overwhelming. This blog-post is my little push towards upsetting the apple-cart.