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Underground > Switchboard >

Dr. David Kelly

  
  

Page: 12(3)45

 
 
Quantum
13:22 / 05.08.03
Robots get my vote..
 
 
Not Here Still
18:03 / 12.08.03
A Robot PM would be cool. I vote for Bender off Futurama.

Right, wasn't going to do this, saw the post, read it, twiched, but thought, naah, leave it, but fuck it -

OPB danielj:

do we care what govt crony said what about whom?

You would if you were his wife, or daughter. And one of these people was a Government crony; the other appears top have died as a result, ultimately, of talking out of turn about them.

i don't give a monkey's whether tom kelly said something offensive about david kelly or not. am i the only one who thinks that perhaps the only effect of this story is to help us forget what we were originally all wondering - how come 'we' went to war in the first place?

Well shit, it found out the other day that I can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Amazingly, I think I've not forgotten my concerns about the war.

But maybe there are some people, less well off than me perhaps, who are just too working class to be able to do so. I'd better hold some smug fuckin' idea about the masses not being able to follow both ideas, because then I can help free them from their chains. And I'll feel all smug and political.

why do the bbc insist on pushing a govt agenda on this one?

The thing you sit on is your arse; the joint in your arm is an elbow.

The BBC. are pushing. a Government agenda?

We're through the looking glass here, people.

Can you explain this statement a little bit, please? What is the Government agenda the BBC is pushing? To be harangued all summer?

even if the govt are a little embarrassed temporarily, they're still not being asked difficult questions about the substantive issue, so they're happy. what a load of codswallop.

And the difficult questions before were being asked by who, exactly?

This inquiry is about as difficult as it is going to get for the Government - we're already finding out far more than they would have ever wanted us to know, and it's only day two.

But fuck it, it's a load of codswallop this, isn't it? The Government being held to account, in a judicial inquiry they didn't want, about at least part of the run-up to the war. What a set-up! Thank fuck I'm radical enough to see through this.

Sorry, rant over. danielj; I'm really quite a nice person, but that post was a bit daft.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
20:12 / 12.08.03
I'm guessing that by 'the BBC pushing the Government agenda' he means that the BBC are playing what might be the larger Government objective of stopping the media talking about whether the Iraq war was justified by arguing about terminology and who said and did what about what was a tiny part of the overall thing. The Question du Jour has shifted to be 'Did the Government lie' which I think is a very difficult one to actually prove, rather than 'was this an illegal war that we had no right to be involved with'.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
20:41 / 13.08.03
But there is a very important reason why the BBC should be involved in this, and to see what that is one only has to look at the front pages of the Murdoch press: I saw the Sun today, and the front page was a picture of Gilligan with the headline 'Lies, Lies, Lies'. Now, as far as I'm aware the enquiry hasn't shown that Gilligan lied at all.

I think we're all aware of the agenda of the Murdoch press, and the way that those papers have the government tied up. Murdoch wants a finger in the pie of British TV (Channel 5), and can get this (depsite the fact that it goes against the current media monoploy laws) because of the influence his papers are supposed to wield over public opinion. If he threatens to withdraw his support from the government, the perception is that they'd rapidly lose support (an especially sever threat at election time). It's a poisonous relationship. So Murdoch's interest is in attackign the BBC's reputation as an independent broadcaster to support the government to get his television channel... the government's interest is to try and deflect attention from its own misdemeanours by forcing the BBC to toe the government line (and it's now pretty clear that it was perfectly well known at the time that the 45 minute claim was based on very shaky evidence; I actually don't know anyone who believed a word of it, but I'll be surprised if many people in government or the media admit that). It's in the interests of some bigwigs in the broadcasting industry to try and remove the special status of the BBC as a public-service broadcaster and force it into direct competition with other broadcasters (and there are many people, notably in the Tory party, who agree with them). I think the BBC should be standing up for itself in this matter and I hope they are not browbeaten by the enquiry.

I do think the whole thing about WMD is skating over the very important fact that not one of the reasons the government gave for going to war were adequate, and much of its evidence was inaccurate; and the real reasons for going to war have been glossed over. Even the neo-cons have been more open about their aims than the Blair government. But I still think the Kelly enquiry is important, though for different reasons.
 
 
sleazenation
21:23 / 13.08.03
I'm not sure the BBC is in a particularly good position to be honest - They need to be able defend their reporter (and therefore the corporation's) credibility as being better than all other broadcasters (Its interesting to recall the recent debacle at the Murdoch owned SKy news where a reporter presented footage shot on a royal navy submarine as being captured as it launched a missile into Iraq when in fact this was not the case).

But unfortunately It does seem clear that Gilligan was not as careful in his reporting as he could and some would say should have been.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
09:48 / 14.08.03
The testimony on day three doesn't do the BBC many favours. Gilligan DIDN'T lie per se, but it looks like he might have been a little overenthusiastic in how he used the facts. What's irritating is that the BBC 'stood behind Gilligan 100%' when they now seem to be aware that his reporting style had shortcomings, but it's not the "Ummmmmmmmmmmm, I'm telling!" level of falsehood that Murdoch and the Government need for the latter to get away blemish free.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
09:54 / 14.08.03
Today, as yesterday, it seems you can draw whatever conclusion you want- the Guardian and the Mirror are saying yesterday's session threw blame on No 10, the Sun's saying the blame has been proved to be firmly with the BBC...

My personal take, so far, is that, without wanting to use the "blood on their hands" cliche, are anyone's particularly clean right now?

I do, however, think that asking why a journalist wouldn't name his source is a bit fucking rich. A) it's the unwritten journalistic law- might as well ask why coppers don't name theirs!, and B) look what fucking happens!

Although, as pointed out in today's Diary column in the Guardian, John "the source could easily have just been some bloke down the pub" Reid has been pretty goddamn quiet recently... wonder if he'll join in all the praise for poor Dr Kelly's expertise?
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
10:39 / 14.08.03
Well - the whole debate seems to centre around exactly what Dr Kelly said to Gilligan, which we don't and can't know, and around whether Gilligan misrepresented it in his reports (of which I understand there were several on the day in question, and the first was the one in which he claimed that the government knew the 45-min thing to be false - and he didn't mention Campbell by name in these reports either...) - which we also can't know, because it depends on the other. What Dr Kelly said afterwards to other reporters isn't conclusive, and what went on at the BBC afterwards isn't either... the whole thing seems doomed to produce no adequate conclusions. Reading the reports I got the impression that there were so many personality clashes and minor differences of opinion that it will be very hard to get any kind of objective view.

I do think this is a level of scrutiny under which most journalists would exhibit some flaws, and it's amusing to see the Sun of all papers ranting on about lies and exaggerations. Gilligan does seem to have been a little less that meticulous in his wording, but beyond that it's hard to make any kind of call.
 
 
sleazenation
11:31 / 14.08.03
I must say that the number 10/MoD press machine seems to have been the most out of line in this affair - regardless of what was or was not said, had they not de facto leaked Kelly's name to the press and thrown him personally to the wolves of the press in the desperate attempt to find a scapegoat I sincerely doubt he would have taken his own life.
 
 
sleazenation
20:13 / 18.08.03
And from today at the Hutton Enquiry into the circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly's death Downing street chief of staff Jonathan Powell, has admitted that the original draft of the dossier "does not demonstrate he (Saddam Hussein) has the motive to attack his neighbours, let alone the West".
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
21:18 / 18.08.03
dizfactor:to be even blunter, i find your tone of moral outrage to be, quite frankly, repulsive, and suspiciously like an attempt to browbeat people raising legitimate concerns into "respectful" silence

No one without personal knowledge of Kelly's reasons for suicide should be speculating as to the reasons why he killed himself. You mention that you're a US citizen - well, fuck, maybe you can speculate as to the possibility of asassination in this instance. The rest of us live in a small, insular country, in which we don't have a media which would or could collude in such a crass cover-up as the assassination of a man right in the forefront of the public eye, who was still being pursued by the press for quotes over the whole situation at the time of his death. Half of the political correspondents in our mainstream media are on direct speaking terms with half of the British civil service and also the elected British Government. I would go so far as to say that this kind of ridiculous, grand conspiracy theory isn't actually possible here, if for no other reason that we're just too fucking small.
 
 
GreenMann
10:31 / 19.08.03
Looks like Bliar's criminal war on Iraq is being exposed, not by massive and historic left-wing demonstrations but, ironically, by one of the lynchpins of the staid and conservative British establishment, Lord Hutton.
 
 
GreenMann
10:40 / 19.08.03
Bliar's animated, emotional lip-quivering and acting out ("time is running out"; "my duty of conscience"; "imminent threat"; "we owe it to our kids" etc etc etc) should be re-played again and again for everyone to see him for what he really is: a super-confidence trickster and mass murderer.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
12:14 / 22.08.03
Hutton Inquiry Website

24 Q. Right. Did you have any other conversation with
25 Dr Kelly that day?

145
1 A. As Dr Kelly was leaving I said to him: what will happen
2 if Iraq is invaded? And his reply was, which I took at
3 the time to be a throw away remark -- he said: I will
4 probably be found dead in the woods.
5 Q. You understood it to be a throw away remark. Did you
6 report that remark at the time to anyone?
7 A. I did not report it at the time to anyone because I did
8 not attribute any particular significance to it.
9 I thought he might have meant that he was at risk of
10 being attacked by the Iraqis in some way.
11 Q. And you, at the time, considered it to be a sort of
12 general comment one might make at the end of
13 a conversation?
14 A. Indeed.
 
 
GreenMann
13:45 / 22.08.03
I never thought it at first, and I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but, with the evidence revealed so far, it seems possible and logical that Dr Kelly was assasinated by the British security service to prevent him exposing government lies on the non-existent "threat" from Iraq.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:17 / 22.08.03
Really? It seems to me that the evidence of the offhand comment that Sam Vega has pulled off the Hutton Inquiry website suggests suicide. Even if he wasn't contemplating it at the time it could easily have stuck in the back of his mind.

I'm of the opinion that it's probably past the time for that type of consideration anyway and frankly there was a lot of doubt about the weapons prior to warfare. You might recall that a government minister resigned partly in response to the intelligence reports.

I disagree with JtB, I believe that there is possibility of grand conspiracy in this country, though less now than there's ever been but I don't believe that Kelly's death should be debated in such a way anymore. The political reprecussions of this Inquiry will not be evident until the end of next week and probably not then and as for Blair- he's the Prime Minister- of course he dressed it up, that was never in doubt.
 
 
Quireboy
14:30 / 22.08.03
The political repercussions are quite evident now.

Powell's email - there was no case for war.

New Labour's spin machine exposed and in the dock.

Hoon hung out to dry.
 
 
Baz Auckland
01:44 / 23.08.03
Meanwhile in Australia...

Australian comission hears case for war fabricated

The Australian government "skewed, misrepresented, used selectively and fabricated" the intelligence used to justify its decision to send troops to Iraq, a parliamentary inquiry in Canberra was told yesterday. The Australian inquiry opened yesterday and took evidence from Andrew Wilkie, a former senior intelligence analyst who resigned in March in protest at the case Australia made for going to war.

Mr Wilkie accused the government of lying about the threat posed by Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. "Sometimes the exaggeration was so great it was clear dishonesty," he said, and added that words and phrases qualifying intelligence assessments, such as "probably", "could" and "uncorroborated evidence suggests" were frequently dropped from reports. "Words like 'massive' and 'mammoth' were included [instead]."
 
 
Not Here Still
12:07 / 23.08.03
OPB GreenMann: I never thought it at first, and I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but, with the evidence revealed so far, it seems possible and logical that Dr Kelly was assasinated by the British security service to prevent him exposing government lies on the non-existent "threat" from Iraq.

Possible, pperhaps, but not logical. If this was the case, they fucked up big time, didn't they?

Referring to an early draft of the weapons dossier, [Government adviser Tom] Kelly told his colleague, Godric Smith: "The weakness, obviously, is our inability to say he could pull the nuclear trigger any time soon."

Or, as noted before: "We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat," [number 10 adviser Jonathon] Powell wrote on September 17, a week before the document was finally published.

Killing Kelly was a stupid thing to do to stop people probing; as is clear, and as I've been saying for some time, more is coming out in this inquiry than would have ever seen the light of day otherwise.

My guess - especially after reading the 'Dead in the Woods' coverage (and what a fucking shocker that was) - is that this is suicide, and that Dr Kelly was opposed to the way the case for war was being made on incorrect facts, lies and spin. And that he was feeling increasingly drawn into something far bigger than him after expressing these personal feelings to journalists, and that both the 'huge cogs' of officialdom and his personal misgivings prompted his actions.

As this piece notes: Dr Kelly felt he was being put in a "morally ambiguous position" because he was telling Iraqi contacts they had nothing to fear if they co-operated with UN weapons inspections.

... Dr Kelly ...was in contact with senior Iraqis whom he had "urged" to give up any remaining biological weapons.

..."He [Kelly] believed that the invasion might go ahead anyway, and this puts him in a morally ambiguous position".

Dr Kelly had told Mr Broucher that the Iraqi were unwilling to fully disarm because "if they revealed too much about their state of readiness, this might increase the risk of being attacked."


However, just to ensure this post does contain the requisite belief in the shadowy hand which rules us all, and that conspiracy lurks round every corner, I'd like to point out something spooky I came across after hearing the 'dead in the woods' remark.

Was there anything special about July 17, the day Kelly was found dead in the woods?

How about the date that the Ba'ath state in Iraq came to power?

1968, July 17 - A Ba'th-led coup ousts Arif and Gen Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr becomes president. Saddam Hussein, relative of Bakr, emerges as Vice President, deputy head of the Revolution Command Council (RCC), and chief interlocutor with the Kurds.


Perhaps Kelly was killed - but to mark this date, and by someone linked to Iraq.

Hussein (or an impersonator) also released a tape on July 17 this year; perhaps there was a trigger in this for Kelly's suicide.

Or perhaps Kelly had lain dead for some time before being found, and died on July 16, and I'm barking up the wrong tree in these woods.

But an odd coincidence, all the same.
 
 
Peach Pie
12:35 / 23.08.03


I had my ears peeled from that I heard he went missing. The very earliest reports on British TV said that poice were checking to see if Kelly had access to a firearm.
 
 
Peach Pie
12:40 / 23.08.03
what the heck am I talking about? it was july 17/18th - you are quite right. I've asked the mods to delete the first line of the post prior to this one.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:40 / 23.08.03
The political repercussions are quite evident now.

Powell's email - there was no case for war.

New Labour's spin machine exposed and in the dock.

Hoon hung out to dry.

These aren't repercussions... a large proportion of the country knew there was no case for war, New Labour's spin machine was rather exposed months ago and Hoon has not been hung out to dry quite yet.

This is the definition of repercussion, just so you understand what I'm trying to get at... An often indirect effect, influence, or result that is produced by an event or action. I repeat that the repercussions of this Inquiry won't be seen until at least next week and probably not for a while afterwards.
 
 
Not Here Still
13:08 / 23.08.03
Awww. I want to know what the missing line was.

Anna is quite right, I'd say - the repercussions here, such as Geoff Hoon's resignation, the wholesale change of the number 10 press office, and Andrew Gilligan, it seems increasingly likely, walking the plank, won't come until about mid-September when the inquiry's second phase is copmpleted.

The second phase looks like being a lot nastier than the first, with cross-examination (probably very cross examination) being allowed.

Even the fuss over Blair and Hoon we'll see next week will be nothing compared to that...
 
 
Not Here Still
13:18 / 23.08.03
Oh yeah, been meaning to put these up for people who haven't already seen them; links to related sites;

Hutton Inquiry website.


BBC news' dedicated site

Media Guardian dedicated site

And, of course, the obligatory 'comedy' website:

www.thehuttoninquiry.org.uk

Yes, very funny. Can I go now?
 
 
Peach Pie
14:40 / 24.08.03
I don't think that that much will change in the workings of government. What's the betting the inquiry will exonerate the government entirely and say that the BBc should really know better?
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
14:57 / 24.08.03
Well, I think in terms of the public's confidence in Mr Tony, I'd say some of the repercussions are being felt already. Otherwise, I agree with Anna de L- the more tangible results ain't gonna happen for a while yet.

Something occurred to me the other day (as usual, it's the bleedin' fuckin' obvious which just happened to hit me a long time after it hit everyone else)- this whole argument between the government and the BBC, over who said what to whom.

For fuck's sake! The BBC's just a fucking TV/radio service! Okay, if they blatantly lie it's gonna piss me off. But the BBC lying has NEVER sent this country into war. Unless I missed something. A government lying, or even misleading, while par for the course, is a MUCH more serious matter.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
13:11 / 28.08.03
Well the BBC holds little power. They may sway public opinion but tbh the public don't have that much power, only every once in a while during election periods and a majority choose not to execute what little is allowed them. The government chooses whether we live or die, it helps create laws, starts and ends war and controls our economy.

Now, what do people think of Hoon and Blair? It strikes me that Hoon might be even more incompetent than previously suspected and Blair would seem to have been a very careful wordsmith, that's clear even before the transcript has been released.
 
 
unheimlich manoeuvre
14:16 / 28.08.03
IMHO the BBC holds a great deal of power. it is a nominally independent international media giant supported by the british public in the form of the licence fee/tax.

...

Scientist told MPs Government was unwise to include 45-minute claim
Blair: 'Sexed up' allegations were a resigning issue
Prime Minister's question time

quote from last link...
Mr Scarlett, appearing on day nine, did his best to defend Downing Street from charges it had interfered with his work. But he admitted accepting changes from Alastair Campbell to the dossier that "strengthened'' its language.

...

The argument seems to be did Downing Street put pressure on the JIC? Surely this is naive as the civil service writes what it thinks the government wants to hear.
 
 
Linus Dunce
15:26 / 28.08.03
The BBC is not supported by the public or separate from the government any more than, say, the NHS or Railtrack. The idea of the licence fee providing public ownership is a myth propogated by those who would wish to privatise the state's media interests and/or underline its "independence." High level managers and editors of all major media, including private, meet regularly with the Home Office to discuss how important issues are best handled.

What has gone wrong, aside from the obvious, is that the BBC has refused to toe the line in a very public way. I wouldn't be surprised if Tory plans for the privatisation of the BBC became a distinct possibility in the future no matter who has the majority in Parliament.
 
 
Lurid Archive
15:27 / 28.08.03
FWIW, I think it was understood that the UK (and US) government wanted justifications for going to war. With intelligence sources, who are not always reliable, this can mean exaggeration in the direction that is considered most desirable by your employers. For the intelligence community, this may mean putting forward all possible intelligence that points to a threat to UK security.

Did the government put pressure on the JIC? I don't think so. Scarlett is fairly pro the government stance, as I understand it, and all they were asked to do is to highlight the intelligence they had which made the case for war most strongly, while retaining control on the precise contents on the report.

But the whole process was misguided. Intelligence is supposed to inform you. Instead, policy was dictating the emphasis of the intelligence. From what I understand, the intelligence community is pretty annoyed at this, in the sense that no one believed the 45 minute claim even though it did come from a legitimate source. If you fail to apply proper scepticism to intelligence, you get reports that are a lot more alarmist than is realistic. Of course, doing it this way makes it impossible to pin anything on the government.

Also, I still don't see any justification for believing in a conspiracy to kill Kelly. Quite the opposite.
 
 
Linus Dunce
16:27 / 28.08.03
My take on it is that the governments weren't looking for justification -- Saddam Hussein and his neighbours have been giving them one for a long time -- rather that they were looking for a justification that could be presented to the public. No public support, no war, especially in the US. With the Afghani Al-qaeda connection and the outrages of the Taliban (curiously low on the anti-war agenda, as was the fact that Saddam Hussein was a nasty piece of work), selling that war was easy, but what to do about Iraq?

And it was that job, the PR, that they screwed up, though it may have been impossible for anyone to make a good job of it given that they've let the bastards get away with murder for years. So now it gets really messy, with lots more dead than should have been and each and every party trying to distance itself from the cockup without have to compromise themselves further. I think it likely Dr Kelly was doing the same in his own way.
 
 
Not Here Still
17:13 / 28.08.03
OPB Lurid Archive: But the whole process was misguided. Intelligence is supposed to inform you. Instead, policy was dictating the emphasis of the intelligence....

...If you fail to apply proper scepticism to intelligence, you get reports that are a lot more alarmist than is realistic.

Exactly. Indeed, this is (at best) what can be said about the Government now.

As regards Hoon, I'm afraid that I was not in a position to be watching the news or listening to the radio, never mind reading newspapers or websites on the issue. As such, despite the fact I could be expected to have an opinion on the matter, I have left it to colleagues who did read the papers to make up my mind for me.

[Manuel off Fawlty Towers] I know naaathing. [/manuel]

Alternatively: Christ, what a twat. Either (a) a liar, or (b) an fool so badly informed and so little involved with what went on in the MOD as to be an absolute irrelevance.
 
 
Not Here Still
17:31 / 28.08.03
Ooops, a little too bold in my last post, I fear...

As regards Blair: compare and contrast:

Mirror, July 23; In an effort to clear his name before the Hutton inquiry into the scientist's death starts, the PM said: "I did not authorise the leak of the name David Kelly.
"My starting point going into this inquiry is that I believe we have acted properly throughout.
"There are a lot of questions the inquiry will ask and we will answer them, but the idea that I authorised the leaking of the name David Kelly is completely untrue. When you set up an inquiry you can speculate forever about what it might find.
"But what is important is to let the inquiry do its work."
,

with

Guardian Unlimited, today: Seemingly passing the buck back to Geoff Hoon, the beleaguered defence secretary who gave evidence yesterday, the prime minister said that after agreeing to put out an MoD statement he moved on to other matters, and it then became a "personnel matter" for the MoD.
Giving evidence to the Hutton inquiry, Mr Blair said: "I was really not sure what the right way to handle this issue was, but I knew that we should not be in a situation where we could be accused of misleading the foreign affairs select committee [FAC]."
Mr Blair added that he was not trying to shirk his responsibility as prime minister and insisted: "The responsibility is mine, at the end of the day. I take the decision as prime minister but I wanted to be able to say that we had played it by the book."

That's what I love about this government; its semantic quibbling. Blair emphatically denies something he later accepts he was responsible for doing. Wanker.
 
 
Not Here Still
17:41 / 28.08.03
Three posts in a row in a short space of time - why didn't I just put them all together?

Anyway, as regards Lurid's earlier post; checking the quotes in the post above, I stumbled over this essay by John Denham, the former Home office minister who resigned over the Iraq war. He agrees with the 'intelligence being made to fit' assessment of the dossier:

"But what Hutton has exposed is that neither the dossier nor the intelligence assessment was designed to inform government decisions on Iraq. The real assessment had already been made by the government, and the intelligence community was asked to provide evidence to support it.

The government's real mistake was to persuade the public, media, parliament (and perhaps even itself) that the intelligence would support decisions that had already been taken. Instead of setting out the real reasons for these decisions, the government wanted us to believe it all stemmed from the intelligence assessment. Of course it didn't, and arguably it never could have done. Even if Saddam had a far more extensive weapons programme, our intelligence would still be hedged with "ifs" and "buts". Intelligence is like that: unreliable, capable of many interpretations and a matter of cautious judgment. It will rarely prove a case. The government's first action in restoring credibility must be to promise that the intelligence services should never be asked to do so again."
 
 
Lurid Archive
20:12 / 28.08.03
I don't think anyone with sense seriously doubted Hans Blix assessments of Saddam's then current capabilities. In my view, these were clearly not the reason we went to war. IIRC, Cook's resignation speech said as much about the current threat that Saddam posed. I don't think one needed to be looking very hard to see that, which is one of the main reasons I don't believe that Kelly was killed by shadowy agents.

I think that intelligence *might*, in exceptional circumstances, be used to justify a war. But nothing the public were presented with came close.
 
  

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