MANAGING THE NARRATIVE THROUGH 'CONSPIRACY THEORIES'

THE DAVID KELLY AFFAIR REVISITED

“The power to tell a story - or indeed to not tell a story - under the conditions of one’s own choosing is part of the political process.” Ken Plummer

How true this is of Keir Starmer! Witness his inability to lie convincingly about being working class, or his son's GCSE study needs. We're supposed to believe that this lad relocated to the scholarly seclusion of Covent Garden, a tourist area of noisy street musicians and constant sirens. Doesn't his school - or the area around his parents' £2m house - have a library? Those dastardly Tories must have shut them all. 

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Story telling - 'creating and managing the narrative' - is now the most powerful and dangerous thing done by those in power. Unfortunately for us, Starmer’s mentor Tony Blair both revelled in it and was far more effective than Starmer. I want to focus on a true-crime story with which I have vaguely personal connections, through links to Porton Down where my late father was director of the Centre for Applied Microbiological Research (CAMR). 

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My aim is to examine how official narratives are often deliberately implausible and confusing, the aim being to hide things through the 'conspiracy theories' provoked, discrediting the theorists and obscuring the real truth. Because it's striking how often the stories we're offered ignore the obvious. Doubtless the authorities are also active in peddling and promoting/refuting various online theories - the greater the complexity the better.

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The designation of interpretations as conspiracy theories, of course, relies on there being an official narrative - plus a correct version of what’s happened. But I'll avoid discussion on the disastrous effects of critical 'theory' and its rejection of empirical truths. There are objective truths independent of human interpretations and feelings, obviously in science but also in true crime.

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The case is that of Dr David Kelly’s 'suicide', in July 2003. Unsurprisingly, the coverup was done by Blair and his corrupt government - one of the most dishonest in our history.  Kelly was a British MoD weapons inspector on secondment to the UN, who'd made it obvious (to the BBC's Andrew Gilligan) that Blair and Campbell were lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the possibility of their use. To divert attention from this correct claim, Campbell went to war with the BBC and Kelly was revealed as their source. He'd previously worked at Porton Down's MoD Chemical Defence Establishment (CDE), where my father met him a few times.

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Kelly was 'outed' and put under immense pressure by the MoD, for having briefed the BBC journalist. He was found dead in an Oxfordshire wood about 15 minutes drive from where I'm writing this. The circumstances were - to say the least - highly unusual, if not downright suspicious. This is a summary of the account given of Kelly’s death, in Miles Goslett’s excellent book: AN INCONVENIENT DEATH:

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David Kelly supposedly went for a walk of one to two hours, about 3pm on Thursday 17th July 2003. He didn't return to his home in the Oxfordshire village of Southmoor but no call was made to the police until nearly midnight, at least seven hours after he should have been back. Mrs Kelly called her daughters later in the afternoon and they all went looking for him throughout the evening. One of them travelled over an hour to take part in this bizarre rural search. Bizarre because they supposedly looked fruitlessly but didn't think to call the police. 

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But there's evidence that the authorities were already aware of something amiss. A huge telecommunications mast was erected in his garden, an hour after the police were finally called. And Tony Blair seems to have been in contact (he was on a plane from the USA to Japan) with his Lord Chancellor chum Charlie Falconer about Kelly, just after he was reported missing. Quite why the government swung into action so quickly is key to the mystery and has never been explained. That fact is the most telling. The highly efficient actions happened without hesitation and with a very clear objective. Yet nothing supposedly was known of how Kelly had died, which could have been through accidental or natural causes.

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Kelly's body was found in woodland at Harrowdown Hill (a mile from his home) about 9:20am the next morning. There are numerous peculiarities in how he was found, the position of his body, blood loss, how the search team were directed to the area, etc. Perhaps the oddest detail is that a heat-seeking helicopter from RAF Benson had flown over the site in the early hours of 18th July, with nothing detected. The strong implication is that his body had been moved to the site more recently. 

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An immediate public inquiry was announced by Blair's government. This despite (apparently) no one knowing if Kelly had perhaps suffered an accident or a heart attack. True, he'd been in the news - but the unavoidable conclusion is that the authorities already knew much more about his death, and what they needed was very fast and effective action, to quell suspicions and create a narrative.  Although impressive sounding, the inquiry was to be non-statutory and have very limited legal powers.

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To lead the inquiry, a judge from Northern Ireland was rapidly appointed by Falconer: Lord Hutton. Many described him as a far from obvious choice, unless the government wanted someone who'd long been involved in the murky world of justice in the province, with its backdrop of espionage and covert operations. Hutton had no coronial experience and had chaired just one public inquiry before - into the diversion of a river in Northern Ireland.  

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Extraordinarily, Falconer used a legal loophole to ensure there was no coroner's inquest into Kelly's death. Legislation intended for some huge disaster involving multiple deaths was used to bury Kelly's inquest within the public inquiry. That legislation was meant to spare relatives of victims killed in (say) a train crash, where the cause of death was the accident and individual inquests deemed unnecessary. It had never been used to prevent a coroner's inquest into a single suspicious death, nor was it intended to be - least of all by a non-statutory inquiry with limited legal powers.

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The lengthy public inquiry was very obviously a PR exercise, to 'investigate the circumstances surrounding his death', but focussing on the leak and the BBC, management structures, personnel, journalistic standards, accountability - you name it. Blair et al performed very well in claiming that such a full inquiry was needed, agonizing over the pressure Kelly had been put under that supposedly meant he killed himself. Who was to blame for this suicide, what could No 10 or the MoD have done better, were they guilty of leaking about him - any and every load of old cobblers was thrown in. The entire thing was predicated on the assumption Kelly committed suicide.

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What had really happened to Kelly was being ignored: did he in fact kill himself? The minutiae of who said what to whom was irrelevant, as were Tony Blair's tedious ramblings and justifications, for his self-serving pursuit of war. All this obfuscation was deliberate. The more complicated and exhausting the inquiry was, the better. Most people focussed on the Blair operation, the BBC, the war, Campbell’s dodgy dossier - and so David Kelly's inquest was very effectively obscured.  Even though the eventual Hutton report was - rightly - dismissed as a whitewash, that criticism focused on the Blair operation and the run up to the Iraq war and claims of Saddam’s WMD. The actual whitewash - of what truly happened to Kelly - was missed.

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To this day, there has been no actual coroner's inquest into his death. The Oxfordshire coroner was ordered off his by Falconer. He did issue Kelly’s death certificate, which records no place of death and has his date of death as 18th July 2003, despite this never being established. The location is ‘found dead at Harrowdown Hill’, as if he’d died elsewhere and been moved. Oddly, the only public copy of this death certificate isn’t even signed - as it should be, by both the coroner and the registrar. And the death certificate (stating suicide) was issued weeks before the Hutton inquiry (the supposed inquest) had even concluded! What better evidence could there be for Hutton’s inquiry being a complete joke, as a replacement for a proper coroner’s inquest? In fact, what was Hutton for, other than as a performative charade for Blair?

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The post-mortem into Kelly's death was done by a relatively inexperienced pathologist. There have been numerous high-profile medical challenges to his conclusion (accepted by Hutton) that Kelly used a blunt knife to cut an obscure and inaccessible artery, which many pathologists (including my father) said shouldn't have caused his death. There are few UK deaths recorded from this artery being severed - just one in 2003 (Kelly’s). And very unusually, the actual pathologist’s report is now being kept secret for 70 years, post-Hutton. 

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One of the oddest details is that Kelly's dental records went missing from his Abingdon dentists and then reappeared. This was discovered by chance. His distressed dentist (a friend) heard of his death and immediately tried finding his records on Friday 18th July, to spare his widow from getting a tactless appointment reminder. At the time, the surgery was undergoing building work and its security was compromised. But since staff were at work on the Friday, if the file had been taken then it must have been done before the discovery of his body (9:20am). In other words, by someone who had known of his death already.

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Alarmed, she spent hours on the Saturday removing every single patient file to confirm that Kelly's wasn't there. On the Sunday, she went back to check again and it had reappeared. She reported this extraordinary ‘non-crime’ to Thames Valley Police, who nevertheless interviewed staff the following week, took fingerprints - and even sent officers to Spain to interview someone who'd helped in the search and since gone away on holiday. Clearly this was seen an important matter to them but the details of why they went to those lengths haven’t been explained by TVP. The matter was cleverly dismissed at the Hatton inquiry, being mentioned as a trivial aside.

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Presumably Kelly’s records were taken in the assumption they'd not be missed - and wouldn't have been but for his dentist's kindness. Their possible use - if a body needs identifying, substituting or disposing of - is obvious. A copy was probably made then they were returned, by people unaware the loss had been spotted.

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Given all of the above, it's small wonder there are numerous theories on what actually happened. The key focus for me is the odd behaviour of Kelly's immediate family - both when he supposedly went missing and since. Is it likely that, when a man in a vulnerable public position goes absent, his family wait many hours before calling the police but instead all go on a search for him? More likely, the daughter I’ve mentioned travelled to Oxfordshire since she already knew something had happened to him.

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There’s also evidence that the family have since had some sort of split over Kelly, with one daughter pointedly refusing to take part in the Hutton inquiry. And there are aspects which suggest the family have been pressurised, with hints that this could involve things found on his computer drives. It’s also odd that Mrs Kelly was given extensive legal services by Tony Blair’s own solicitors.

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The most likely explanation for the whole thing is that Kelly - who was last seen by a neighbour walking in the opposite direction to Harrowdown Hill - was picked up by arrangement in an MoD car on the outskirts of Southmoor and taken to some MoD location (probably in Berkshire) for a robust interrogation. Before going on his ‘walk’, he’d had a long work phone call with his bosses. It’s known they were very angry about his conversation with the BBC, so he was summoned to a meeting with disciplinary action (and worse) under discussion.

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I think he then had a heart attack under the stress, and died. Political contact was made and a cover up ordered; there was panic over claims of foul play if they said he’d had a coronary under interrogation. The security services were used, hence the theft of dental records, as various options were being covered. Mrs Kelly was told but threatened/coerced. She went along with the plot under duress, with the TVP called just before midnight reporting Kelly missing. Possibly the police went genuinely searching for him, but his body was moved onto Harrowdown Hill early in the morning of Friday 18th July - well after the heat-seeking RAF Benson helicopter had flown over.

One thing that’s always puzzled me: why Harrowdown Hill? In Goslett’s book, it’s given as number two on a list Mrs Kelly provided to TVP when they arrived, for favourite spots that David Kelly would visit on his walks around the area (page 69). In which case, wouldn’t it have been somewhere the Kelly family would already have carefully checked before they called the police, during their supposed extensive search for him on the evening of 17th July? I’ve not seen this point made before, in the extensive discussions (says he modestly!). And the more I ponder it, the more it seems suggestive.

In fact, wouldn’t the family have searched all the places on the list - in their account, they spent about four hours looking. It sounds more like this claim of a list given to TVP is a neat way to cover why the official search quickly focused on Harrowdown Hill. Claiming it as second on the ‘list’ is clever too - number one would be too obvious.

Of course, he could have slashed his wrists on the hill later, but then what was he doing for those many hours and why did no one see him? As said, the last reported sighting was about 3:20 pm on the 17th by a neighbour, walking away from Harrowdown Hill. He’d even chatted with this lady, who reported him as friendly and his normal self.

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A very odd claim is that Kelly was seen undergoing frantic resuscitation, in the A & E department of a Reading hospital on the afternoon of 17th July! It’s impossible to verify but also difficult to see why this claim - apparently made by a consultant at the hospital - would be bogus. This could also explain why Kelly’s body wasn’t just dumped at Harrowdown Hill without faking a wrist-slashing suicide. If a heart attack was the only and obvious cause of death, then the signs of an attempted resuscitation were more likely to be spotted in an autopsy. As it was, one of the paramedics who found the body thought there were indications that a mask had been recently placed over his face. But all the focus was on the slashed wrist and the knife alongside his body. And wouldn’t it all seem even more suspicious if Kelly had conveniently just dropped dead whilst out on a routine walk?

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Versions of this explanation can be found all over the place. It fits the facts, although is weakest on the family’s involvement. What doesn’t work is how Kelly died from suicide, why he committed suicide, why the death certificate doesn’t specify a place of death (just ‘found dead at Harrowdown Hill’) - and why his dental records went missing. No worries though! None of those obvious points were discussed at the Hutton enquiry, which was supposedly an inquest into his death. Job done for Blair et al.

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How Starmer must envy the sheer gall of such a cover up. It’s all done in plain sight. The official narrative is in some ways strengthened by its obvious flaws; it has what those who analyse discourse call ‘anti-fragility’, with attacks on it being consigned to the nutjob conspiracy theory bin. Time and again this simplistic ‘othering’ works, however crude it is.

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The majority of us want and perhaps need to believe in officialdom, which is understandable since the alternative - that we’re constantly lied to, using increasingly sophisticated gaming methods - is so unbearable. But Blair established that as the norm in British politics, and the litany of nonsense around Covid saw its full fruition. Needless to say, the interminable Covid inquiry has successfully obscured the key question: should we have gone into lockdown?