In These New Times

Morning Star

What the government has to hide by gagging information about the death of David Kelly for 70 years

This week it was revealed that Lord Hutton, the peer who chaired the Hutton inquiry, placed a 70-year gag on the evidence surrounding the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly.

The establishment narrative was that Kelly had committed suicide. But since his death in 2003 more and more doubts have surfaced over the official version of events.

A group of doctors, including myself, is among the growing number of sceptics.

As one of the group, Dr Michael Powers QC, points out – if the evidence for the suicide verdict was sound, then why lock it up for 70 years?

But even before this latest bombshell from Hutton, there were serious question marks hanging over Kelly’s death.

I was the author of the first published letter questioning the verdict of suicide, which appeared in the Morning Star on December 16 2003.

It read: “As a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon, I cannot easily accept that even the deepest cut into one wrist would cause such exsanguination that death resulted.

“The two arteries are of matchstick size and would have quickly shut down and clotted. Furthermore we have a man who was expert in lethal substances and who apparently chose a most uncertain method of suicide.”

This letter’s publication drew me towards two other doctors and a lay person and the group enlarged.

The available evidence was examined minutely and letters were written to the press demanding the inquest be reopened. The crucial point was that a verdict of suicide had to be proved beyond reasonable doubt, as did the intent to commit it.

Kelly was Britain’s leading expert in biological and chemical weapons and he worked as an adviser to the Ministry of Defence.

In the early ’90s he had debriefed the Russians on their allegedly vast germ warfare programme. After the end of the first Gulf war he was appointed as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq, which he visited 37 times.

A secondary role that he played for the MoD was to interpret scientific and defence matters for the media. He regularly acted as a confidential source, although he rarely went on the record or appeared on camera.

The David Kelly scandal began at 6.07am on May 29 2003, when BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan quoted an unnamed source on the Today programme.

The source had spoken of Downing Street ordering the 2002 dossier on Iraq’s WMD to be “sexed up.”

This dossier provided a crucial plank of the government’s justification for invading Iraq – most crucially it claimed that Iraq was capable of firing battlefield biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes of an order to use them.

But Gilligan reported that his source had told him the 45-minute claim was unreliable, suggesting that it had been deliberately placed in the dossier by the government to bolster its case for war.

A scramble began both in government and the media to identify the source.

As the political battle mounted, Kelly knew that he had had contact with Gilligan and he informed his employer that he thought he might have been the source. The government hung him out to dry.

It told the media that someone had come forward who might be the source, but its announcement contained enough clues for reporters to guess Kelly’s identity and the MoD, in a breach of form, confirmed the name when it was put to it.

Kelly was quizzed by the foreign affairs select committee on July 15 2003 about his contact with Gilligan. During the televised proceedings he appeared to be under severe stress.

Days later he was found dead in the woods on Harrowdown Hill with his left wrist cut. A knife was by his side and three empty packs of prescription painkillers were found in a pocket of his wax jacket.

Within 24 hours of the news of his unnatural death, while Kelly’s corpse was still cooling, lord chancellor Lord Falconer appointed Lord Hutton to an “ad hoc” inquiry.

A month later Falconer added section 17a of the Coroner’s Act to the Hutton structure.

This section allows inquests into multiple deaths to be carried out by public inquiry where there is one cause. This is both efficient and considerate to the relatives.

It has been used nine times, including twice for the trawler Gaul inquiry. It has never been used for a single death – except Kelly’s.

An inquest was opened briefly in Oxford by Nicholas Gardiner. It was adjourned in the face of the impending Hutton inquiry and reopened a few weeks later to receive the death certificate signed by forensic pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt, which listed the cause of death as (1a) Haemorrhage, caused by (1b) Incised wounds to the left wrist and (2) Coproxamol ingestion and coronary artery atherosclerosis.

The Hutton inquiry took place under Falconer’s brief of inquiring into “the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly.”

Under normal circumstances it would be a coroner’s duty to establish the cause of death. They would also be able to call a jury, subpoena witnesses, give testimony under oath and have them cross-examined. None of these was available to Hutton.

Media reporting at the time focused on the battle between the BBC and the government and the hounding of the deceased.

The tenor of the inquiry is shown well by this extract from the Hutton website. Peter Knox QC is examining Hunt.

Knox: “Could you confirm whether, as far as you could tell on the examination, there was any sign of third party involvement in Dr Kelly’s death?”

Hunt: “No, there was no pathological evidence to indicate the involvement of a third party in Dr Kelly’s death. Rather, the features are quite typical, I would say, of self-inflicted injury if one ignores all the other features of the case.”

Knox: “Is there anything else you would like to say concerning the circumstances leading to Dr Kelly’s death?”

Hunt: “Nothing I could say as a pathologist, no.”

Hutton: “Thank you for your very clear evidence, Dr Hunt.”

Hutton, who had never been a coroner but who had led the defence for the MoD at the Bloody Sunday inquiry, pronounced a verdict identical to the death certificate above in his public statement of January 28 2004.

The suicide verdict still stands as the official cause of Kelly’s death. But during the six years since his death, the group of doctors has put in thousands of hours of work in its campaign to find answers to the many unresolved questions.

Two vital pieces of evidence have been prised from Thames Valley Police under freedom of information requests. There were no fingerprints on the pruning knife beside Kelly’s body and a helicopter picked up no thermal image of a human at 2.30am on Harrowdown Hill on the morning he was found.

Legal advice was taken a year ago from Leigh and Day. An opinion was prepared by the doctors focusing on the possibility of haemorrhage being the primary cause of death, which said: “The bleeding from Dr Kelly’s ulnar artery was highly unlikely to have been so voluminous and rapid that it was the primary cause of death.”

The solicitors wrote to the Attorney General and the coroner asking for full disclosure of the medical notes, including the autopsy report.

It has been learned from the coroner that all the evidence that was received at the inquiry but not heard will be “closed” for 30 years. The medical evidence will be closed for 70 years.

Due process has been subverted. Kelly’s death has not been subjected to the rigour of a coroner’s inquest – and the 70-year gag extends the perversion.