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Murder theory that just won't go away
11:39am Friday 13th April 2007
Comments (20)The greatest British conspiracy theory of the modern age was unveiled this week. Lewes MP Norman Baker set out in detail for the first time why he believes the secret service murdered the Government scientist Dr David Kelly.
MILES GODFREY and KATYA MIRA report on a one-man crusade for the truth which has catapulted an unassuming Parliamentarian into the international spotlight.
- It was the start of 2006 and the time was right to bring down the British Government.
- In March last year Norman Baker, serial thorn in the side of the establishment and by his own admission "not the Prime Minister's favourite person", resigned his role as a frontbench MP for the Liberal Democrats.
It was a typically low-key announcement, timed to coincide with the anointment of the party's new leader Sir Menzies Campbell.
The time had come, the MP said, for a new man to take over.
But to those who knew Norman Baker, the decision to resign was made for another reason.
It would allow him more time to do what he does best: investigate, challenge, push, probe - specifically into the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly. He was about to embark on an amazing investigation into the murky world of secret service agents, national security and the death of the man who very nearly halted the start of the war in Iraq.
If he could prove conclusively that members of the Government had conspired to get rid of Dr Kelly, it would have been - and still could be - the biggest single scandal this country has ever known.
The official report into the death of Dr David Kelly concluded he committed suicide after a row between the BBC and the Government over the "sexed up" dossier on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction thrust the normally private scientist into the glare of the limelight.
But Mr Baker didn't believe a word of it. He said at the time: "The public out there can smell a rat and they don't think it's finished business either."
The scientist's death was, the MP said, just too convenient, too riddled with inconsistencies and so unlike a man like Dr Kelly.
His year-long investigation culminated on Wednesday night at a meeting at which he proclaimed Dr Kelly had been murdered and set out his evidence.
Mr Baker told a packed community hall in Lewes: "I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that this could not be suicide.
"The medical evidence does not support it and David Kelly's state of mind and personality suggests otherwise.
It was not an accident so I am left with the conclusion that it is murder."
He told of how the world's leading WMD expert had spent the morning before his death sending "upbeat emails" and even booking himself a flight to Iraq from his rural home in Southmoor, near Oxford.
Mr Baker questioned the cause of death - a haemorrhage caused by cuts to the ulnar artery in the wrist.
He said such wounds were "matchstick thick" and hidden, difficult to get to, as well as rarely leading to death.
The knife said to have been used was a gardening pruner Dr Kelly had kept since childhood - an unlikely and blunt choice.
Paramedics have said he had lost little blood and was "incredibly unlikely" to have died from the wound they saw.
Police said 29 tablets of the painkiller Coproxamol were missing from his home but all that was found in Dr Kelly's stomach was the equivalent of one fifth of a tablet.
The MP told The Argus: "It has taken more than a year to investigate and it has been an incredible and fascinating journey which has taken a large number of twists and turns.
"I have met experts on weapons of mass destruction in Brussels and uncovered more evidence about the lies the Government told about weapons of mass destruction before the war."
Along the way Mr Baker has had personal run-ins with high-profile Government figures, not least Tony Blair.
He said: "I wouldn't say it has been easy, certainly the Foreign Office has done a lot to put obstacles in my way and other people have too. It has been hard work but at the same time it has been extremely worthwhile."
He has also been hugely encouraged by the public, who he claims can see Dr Kelly's death for what he says it was. Mr Baker said: "There is a world in Westminster and the rest of the world and I think most people in the public world can see that Dr Kelly was murdered.
"He was the world's foremost expert on weapons of mass destruction who could single-handedly destroy the Government's case for war so it was no wonder he was killed.
"It may have also been intended as a message to other people out there who speak to the press when the Government doesn't want you to.
"I was appalled at his death and at the Hutton Inquiry into it. It was a procedural disaster from start to finish and I felt compelled to look into it."
Mr Baker has signed a book deal to explain in greater detail his findings on Dr Kelly's death and he expects to publish it later this year.
But the MP insists he will continue to investigate.
He has nagging doubts about the official line taken over the recent Navy hostages taken in Iran and over the death of Robin Cook, the MP who resigned in protest at the Iraq war.
He said: "Robin Cook was on Ministry of Defence land, I believe, when he died and certainly I have doubts over what happened."
There are those, of course, who doubt Norman Baker's theories.
But for every person out there who does there are an equal number for whom the MP has become a beacon of truth in an increasingly murky world.
Your Say YourThe Argus
BlairSupporter, UK says...
7:59pm Fri 13 Apr 07
"It was the start of 2006 and the time was right to bring down the British Government."
So THAT'S your motivation, is it, Mr Baker? Bringing down the PM & the government? Well, they've all tried - the SNP, half of the press, the police, and now the Tories over the navy lark. The public don't seem quite so moved to do this.
In the end Tony Blair has seen them all off apart from some in his own stupid party, who are after his blood for other reasons.
And if you think that Robin Cook has been knocked off by the government or secret services too, I'm seriously concerned about your sanity! More and more foolish. And your allegations were pretty silly already, questioning the integrity of Lord Hutton and his inquiry and the honesty of all those from whom he took evidence.
There is no date to this article, so I assume it was written some time ago before the recent TV programme on the "Kelly Conspiracy". If so this article is devalued and should be removed. The programme concluded that Mr Kelly died by his own hand, with a few conspiracy theories thrown into the melting pot, and then dismissed, about the Iraqi secret services.
If this 'truth-hunter' of an MP KNOWS that there was someone else behind Dr Kelly's death - presumably the PM - WHERE'S THE EVIDENCE? Come on now, Mr Baker. I'd like to know if my Prime Minister is out there murdering people, or encouraging others so to do.
Admit it, Mr Baker - people like you are motivated by your hatred of Tony Blair for Iraq, for his believing the WMD evidence, (or for being taken in by it), for his closeness to Bush, for still being listened to at home and around the world even in the dying days of his premiership. In fact you hate him for breathing.
For me, he is the best Prime Minister we have had for decades - honest, upright and with true leadership qualities. Pity it seems that envy and suspicion consumes such as yourself, and many in the press.
I have put my thoughts on Mr Blair on my own blog, just to try to counteract some of the unproven, defamatory junk he has to put up with. People like yourself should be ashamed.
Google - Keep Tony Blair For PM.
martin brighton, says...
11:44am Sat 14 Apr 07
This nulabor government, as corrupt as it is, has a policy of inducing mental illness and suicide among those it has deemed to be a potential threat.
In effect, Dr. David Kelly, among others, was effectively killed because of what he knew about nulabor.
This sad saga, yet another in years of similar abuses by nulabor, demonstrates yet again that:
This nulabor government is corrupt. The corruption is absolute, lead from the top down, includes the government institutions, and is out of control. Being rotten to the core and from the core, everything it touches it taints. Having neither the ability nor inclination to sort itself, outside intervention is indicated.
Ron Lambert, Geordieland says...
3:51pm Sat 14 Apr 07
Conspiracies are only theories if there are no facts and in Dr. Kelly's case there are plenty. There are hundreds of suppressed facts and real witnesses relating to 911 that were blatantly, no criminally ignored. So please stop trying to tell us that what we see is reality, haven't you heard of smoke and mirrors? It's what governments do when they don't want to be found out, such as in taking the country to war for reasons no sane person would agree to,
i.e. oil and power. I am only a humble, disabled bricklayer with lots of time on my hands, to read freepress on the internet, to look beyond the matrix of the controlled mainstream media, and guess what. I can see through the phoney spin of your masters, whom you prefer to lie down with. But the scales are rapidly falling from the eyes of the masses, like with the cold war and the 911 pretext for this phoney war on terror.
And people like Norman Baker, George Galloway and the late courageous Robin Cook
are the only one's with balls enough to rebuff ridicule by their bosses and peers to say ENOUGH!.
Truth is like a little crack in a roof tile which lets in a trickle of rain-water, until it builds up in the felt and bursts through the ceiling, and it is building up in the populous my freind.
Go to New York and ask Joe Schmoe in the street if he thinks that the 911 commission was fairly conducted, and well over 50% will tell you that they know someone who heard, felt or saw dozens of explosions from the basements of the towers to the top, well before the collapses. If you think it's beyond a 'civilized' government to perpetrate terror against it's citizens, please google up 'The Northwoods document' where some inside Kennedy's admin. drew up a plan to sink ships, shoot down aircraft with make-believe passenger lists, and even kill patsies in Florida so that they could win public opinion in order to go to war with Cuba. Heck, it's like a script for 911 and this current bloodbath in Iraq, who like Afghanistan,
had nothing to do with 911. And you don't call the deaths of approx.1,000,000 civillians murder, not to mention the 500,000 Iraqi kids who died of starvation and no medicine through embargos after Gulf war 1? Boy you really need to swallow the red pill, or was it blue? Where's the evidence? you say, well there's an old latin saying, Cui Bono?...or who benefits? Iraq didn't benefit, nor Afghanistan, nor did the old C.I.A. agent
called Bin Laden who denied the gig, even though it would have rocketed his kudos.
Palestine, Syria and Iran didn't benefit too. Hmm, who did?
Bush, Blair, Cheney, especially Dick with his multi billion dollar, no tender Halliburton contracts.
Er..Larry Silverstein who took over the twin towers a year earlier and insured them for seven and a half billion and counting did o.k. The
unknown stock traders who made who knows what on put options on the decline of American Airlines, on the 9th. of Sept.and before. Everybody but the invaded got rich, and stayed alive. You want evidence pal? Try opening your eyes to the discrepancies, they far outweigh the official line. As to Norman Baker's book, I suspect it's more for reaching a brain-washed public than fiscal profit, but so what, plenty M.P.'s do books about their sordid lives and still get fat pay-offs, and pretendy jobs in the city for keeping their mouths shut. Wake up fool, unless you are..... already wide awake.
viceroy, says...
5:04pm Sat 14 Apr 07
Rob Meyerson, UK says...
8:02pm Sat 14 Apr 07
There's an interview with Aaron Russo that tells where we're heading -
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2007/290107rockefellergoal.htm
"Hollywood director and documentary film maker Aaron Russo has gone in-depth on the astounding admissions of Nick Rockefeller, who personally told him that the elite's ultimate goal was to create a microchipped population and that the war on terror was a hoax, Rockefeller having predicted an "event" that would trigger the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan eleven months before 9/11."
Stephen B Coulson, Canada says...
1:48am Sun 15 Apr 07
If people are suspicious about this government, it's really the governments own fault. Neither Tony Blair, nor president Dick Cheney and his glove puppet for that matter, have given much indication that they should be trusted on matters of fact.
Dianne C. Foster, USA says...
2:13am Sun 15 Apr 07
Veloceraptor, U.K. says...
9:35am Sun 15 Apr 07
Even BBC political editor Andrew Marr comments on Hutton's underlying assumptions and background, making him more likely to believe and trust certain social groups: "again and again, he comes down on the side of politicians and officials."
So who is Hutton, and what is in his background to come to these extraordinary conclusions? What has lead to the reports extraordinary absolution of Blairs war lies and attack on journalistic freedom?
The 72 year old Baron Hutton of Bresagh, County of Down, North Ireland, is a classic representative of the British ruling establishment. A member of the Anglo-Irish elite, he was educated at Shewsbury all boys boarding school, and then Balliol, Oxford, before entering the exclusive club of the British Judiciary. Whilst British Judges are overwhelmingly conservative, upper class, white, male and biased, Huttons background is even more compromised.
His name will be familiar to residents of the Six counties of Ulster. During the bloody thirty years war Hutton was an instrument of British state repression, starting in the late 1960s as junior counsel to the Northern Ireland attorney general, and by 1988 rising to the top job of Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.
Hutton spent his career as Judge and Jury in the notorious northern Ireland kangaroo Diplock Courts. These were special non-Jury courts, condemned by human rights advocates for their miscarriages of justice. He was hated for this role by the families of the many innocent Catholics wrongly convicted here.
Hutton distinguished himself after the Bloody Sunday massacre of civil rights protesters in 1972. He played a key role in the ensuing judicial cover-up called the Widgery Inquiry which absolved British troops of Murder. This miscarriage of justice is only now being investigated by the current Saville inquiry.
Then in 1978 he represented the British Government before the European Court of Human Rights, defending it against a ruling that it abused and maltreated detainees from the conflict.
However, he will be remembered in the rest of the UK for his role in the 1999 Pinochet affair. Another senior Judge, Lord Hoffman had contributed to the decision to arrest and extradite the notorious former dicator of Chile and mass murderer General Pinochet during his visit to Britain.
As a law lord, Hutton led the rightwing attack on Lord Hoffman, on the excuse that Hoffmans links to the human rights group amnesty international invalidated Pinochet's arrest! Lord Hutton said "public confidence in the integrity of the administration of justice would be shaken" if Lord Hoffmans ruling was not overturned.
More recently, Hutton was also involved in the ruling that David Shayler, the former MI5 agent, could not argue he was acting in the public interest by revealing secrets.
This history of intimate links with, and knowledge of Britains secret military intelligence operations meant he could be a trusted pair of hands when it came to the Kelly affair.
FedUpWithLies, Brighton says...
11:43am Sun 15 Apr 07
bigmouth, manchester says...
4:58pm Sun 15 Apr 07
Michael Smith, Germany says...
1:10pm Mon 16 Apr 07
Strategist, London says...
1:32am Tue 17 Apr 07
This is an important contribution. It feels implausible that Blair would have ordered the murder (even in a "who will rid me of this turbulent weapons inspector" moment) - Blair & Campbell's No.10, constantly obsessed by how it was being reported, would have thought killing him in the midst of a total media furore way too risky to contemplate.
With the information I have seen to date I have for some time thought that the most plausible explanation of what the British security services were doing at the crime scene (standing down the local constabulary for however many hours and so on) was hurriedly finding out what had happened and removing evidence.
Can you imagine the scene in No 10 as the report came in that yes he was dead and that MI5 suspected an American agency had done it? They would be bricking it. A cover up would be of paramount importance. The idea of an inquiry announced quickly was a clever one the govt that always resists inquiries into itself suddenly looked good at the time by announcing an inquiry quickly and appearing to come clean by releasing emails, for example but all the time they knew that the inquiry would find nothing incriminating in No 10s email accounts. Appointing Hutton a man who could be relied on to give the right verdict at the end of the process without needing to be leaned on by the government was clever, but the masterstroke was to say that the Inquiry superseded any need for a local coroners inquest a local level process that would correspondingly be far more difficult to control. So, one way of understanding the Hutton Inquiry is to think of it as a means of distracting attention from the really damaging evidence (from the local medics etc) that this was no suicide.
I await Stormin Norman Bakers book with great interest. I hope he has considered the possibility that it was neither suicide nor a British Govt-sponsored murder, but a third party sponsored murder obligingly covered up by the British secret services. The BBC's Conspiracy Files programme on 26 Feb, whilst airing ridiculous ideas, eg the Iraqi secret services did it (!), noticeably failed to give any time whatsoever to the possibility that the Americans had done it.
Finally, on a theme we must often return to, isnt it funny that Norman Bakers pronouncements last week, which one might have thought just slightly newsworthy, have been utterly blanked by the London media and are going totally unreported outside Sussex? Clearly the carrier pigeon hasnt quite made it across the North Downs to Fleet Street yet!
Psynonymous, Sunderland says...
5:29pm Tue 17 Apr 07
SAY WHAT ? How did they know there would be any events, and at the time and place where their camera was pointing? I am no Sherlock Holmes but is this not a bit odd? Especially as they and another hundred were arrested, failed polygraphs and were spirited away to whence they came. Now who could have that kind of power in Washington on America's darkest day? Soon after, we heard on the news that Israel is the worst offender in spying on uncle Sam. Like I said, I am no Sherlock Holmes.
nbw, says...
6:01pm Tue 17 Apr 07
http://normanbakerwatch.blogspot.com/
blogwatch, UK says...
11:57am Wed 18 Apr 07
Here's a real blog - http://lataan.blogspot.com
Joe Craggs, Glasgow says...
12:32pm Thu 19 Apr 07
Rocky Rosebud, London says...
12:41pm Sun 21 Oct 07
Bella, London says...
11:49pm Tue 23 Oct 07
joe, Bristol says...
11:15pm Sat 5 Apr 08
I'm sure most of the public realise some very unsavoury things happen from time to time. For the good or less good of the country. To go around thinking that because the government wants to reduce road deaths or heart disease levels that they wouldn't bump off dangerous or leaky people then that is total niavety and stupidity.
It's well known that Robin Cook had started to get a bit 'mouthy/leaky' where the official secrets act was concerned, just before he died. Thats fact.
Norman Baker says lies have been told
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roy, says...
2:31pm Fri 13 Apr 07
The official report into the death of Dr David Kelly concluded he committed suicide and yet Mr. Baker persists in trying to make money (Mr. Baker has signed a book deal) on the back of this sad story. There is no mention of the fact that the widow accepted the govt. report.
My father committed suicide in Lisbon in the 1960s, following a property deal that when wrong. My mother never came to terms with it, convinced that he had been murdered by casino crooks and/or MI5 spies. Support services for the grieving relatives were not as available as they are now.
To describe Bakers story as a beacon of truth is worse than nonsense: more like a wrecking light, trying to get electoral advantage, both locally and nationally. He should be ashamed.
He had a broken heart. He had shrunk into himself. Mrs Kelly told
the Hutton Inquiry.