Coverup of Dr. Kelly's Death Unraveling
by Jeffrey Steinberg
Aug. 24—New evidence that Dr. David Kelly, the British weapons scientist who blew the whistle on then-Prime Minister Tony Blair's "sexed up" disinformation dossier on alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and who allegedly committed suicide on July 17, 2003, was actually murdered, has forced the British government to reopen the case, more than five years after the Hutton Commission published its flagrant coverup.
On Aug. 1, Britain's Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, recommended that Sir John Chilcot expand his inquiry into the government's role in the events leading to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, to include a probe into new evidence that Kelly was murdered. Her decision was triggered by an interview in The Mail, in July 2008, by Sgt. Mai Pederson, a U.S. Air Force linguist, who served in Iraq in the late 1990s with Dr. Kelly, and became a close friend.
Pederson wrote to Baroness Scotland, on July 16, 2009, through her Washington, D.C. attorney Mark Zaid, detailing why it was impossible that Dr. Kelly took his own life in the manner described in the Hutton Commission findings. Dr. Kelly supposedly slashed his left wrist, slicing the ulnar artery, with a dull garden knife, after taking an overdose of the pain killer Co-Proxamol.
However, Sergeant Pederson revealed that Dr. Kelly had broken his right elbow years earlier, was incapable of holding a knife in his right hand and cutting deep, and also suffered from a condition that made it almost impossible for him to swallow pills.
Tony Blair, Star Witness
The star witness in the Chilcot probe is former Prime Minister Blair, who is scheduled to be publicly interrogated about the Downing Street "white papers" that formed the basis of the disinformation that led to the Iraq invasion. Shortly before his death, Dr. Kelly had told journalists for the BBC that the Blair government had faked the intelligence, and that Iraq did not have a current WMD (weapons of mass destruction) program that would have warranted an invasion and overthrow of the Iraqi government.
During that same Spring-Summer 2003 period, Lyndon LaRouche was also interviewed by BBC, on two occasions, about his demands for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney—for his collusion with Blair in doctoring intelligence to justify the "preventive" war on Iraq.
The Blair government went berserk against BBC, over the LaRouche and Kelly revelations, forcing a purge of top news executives and reporters. In October 2007, BBC's longtime war correspondent John Simpson went public with his own scathing attack on Blair and the Prime Minister's spokesman, Alastair Campbell, a member of a secret 10 Downing Street propaganda unit, which manufactured the intelligence on Iraq WMD, at the very start of the war drive, in September 2002. "Few Prime Ministers in my 40 years have done as much damage to the BBC as Tony Blair and his head of communications, Alastair Campbell," Simpson told The Scotsman. Simpson charged that Campbell and other Blair aides made threatening calls to BBC and other journalists, and "routinely attempted to intimidate BBC editors by making foul-mouthed and menacing tirades against them."
Dr. Kelly was vilified by the Blair government, dragged before parliamentary committees, and threatened. While Blair's "war on Kelly" was presented by the Hutton Commission, which was charged with investigating Kelly's death, as a cause for his decision to take his own life, the Commission whitewashed the evidence of murder, and presented a "finding of fact" that was devoid of any credibility.
Downing Street Targeted LaRouche
A serious probe into the death of Dr. Kelly could bring down the Gordon Brown Labour government, and end the political career of Tony Blair. Furthermore, since the same Downing Street apparatus that went after Dr. Kelly simultaneously launched a vile slander campaign against LaRouche, centered on the Spring 2003 suicide of British youth Jeremiah Duggan, the Chilcot probe into Dr. Kelly's death should also be mandated to investigate the "Get LaRouche" operations, run by Blair's inner circle, including Campbell; Phil Bassett, another member of the Blair propaganda team; and Baroness Symons, now the wife of Bassett, who was central to the lies about Duggan.
