Hutton Inquiry
On 18 July 2003, Kelly, an employee of the Ministry of Defence, was found dead after he had been named as the source of quotations used by BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan.
[3] Kelly had been the source for reports made by three BBC journalists that the government, particularly the press office of Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, had knowingly embellished the dossier with misleading exaggerations of Iraq's military capabilities; specifically, a claim that Iraq had the ability to launch a strike using "weapons of mass destruction" within 45 minutes.
On 1 June, Gilligan repeated his allegations in an article written for The Mail on Sunday, naming government press secretary Alastair Campbell as the driving force for alteration of the dossier.
British ambassador David Broucher reported a conversation with Dr Kelly at a meeting in Geneva in February 2003, which he described as "from a very deep memory hole".
[6] It ran to 750 pages in 13 chapters and 18 appendices, though this was mainly composed of excerpts from the hundreds of documents (letters, emails, transcripts of conversation, and so on) that were published during the inquiry.
10 was not aware of the reservations of the intelligence community was not supported by other evidence contained in the report, such as the transcript of an interview given by David Kelly to BBC journalist Susan Watts.
Gilligan, for example, admitted and apologised for surreptitiously briefing politicians on a select committee in order to put pressure on Dr Kelly.
However, immediately after the Board of Governors had accepted Dyke's resignation, Lord Ryder, as Acting Chairman of the BBC, apologised "unreservedly" for errors made during the affair.
Amongst other things, the Butler Report concluded that "the fact that the reference to the 45 minute claim in the classified assessment was repeated in the dossier later led to suspicions that it had been included because of its eye-catching character".
The Financial Times reported, "Every previous inquiry into Britain's decision to invade Iraq has swiftly been condemned by the public as a "whitewash".
Delivered by an unnamed source over the telephone to Sun political editor Trevor Kavanagh, the leaked version accurately described the report's main findings.
[15] The Daily Mail wrote in its editorial "We're faced with the wretched spectacle of the BBC chairman resigning while Alastair Campbell crows from the summit of his dunghill.
The Daily Express headline read "Hutton's whitewash leaves questions unanswered" — referring to the fact that an investigation into Britain's reasons for joining the war in Iraq was beyond the scope of the inquiry.
On the other hand, left-wing newspapers such as The Guardian and The Daily Mirror, while supporting Blair against the Conservatives, strongly opposed British participation in the war in Iraq, and sympathised with what they (and many others) saw as the anti-war stance of BBC journalists such as Gilligan.
Thousands of BBC workers paid for a full-page advertisement in The Daily Telegraph on 31 January in order to publish a message of support for Dyke, followed by a list of their names.
He felt the allegations against Gilligan were "far graver" than questions concerning the quality of the intelligence, and that it was right that a separate inquiry, the Butler Review, was being conducted.
[22][failed verification] In December 2010 The Times reported that Kelly had a rare abnormality in the arteries supplying his heart; the information had been disclosed by the head of the Academic Unit of Pathology at Sheffield University Medical School, Professor Paul Ince, who noted that the post-mortem had found severe narrowing of the blood vessels, and said that heart disease was likely to have been a factor in Kelly's death as the cut to the wrist artery would not itself have been fatal.
Milroy also told The Guardian that Kelly's heart condition may have made it hard for him to sustain any significant degree of blood loss.
[28] The BBC broadcast a programme on Kelly on 25 February 2007 as part of the series The Conspiracy Files;[29] the network commissioned an opinion poll to establish the views of the public on his death.
"[35] On 5 December 2009 six doctors began legal action to demand a formal inquest into the death,[36] saying there was "insufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt he killed himself".
[39] Early that August, a group of nine experts, including former coroners and a professor of intensive-care medicine, wrote a letter to the newspaper The Times questioning Lord Hutton's verdict.
[40][41][42] On 14 August 2010, Jennifer Dyson, a retired pathologist, amplified the criticism, saying that a coroner would probably have recorded an open verdict in the absence of absolute proof that suicide was intended.
She joined other experts questioning the official finding that Kelly had bled to death and argued that it was more likely that he had suffered a heart attack due to the stress he had been placed under.
This intervention came as Michael Howard, the former Conservative Party leader, became the most prominent politician to call for a full inquest into Kelly's death.
Baker concluded that Kelly's death was probably a revenge killing by Iraqi supporters of Saddam Hussein, and that it was crudely disguised as a suicide by Thames Valley police – who appeared to have known of an assassination plot in advance – because the British government was fearful of the political consequences.
[44] While investigating Kelly's death, Baker claimed he had experienced strange events, including apparent intimidation of a woman who was assisting him, and the unexplained wiping of his computer's hard drive.
[25] They said that it was extremely unusual to die as a result of cutting the ulnar artery – Kelly being the only supposed case of this occurring in 2003 – and that almost no blood was found at the scene.
In August 2010, nine leading doctors and forensic experts wrote to The Daily Telegraph calling for a full inquest, on the grounds that the cause of death claimed was extremely unlikely and had not been properly investigated by the Hutton Inquiry.
[48] In June 2011, Attorney General Dominic Grieve ruled out applying to the High Court for an inquest, saying that the evidence Kelly had committed suicide was "overwhelming".
This was greeted with outrage by the group of doctors campaigning for an inquest, whose leader, Dr Stephen Frost, said the government was "complicit in a determined and concerted cover-up".
