Discovered
in July 2003 slumped against a tree with his left wrist slashed, the
consensus was that Dr David Kelly had committed suicide after being
pushed to the edge by the MoD. Media pundits concurred that being
humiliated in front of a televised government committee was for him, the
last straw.
But many of his colleagues were incredulous that this steely weapons expert, highly-respected and at the peak of his career, would have crumbled to the point of taking his own life. Kelly was a man‘whose brain could boil water’; who had, in the course of his career, dealt skilfully with evasive and threatening Iraqi officials. E-mails written just before his disappearance were upbeat, expressing his strong desire to return to Iraq and get on with the ‘real work‘.
But many of his colleagues were incredulous that this steely weapons expert, highly-respected and at the peak of his career, would have crumbled to the point of taking his own life. Kelly was a man‘whose brain could boil water’; who had, in the course of his career, dealt skilfully with evasive and threatening Iraqi officials. E-mails written just before his disappearance were upbeat, expressing his strong desire to return to Iraq and get on with the ‘real work‘.
Scott
Ritter, who worked with him as part of the UN weapons inspections team
in Iraq, said he was a man of "integrity, character, and somebody who
cared deeply about his country".
Mr
Ritter, who lead the UN inspection team up until it left Iraq in 1998,
told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Dr Kelly was somebody who had
doggedly pursued the Iraqi biological weapons program and who had never
caved in to pressure.
He said: "My experience of David is that he is a man who does his job and does it quietly.
"While
a gentle man, he had a core of steel in him. I've seen him interact
with Iraq government officials; there was no give in this man."
Asked by US translator and military intelligence operative Mai Pederson, if he would ever commit suicide, he had replied, ‘Good God no, I would never do that.’ Immediately after his death, Pederson asserted, ‘It wasn’t suicide’. This, for the establishment’s sensitive apparatus, was an alarming statement that could not be allowed to resonate.Any intimation of state-sponsored killing on British soil was politically seismic. The notion must be quashed, doubters turned. Additional motives had to be found to account for Kelly’s alleged final act. A simple but ingenious plan was devised: a civil servant, skilled in the art of deception, would convey a startling piece of fiction, and convince the world that this ‘suicide’ had been Kelly’s answer to a thorny predicament.
KELLY'S GRILLINGTwo days before he went missing on 17th July 2003, Dr Kelly gave evidence before a Kafkaesque Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC). It had been stated in the government’s September 2002 dossier that Iraq was capable of launching an attack on a British base within 45 minutes. The committee was convened to determine whether the weapons expert had been the source of Andrew Gilligan’s allegation on the BBC’s ‘Today’ programme, that in using ‘the 45 minutes’ knowing it to be false, intelligence and facts were being - in the words of MI6’s Richard Dearlove - ‘fixed around the policy‘.
Dr Kelly admitted that he had met Andrew Gilligan to discuss Iraq. However the crux of the issue - whether Kelly had accused the government of taking military action using shaky intelligence - could not be resolved: Kelly denied it, and the FAC construed it unlikely that Kelly was Gilligan’s source. It appeared he was off the hook.
Three days later the world was stunned when David Kelly was found dead on Harrowdown Hill.
POLITICAL FALL-OUT
Astonishingly, within hours of his body being found, Lord Chancellor and old flatmate of Blair, Charles Falconer, appointed the establishment’s Brian Hutton, to head an inquiry into his death. Normally Inquiries take months to set up; this one took just five working days.
The remit: ‘urgently, to conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly’ conveniently circumvented the main issue. The ‘elephant in the room’ - whether or not the death was suicide - was skilfully avoided by framing the whole affair in terms of a ‘battle’ between the war-hungry government and Gilligan’s employer, the unrepentant BBC.'
Had there been an inquest, witnesses would have been subpoenaed and cross-examined, their evidence given on oath.
At the Hutton Inquiry, their version of events went unchallenged, no real investigation took place, and at the end of it, no verdict emerged - Hutton merely rubber-stamped the line that Dr Kelly took his own life.
EVIDENCE AGAINST SUICIDE
But did he? A detailed analysis of Hutton evidence by the Kelly Investigation Group indicated that Dr Kelly‘s body was moved - twice; and that ‘haemorrhage’, listed as the primary cause of death, was almost certainly a mistake.
Yesterday, I sent by recorded delivery a letter to Dominic Grieve QC, requesting that he apply to the High Court for an order that an inquest be held into the death of Dr David Kelly.
The text of that letter follows below, for reference.
25th October 2010
To:
Dominic Grieve AC
Attorney General
Open Letter
The Death of Dr David Kelly - information indicating that a Coroner-led inquest, taking evidence on oath, is needed.
Dear Attorney General
I write to you to request that you apply to the High Court for an order that a Coroner-led inquest be conducted with respect to the death of Dr David Kelly in 2003, as provided for on the grounds enumerated in Subsection 13(1)(b) of the Coroner's Act 1988.
Of the grounds mentioned in Subsection 13(1)(b) I consider the following grounds potentially to be of relevance in an application to the High Court with respect to the death of Dr David Kelly.
1. Rejection of evidence
2. Irregularity of proceedings
3. Insufficiency of inquiry
4. Discovery of new facts or evidence
As
I read Subsection 13(1)(b) any one of these deficiencies is sufficient
grounds on which to apply for an order from the High Court. Given
persistent public concerns about how Dr Kelly met his death I find it
difficult to conceive how the High Court could conclude otherwise than
such an inquest in is the interests of justice
http://dr-david-kelly.blogspot.com/
It is known that doctors rarely agree. But in this case, nine doctors - four of them surgeons - concurred that from a single transected ulnar artery Dr Kelly would have lost no more than a pint of blood: the tiny artery would have immediately constricted and retracted, and blood-clotting would have ensued. This is consistent with the paramedics‘ observation that there was remarkably little blood at the scene. As for the secondary cause - co-proxamol ingestion - tests revealed that the amount in his blood was only a third of what is normally fatal - and there was no alcohol in his system.
The Coroner nonetheless declared himself ‘satisfied’ with Lord Hutton’s conclusion that the government scientist took his own life.
‘I WILL PROBABLY BE FOUND DEAD IN THE WOODS’
The Hutton Inquiry was for the most part a pedestrian affair, with civil servants, politicians and reporters obediently recounting their connections to Dr Kelly. But on 21st August 2003 one particular appearance set the proceedings alight.
David Broucher, Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, was relaying an account of a meeting with David Kelly which he declared took place on 27th February 2003.
The court heard how Broucher and Kelly had talked over the problem of achieving Iraqi compliance with the 1972 Convention on Biological Weapons. Resolution 1441 had been passed, putting pressure on the Iraqis to give up their weapons. They discussed the government’s September 2002 dossier, and all the difficulties with ‘the 45 minutes’. It seemed a straightforward account - but one phrase electrified the court.
When Broucher asked Kelly what he thought would happen if Iraq were invaded, Broucher said the weapons-expert responded:
‘I will probably be found dead in the woods'
According to Broucher, Kelly had promised the Iraqis that the West would not bomb, as long as Iraq complied with weapons inspections. The diplomat said he had thought Kelly believed Iraqi intelligence might have him killed if he reneged on his promise. But now, in the light of the scientist’s apparent suicide, Broucher ‘realised’ Kelly meant he might be shamed into taking his own life.
It was a breathtaking piece of courtroom drama: such prescient words from the grave!
But there is a massive problem with Broucher’s story. There is strong evidence that this meeting did not take place on 27th February 2003 - as he claimed - but on 18th February 2002.
Everything hinges on this date. If Broucher’s meeting took place in February 2003 then its content would be plausible. But since, as Hutton concedes in his report, it almost certainly took place in 2002, and not 2003, then none of the following makes sense:
It is known that doctors rarely agree. But in this case, nine doctors - four of them surgeons - concurred that from a single transected ulnar artery Dr Kelly would have lost no more than a pint of blood: the tiny artery would have immediately constricted and retracted, and blood-clotting would have ensued. This is consistent with the paramedics‘ observation that there was remarkably little blood at the scene. As for the secondary cause - co-proxamol ingestion - tests revealed that the amount in his blood was only a third of what is normally fatal - and there was no alcohol in his system.
The Coroner nonetheless declared himself ‘satisfied’ with Lord Hutton’s conclusion that the government scientist took his own life.
‘I WILL PROBABLY BE FOUND DEAD IN THE WOODS’
The Hutton Inquiry was for the most part a pedestrian affair, with civil servants, politicians and reporters obediently recounting their connections to Dr Kelly. But on 21st August 2003 one particular appearance set the proceedings alight.
David Broucher, Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, was relaying an account of a meeting with David Kelly which he declared took place on 27th February 2003.
The court heard how Broucher and Kelly had talked over the problem of achieving Iraqi compliance with the 1972 Convention on Biological Weapons. Resolution 1441 had been passed, putting pressure on the Iraqis to give up their weapons. They discussed the government’s September 2002 dossier, and all the difficulties with ‘the 45 minutes’. It seemed a straightforward account - but one phrase electrified the court.
When Broucher asked Kelly what he thought would happen if Iraq were invaded, Broucher said the weapons-expert responded:
‘I will probably be found dead in the woods'
According to Broucher, Kelly had promised the Iraqis that the West would not bomb, as long as Iraq complied with weapons inspections. The diplomat said he had thought Kelly believed Iraqi intelligence might have him killed if he reneged on his promise. But now, in the light of the scientist’s apparent suicide, Broucher ‘realised’ Kelly meant he might be shamed into taking his own life.
It was a breathtaking piece of courtroom drama: such prescient words from the grave!
But there is a massive problem with Broucher’s story. There is strong evidence that this meeting did not take place on 27th February 2003 - as he claimed - but on 18th February 2002.
Everything hinges on this date. If Broucher’s meeting took place in February 2003 then its content would be plausible. But since, as Hutton concedes in his report, it almost certainly took place in 2002, and not 2003, then none of the following makes sense:
- Resolution 1441 was not passed until 8 October 2002 . So it was not, as counsel Dingemans said, in force at the time,
- ‘The September dossier’ was not even at the draft stage in February 2002, and was not published until the September of that year,
- ‘the
45 minutes’ with all the problems it incurred, did not exist in
February 2002 - it was not introduced until August of that year.
Rather than be mesmerised by the magic phrase, ‘I will be found dead in the woods’, we must question whether the words were ever uttered.
Suspecting the substance of this meeting was invented to exert a particular effect, let us examine how and why it was done.
Suspecting the substance of this meeting was invented to exert a particular effect, let us examine how and why it was done.
NO HEAD FOR DATES? David
Broucher had been a civil servant for nearly forty years - surely he
would have kept careful records. Not this time it seems. His meeting
with Kelly, he tells us, was convened at short notice, and so was not in
his diary.
Doing ‘the best that [he] can’ as Dingemans prompts, he dons the cloak of a gauche amnesiac who must dig into a ‘very deep memory hole’ to dredge up the content of a rendezvous which, he maintains, took place only 5 months before.
He tells the inquiry he had only one meeting with Kelly, and to the best of his knowledge, this took place on 27th September 2002. But then, in trying to work out when the weapons expert could have been in Geneva at the same time as himself, he corrects that to 27th February 2003. Matters are further confused when he says they had tried to meet on 8th November 2002, but that had not proved possible; 27th February 2003 is his final date.
But Broucher’s date is wrong - and he knows it. Doing ‘the best that [he] can’ as Dingemans prompts, he dons the cloak of a gauche amnesiac who must dig into a ‘very deep memory hole’ to dredge up the content of a rendezvous which, he maintains, took place only 5 months before.
He tells the inquiry he had only one meeting with Kelly, and to the best of his knowledge, this took place on 27th September 2002. But then, in trying to work out when the weapons expert could have been in Geneva at the same time as himself, he corrects that to 27th February 2003. Matters are further confused when he says they had tried to meet on 8th November 2002, but that had not proved possible; 27th February 2003 is his final date.
According to an entry in one of Kelly’s diaries, discovered afterwards by his daughter Rachel at his home, this meeting did not take place in February 2003, but in February 2002. Could there have been a mistake? All the evidence suggests not. Rachel informs the inquiry that her father painstakingly recorded events in his diary after they happened. She relays a number of examples where her father’s original plans had changed, and the correct entry was made after the event. The one entry in Kelly’s diary mentioning Broucher reads:
'Monday 18th February 2002, 9.30, David Broucher, US mis' [mission]
Rachel goes on to say that this entry gives details of her father’s flights both into Geneva on 17th February and out of Geneva on 20th February.
Lord Hutton writes in his report:
‘Therefore it appears to be clear that Dr Kelly's one meeting with Mr Broucher was in February 2002 and not in February 2003‘.
It can therefore be established with some confidence that Broucher met Dr Kelly not on 27th February 2003, but on 18th February 2002. And the start time was not ‘noon’ as Broucher claims for his 27th February 2003 meeting, but 9.30 a.m.
To tighten this up further, let us see where Kelly was on February 27th 2003 - the day Broucher claims they met.
According to Kelly’s half-sister, Sarah Pape, the day after his daughter Ellen’s wedding on Saturday 22nd February 2003, he flew out to New York. Puzzled by Broucher‘s evidence, Pape remarks to the inquiry, ‘he certainly did not mention he was going to be flying almost straight back to visit Geneva.’
Broucher: … he [Kelly] did not attend a meeting in Baltimore on 28th February that he was due to attend, so my feeling is that he probably returned to Geneva - to Europe early and that he came to Geneva, because I did see him there.’
But according to another of Kelly’s diaries published on the Hutton website, on 27th February he was still in New York on UNMOVIC business. There is no entry to indicate that he had a meeting in Baltimore on Friday 28th February as Broucher claims - the diary entry records that on Friday 28th February he was on leave in New York, and that he did not return to London until Sunday 2nd March.
In the diaries Rachel found, there was no entry for Broucher in 2003, and no mention of any trips to Geneva that year.
In a nutshell, neither Rachel’s diaries nor the Hutton website diaries contain an entry for Broucher or Geneva in 2003, whereas the entry in Rachel’s 2002 diary shows a meeting time, date and flight details. Thus there is convincing evidence that the Broucher/Kelly meeting took place on 18th February 2002.
Let us now review the contents of their alleged conversation.
THE CONVERSATION THAT NEVER HAPPENED Had reporters been alert, they might have questioned how, despite Broucher’s poor recall of dates, he was nonetheless able to squeeze from his memory every twist and turn of his professed conversation with David Kelly. If he did not keep a record of the date of the meeting, presumably he did not keep contemporaneous notes. If he had, he would have dated and filed them. So how was he able to provide such a vivid and detailed account?
Broucher claims Dr Kelly phoned him while in Geneva and suggested a meeting at very short notice. But why would Kelly have stopped off in the centre of Europe on the off-chance that Broucher would be free to see him - or that Broucher would even be in Geneva? Curious too that Kelly allegedly instigated this meeting, since it was Broucher who was ‘keen to pick his brains’ knowing him to be ‘a considerable expert on these issues in relation to Iraq.'
According to Broucher, the meeting lasted about an hour. They began by discussing Iraq’s biological weapons capability. Counsel Dingemans then raised the question of Resolution 1441 which ordered Iraq to allow weapons inspections within 45 days.
Dingemans: 'And at this stage, we know that Resolution 1441 has been passed and there had been further subsequent inspections; Dr Kelly was not part of that team.'
However when this meeting actually took place - February 2002 - 1441 had not been passed by the Security Council; it did not come into force until 8 November 2002.
The alleged discussion then moved on to the possible use of force in Iraq. Broucher ventured he did not understand why the Iraqis were courting disaster by refusing to give up whatever weapons remained.
Kelly said the Iraqis were concerned that revealing too much about their state of readiness might invite an attack, but he had tried to reassure them that if they co-operated with weapons inspectors they would have nothing to fear. However, he also believed that the invasion might go ahead anyway, which would put him in a morally ambiguous position, for the Iraqis would consider he had lied to them.
Thus we are provided with the first new suicide motive: guilt.
The most telling indication that Broucher’s account is a falsehood, is his claim that he and Kelly discussed the dossier and ‘the 45 minutes’. The September dossier was published on 24 September 2002. A paper on WMD capabilities was commissioned in February 2002, and another followed in March; but the early papers were not for public consumption. Broucher’s says his task was to ’sell’ the dossier to the UN - this did not apply to the early papers. The dossier referred to by Broucher and Kelly - in which ‘every judgement… had been closely fought over’ - was clearly the September dossier.
As for ‘the 45 minutes’, according to both Lord Butler and Lord Hutton, this piece of intelligence was submitted to MI6 on 29 August 2002 - 5 months after the date Broucher alleged the meeting took place. Thus there is no way Broucher and Kelly could have discussed it.
We can infer therefore, that the following passage is a complete fiction:
‘We did discuss the dossier. I raised it because I had had to… it was part of my duties to sell the dossier, if you like, within the United Nations to senior United Nations officials; and I told Dr Kelly that this had not been easy and that they did not find it convincing. He said to me that there had been a lot of pressure to make the dossier as robust as possible; that every judgement in it had been closely fought over; and that it was the best that the JIC could do. I believe that it may have been in this connection that he then went on to explain the point about the readiness of Iraq’s biological weapons, the fact they could not use them quickly, and that this was relevant to the point about 45 minutes.’
Broucher reminds us here of Kelly’s concern over the 45 minutes - as would later be conveyed to the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan.
He then throws something else into the mix: he tells us that Kelly felt undervalued at the Ministry of Defence and would have preferred to go back to Porton Down:
‘He felt that when he transferred into the Ministry of Defence they had transferred him at the wrong grade, and so he was concerned that he had been downgraded.’
New suicide motive number two: job dissatisfaction because of unfair downgrading.
Broucher has thus given us two new motives: guilt over a promise Kelly knew might be broken, and unhappiness with his position at the MoD.
The diplomat then introduces the stunningly theatrical line he attributes to Kelly:
'I will probably be found dead in the woods.’
He terms this a ‘throwaway’ remark, affecting not to have thought it significant at the time. But far from being ‘throwaway’, it was actually designed as the climax of the whole drama: it suggested that Kelly was, in a sense, predicting his own suicide.
Broucher was implanting the idea that 5 months in advance, Kelly would, under certain circumstances, contemplate suicide. However, since the actual date of this meeting was February 2002 (not 2003), it was not 5 months ago, but 17. Are we seriously to believe that way back in early 2002 David Kelly was predicting that a promise to senior Iraqis he had not yet made might have to be broken, possibly driving him to take his own life? He would not have been making any promises to the Iraqis at the time - the previous round of inspections ended in 1998.
While war was secretly on the agenda, it was not officially so. A secret memo to Tony Blair, dated 14 March 2002, revealed that UK Foreign Policy Advisor David Manning reported telling George W Bush at a dinner, that the Prime Minister ‘would not budge in his support for regime change’ in Iraq - an embarrassing revelation for Blair, who was outwardly insisting the reason for invasion would not be regime change, but failure to comply with weapons inspections. Publicly, an invasion of Iraq was barely on the cards in Britain at the time, and weapons inspections did not resume until 18 November 2002.
In summary, Broucher’s ‘conversation’ was a fabrication from start to finish. His ineffectual persona was a cover. The confusion he sowed around dates was to protect him from future ’blowback’. This diplomat was less the bumbling fool, more the conniving fox.
HARD LABOUR
Oxford-educated barrister James Dingemans - Hutton‘s choice - took a soft-glove approach to witnesses, glossing over inconsistencies in their evidence. He and Broucher make an extraordinary duo. Nowhere else in the inquiry do we find such stilted language and tedious repetition.
After a blow by blow account of the alleged conversation, with its ‘memory hole’ and ‘throwaway remark’, we are forced to go back over it when Broucher reads from an e-mail he wrote to press officer Patrick Lamb at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to alert him to the conversation he supposedly had with Kelly.
Once again we are told, absurdly, of Broucher’s ‘straining’ to dig up details of the meeting from a ‘very deep memory hole.’ Six more times we hear that ‘I will be found dead in the woods’ was a ‘throwaway remark’.
By referring to it as an inconsequential throwaway remark, Broucher implies he was under no obligation to report it at the time. The casualness of the phrase belies the fact that this ‘throwaway remark’ was a pivotal part of the psyop; its purpose, to remind us of the primary newly-supplied motive - guilt.
On hearing of Kelly’s death, Broucher ‘realised’ that the scientist had not meant that he might be killed by the Iraqis, but ‘may have been thinking on rather different lines’ - an oblique way of inferring that Kelly was foreseeing he might be driven by his own conscience to take his own life. Thus we are lured into accepting the idea that Kelly had been envisaging suicide for months.
Then, nauseatingly, Dingemans reinforces the ‘throwaway remark‘ and the ‘very deep memory hole’ yet again:
Dingemans: 'In terms of strength of recollection, you have suggested that it was, as you thought at the time, a throwaway remark, and you have shown on the e-mails a very deep memory hole. Is that reasonable to characterise the way in which you had approached it at the time?'
The hypnotic effect of this deliberate repetition allowed the new message to be implanted within the public mindset.
THE SYSTEM TRIUMPHS?
Given that we now know the actual conversation took place in 2002, it is clear that the whole David Broucher/dead-in-the-woods ‘event’ was staged to offer more persuasive grounds for David Kelly’s ‘suicide‘. The new message: that after the invasion of Iraq, David Kelly, deeply unhappy with his lot at the MoD, and sick with guilt at having betrayed the Iraqis, had finally been driven to take his own life. Thus his ‘suicide’ was not simply a desperate reaction to government pressure, but a response to the dictates of his own conscience.
It was a slick and clever operation, and the world fell for it. But as with most deceptions there was a flaw: the planners had not foreseen that Rachel Kelly would publicly highlight the relevant diary entry at the Hutton Inquiry - and send Broucher’s edifice of deceit toppling like a house of cards.
Since they had met in 1998, Mai Pederson had become Kelly‘s close friend, introducing him to the Baha’i religion. After his death she told her Baha’i associates, ‘There will be more coming out on this… Don’t believe what you read in the papers.’ Her optimism was misplaced. Denied the right to have her identity disguised at the Hutton Inquiry, she was whisked out of sight.
No more came out, no one else ‘talked‘. History had been suitably revised. The ‘dead-in-the-woods’ psyop- in conjunction with MoD silencing tactics - had been a success.
FINAL WORD
But why take the risk in setting up such an operation? Maybe Pederson was right in saying, ‘It wasn’t suicide’.
At a highly-charged press conference in Asia after Kelly’s death, Blair was stunned by the question: ‘Is there blood on your hands, prime minister?’ We may never know.
But as his plane flew back to Britain, a TV journalist overheard Alastair Campbell ranting:
'This is what you wanted, you asked for this, so play the game Tony.'*
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* It has been recently confirmed that this exchange between Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell did take place as described.
If you have comments or information on the Kelly story, please send your e-mail in confidence to: RowenaThursby@onetel.com
US spy confirms Dr Kelly's death 'was not suicide'
Dr David Kelly was befriended by Mrs Mai Pederson, an undercover US intelligence agent.
Dr Kelly, a leading weapons expert, was found dead by police in the woods near his home after being named as the insider who spoke to journalists about the lies told by the UK and US governments to justify the invasion of Iraq. Mrs Pederson was "one of the very first people to know that Dr Kelly's body had been found."
As a US military intelligence spy, Master Sergeant Mai Pederson was trained to attach to people identified as targets, befriend them, gain their trust, infiltrate their life, and then exploit them as directed by her superiors. She was a specialist in seducing male targets. Her husband, US Air Force Sergeant Mr Jim Pederson, described his wife's standard mode of operation:
"She has always been a spook of one kind or another.
She is invaluable in this job because she doesn't look
as though she's in military intelligence. She goes to
interrogate someone and she's tiny and beautiful, and
she flirts with them, and just sits down and chats.
Before they know it they've told her all sorts of stuff."
As well as basic combat skills, Mrs Pederson's training as a spy and assassin would have included sophisticated cover-up techniques, and in particular how to make murder look like suicide. As Mr Pederson boasted:
"She was proficient with a gun and basic unarmed
combat and worked under-cover for long periods -
called TDA for Temporary Duty Attachments - in
Egypt and, I believe, Iran. She was a very complex
character."
Sgt. Pederson and Dr Kelly are thought to have been "more than friends" and may have had an "affair." Pederson initiated Dr Kelly into an arcane Eastern mystery cult, the Baha'i sect. The involvement of the intelligence services in mysterious religious groups is an extension of their special relationship with secret societies.
Despite her elite training, Master Sgt. Pederson may have become emotionally entangled in her attachment to Dr Kelly. As soon as his dead body was found she phoned her contacts at the Baha'i faith in California. The Baha'i leader Marilyn VonBerg disclosed the details of their conversation:
"It wasn't suicide. There will be more coming out on this."
Evidently Mrs Pederson knew in advance what the media would report about her dead assignment, because she warned her friends that they: "shouldn't believe what we would be reading in the newspapers."
Mrs Pederson had dissapeared by the time Dr Kelly's death had been announced. The US authorities have hidden their agent very well, and her loyal Baha'i brethren refuse to disclose her location. At the Maxwell Air Base in Montgomery where she was based the initial response to inquiries is: "We have no one here of that name that I can find."
SOURCES:
Mail on Sunday, "Does this woman hold key to death of Kelly?", front-page, 7 September 2003.
THIS is the first picture of Sergeant Mai Pederson, a twice-married American spy who could hold vital clues to the death of Dr David Kelly.
Ms Pederson, 43, struck up a close friendship with the Ministry of Defence scientist when they were both serving with a UN weapons inspection team in Iraq, and has been questioned by officials investigating his death.
She is a veteran of the American military intelligence and also a devotee of the exotic Baha'i religious sect. She converted Dr Kelly to the faith in 1999.
Yesterday it was revealed that Sgt Pederson may now be called to give evidence at the Hutton inquiry into the death of 59-year-old Dr Kelly. ...
The developments have fuelled intense speculation in Whitehall. Observers said Sgt Pederson's testimony would open a new line of inquiry into the tragedy and perhaps supply unique insights into Dr Kelly's frame of mind and his links to international intelligence.
Last night Sgt Pederson appeared to be in hiding, with US officials refusing to discuss the affair or say where she was.
'This is not a US investigation and it would be inappropriate for us to discuss the inquiry,' said a spokesman at the Maxwell-Gunter US Air Force base in Alabama, where Sgt Pederson is stationed. 'She is co-operating with the authorities. She has been very co-operative.'
Sgt Pederson's existence was [first] disclosed last week by the [establishment-linked] Labour-supporting [pro-government] Times newspaper on the morning that Dr Kelly's widow, Janice, gave evidence to the Hutton inquiry.
Mrs Kelly said Sgt Pederson had become a family friend who influenced her husband's commitment to the Baha'i faith.
Sgt Pederson's ex-husband, Jim, told friends last week that she was a 'spook' trained to 'cultivate anyone that might be able to help her in her intelligence work'.
She broke the news of Dr Kelly's death of fellow members of the Baha'i sect, telling them 'not to believe' what they would read about the affair in the press.
A Pentagon spokesman said last night: 'I can tell you emphatically that we are not hiding her. We do not hide people.'
Mail on Sunday, "Revealed: how a mysterious American spy befriended Dr David Kelly...", pp 6-7, 7 September 2003.
SHE is a flirtatious divorcee, a spy for the American Air Force, and a leading cheerleader for an exotic Eastern religious sect. And now she may hold the key to the lonely, mysterious death of Dr David Kelly.
Petite , exclusively pictured today by The Mail on Sunday, befriended Dr Kelly while both were serving as weapons inspectors in Iraq in 1998. Before long she converted him to the Baha'i faith.
Ms Pederson was in hiding last night, and has seldom been seen since Dr Kelly was found dead on July 18. Indeed, her existence was unknown until last week, when in a cryptic article that mysteriously failed to appear in its main edition, the Labour-supporting [pro-establishment, pro-government] Times newspaper disclosed that she had been the government scientist's spiritual mentor. Hitherto, almost nothing had been known about the enigmatic Dr Kelly's private life.
...
So what light could Mai Pederson shed on the tragedy of Dr Kelly, who was found dead after being named as a source for a BBC report that the Government had 'sexed up' the case for war on Iraq? The Mail on Sunday has found no evidence to support The Times repeated implication that the 59-year-old Dr Kelly and Mai Pederson - who was 16 years his junior -were more than friends. Nevertheless, it seems certain that the self-effacing government scientist did indeed fall under Pederson's spell...
...
In addition, it is clear that Pederson would have first-hand knowledge of Dr Kelly's immersion in the murky world of international intelligence.
It appears that Dr Kelly first met Ms Pederson in Iraq in December 1998. He was part of the UN's weapons inspection team; she was an Arabic-speaking USAF sergeant who had graduated from spy school and had held various posts in military intelligence.
She was also an energetic advocate of the Baha'i faith - oddly, perhaps, because of its avowed opposition to militarism.
... She was introduced [to Baha'i meetings in Monterey, California] as his spiritual mentor, to the puzzlement of some members of the sect.
'There are Baha'is all over the world, including England. He didn't have to come all this way,' one official said last week. Kristen Caldwell, who runs a Baha'i bookstore, added: 'One of the tenets of the faith is that you investigate it on your own.'
An intelligence expert said last night that the American military had tried - and often failed - to use weapons inspectors as informants. Did Pederson target Dr Kelly for this reason?
The American Air Force was blocking queries on the subject last night and is believed to have Pederson under its protection.
'The CIA was desperate to get information out of the inspectors,' the expert said. 'It had a policy of putting spooks alongside some of the more unco-operative weapons inspectors.
'It is not inconceivable that she was one of these people. It's an amazing coincidence that she was military - and that now, of course, she has been whisked away by the military.'
...
[ More extracts from this article coming soon... ]
The Times (UK), "American was Kelly's spiritual mentor", 1 September 2003.
[ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7813-800123,00.html ]
DAVID KELLY had an American woman spiritual mentor who served with him as a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq and later introduced him to the Baha'i religion.
The role of Mai Pederson, a US military linguist, in bringing Dr Kelly to the Baha'i faith was highlighted by Mrs Marilyn VonBerg, who was secretary of the local Baha'i assembly in Monterey, California, when Dr Kelly converted there in 1999.
Mrs VonBerg said Sgt Pederson was "very close" to Dr Kelly's family and had visited them some time before his death. "He and Mai were friends because she had taught him the faith. She is high security so we never asked them questions. But I am sure she was his translator at one point." The VonBerg family received a call from Ms Pederson, an Arabic-speaker who holds the rank of senior staff sergeant, to inform them of Dr Kelly's apparent suicide on July 17.
"All she said is: 'Don't believe what you read in the newspapers," John VonBerg said. "I do not know which direction she was coming from. It's very mysterious to us."
Dr Kelly's friendship with Sgt Pederson has not yet figured in the Hutton inquiry, but further details of Dr Kelly's faith could surface today when his widow, Janice, who suffers from arthritis, and one of his daughters, Rachel, give evidence.
Sgt Pederson, who moved to the Pentagon after working at the Defence Language Institute in Monterey, left the Washington area after Dr Kelly's death for Montgomery, Alabama, where she lives not far from Maxwell Air Force base. She would not comment when contacted through a friend at the weekend.
A US Air Force spokesman in Washington said that she was still listed in the Pentagon's internal telephone directory, but that her extension was not working. Her last known telephone number in the Washington suburbs has been reassigned, but records suggest that she bought a house in Fairfax County, Virginia, for $237,000 (�150,000) in 2001.
A source with access to UN records said that Sgt Pederson served under Dr Kelly on a UN mission to Iraq in December 1998, the last inspection before the withdrawal of UN inspectors and the US-led bombing campaign.
According to Bahai's records Dr Kelly made his declaration of faith on September 25, 1999, less than a year after the withdrawal of UN weapons inspectors.
"They were devoted friends," said Noreen Steinmetz, the current secretary of the Monterey Baha'i assembly, who spoke to Sgt Pedersen at the weekend to convey an interview request from The Times.
Mrs VonBerg, a former secretary of the local Baha'i spiritual assembly in Monterey, remembers Sgt Pederson bringing Dr Kelly to Baha'i meetings before he converted. "Her and David would come to the meetings, and he became a Baha'i. He was studying the faith," she said.
Mrs VonBerg does not know how the two first met, but, like many other Baha'i friends, she assumed that Sgt Pederson helped Dr Kelly to translate from Arabic for his work on Iraq.
She remembers Dr Kelly filing his declaration of faith, marking his conversion to the Baha'i religion, with Sgt Pederson: "We gave him a book and later he bought one in England and sent over to us a book by a scientist who was a Baha'i, and he said the book really helped him to God.
"He was a very spiritual person."
Kristin Caldwell, who works at the Bosch Baha'i school in Santa Cruz, California, admired the depth of Sgt Pederson's faith.
"I lived in Monterey county for over 20 years and she was another Bahai and I truly respected her. I was impressed by somebody who could be son apolitical and still work within the Defence Department."
Dr Kelly, a leading weapons expert, was found dead by police in the woods near his home after being named as the insider who spoke to journalists about the lies told by the UK and US governments to justify the invasion of Iraq. Mrs Pederson was "one of the very first people to know that Dr Kelly's body had been found."
As a US military intelligence spy, Master Sergeant Mai Pederson was trained to attach to people identified as targets, befriend them, gain their trust, infiltrate their life, and then exploit them as directed by her superiors. She was a specialist in seducing male targets. Her husband, US Air Force Sergeant Mr Jim Pederson, described his wife's standard mode of operation:
"She has always been a spook of one kind or another.
She is invaluable in this job because she doesn't look
as though she's in military intelligence. She goes to
interrogate someone and she's tiny and beautiful, and
she flirts with them, and just sits down and chats.
Before they know it they've told her all sorts of stuff."
As well as basic combat skills, Mrs Pederson's training as a spy and assassin would have included sophisticated cover-up techniques, and in particular how to make murder look like suicide. As Mr Pederson boasted:
"She was proficient with a gun and basic unarmed
combat and worked under-cover for long periods -
called TDA for Temporary Duty Attachments - in
Egypt and, I believe, Iran. She was a very complex
character."
Sgt. Pederson and Dr Kelly are thought to have been "more than friends" and may have had an "affair." Pederson initiated Dr Kelly into an arcane Eastern mystery cult, the Baha'i sect. The involvement of the intelligence services in mysterious religious groups is an extension of their special relationship with secret societies.
Despite her elite training, Master Sgt. Pederson may have become emotionally entangled in her attachment to Dr Kelly. As soon as his dead body was found she phoned her contacts at the Baha'i faith in California. The Baha'i leader Marilyn VonBerg disclosed the details of their conversation:
"It wasn't suicide. There will be more coming out on this."
Evidently Mrs Pederson knew in advance what the media would report about her dead assignment, because she warned her friends that they: "shouldn't believe what we would be reading in the newspapers."
Mrs Pederson had dissapeared by the time Dr Kelly's death had been announced. The US authorities have hidden their agent very well, and her loyal Baha'i brethren refuse to disclose her location. At the Maxwell Air Base in Montgomery where she was based the initial response to inquiries is: "We have no one here of that name that I can find."
SOURCES:
Mail on Sunday, "Does this woman hold key to death of Kelly?", front-page, 7 September 2003.
THIS is the first picture of Sergeant Mai Pederson, a twice-married American spy who could hold vital clues to the death of Dr David Kelly.
Ms Pederson, 43, struck up a close friendship with the Ministry of Defence scientist when they were both serving with a UN weapons inspection team in Iraq, and has been questioned by officials investigating his death.
She is a veteran of the American military intelligence and also a devotee of the exotic Baha'i religious sect. She converted Dr Kelly to the faith in 1999.
Yesterday it was revealed that Sgt Pederson may now be called to give evidence at the Hutton inquiry into the death of 59-year-old Dr Kelly. ...
The developments have fuelled intense speculation in Whitehall. Observers said Sgt Pederson's testimony would open a new line of inquiry into the tragedy and perhaps supply unique insights into Dr Kelly's frame of mind and his links to international intelligence.
Last night Sgt Pederson appeared to be in hiding, with US officials refusing to discuss the affair or say where she was.
'This is not a US investigation and it would be inappropriate for us to discuss the inquiry,' said a spokesman at the Maxwell-Gunter US Air Force base in Alabama, where Sgt Pederson is stationed. 'She is co-operating with the authorities. She has been very co-operative.'
Sgt Pederson's existence was [first] disclosed last week by the [establishment-linked] Labour-supporting [pro-government] Times newspaper on the morning that Dr Kelly's widow, Janice, gave evidence to the Hutton inquiry.
Mrs Kelly said Sgt Pederson had become a family friend who influenced her husband's commitment to the Baha'i faith.
Sgt Pederson's ex-husband, Jim, told friends last week that she was a 'spook' trained to 'cultivate anyone that might be able to help her in her intelligence work'.
She broke the news of Dr Kelly's death of fellow members of the Baha'i sect, telling them 'not to believe' what they would read about the affair in the press.
A Pentagon spokesman said last night: 'I can tell you emphatically that we are not hiding her. We do not hide people.'
Mail on Sunday, "Revealed: how a mysterious American spy befriended Dr David Kelly...", pp 6-7, 7 September 2003.
SHE is a flirtatious divorcee, a spy for the American Air Force, and a leading cheerleader for an exotic Eastern religious sect. And now she may hold the key to the lonely, mysterious death of Dr David Kelly.
Petite , exclusively pictured today by The Mail on Sunday, befriended Dr Kelly while both were serving as weapons inspectors in Iraq in 1998. Before long she converted him to the Baha'i faith.
Ms Pederson was in hiding last night, and has seldom been seen since Dr Kelly was found dead on July 18. Indeed, her existence was unknown until last week, when in a cryptic article that mysteriously failed to appear in its main edition, the Labour-supporting [pro-establishment, pro-government] Times newspaper disclosed that she had been the government scientist's spiritual mentor. Hitherto, almost nothing had been known about the enigmatic Dr Kelly's private life.
...
So what light could Mai Pederson shed on the tragedy of Dr Kelly, who was found dead after being named as a source for a BBC report that the Government had 'sexed up' the case for war on Iraq? The Mail on Sunday has found no evidence to support The Times repeated implication that the 59-year-old Dr Kelly and Mai Pederson - who was 16 years his junior -were more than friends. Nevertheless, it seems certain that the self-effacing government scientist did indeed fall under Pederson's spell...
...
In addition, it is clear that Pederson would have first-hand knowledge of Dr Kelly's immersion in the murky world of international intelligence.
It appears that Dr Kelly first met Ms Pederson in Iraq in December 1998. He was part of the UN's weapons inspection team; she was an Arabic-speaking USAF sergeant who had graduated from spy school and had held various posts in military intelligence.
She was also an energetic advocate of the Baha'i faith - oddly, perhaps, because of its avowed opposition to militarism.
... She was introduced [to Baha'i meetings in Monterey, California] as his spiritual mentor, to the puzzlement of some members of the sect.
'There are Baha'is all over the world, including England. He didn't have to come all this way,' one official said last week. Kristen Caldwell, who runs a Baha'i bookstore, added: 'One of the tenets of the faith is that you investigate it on your own.'
An intelligence expert said last night that the American military had tried - and often failed - to use weapons inspectors as informants. Did Pederson target Dr Kelly for this reason?
The American Air Force was blocking queries on the subject last night and is believed to have Pederson under its protection.
'The CIA was desperate to get information out of the inspectors,' the expert said. 'It had a policy of putting spooks alongside some of the more unco-operative weapons inspectors.
'It is not inconceivable that she was one of these people. It's an amazing coincidence that she was military - and that now, of course, she has been whisked away by the military.'
...
[ More extracts from this article coming soon... ]
The Times (UK), "American was Kelly's spiritual mentor", 1 September 2003.
[ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7813-800123,00.html ]
DAVID KELLY had an American woman spiritual mentor who served with him as a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq and later introduced him to the Baha'i religion.
The role of Mai Pederson, a US military linguist, in bringing Dr Kelly to the Baha'i faith was highlighted by Mrs Marilyn VonBerg, who was secretary of the local Baha'i assembly in Monterey, California, when Dr Kelly converted there in 1999.
Mrs VonBerg said Sgt Pederson was "very close" to Dr Kelly's family and had visited them some time before his death. "He and Mai were friends because she had taught him the faith. She is high security so we never asked them questions. But I am sure she was his translator at one point." The VonBerg family received a call from Ms Pederson, an Arabic-speaker who holds the rank of senior staff sergeant, to inform them of Dr Kelly's apparent suicide on July 17.
"All she said is: 'Don't believe what you read in the newspapers," John VonBerg said. "I do not know which direction she was coming from. It's very mysterious to us."
Dr Kelly's friendship with Sgt Pederson has not yet figured in the Hutton inquiry, but further details of Dr Kelly's faith could surface today when his widow, Janice, who suffers from arthritis, and one of his daughters, Rachel, give evidence.
Sgt Pederson, who moved to the Pentagon after working at the Defence Language Institute in Monterey, left the Washington area after Dr Kelly's death for Montgomery, Alabama, where she lives not far from Maxwell Air Force base. She would not comment when contacted through a friend at the weekend.
A US Air Force spokesman in Washington said that she was still listed in the Pentagon's internal telephone directory, but that her extension was not working. Her last known telephone number in the Washington suburbs has been reassigned, but records suggest that she bought a house in Fairfax County, Virginia, for $237,000 (�150,000) in 2001.
A source with access to UN records said that Sgt Pederson served under Dr Kelly on a UN mission to Iraq in December 1998, the last inspection before the withdrawal of UN inspectors and the US-led bombing campaign.
According to Bahai's records Dr Kelly made his declaration of faith on September 25, 1999, less than a year after the withdrawal of UN weapons inspectors.
"They were devoted friends," said Noreen Steinmetz, the current secretary of the Monterey Baha'i assembly, who spoke to Sgt Pedersen at the weekend to convey an interview request from The Times.
Mrs VonBerg, a former secretary of the local Baha'i spiritual assembly in Monterey, remembers Sgt Pederson bringing Dr Kelly to Baha'i meetings before he converted. "Her and David would come to the meetings, and he became a Baha'i. He was studying the faith," she said.
Mrs VonBerg does not know how the two first met, but, like many other Baha'i friends, she assumed that Sgt Pederson helped Dr Kelly to translate from Arabic for his work on Iraq.
She remembers Dr Kelly filing his declaration of faith, marking his conversion to the Baha'i religion, with Sgt Pederson: "We gave him a book and later he bought one in England and sent over to us a book by a scientist who was a Baha'i, and he said the book really helped him to God.
"He was a very spiritual person."
Kristin Caldwell, who works at the Bosch Baha'i school in Santa Cruz, California, admired the depth of Sgt Pederson's faith.
"I lived in Monterey county for over 20 years and she was another Bahai and I truly respected her. I was impressed by somebody who could be son apolitical and still work within the Defence Department."
Did MI5 kill Dr David Kelly?
Just another crazy conspiracy theory? But, amid claims he wrote tell-all book that vanished after his death, it's one that refuses to go away
By Sue Reid
Sent from the heart of the British Government, the pages were marked 'personal' and threatened the world-renowned microbiologist with the sack if he ever publicly opened his mouth again.
The letter remained unopened for the seven days during the drama that would pitch Dr Kelly into the spotlight and end in his death at just 59.
No one has ever explained why the eminent scientist and UN weapons inspector did not open the letter, but everyone close to him is convinced he knew its contents.
It was designed to silence him because his Ministry of Defence bosses had discovered that not only was he secretly talking to journalists, but was also preparing to write an explosive book about his work.
It was six years ago tomorrow, on July 17, 2003, that Dr Kelly was found dead under a tree on Harrowdown Hill half a mile from his family home in Southmoor. His fate has become one of the most contentious issues of recent political history and has raised profound questions about the moral integrity of the New Labour government.
The former grammar school boy had celebrated his 36th wedding anniversary just a few days before.
The questions of why and how he died - and if he was murdered - have never gone away.
Dr Kelly had examined the Government's 'sexed up dossier' which declared that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which could be activated in just 45 minutes. The claim was used by Tony Blair in 2002 as the central justification for the Iraq war.
When Dr Kelly secretly revealed his doubts about the dossier to BBC reporters, all hell broke loose.
After he was unmasked as the BBC mole, he was marched before the television cameras of a House of Commons committee and, later, taken away to a safe house to be interviewed by the British intelligence services.
In one final phone conversation he told a caller he wouldn't be surprised 'if my body was found in the woods'.
And so it was to be. The official inquiry into his death later decided that he committed suicide - by slashing his wrist and consuming a cocktail of painkillers.
But this week, 13 respected doctors declared that it was medically impossible for Dr Kelly to have died in this manner. They are mounting a legal battle to overturn the suicide verdict.
A new film, Anthrax War, to be released in London this weekend, also asserts that Dr Kelly had spent hours writing a tell-all book which would violate the Official Secrets Act by exposing Britain's dubious authority for toppling Saddam Hussein.
The film, directed by New York-based documentary maker Bob Coen, states that Dr Kelly, head of biological defence at the Government's secretive military research establishment of Porton Down, Wiltshire, was the brain behind much of the West's germ warfare programmes. Quite simply, the film says, Dr Kelly 'knew too much'.
In further unsubstantiated and hard-to-believe claims, the film alleges he may have been embroiled in apartheid South Africa's Project Coast programme to develop an ethnic germ weapon programme to target the black population.
Coen also says Dr Kelly had links to illegal human experiments on British servicemen at Porton Down, which sparked the largest ever investigation by Wiltshire Police.
Officers recommended charges against some scientists at the germ warfare establishment - but dropped the idea just days after Dr Kelly was found dead.
Whatever the veracity of all this, the film's central thrust - that he was writing a sensational book - has been confirmed by Gordon Thomas, a British intelligence expert, who had met Dr Kelly.
Thomas told me: 'I visited Dr Kelly as part of research into a book I was writing. But he told me that he was writing his own book, which intended to show that Tony Blair had lied about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.
He had told the Prime Minister categorically that there were no weapons of mass destruction.'
Thomas, in his own book, states: 'Dr Kelly was not a man given to exaggeration or showing off; he was the absolute expert in his field and if he said there no weapons of mass destruction, then there were none.
'I told Dr Kelly he would never be allowed to publish his book in Britain. I told him he would put himself into immense danger.
His plan was to resign from Porton Down and move with his wife to the United States where he could make more money from his revelations.'
Can this possibly be true? Certainly, Dr Kelly lived a double life. At home in Oxfordshire with wife Janice, he was the perfect husband.
The couple would have supper together in the garden after he had spent hours in what she called 'his secret world' - the book-lined study off the hallway.
Here, computers linked him to the Britain's intelligence services MI5 and MI6, GCHQ, the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Foreign Office and foreign spy agencies - including Israel's notorious Mossad (for whom he had worked since 1995 as an advisor with the blessing of Whitehall).
Although he had an office in London - Room 2/35 in the MoD's Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat - and another at Porton Down, Dr Kelly kept his secret data at home, including tens of thousands of documents and photographs; some show human victims of anthrax poisoning, as well as animal 'guinea pigs' poisoned with anthrax and other germs in labs across the world. For a man who was not a spy, it was an impressive collection.
From all round the globe he was consulted on biological weaponry, in particular the use of anthrax.
'You couldn't commit suicide like that'
However, perhaps fatally for Dr Kelly, his book was not only in his head. It was on hard-disk in one of his computers, which have all been seized by MI5 and are unlikely ever to see the light of day.
By any standards, the book would have been hugely contentious. In addition to Tony Blair and the British Government, there are any number of foreign intelligence agencies who would not want a public airing of the explosive information which they shared with Dr Kelly over the years.
His book was also expected to expose a black market trade in anthrax which was being exploited, and thus condoned, by many governments.
But it has now come to light that there may be another compelling reason why Dr Kelly might have been murdered.
Amazingly, 12 other well-known micro-biologists linked with germ warfare research have died in the past decade, five of them Russians investigating claims that the Israelis were working on viruses to target Arabs.
The Russian plane in which they were travelling from Tel Aviv to Siberia was shot down on October 2001 over the Black Sea by an 'off-course' Ukrainian surface-to-air missile.
Dr Kelly knew the victims and asked MI6 to find out more details. However, they drew a blank.
Five weeks later, Dr Benito Que, a cell biologist known to Dr Kelly, was found in a coma near his Miami laboratory.
The infectious diseases expert had been investigating how a virus like HIV could be genetically engineered into a biological weapon.
Dr Que, 52, was found unconscious outside in the car park of his lab and died in hospital. Officially, he suffered a heart attack - although his family say he was struck on the head. Police refused to re-open the case.
Ten days after Dr Que's death, another friend of Dr Kelly died. Dr Don Wiley, 57, one of America's foremost microbiologists, had a U.S. Government contract to create a vaccine against the killer Ebola fever and other so-called doomsday germs.
His rental car was found abandoned on a bridge across the Mississippi. The keys were in the ignition and the petrol tank full. There had been no crash, but Dr Wiley had disappeared.
The FBI visited Wiley's laboratory and removed most of his work. A month later his body was found 300 miles downstream, with evidence of severe head injuries. No forensic examination was performed and his death was ruled 'accidental'.
Little wonder, then, that Dr Kelly had begun talking about his body being 'found in the woods'.
And there is more. The most mysterious death of them all happened to Dr Vladimir Pasechnik - a Soviet defector Dr Kelly knew well.
The biochemist had left a drugs industry fair in Paris in 1989, just before the collapse of Communism, saying he wanted to buy souvenirs for family. Instead, he went to the British Embassy where he announced to a startled receptionist that he was a Russian scientist who wanted to defect.
Pasechnik was whisked secretly back to Britain, and Dr Kelly was brought in to verify his claims that the Soviets were adapting cruise missiles armed with germs to help spread killer diseases such as plague and smallpox.
As chief director of the Institute for Ultra-Pure Biological preparations in St Petersburg, Pasechnik had developed killer germs. 'I want the West to know of this. There must be a way to stop this madness,' he told Dr Kelly in a safe house.
Dr Kelly later told the author Gordon Thomas that he believed Pasechnik. 'I knew that he was telling the truth. There was no waffle. It was truly horrifying.'
The two scientists became friends. And soon Vladimir had set up the Regma Biotechnologies laboratory, near Porton Down. He seemed healthy when he left work on the night of November 21, 2001.
Returning home, the 64-year-old cooked supper and went to sleep. He was found dead in bed the next day.
Officially, the reason given was a stroke. However the Wiltshire police later said his demise was 'inexplicable'.
It is against this extraordinary background of highly suspicious deaths that Dr Kelly's own death occurred.
As we know, an inquest on his body was ruled out by Oxfordshire's coroner, a highly unusual move.
'Don't be surprised if my body is found.'
A detailed medical dossier by the 13 British doctors, however, rejects the Hutton conclusion on the grounds that a cut to the small ulnar artery is not deadly.
The dossier is being used by lawyers to demand a proper inquest and the release of Dr Kelly's autopsy report, which has never been made public. Their evidence will be sent to Sir John Chilcot's forthcoming Iraq War inquiry.
One of the doctors, David Halpin, former consultant in trauma at Torbay Hospital, Devon, told me: ' Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss.'
He and the other doctors say: 'To die from haemorrhage, Dr Kelly would have had to lose about five pints of blood.
It is unlikely from his stated injury that he would have lost more than a pint.' A lack of blood at the death scene was also confirmed by the search team who found Dr Kelly and the paramedics who tried to treat him.
One of the country's most respected vascular surgeons, Martin Birnstingl, also says that it would be virtually impossible for Dr Kelly to have died by severing the ulnar artery on the little finger side of his inner wrist.
'I have never, in my experience, heard of a case where someone has died after cutting their ulnar artery.
The minute the blood pressure falls, after a few minutes, this artery would stop bleeding. It would spray blood about and make a mess but it would soon stop.'
He believes that if Dr Kelly was really intent on suicide he would have cut the artery in his groin.
Dr Kelly was also right-handed - which meant he would have to slash awkwardly from left to right on his opposite wrist to have cut into the ulnar artery to any depth.
And what of the tablets? The almost empty packet of Co-Proxamol found by the dead scientist's side suggested he had taken 29.
But he had vomited and only a fragment of one remained in his stomach. The level of painkillers in his blood was a third of what is required to cause death.
As David Halpin says: 'The idea that a man like Dr Kelly would choose to end his life like that is preposterous. This was a scientist, an expert on drugs.'
So what really happened to Dr Kelly? The gardening knife that Lord Hutton said killed him was blunt and - although the scientist was not wearing gloves - had no fingerprints on it.
Which brings us back to that unopened letter found on Dr Kelly's desk, which had been sent to him at his home by MoD bosses and signed by Richard Hatfield, the ministry's personnel chief.
A whole series of experts died in strange ways
At the time, Dr Kelly had received a number of warning phone calls at his home from the MoD about his indiscreet behaviour - and he will have been in no doubt that the official letter was written confirmation of these admonishments.
But he would not be put off. He saw his book as a guarantee of his financial future, which he often worried about.
On what he felt was a lowly £58,000 a year, the scientist fretted that his Government pension (based on his final salary) would not finance a decent retirement for him and his wife.
On the day he died, Janice has confirmed her husband was a distressed man. Dr Kelly lunched with her, before going out for a walk on Harrowdown Hill at 3.30pm.
It was a walk he made regularly at the same time of day - something anyone watching his movements would have been well aware of.
That day, events were already in motion elsewhere. An hour before, at 2.30pm, a senior policeman sat down at his computer at Thames Valley Police headquarters in Oxfordshire.
He began to create a restricted file on his secure computer. Across the top he typed a code name: Operation Mason. Although its contents have never been made public, it would detail the overnight search for Dr Kelly.
Incredibly, he created this file an hour before the scientist even left home.
After Dr Kelly's corpse was found at 8.30am by the volunteer searchers, the senior policeman made his last Operation Mason entry. It simply states: '9.00am. 18.07.03. Body recovered'.
Most intriguingly, at 8am, half an hour before Dr Kelly's body was discovered under the tree, three officers in dark suits from MI5's Technical Assessment Unit were at his house.
The computers and the hard-disk containing the 40,000 words of the explosive book were carried away. They have never been seen since.
