Before everyone writes a firm line under Lord Hutton's verdict on Dr. David Kelly's death, they should re-examine the evidence, and determine how the Law Lord arrived at his conclusion.
While supporters of the Labour government can find the verdict most convenient - that this middle-level civil servant overplayed his hand in a tricky game, and when in danger of being caught out, he killed himself to avoid further humiliation - it is a horrible cover up of a terrible crime if totally untrue. People who hate the Prime Minister, and his war on Iraq would then be equally incorrect in claiming that the appointment of the Hutton Inquiry was merely a sideshow to divert attention away from what is happening in the defeated country. Even wild conspiracy theorists could then be exposed for claiming that it was only a single incident of a much wider plot whose composition and aims remain to be determined.
The most blatant commissions of error by Lord Hutton were to delegate his primary task - to determine the circumstances surrounding Kelly's death - to psychiatrist Dr. Keith Hawton, a specialist in suicide, and then completely endorse his finding in a most matter of course way when he delivered his report. This is the making of farce in a most perfunctory way - what veteran members of the press are even making into scripts for the stage!
When a death occurs, particularly a suspicious one, the coroner wants to determine how - was it a natural one, an unnatural one, or a suicide. He certainly wants any helpful evidence that the police can provide as to why and how the death occurred. Witnesses can assist the process, and friends and associates can provide evidence as to any of these possible causes having been the real one. A coroner could even hire other investigators to help determine the cause of a most difficult, controversial death.
Instead of doing anything like this, Lord Hutton simply had the Inquiry's solicitors, Clifford Chance LLP, instruct legman Martin Smith to hire Dr. Hawton to establish the verdict. Of course, in delegating the responsibilty to a student of deviant social psychology with a speciality in suicide, the result was a foregone conclusion. These specialists are noted for finding suicides that no one else even imagines. They are especially desired when survivors of a deceased are allegedly jilted out of their legacy.
For more on the gullibility of such professionals, I would recommend readers consult a recent review in The Guardian about how psychiatrists serving in hospitals for a more general clientele suffering from less severe psychiatrict problems can be conned into adopting a diagonsis and prognosis that the patient conjures up almost at will.
When dealing with the dead, such specialists have a free rein as to where they go, and what they find. Dr. Hawton found the ideal spot Kelly had picked on Harrowdown Hill, though on the spur of the moment, and despite all the ties militating against suicide, where he most deliberately, and carefully killed himself, perhaps in the dark, taking off his wristwatch, and cutting a most unlikely artery, though still a medical doctor, so as to make the process as slow, and painful as possible, psychologically unable to stuff down the necessary drugs to mitigate it.
Leaving the last word in a most controversial, apparently suspicious death to such a person is almost laughable if the demise were not so tragic. If Hutton wanted to determine the truth from a qualified specialist, why didn't he first hire an experienced criminal investigator, especially if he were unhappy with the inquires and information that the Thames Valley Police was providing? As it is, it would hardly have been more ludicrous if he had hired an astrologist to make sure that Kelly had not been killed by occult forces.
For enemies of the Prime Minister, and the Labour government to make light of the matter, though, misses the point. Kelly's apparent murder was not hurriedly investigated by the government to divert the public away from what was really going on in Iraq, but to prevent the public from seeing that he was killed to prevent exposing how contrived, and unnecessary it had all been.
From what Kelly had been told by the Defence Intelligence Staff, MI6, and MI5, and their Israeli and American counterparts, he knew most widely what the Coalition had claimed about Iraq's WMD, especially its bioterrorism capability regarding anthrax - what the Mossad had stoked up to get the war going - and when no WMD were found there after the war, Kelly was increasingly inclined to tell all, apparently because he felt it was just a most convenient cover for the Israelis having mailed the anthrax-filled letters, especially to Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahey, after the 9/11 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon.
For those who find this probability most unlikely, they should know that Lt. Col. Philip Zack, a former employee at the US Army WMD research center at Fort Detrick, Md., and a rabid supporter of the Israelis on just this issue at the expense of any Muslim, is now the leading suspect in the case. As Jack Dolan and David Altimari wrote in their January 20, 2002 article, "Anthrax Missing from Army Lab," in The Hartford Courant, Zack has no explanation for his unauthorized visit to the facility on January 25, 1992, after which samples of the spores were found missing.
In sum, the pre-emptive war against Iraq made Kelly into the most dangerous whistleblower, and it was hardly surprising, when he was planning to quit his position, and write a book about what he now knew, that some assassination squad, most likely a Mossad kidon, took him out - in what has been described by most people in the field as a most ham-handed covert operation.
In this context, though, it does no good for apparent enemies of the Coalition, especially Israel, to claim that it was part of a much larger operation - e.g., Kelly was merely the last in a line of microbiologists killed by Tel Aviv to prevent disclosure of its wild scheme to wipe out the troublesome Arabs, especially the Palestinians, by DNA sequencing and the like. (This like trying to dispose of all the women so that the gays can have it all their way.)
It is no better to claim that Kelly may have been killed by those, knowledgeable of the process by which 9/11attacks occurred, because of his friendship with Mia Pederson, an apparent American secret agent who, while confident Kelly did not commit suicide, is unwilling to come forward to so testify. This story is that she got Kelly to convert to the Baha'i faith, so that he could be set up after 9/11 because of his connections, like some of the hijackers, especially Mohamed Atta, with US Air Force bases.
In sum, those really interested in why, how, and where Dr. Kelly was apparently murdered should start from scratch at the alleged site, and carefully build their inquiry from there, avoiding all the diverting disinformation along the way, and convenient myths in reaching their conclusions. It should certainly test the abilities of Oxfordshire Coroner Nicholas Gardiner.
