Who Ordered the Assassination of Dr. David Kelly?

by Michel Chossudovsky
Feb. 27, 2007

The BBC has become embroiled in a yet another set of media distortions regarding the death of British government weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly in July 2003. Kelly died in mysterious circumstances in the woods near his home in Oxfordshire.

Kelly was Britain's foremost expert on biological weapons, with direct access to WMD intelligence on Iraq. In the months leading up to his death, he had become increasingly skeptical regarding Iraq's alleged WMDs. "It was Dr Kelly who exposed claims by President George Bush, Tony Blair and Colin Powell that mobile biological warfare units had been found in Iraq as false." (Independent, 25 July 2003)

According to the Hutton inquiry report:

"Dr Kelly took his own life... [T]he principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body''.

Suicide was seemingly assumed from the outset by Lord Hutton, and the Hutton Inquiry descended into establishing who, between the BBC and the Government, was to blame for the suicide (rather than murder) of Dr Kelly. The inquiry led by Lord Hutton pointed to "suicide" as the cause of death, in contradiction with the results of the autopsy. "Suicide was never proved, either by the Coroner or Lord Hutton, as required by law". (See Dr. Stephen Frost, et al, Global Research, 28 November 2006)

The inquiry purported to obviate the need for an inquest as well as exonerate the Government of Tony Blair and the Secret Service "of all significant charges". It was an obvious camouflage.

On November 3, 2006, The London Times published a letter by Lord Hutton, in which he attempted to defend his report on Dr. David Kelly's death. In the letter, Lord Hutton dwells on the issue of the allegedly "sexed up" intelligence, ignoring the arguably much larger issue of his failure to establish exactly how Dr. David Kelly died.

A response to Lord Hutton's letter to The Times was submitted to The Times by three distinguished doctors ( Drs. C. Stephen Frost, David Halpin and Searle Sennett) The Times, refused to publish the response, which was subsequently published as an article by Global Research. Drs. Frost et al contributed to breaking the mainstream media silence on the possibility that Dr David Kelly did not commit suicide.

What was dismissed by the mainstream media was that Lord Hutton, who seemingly assumed suicide from the outset, had undermined due process, and therefore laid himself open to charges of cover-up, by himself "sexing up" his own findings on the cause of Dr David Kelly's death. But, a cover-up of what? (See Drs. C. Stephen Frost, et al, op cit)

New British Media consensus

In its "Conspiracy Files" documentary (25 February 2007), the BBC questioned the official version that Kelly had committed suicide, as outlined in the Hutton inquiry report.

The media consensus regarding the cause of Dr. Kelly's death seems to have been reversed. Or has it?

While the media has acknowledged that Dr. Kelly was murdered, they have also waffled their way out of addressing two crucial questions:

Who ordered the assassination of David Kelly? Who ordered the cover-up? (Both of which are criminal offenses).

Contradicting their own assessment of the evidence, the British media, with the BBC in the lead, are now saying in chorus: the government of Tony Blair could not possibly have been involved. John Morrison, former deputy chief of British defence intelligence, who was interviewed by the BBC, states emphatically that there was "no British secret service plot to kill Dr Kelly."

Mr Morrison rejects suggestions that Dr Kelly could have been the victim of British agents licensed to kill: "It is indeed complete fantasy that there are agents that are licensed to kill". According to Morrisson:

"There are intelligence agencies around the world who do engage in assassinations, there's no doubt about that. Some of them not very nice people at all..... But we [ in Britain] have never had a policy of assassination to my knowledge in the history of the UK intelligence agencies, and certainly not in the last few decades". (Source BBC website)

No tradition of assassinating people? If Her Majesty's government was not involved because The British Secret Service "does not have a policy of assassination", who then could possibly be behind the murder of David Kelly?

Criminal Investigation

If it was murder rather than suicide, one would expect a full fledged police investigation leading up to trial court proceedings.

One would also expect --as in a bona fide criminal investigation-- that one or more "suspects" would be identified, and that "methods" "motives" and "intent" would be examined. Moreover, one would also expect that the issue of alleged government involvement be either confirmed or dismissed in a court of law.

(Following the Abolition of the Death Penalty in 1965, the maximum sentence under British law for murder is life imprisonment.)

Will a criminal investigation --which could potentially bring down the government-- be allowed to proceed?

Or will there be another cover-up, "to cover-up the cover-up"?

Saddam did It

Meanwhile, in the interest of "balanced reporting", the BBC documentary also included an authoritative statement by Richard Spertzel, a former US weapons inspector who worked with Dr Kelly in Iraq. Spertzel believes that "the Iraqis assassinated him" implying that Kelly had been murdered on the orders of Saddam Hussein and that the defunct Baathist regime's intelligence apparatus was indelibly behind the assassination.

It has always been obvious that his death was highly convenient for the UK intelligence services but one of Kelly's former colleagues, Richard Spertzel, an American biological weapons inspector, says that the Iraqi intelligence service may have been pursuing a vendetta against him. Spertzel says both he and Kelly were known to be on an Iraqi hit list.(Irish independent, 26 Feb 2007)

How "convenient to the UK intelligence services" and the Government. Saddam (who is no longer alive) was behind the assassination of Dr. Kelly!

Qui Buono? Who benefits? Did the murder of Dr. Kelly serve the interests of Iraq. Was it "covenient" for the defunct Baathist regime? And why the Hutton report cover-up? If indeed Saddam had been behind it, one would have expected that news reports of the Iraqi sponsored murder of a British scientist would have been plastered on Britain's tabloids

Where is the motive? What interest would the post Saddam Iraqi resistance have in murdering a prominent British scientist who was revealing the lies behind the Iraqi WMD allegations, which served as the main justification for waging war on Iraq. Remember: Dr David Kelly was the source for a BBC report claiming the government of Tony Blair had "sexed up" its dossier on Saddam's alleged WMD arsenal. And ultimately, the "sexed up" WMD report was the casus belli, the pretext for waging war on Iraq, which was invoked by the US and its indefectible British ally.

On GMTV "The Sunday Programme", 25 February, Liberal MP Norman Baker, outlines the results of his investigation. He states that it was not suicide, but murder.

"I've concluded in my mind, beyond reasonable doubt as it were, that it's impossible for the suicide explanation to hold water. The medical evidence doesn't support it in any way, the psychological evidence barely supports it either and as it wasn't obviously natural causes or an accident, then you're driven to the conclusion that it must have been some sort of murder."

"Describing his approach as non-sensational and factual, he said he has tested various theories 'to destruction'. One witness who contacted him recently claimed to "know" that Dr Kelly was murdered. Asked about "complicity of the State", Mr Baker chose his words carefully, claiming this would 'set the hares running'. He is pursuing a number of leads"

Norman Baker's inquiry has reached the conclusion that Kelly was assassinated but he asserts categorically that the British government could not possibly have been involved:

"I don't believe the Prime Minister, the politicians and the Government were responsible for what happened to David Kelly. I believe they treated him shamefully and I believe they treated him callously in that they deliberately leaked his name to the press and they were quite happy to offer him up as fodder in some sort of Soviet-style Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in order to discredit Andrew Gilligan and the BBC".

VIDEO: Watch the TV interview with Norman Baker

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best America’s "War on Terrorism" Second Edition, Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization.

© Copyright Michel Chossudovsky , Global Research, 2007