Sunday, May 15, 2011

Helicopter at death scene: Can the David Kelly suicide get any more bizarre?/ Daily Mail

While the world waits for UK Attorney General Dominic Grieve to decide whether to hold an inquest into Dr. Kelly's death, accruing information makes the suicide theory less and less tenable.  A helicopter, hired by Thames Valley police, landed at the scene 90 minutes after Kelly's body was discovered, stayed 5 minutes, then left.  Another scoop from the Daily Mail:
Details from its flight log, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show that the helicopter – hired by Thames Valley police – landed at Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire at 10.55am on July 18, 2003, 90 minutes after the body was discovered by volunteer search teams.
Significantly, the flight log has been heavily redacted, making it impossible to know who was on board or what its exact purpose was.
The flight was not mentioned in oral evidence at the Hutton Inquiry, set up by Tony Blair to investigate Dr Kelly’s death...
The riddle joins the growing list of unanswered questions about the circumstances of the government weapons inspector’s final moments.  
It emerges in the same week that Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell were accused of lying to the Chilcot Inquiry into the lead-up to the Iraq war.
The Mail reported yesterday how declassified documents from the inquiry revealed a spy chief disputed Campbell’s claim that the dossier was ‘not the case for war’.  
According to Major-General Michael Lurie, ‘We knew at the time that the purpose of the Dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence. I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given... ‘During the drafting of the final Dossier, every fact was managed to make it as strong as possible, the final statements reaching beyond the conclusions intelligence assessments would normally draw from such facts.
Called to give evidence behind closed doors, General Laurie was asked if the dossier gave the public ‘a false picture’ of the intelligence. He replied: ‘Yes, yes, yes.’
See the Daily Mail piece for "Ten Unanswered Questions."

Evidence not previously mentioned in this blog includes the fact Dr. Kelly booked a return flight to Iraq (for work) the morning he died, and had an appointment to meet one of his daughters later that day.

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