Dr Kelly's body found July 18
Posted on 08/21/2003 10:19:13 AM PDT by bedolido
Dr David Kelly predicted he would be "found dead in the woods" if Iraq was invaded, months before his apparent suicide, the Hutton Inquiry has heard.
Foreign Office official David Broucher said Dr Kelly had made what he thought to be the "throwaway" remark in February.
Mr Broucher said he met the weapons expert in Geneva.
Dr Kelly had told him that continued inspections "properly carried out would give a degree of certainty about compliance" with UN disarmament demands.
"He said he had tried to reassure them that if they cooperated with the weapons inspections, they had nothing to fear," Mr Broucher said.
"My impression was that he felt he was in some personal difficulty or embarrassment about this because he felt the invasion might go ahead anyway and somehow it was putting him in a morally ambiguous situation."
Mr Broucher added: "As David Kelly was leaving, I said to him `what do you think will happen if Iraq is invaded?'. "His reply was, which at the time I took to be a throwaway remark, he said `I will probably be found dead in the woods'."
The weapons inspector slashed his wrist at a beauty spot after being revealed as the source for BBC claims that intelligence on Iraq had been "sexed-up" in the run-up to war.
Dr Kelly had expected to remain anonymous after meeting BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan, the inquiry heard.
The inquiry's spotlight had earlier fallen on the grilling Dr Kelly received from MPs two days before he apparently took his life.
The chairman of the Commons' Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Donald Anderson, said Dr Kelly did not display any signs of distress - and even laughed, at times.
The inquiry continues on Tuesday. Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon will give evidence on Wednesday and Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday.
Last Updated: 17:30 UK, Thursday August 21, 2003
Dr Kelly's body found July 18
He was a person who felt qualified to define what is danger to a nation yet when mildly confronted killed himself.
Would he have destroyed his own nation when it faced confrontation too? Sounds like that would have been his course of action.
I have looked over this statement and the preceeding paragraphs a few times and I still don't know who "them" is. Is it Iraq? Is it the UN? Haven't we found enough to tell us that Iraq was not trying to comply? After all, they just have to say, "Look, we buried x planes over here, we have plans buried under the rose bush, etc." It sure looks like non-compliance to me.
Still LOL!
The premonition was recounted at the investigation into the suicide of Kelly, sucked into the heart of a row over whether Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s inner circle hyped evidence about Iraq's weapons capability to win support for the war.
Blair is due to testify to the hearing next week and the inquiry is expected to finishing taking evidence late next month, judge Lord Hutton announced on Thursday.
Kelly, a former Iraq weapons inspector whose body was found in woodlands near his home last month, told diplomat David Broucher in February he advised Iraqi officials that if they cooperated with the inspectors "they would have nothing to fear."
"The implication was if the invasion went ahead, that would make him a liar and he would have betrayed his contacts, some of whom might be killed as a result of his actions," Broucher told the inquiry probing the death of the weapons expert.
Broucher said he asked Kelly what would happen if Iraq were attacked. "His reply was, which I took to be a throwaway remark: 'I will be found dead in the woods."'
"I thought he might have meant that he was at risk of being attacked by the Iraqis in some way," Broucher said.
But he added that Kelly, described by one of his former bosses as a man "welded to the truth," believed that the invasion "might go ahead anyway and that somehow this put him in a morally ambiguous position."
Less than a month after his conversation with the diplomat, U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), saying Saddam had failed a last chance to prove he had scrapped his weapons of mass destruction programs.
Four months after Saddam's overthrow, no such weapons have been found in Iraq, raising doubts over Washington and London's case for military action.
Broucher said Kelly, who was the source for a BBC reporter's accusations that Blair's government "sexed up" a dossier making the case for war, believed British intelligence services had come under pressure to produce compelling evidence.
"He said there had been a lot of pressure to make the dossier as robust as possible, that every judgment (in the dossier) had been robustly fought over," he said.
The most dramatic section of the September dossier said Saddam had chemical and biological weapons that could be unleashed within 45 minutes.
But Broucher said Kelly, a microbiologist and biological weapons specialist, appeared unconvinced.
"He felt if the Iraqis had any bio-weapons left they would not have very much," he told the inquiry.
Broucher also said Kelly told him the deadly poisons "would be kept separately from the munitions and that this meant that the weapons could not be used quickly."
A bit more on this subject. Note the next to last paragraph---in my understanding it wouldn't take MUCH when one is talking about bio-weapons. This entire slant on the Kelly subject sounds contrived IMO.
Prairie
An idea, or just a thought, that I suspect he probably entertained on more than one occasion.
Curiouser and curiouser. Use of the word "apparent" is also an interesting journalistic twist.
Iraq weapons expert David Kelly eerily predicted his death six months ago, telling a British diplomat that if Baghdad was attacked he would be found "dead in the woods," the inquiry into his death revealed on Thursday.
But should instead read like this:
Diplomat David Broucher claims that Iraq weapons expert David Kelly predicted his death six months ago. Broucher alleges that Kelly told him that if Baghdad was attacked he would be found "dead in the woods."
It's convenient for Broucher that Kelly is dead and cannot confirm or deny whether he said it or not.
Of course, if a person was contemplating suicide, they would be the first to know and are thus in a position to predict the time, place and method.
This would be more newsworthy if someone OTHER than Kelly was known to have predicted or threatened Kelly's death.
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