David Kelly inquiry a whitewash

Official lines fed to media which repeats it as truth’

- by SIOBHAN MACKENZIE

LAST year marked the 20-year anniversary of the publication of the Hutton Report into the death of government scientist and expert on biological warfare David Kelly.

In the scientific community, there are no absolutes, only theories proposed from data collected. The theories depend on the quality of data and the quality of minds that formulate the theory. That's what we have to recognise. Theories change over time due to new available data.

Against that background, we are faced with media that say a theory is the one truth. It is absolute. It is fed to the media via official channels. Official channels told the media David Kelly's death was suicide.

Not long ago, 20 years after that shocking event, BBC Radio 4 rolled out a documentary 'proving' again that David Kelly, a man who once brought an Iraqi weapons expert to tears through interrogative questioning, was so upset at the public circus around his frank but not unusual conversation with journalist, Andrew Gilligan, that he decided to end it all:

• Without a suicide note to his wife

• Just before his daughter's wedding

• Just after announcing to a publisher he was thinking of writing a book

• Just after mentioning to a colleague he was thinking of resigning from the Ministry of Defence who underpaid him, and taking a position in America, where he could get better money and better health care for his sick wife