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British scientist who ‘briefed’ BBC reporter on Iraq dossier found dead
H.S. Rao (Press Trust of India)
London, July 18: British government's defence advisor David Kelly, suspected to be a source behind BBC's report that the Blair government had "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq's weapon capabilities, was found dead on Friday, four days after he was grilled by the foreign affairs committee on the issue. The body of 59-year-old Kelly, who was missing since Thursday, was found by a member of the police team searching for him in a wooded area at Harrowdown Hill, eight km from his house in Oxfordshire.
Acting superintendent of police Dave Purnell said the body matched Kelly's description but formal identification would take place on Saturday. The case was being treated as an "unexplained" death, he said at a brief press conference, adding "we will be awaiting the results of the post mortem and also waiting while the forensic examination continues at the scene at Harrowdown Hill. The body was discovered lying face down. No note was found either at the scene or at Kelly's house, the police said. Government said an independent judicial inquiry would be held in to the circumstances of his death if the body is confirmed that of Kelly. Kelly, who worked in the MOD's counter-proliferation and arms control secretariat, was reported missing by his family on Thursday as he did not return after telling his wife was going for a walk. Kelly found himself at the centre of a row over a BBC report claiming Downing Street "sexed up" a dossier on weapons of mass destruction after he was named as the possible "mole" who briefed reporter Andrew Gilligan. The government claimed Kelly had come forward voluntarily to admit he had spoken to the reporter. On Tuesday, the foreign affairs committee MPs grilled him about what he told Gilligan, who claimed in his report that the government had "sexed up" the weapons dossier. Kelly's appearance prompted an angry reaction from MPs on the committee who claimed that he had been "set up" by the Ministry of Defence, which had previously released a statement suggesting that he might have been the source. The scientist admitted he had met Gilligan a week before he broadcast his story on the Radio 4 Today programme about the Iraq dossier. But he said he did not think he could have been the source for the story, which became the subject of a bitter row between the government, the BBC and critics of the war on Iraq. The weapons expert told MPs that Gilligan's account of his conversation with his source for the story was so different from their conversation and that he did not believe he could be the source. "From the conversation I had I don't see how he could make the authoritative statements he was making from the comments that I made." One Tory MP on the committee, Sir John Stanley, said Dr Kelly had acted in a "proper and honourable manner" in coming forward to suggest that he may have been Gilligan's source but had been "thrown to the wolves" by the MOD. Kelly said he had contacted his line manager after Gilligan gave evidence to the committee because he thought it was possible he was the source. He said they had met in the Charing Cross hotel in London - where Gilligan also met his source - and that elements of his story were similar to things they had discussed, such as a suggestion there was a 30 per cent probability Iraq had chemical weapons. Tom Mangold, a television journalist and close friend of Kelly told ITV news he had spoken to Dr Kelly's wife Janice earlier in the day. According to him she had said her husband was deeply unhappy and furious at how events had unfurled. "She told me he had been under considerable stress, that he was very, very angry about what had happened at the committee, that he wasn't well, that he had been to a safe house, he hadn't liked that, he wanted to come home," Mangold said. "She didn't use the word depressed, but she said he was very stressed and unhappy about what had happened and this was really not the kind of world he wanted to live in." Mangold said Kelly was a source to many reporters. His ambition was to help serious journalists understand a complex topic. "He was a man whose brain could boil water, he used words with tremendous precision, he used them as weapons," he said. "There was nothing he didn't know about biological warfare and there wasn't much he didn't know about WMD."
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