posted 07-20-2003 12:24 PM            

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"--- Witness saw Kelly on final walk "Paul Weaver, a local farmer, did see him, however. He greeted Kelly as he strode through the fields north of the A420 close to his home, but there was nothing to indicate he was troubled. 'He smiled and said hello,' Weaver recalled."

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A haunted man

But why did Kelly have to die?

Sunday July 20, 2003
The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1001786,00.html

No one at the Waggon and Horses pub opposite Dr David Kelly's house in the quiet Oxfordshire village of Southmoor saw Britain's leading expert on biological weapons go out at 3pm last Thursday, although they knew him by sight.

He stopped in for a drink there occasionally, but was more likely to go to the nearby Hind's Head, where he was a member of the pub cribbage team and where he sometimes ate with his wife, Janice. Even there, though, he was hardly a drinker, sipping a mineral water while others downed pints.

Although he was discreet about his work, they knew Kelly was a senior government scientific adviser who had been a leading United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, and had regularly visited the country.

In the past week, they also knew that Kelly had been thrust unwillingly into the limelight, named as the alleged mole at the centre of a furious row between the Government and the BBC. He had been dragged before a House of Commons committee to deny he had told journalist Andrew Gilligan that the Government had 'sexed up' its crucial September dossier that made the case for war against Iraq.

Paul Weaver, a local farmer, did see him, however. He greeted Kelly as he strode through the fields north of the A420 close to his home, but there was nothing to indicate he was troubled. 'He smiled and said hello,' Weaver recalled.

Kelly's route was a familiar one to the keen rambler, cutting across the gentle rolling countryside of fields and copses that lay between his home village and Longworth, two miles away. It would have taken him at least an hour to walk across the fields, sodden after rain. But in Longworth, too, he passed unnoticed as he tramped through the pretty village that sits on a the crest of a hill.

Kelly continued towards the centre of that crest, set forward a little from the village, where there is a small hill, topped with a thick copse of ash and oak, known as Harrowdown Hill. He knew the farmer whose fields lay around the wood well. He knew, and loved, the fields and woods that would be his final destination. Some time on Thursday afternoon or late evening, according to police, Kelly took some tablets of Co-proxamol, a prescription painkiller, and cut his left wrist. Then he simply waited, on the crown of the ridge, above the most magnificent of views.

By late evening, Janice was worried that her husband had not returned. She called friends and family who launched the first, impromptu and unsuccessful search. At 11.45, increasingly concerned, Janice called in the police. At first light they started searching Kelly's favourite footpaths, and at 9.20am a body was found near the edge of the copse.

The two men who sat down to lunch in the Victorian Charing Cross hotel, between Strand and the Thames Embankment, on 22 May could not have been much more different. One was Andrew Gilligan, the Today programme's defence correspondent - garrulous and heavy set. Sitting opposite was Kelly. Fit for his age, tanned and smartly turned out, he was everything the journalist is not: quiet, deeply serious and rather introverted.

Gilligan had invited Kelly to the hotel to ask him about the case the Government had made for going to war against Iraq, a case that was coming under more intense scrutiny day by day on both sides of the Atlantic following the failure of coalition forces to turn up Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. If anyone knew about Iraq's biological weapons it was Kelly - the former head of biological inspections in Iraq for the UN mission, Unscom, former deputy head of Porton Down and the Ministry of Defence's senior adviser on biological defence.

For Gilligan, it was simply a meeting with a well-regarded contact to whom he had spoken before. For Kelly, briefing a senior journalist while officially prohibited by his contract with the MoD, was part and parcel of his work.

Neither man, however, could foresee the profound implications that meeting would have; how both would be hounded by Ministers and government officials over who said what to whom. In particular, neither could foresee the consequences of allegations - denied by Kelly - that he had told Gilligan how Alastair Campbell,the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, had improperly 'sexed up' the Government's September dossier, which presented the pressing evidence of Iraq's weapons programmes.

One claim in particular infuriated Campbell and the Government when it appeared in an article by Gilligan - that a senior intelligence source had told him the communications chief had insisted on including a contested claim that Iraq could 'deploy' its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.

And, of course, neither could possibly predict the awful events that unfolded last week - how, at the end of a public, and very vicious, mole hunt, Kelly would be found dead, after complaining to his wife and friends of his distress at the way the search for the source of Gilligan's story had launched him into a very humiliating public prominence.

In the peculiar world where science meets intelligence and intelligence meets public policy, Kelly was an unusual figure, a scientist to his bones, with little apparent interest in the Machiavellian manoeuvrings of politicians.

Fiercely intelligent, according to close family friends such as the broadcaster Tom Mangold, his speciality as an Oxford microbiologist had originally been the production of fertilisers and pesticides, a field with close parallels to the production of biological weapons.

Born in South Wales, his early career, after degrees at Leeds and Birmingham universities, had been as a biological pesticide expert at the Oxford Institute of Microbiology. By 1984 he was chief science officer at the Natural Environment Research Council. But then came the call from Porton Down, Britain's Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment, asking him if he would join its staff. Later he would recall: 'It was the best decision of my life.'

By1989 he had become head of microbiology at Porton Down, his rise to pre-eminence as Britain's leading expert in biological weapons coming rapidly as his expertise was recognised not only by officials at Porton Down but also by MI6, who regarded him as one of the few scientists capable of debriefing defecting scientists, from the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

Among those defectors was Vladimir Pasechnik, a germ warfare expert who first alerted Western intelligence about the extent of clandestine research into biological weapons in the Soviet Union when he defected to Britain in 1989.

When Russia agreed to examination of its bio-weapons factories little over 12 months later, Kelly was the obvious choice to join the joint US/UK mission. It was the first of several such missions that would bring the scientist into close contact with a world very unlike his beloved one of science, proof and hard fact - the world of intelligence with its hunches, extrapolation and surmise. A world whose uncertainties, in all probability it now seems, would contribute to the tragic downfall of 'a very decent man'.

And the crisis, when it came, would be triggered by his involvement with a country that he would come to love and where he spent much of the mid-1990s as the head of biological weapons inspections: Iraq.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war, Kelly was a shoo-in for one of the UN inspection teams that would be sent into Iraq to hunt down Saddam's weapons of mass destruction for dismantlement under the terms of the ceasefire. He would return 36 times over the next seven years, patiently hunting for evidence of a military biological programme.

Kelly's views on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein before the invasion of Iraq were, despite claims to the contrary, rather orthodox. To the very end he believed that Saddam had been pursuing a programme to rebuild his biological weapons programme - a view which, on the surface at least, is little different from that of Tony Blair and his other advisers. But in other ways his view did differ, and as the war against Iraq came to an end he seemed to become more vocal in his doubts with the journalists he encountered and briefed on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

In one particular Kelly was definitively at odds with what both George Bush and Blair were claiming about postwar discoveries of Iraqi weapons. Both had insisted that Coalition Forces had found and identified two alleged mobile germ warfare laboratories. But Kelly had a totally different opinion, telling The Observer that he had examined the alleged labs in person and had no doubts about what they were intended for - the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons. 'Exactly as the Iraqis described them,' he would tell this paper.

In one of the last conversations he would have with the media, Kelly seemed cheerful, confident and very certain of his ground. Far from being nervous about talking to the press, he suggested further contact, if it was necessary. But he was emphatic too, a man comfortable with his facts. It did not seem the behaviour of a man who felt he was under any threat. And Kelly was insistent too about another crucial fact. Despite demolishing claims for the germ labs, even as Blair's entourage was still briefing them to political journalists accompanying him to Iraq, he was still certain that Iraqi programmes for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) would be discovered.

Within two weeks, however, Kelly would be under a state of virtual siege, accused of being the source of Gilligan's report that claimed that Number 10 had hyped the evidence to go to war. It is this issue that goes to the heart of the cruel sequence of events that cost him his life.

Was Kelly the 'senior intelligence source' who had given such a damning assessment of the Government's actions? It was a claim he denied to MPs - and a claim which the BBC refused to acknowledge. But as the evidence amassed, it seemed daily more likely that what Kelly had said to Gilligan was at the heart of the allegations against Campbell and Number 10.

What is without question is that Kelly had spoken to reporters other than Gilligan. As his long-time friend Mangold acknowledged after his death, Kelly was concerned that Gilligan may have misrepresented their conversation. However, he had also seemed to confirm in private conversations the central thrust of Gilligan's allegation - that there were serious questions about whether Iraq's chemical and biological weapons could be ready for use in '45 minutes'. According to Mangold, he had scoffed at the idea, saying it was unlikely that Iraqi technicians could even fill the warheads in that time.

Kelly had spoken to other journalists too. Critically, one conversation would be with Gilligan's colleague at the BBC, Science Correspondent, Susan Watts. In her evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee that would examine claims that Campbell had 'sexed up' the dossier, she would refer to notes of a meeting she had with Kelly.

Watts's report for BBC2's Newsnight would put a similar spin on the '45 minutes' story. She said the claim got out of 'all proportion' because the Government was 'desperate for information' to bolster its case against Saddam. So it seems possible that Kelly had also expressed the same reservation to Gilligan.

But the net was rapidly closing around Kelly over his meeting with Gilligan. Sources at the Ministry of Defence say the first time Kelly became aware that he might be a central figure in the growing row between the Government and the BBC was when he bumped into an old friend at a function at the Royal United Services Institute in London at the end of June. The colleague told him: 'Some of it [Gilligan's report] sounds like something you might say.'

Kelly also had been seen by MoD officials taking an 'over-keen' interest in the story as it unfolded. Whitehall sources said Kelly had a choice - to wait and see if anyone came up with his name, or take the decision into his own hands and detail his meeting with Gilligan on 22 May, a week before Today first carried its allegations.

Kelly was aware too that it was well known in government circles that the substance of the BBC reports - in particular a claim that the source was 100 per cent sure that Saddam had WMD programmes but only 30 per cent sure he had the actual weapons - sounded like his analysis. So on 30 June Kelly made his decision, writing to his line manager, saying he believed he may have been the source of some of Gilligan's report.

'He decided on the decent course of action,' an MoD official said. 'He came forward.' Had he not done so, it is not clear whether he would ever have been unmasked.

Save for one problem. Campbell had been itching to rise to his own defence from the moment he appeared at the edge of the crowd of British soldiers during Blair's visit to Iraq last month. He told reporters travelling with the Prime Minister precisely what he thought of Today - and that he was anxious to find out exactly who the mole briefing against him was. Loyalist Labour MPs had also taken up cudgels on behalf of Number Ten. As he penned his letter, Kelly put himself in the firing line.

In the interview with Kelly that followed, the MoD became convinced that not only had it found the source of Gilligan's story but that the source had not made the claim about 'sexing up' Gilligan had claimed. In other words, it felt certain it could prove that Gilligan and the BBC were lying.

So it was that on 8 July, at a lobby meeting of journalists, the MoD put out a statement saying that 'an individual working in the MoD' had come forward 'to volunteer that he met Andrew Gilligan'. The Ministry of Defence - now certain of its ground - offered a confidential swap of names with senior BBC executives, trying to lay a trap for the corporation, which it refused to be drawn into.

As the row between the BBC and the Government gathered pace over the identity of the source - with both sides now sticking to their guns - Kelly would be torn between them as, most cruelly, government sources orchestrated a series of leaks regarding Kelly's identity to ratchet up the pressure on the BBC.

The hints and whispers pointed ever more to Kelly, who friends say believed his name would be kept out of the row. So the MoD said that the unnamed individual was 'an expert in WMD' who advised Ministers and contributed to the government dossier on Saddam of September last year. But the key was in the last line of the statement. 'The MoD, with the individual's agreement, intend to give his name to the chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee [ISC] should they wish to interview him,' it said.

For while the ISC was conducting an inquiry into the use of intelligence to justify the conflict in Iraq, its hearings are in private. The volunteering of the alleged source was a red rag to the ISC's arch-rivals, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which just completed a similar inquiry into the Campbell-BBC affair. Donald Anderson, the Labour MP and chairman of the committee, immediately wrote to the ministry demanding that Kelly appearbefore his committee - which meets mostly in public - as well. Whitehall sources say the MoD was initially reluctant for Kelly to attend the public hearings, but decided it would have looked like a cover-up if he did not.

Suddenly Kelly was about to be thrust into the limelight as the key witness in someone else's row. The hints too had been so heavy and so clumsy that journalists well versed in the field of arms control were beginning to guess who it could be. Many already knew Kelly. The MoD poured petrol on the flames of speculation. As his name began being bandied about, the MoD suggested that if his identity was put to it, it would confirm it. Not satisfied with that, Kelly's name was finally leaked to three newspapers.

It was, say Whitehall sources, an extraordinary affair, in breach of all Whitehall rules for dealing with disciplinary procedure with senior government officials. One senior Whitehall source with close links to the intelligence services described the Ministry of Defence's behaviour.

'The way his name was put into the public arena was distasteful. The fact that the MoD named him was a surprise.'

The Ministry of Defence had hung Kelly out to dry.

Flamnked by two Ministry of Defence police officers, Kelly walked into the oak-panelled room overlooking the river Thames on 15 July. As his minders sat behind him scribbling notes, he faced an unrelenting barrage of questions from the Foreign Affairs Select Committee seated at the horseshoe of desks in front of him. What had he said, and to whom? Which other journalists had he met? What did he think about Alastair Campbell?

Most haunting of all were the continual questions about how his employer had treated him. Unlike the Foreign Office civil servants interviewed by the committee, who were accompanied by Jack Straw, Kelly was alone and the implication to some of the MPs was clear: Geoff Hoon - who was in Malta for talks that day - was not standing by him. 'You're chaff,' said Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay, aggressively, taunting the scientist. 'You've been thrown up to divert our probing. Have you ever felt like the fall guy? I mean, you've been set up, haven't you?'

A plainly nervous and wretched Kelly said he did not think he had been the single source of Gilligan's allegations. The journalist has always refused, quite properly, to identify that source while alive - although, in his second private appearance before the committee last week, he appeared to alter his account, acknowledging that, far from being directly recounted, some of his story about the '45 minutes' and 'sexing up' may have been deduced by inference from his source.

But, according to friends such as Mangold, Kelly himself was worried that he might be the source of at least part of Gilligan's story. He recognised much of the account but not, he insisted, the crucial issue of Campbell 'sexing up' the dossier via insertion of the '45 minute claim', despite scepticism he had relayed to both Mangold and Watts about the practical implications of that claim and the emphasis given to it in the dossier.

Certainly, according to Mangold's account, his friend had told him privately that Kelly did believe he was the 'major source' for Gilligan's story, directly contradicting the evidence Kelly had given to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

But if Kelly thought his troubles were over as he left the committee he was wrong. In reality they were just beginning. For the following day presented an even more formidable interrogation. Kelly was up in private session before MPs of the Intelligence and Security Committee.

While it is not known what happened behind the closed doors, one thing is certain. As the week progressed there was a subtle convergence of Gilligan's and Kelly's accounts which, far from putting either Kelly or the BBC in the clear, unwittingly undermined both their cases, suggesting strongly that Kelly was the source, or at least the 'major source' of Gilligan's original story.

If this is the case, a crucial implication remains - did Kelly lie to protect himself to MoD officials and MPs or did Gilligan stoke up Kelly's information for effect in his reports?

Whatever the truth that emerges, however, it was Kelly's treatment at the hands of this committee last week - and perhaps his own performance before it - that shook him to the core. He had been interrogated for three days by Defence Intelligence Officials and threatened with the Official Secrets Act. But it was his cross-examination in public, say friends, that left him feeling 'physically sick'.

Was that because Kelly knew that he had not told the full story? Was it - as seems likely - because Kelly had encouraged Gilligan, perhaps, unwittingly, to believe that Campbell had somehow been involved? And did a courageous, diligent man, because of a mistake, become the subject of a distasteful tug of war between the Government and the BBC that would lead to his death?

Whatever is established, Kelly appears to have returned home almost immediately after the hearing. According to friends who have spoken to the family, he was worried, angry, tired and stressed.

When Mangold spoke to Kelly's wife on Friday morning after his friend's disappearance she had said her husband had been deeply unhappy and furious at the way events had unfolded.

'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 said he was very, very stressed and unhappy about what had happened and this was really not the kind of world he wanted to live in.'

In the first class cabin of the British Airways Boeing 777 carrying Blair to Tokyo from Washington on Friday is a satellite pod attached by suckers to one of the airliner's windows. From it a lead snakes across the cabin to a telephone. It is the Prime Minister's secure link to the rest of the world, a satellite phone which cannot be hacked into.

At 9.30am on Friday the Downing Street clerk took a call from Number 10 with troubling news. Kelly was missing. Later that morning another call came through. A body had been found. Everyone had to assume it was Kelly's.

Early yesterday, as Blair was walking through the plush halls of the New Otani Hotel in Tokyo and while London still slept, he took a detour in front of the Sky News cameraman and said he was ready to make a short statement. The cameraman had been given 30 seconds' notice. There would be no questions.

'This is an absolutely terrible tragedy,' Blair said. 'I'm profoundly saddened for David Kelly and for his family. He was a fine public servant who did an immense amount of good for his country in the past and I'm sure would have done so again in the future.

'There is now, however, going to be a due process and a proper and independent inquiry and I believe that should be allowed to establish the facts.

'And I hope we can set aside the speculation and the claims and the counter-claims and allow that due process to take its proper course.

'In the meantime, all of us, the politicians and the media alike, should show some respect and restraint. That's all I intend to say.'

With that, the Prime Minister swept away to give a speech on the European single currency which he knew would be overtaken by more terrible events. He considered cutting short the trip, but decided that it would add to the sense of crisis. 'It's business as usual,' said one Number 10 official. Not quite. For political business stopped being usual the moment Kelly's body was found.

And, surprisingly for a Prime Minister who likes to surround himself with his most trusted confidants when difficult waters are ahead, as the news broke, Blair found himself oddly exposed.

Campbell, Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Sally Morgan, Director of Government Relations, had been with the Prime Minister for the first leg of his round-the-world diplomatic mission which started on Thursday. But they had all left him in the American capital. The only person on the plane to provide political succour was Sir David Manning, Blair's personal foreign policy adviser and a recent addition to the inner sanctum.

Campbell had caught the 'red eye' flight back from Washington to London the night before, his flight touching down at 10am on Friday at Heathrow. The communications chief was pleased as he got off the plane. The Prime Minister's speech to a special joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill had received rapturous applause, Powell leaning across and whispering into Campbell's ear 'that's good'. The mood, however, was about to take a lurching change.

As his car sped away from the airport, Campbell was immediately contacted by the Number 10 switchboard and put through to a member of his staff. Kelly was missing, he was told. Campbell made two phone calls to Blair on the plane. Although it is not clear whether the immediate question of resignation came up, Campbell has told friends that he has done nothing wrong and that to quit now would leave the Prime Minister brutally exposed to the crisis.

'It would be the wrong thing to do,' he said to one colleague, arguing that a serious allegation had been made against him - that he had deliberately 'sexed up' intelligence to make the case for war against Iraq - and he should be able to defend himself. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said yesterday that, as far as he was aware, Campbell had never offered to resign and had not been asked to.

From the plane, Blair called Charlie Falconer, his old friend and Secretary of State at the newly-formed Department for Constitutional Affairs, Sir Kevin Tebbit, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, and Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary

What was to be done? Campbell admitted to the Prime Minister that he felt 'absolutely wretched'. All the men spoken to by Blair knew that the political stakes were uncomfortably high. The public would want to be given convincing answers.

The battle between Campbell and the BBC, had always had a slightly Westminister hothouse feel to them, but now someone had died. How did a report by on the Today programme lead to a body in a field in the middle of Oxfordshire? Whatever the political response, Campbell and Blair agreed, it had to be commensurate with the gravity of the situation. This was the only strategy that would work.

A judicial inquiry, announced by the Ministry of Defence over the weekend, comes out of the top drawer of government actions. The Falklands war, the arms-to-Iraq scandal, Bloody Sunday, the Bristol heart deaths, the murder of Victoria Climbié - all have been the subject of a judge-led investigation. Blair, Falconer and Campbell agreed that the death of David Kelly was of the same magnitude. It had to answer some tough questions.

'We knew that political pressure on this was going to intensify,' said one senior Number 10 figure. 'We knew this had really become something out of the ordinary, someone had lost their life.'

On Thursday Kelly wrote some last emails to colleagues. To a journalist on the New York Times he warned of 'many dark actors playing games', apparently a reference to his treatment by officials at the Ministry of Defence and UK intelligence agencies, with whom he had sparred over interpretations of weapons reports.

A second email was sent to another associate, in which Kelly said that he was determined to overcome the scandal surrounding him and was enthusiastic about the possibility of returning to Iraq. Then at 3pm on Thursday he told his wife he was going for a walk. Despite rainy weather, he left the eighteenth-century converted stone-walled farmhouse where he and his family had lived for nearly 20 years, wearing a shirt and a pair of jeans. Only later did anyone think that the meticulous scientist's lack of proper clothing was odd.

And some time between late afternoon on Thursday, Dr David Kelly would die, alone and unhappy, among his much-tramped and beloved Oxfordshire hills.

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posted 07-20-2003 12:37 PM            

Weapons expert Dr David Kelly reportedly told of "many dark actors playing games" in an email to a journalist hours before his suicide.

The words appeared to refer to officials at the Ministry of Defence and UK intelligence agencies with whom he had sparred over interpretations of weapons reports, according to the New York Times.

The message gave no indication that he was depressed and said he was waiting "until the end of the week" before judging how his appearance before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee had gone.

The newspaper did not name the recipient of the email.

It said another associate had received a "combative" message from Dr Kelly shortly before he left his Oxfordshire home for the last time on Thursday.

The scientist said in the email that he was determined to overcome the scandal surrounding him and was enthusiastic about the possibility of returning to Iraq.

Dr Kelly was grilled by MPs last week over his comments to reporters about the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war in Iraq. He had denied being the main source for a BBC story about claims that a dossier on Iraq had been "sexed up" to boost public support for military action.

Dr Kelly's wife Janice told the New York Times her husband had worked on Thursday morning on a report he said he owed the Foreign Office and had sent some emails to friends.

She said: "After lunch, he went out for a walk to stretch his legs as he usually does."

Mrs Kelly said she had no indication that her husband was contemplating suicide.

"But he had been under enormous stress, as we all had been."

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"--Kelly warned of 'dark actors playing games'--"

posted 07-28-2003 01:05 PM            

www.theguardian.co.uk

Matthew Tempest, political correspondent
Monday July 28, 2003

Clare Short, the former cabinet minister who resigned after the Iraq war, today accused the prime minister of being "implicated" in the death of government scientist David Kelly.

The ex-international development secretary said Dr Kelly's apparent suicide was a result of "an abuse of power" by the government, with Tony Blair and his director of communications, Alastair Campbell, working "very, very closely together".

Downing Street dismissed the claim. This morning the prime minister's official spokesman said: "I don't think that anyone reading the interview this morning will have been in the least bit surprised by anything Clare Short says.

"She has said very similar things in other comments. I think therefore it is best to let Clare speak for herself and we will continue to speak for ourselves."

Ms Short's attack, the most recent in a range of criticisms of the government, comes as the home secretary, David Blunkett, conceded that Mr Blair's reputation has been "tarnished" by recent rows.

Mr Blair is back in Britain, briefly, with his monthly press conference due on Wednesday before he leaves for a Caribbean holiday at the home of Sir Cliff Richard.

In her interview with the Independent today, Ms Short says of Dr Kelly's death: "The truth needs to be found and those responsible held to account. Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair work very, very closely together. They are all implicated, it seems to me."

She agreed with her questioner that the chancellor, Gordon Brown, has one year to depose the prime minister before the next election looms too close, but adds she is "not a Brownie".

Ms Short says of her party leader: "He is a complete convert to a neo-conservative view of the world. "

She goes on: "He hasn't had an adverse period since becoming leader of the Labour party. It has been an easy ride. Now it is going to be much more difficult. We will see how he copes with it and how long he wants to hang on."

The MP for Birmingham Ladywood repeats her claim that Mr Blair lied to her by claiming that the French president, Jacques Chirac, had said he would "veto anything", and concludes: "I think he deceived himself and he deceived us."

Recalling her 1996 attack on spin doctors who "live in the dark", she says: "I said spin would damage and destroy Tony.

"The test for the Labour party is: can we renew ourselves in power? The third election could be won; it could be lost, too. It can't be everyone keeping quiet and supporting all the mistakes that are being made, otherwise we will throw away the third term."

Speaking on the BBC's Westminster Hour last night, Mr Blunkett said: "We have to seek the trust of the British people and we have to seek their continuing confidence.

"I think when we come through the period ahead with the Hutton inquiry [into the death of Dr Kelly]: when you see the truth, when you understand what has been done not only to Tony but those around him, quite undoubtedly people may just be won back."

Meanwhile, No 10 remained tight-lipped about reports that Mr Campbell, is to quit later this year.

"Alastair Campbell has gone on holiday. We wish him well. He will return in September, to the same job," Mr Blair's spokesman said.

************

"--Ms Short says of her party leader: "He is a complete convert to a neo-conservative view of the world.--"

posted 07-29-2003 12:27 AM            

Full Member

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Techie on the edge of time.

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Posts: 196
Re: Dubya at 50%
« Reply #2 on: Jul 24th, 2003, 12:31am »

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well Swamp..you could be right....but,

According to The CFR (Council on Foreign relations) the next "terrorist" attack is likely to occur in either Clevland OH, Dallas TX,
or Denver CO.

You know how the globalists love to brag.

If the next attack goes down..expect America to turn into a miltarized police state over night....I'm sure @$$Crack will get his wish and we will see "Patriot 2" get passed in a matter of days.In that case 1984 will look like Disneyland by comparison.

Especially if its a C.B.R. or suitcase nuke "attack".

posted 07-31-2003 08:21 PM            

By John Rappoport

From: http://www.nomorefakenews.com

THE DEATH OF DAVID KELLY AND THE GLOBAL ELITE

July 20. The death of Dr. David Kelly, named by the BBC as its source for a story that the Blair government lied about Iraq WMDs, is being painted as a suicide. Wrist slashed.

We are getting nothing of substance about a crime investigation.

The British government and press description of Kelly as a shy, soft-spoken man (who might commit suicide) is at odds with his past. As a UN weapons inspector, he had no problem dealing with Iraqi officials face to face, and the idea that being questioned, as he was, by a British parliament committee would cow him and send him trembling into a corner doesn't add up.

This whole story is quite weird. Kelly's testimony indicated he was not the BBC source for its WMD piece. Yet the BBC says he was.

Blair's people are using this contradiction as "evidence" that the BBC cooked up the whole article out of false evidence.

I believe someone behind the scenes is manipulating both sides in this scandal.

Purpose? To further box in and weaken the credibility of two administrations. The White House and 10 Downing Street.

Note well: I'm not defending the actions of these administrations in Iraq. Far from it.

But that has nothing to do with secret ops.

>From the beginning, which we can peg at 9/11, the plan has been to sucker both Bush and Blair into a war in Iraq. A similar operation was mounted to drag the US into Vietnam.

The secret societies I have recently been commenting on have the aim of eliminating ALL sovereign nations and subsuming the planet under a globalist management scheme. The many ruled by the few. Getting there requires discrediting and weakening, on many fronts, nations like England and the US.

Here is a comment from the late Carroll Quigley, in his tome, Tragedy and Hope. Quigley was an insider who taught at Princeton. One of the elite groups he observed carefully was the NYC-based Council on Foreign Relations:

"The CFR is the American branch of a society which originated in England, and which believes that national boundaries should be obliterated, and a one-world rule established."

Founded in the years 1918-1921, in 1929 the CFR moved into a building at 58 East 68th Street. The building was provided by the Rockefeller family. 1929 was also the year certain CFR-connected bankers helped engineer the crash of the stock market.

David Rockefeller is still honorary chairman of the CFR, and according to some reports, he served as chairman from 1970-1985.

The CFR was tasked by President Roosevelt, during WW2, to draw up plans for a new organization (of global management) to be called the United Nations.

CFR played a major role in formulating other globalist organizations: IMF and World Bank.

For the uninitiated, FREE TRADE, a cornerstone of CFR policy, is one of the prime ways in which sovereign nations are gradually eliminated. Free trade actually means that capital and transnational corporations have a carte blanche right to roam the world and intercede, without limit, in the economies of all nations. Which finally means no more sovereign nations.

Bush and his cronies represent what could be called a rebel wing of the global elite. Although they profit from many of the goodies to be won from this policy of free trade, and although Bush is a solid free trader, he also wants to push for American Empire.

It was this psychology that was played on. Given his state of mind, 9/11 would inevitably lead him back to Iraq---to the Quagmire.

The more unequivocally globalist controllers do NOT want an American empire. They want America to be further weakened, to eventually fit into de facto global management as just another floundering country.

David Kelly was made into yet one more small pawn in this overarching agenda. A footnote on a footnote on a footnote in the grand scheme.

These footnotes add up over time. They discredit, weaken, bring down morale. They provide further justification for "the need to solve all these scandals and differences and conflicts and untenable situations" by bringing in stronger rule from the top.

Political leaders are juicy targets. Of course they are already corrupt and sold out and ill-intentioned and ego-ridden----but that is just raw material for the secret ops which thrust them into the orbit of scandals----and then The People tend to throw up their hands and hope for "better, more inclusive governance."

The elite secret societies are planning all this, and benefiting from it. Slowly poison the well, move in, take over.

This is global theater, and we are supposed to sit in front of our television sets, in a trance, and buy it. We are supposed to feel powerless. We are supposed to be at a complete loss. We are supposed to come up empty when we try to think about what we can do to close down this stage play. We are supposed to think our own ability to create something better is zero. We are supposed to reject the truth because we can't figure out what to do to end the lies.

Make no mistake. WE ARE THE PRIME TARGETS.

At the highest level, we are mind-controlled. We think we have no answers.

Forget the idea that our apparent lack of power is just part of the human condition. THAT conclusion is what mind control is all about.

A mind-control victim is ALWAYS a person who sees no way out. He ALWAYS thinks that, if any answers exist, they will come from somewhere else. From the next leader, the next savior, the next messiah, the next hero, the next god.

Of course, because a mind-control victim is seeing things from this bankrupt perspective, he can't imagine that he is mind-controlled. All he sees is a blank and dreary landscape, and he thinks that's all there is to see.

I SEE ALL THERE IS TO SEE is always the inference one makes when one is in a trance.

That's what great theater is all about, baby. It entrances you. For the duration of the play, you don't see any other reality. You are riveted by the performances.

And in this state of mind, the very LAST, LAST, LAST thing a person recognizes is, I'M INVESTING MY OWN IMAGINATION IN THE ACTORS ON THE STAGE. I'M MAKING THEM FAR MORE BELIEVABLE THAN THEY ALREADY ARE. I'M CREATING THE BEST DAMN PLAY THAT EVER EXISTED. IT IS MY POWER THAT GIVES THE PLAY LIFE. IT IS ME. I'M THE SECRET POWER BEHIND THE DIRECTOR AND THE PRODUCER AND THE INVESTORS AND THE BACKERS AND THE REVIEWERS. I'M THE REAL MAGICIAN, I'M THE TITAN.

To paraphrase an old Tibetan slogan, WHAT I CREATE I CAN MAKE VANISH.

Poof.

This is the secret of secrets within the system of Tibet, within Buddhism, within alchemy, within magick, within the Tao, within that little thing called freedom that was the carrier pigeon of the American republic.

That is my interest, and it is the subject of my upcoming August seminar in San Diego (see box at top of this page), titled, THE TRADITION OF IMAGINATION AND THE FORMULA OF THE SECRET SOCIETY. Why not roll the dice and join me then. It won't be boring.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

peace,
Tom