Dr. David Kelly, a British Weapons Inspector who blew the whistle on documents fabricated to sell the Iraq War, predicted his own death in February 2003 if the invasion went ahead.
Dr David Kelly told a UK diplomat he would probably be "found dead in the woods" if the UK invaded Iraq, the Hutton inquiry has heard.
...Mr Broucher said the remark was made after Dr Kelly had explained to him that he had assured senior Iraqi officials that if they cooperated with United Nations weapons inspections they would have nothing to fear.
"The implication was that if the invasion went ahead, that would make him a liar and he would have betrayed his contacts, some of whom might be killed as a direct result of his actions," he said.
More after the flip:
Five short months later the prediction of his own fate would come true.
His chilling prediction of his own death during a conversation with the British diplomat David Broucher in Geneva in February, throws new light on his state of mind about the row over Britain's role in the Iraq war.
...The disclosure of Dr Kelly's unease about the Iraq war even before the invasion on March 20 undermines assumptions that his apparent suicide was tied to recent events, principally the pressure he came under last month over his conversations with the BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan.
Dr Kelly's body was found in woods near his home [in July 2003].
Over the past weekend it was reported that Kelly was working on a book exposing secrets on government germ warfare prior to his death.
He was intending to reveal that he warned Prime Minister Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq weeks before the British and American invasion.
He had several discussions with a publisher in Oxford and was seeking advice on how far he could go without breaking the law on secrets.
Following his death, his computers were seized and it is still not known if any rough draft was discovered by investigators and, if so, what happened to the material. Dr Kelly was also intending to lift the lid on a potentially bigger scandal, his own secret dealings in germ warfare with the apartheid regime in South Africa.
The CBC ran a documentary in March on germ warfare called Anthrax War
Part 1:
After US investigators failed to pin the anthrax attacks on former Army scientist Steven Hatfill, they blamed the entire episode on bio-defence researcher Bruce Ivins just as he was reported to have committed suicide. No other suspects were charged.
The death in Maryland of Ivins, who helped the FBI analyse anthrax samples used in the attacks, may bring to a close a long-running mystery in the US "war on terror". Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the anthrax assaults crippled the US mail system and sowed fears the US was under attack from al-Qaida terrorists who had acquired biological weapons.
Ivins, whose name had not surfaced publicly in connection to the attacks, was a long-serving civilian bio-defence researcher at a top military research laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
According to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported the death, Ivins had recently been informed of his impending prosecution. He died Tuesday in a Maryland hospital after ingesting a large dose of prescription Tylenol with codeine, a friend told the Los Angeles Times.
Anthrax War
Part 2:
A British Member of Parliament would call for a public inquiry into what he believed may have been the murder of Kelly.
Norman Baker has spent six months investigating the death of the Government weapons expert, found dead in an Oxfordshire wood three years ago. Mr Baker - who stepped down from the Liberal Democrat front bench to carry out his investigation - published his preliminary results and called for a new public inquiry.
..."If it wasn't suicide, then clearly Dr Kelly was bumped off. My aim is to find out exactly what happened. Frankly, there is more than enough cause to reopen the inquest." Mr Baker's investigation comes after three senior doctors claimed the official cause of death - a severed ulnar artery in the wrist - was extremely unlikely to be fatal.
David Halpin, Stephen Frost and Searle Sennett said: "Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss."
Baker would continue investigating his death until publishing an article the following year concluding that Kelly had been murdered.
My investigations have since convinced me that it is nigh- on clinically impossible for Dr Kelly to have died by his own hand and that both his personality and the other circumstantial evidence strongly militate against suicide.
Given that his death was clearly not an accident, that leaves only one alternative - that he must have been murdered.
This is not a conclusion I have come to lightly. I simply set out to examine the facts, to test the evidence, and to follow the trail wherever it took me.
Anthrax War
Part 3:
FBI agents would question British scientists in 2002 at Porton Down, where David Kelly had worked, in relation to their involvement in the Anthrax case.
FBI agents tracing the source of deadly anthrax attacks in America want to question scientists at Porton Down, the British defence establishment over fears that the spores may have been smuggled out of a British laboratory.
They have established that the Ministry of Defence's centre in Wiltshire has experimented on the Ames strain of anthrax - identical to that sent to American journalists and politicians. Agents in Washington will request a list of scientists who have had access to the samples of anthrax used in MoD laboratories over the past 15 years. The British Government is currently developing a new vaccine against the disease.
...Sue Ellison, the spokesman for Porton Down, confirmed last night that the authorities were aware of FBI inquiries and would help when approached. "We keep a full list of where the anthrax samples are sent, and would give these details to the relevant authorities. In the UK, we work closely with our American partners and we will continue to do so."
That year anthrax vaccines would be developed at Porton Down, as part of what British authorities called purely defensive research.
The Porton Down research is listed in a Health and Safety Executive register, seen by this newspaper, of all GM research projects in Britain. But in a move expected to provoke heavy criticism, ministers will announce tomorrow that this information will now be suppressed on the grounds of national security. Porton Down officials also reveal in the documents that human trials of powerful GM anthrax and bubonic plague vaccines are being conducted this year, using volunteers hired by a bio-medical company.
...Certainly, security concerns about bio-weapons escalated after the FBI concluded that US anthrax attacks which left five dead in October and November were probably carried out by a scientist involved in research or bio-warfare programmes. Analysis of the anthrax used in the attacks showed that Porton Down was one of five laboratories to hold stocks of the same Ames strain of anthrax since it was shared by the US and British bio-warfare programmes.
...Ministers insist that Porton Down's research is purely defensive, and is intended to develop more effective vaccines, antibiotics and detection methods for troops and potentially the civilian population. They argue it would be negligent to ignore the potential threat. But the research is also designed to anticipate lethal new GM bio-weapons that could be designed by hostile countries and terrorists. Russian scientists have admitted genetically modifying anthrax in the 1990s, and suspicions about Iraqi research programmes continue.
Anthrax War
Part 4:
The apartheid regime in South Africa, whom David Kelly had secret dealings with, would employ chemical and biological weapons against the African people.
South Africa's CBW program was headed by Dr. Wouter Basson, a former Special Forces Army Brigadier and personal heart specialist to former President P.W. Botha. Basson ran the CBW program during the 1980s and early 1990s. CBW, also known as Project Coast, was initiated in the early 1980s to provide detection and protection capabilities to the South African Defence Force. However, there was an offensive component to the program and the claims are that CBW's offensive program:
- Developed lethal chemical and biological weapons that targeted ANC political leaders and their supporters as well as populations living in the black townships. These weapons included an infertility toxin to secretly sterilize the black population; skin-absorbing poisons that could be applied to the clothing of targets; and poison concealed in products such as chocolates and cigarettes. (Read the interviews with former President F.W. de Klerk, and Dr. Daan Goosen, who worked with Basson in the CBW program.)
- Released cholera strains into water sources of certain South African villages and provided anthrax and cholera to the government troops of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the late 1970s to use against the rebel soldiers in the guerrilla war. In 1979 the world's largest outbreak of anthrax took place in Rhodesia where 82 people were killed and thousands became ill. Zimbabwe's current Minister of Health, Dr. Timothy Stamps has ordered an investigation into whether South Africa was involved in the incident.
Anthrax War
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One suspected production site for the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks was an Army base at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.
Military watchdogs say it's been tough over the years getting a straight story out of the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds. The sprawling facility has been home to open air testing of the worst poisons known to man and nature. In the late '60s, thousands of sheep around the base died horrible deaths after being exposed to nerve agents. For 30 years, the Army denied any involvement -- even after it paid off the ranchers.
Inside the secret labs at Dugway is a deep-freeze treasure trove of deadly agents, dubbed Pandora’s Icebox. Military watchdog Steve Erickson says: "Anthrax? Yes. Black plague? Yes, and many others. Fever. Lots of fever."
The FBI confirms that its agents are inside Dugway, interviewing Army scientists about their stash of anthrax. The army has now admitted that, contrary to earlier statements, it still makes anthrax at Dugway, including weapons-grade anthrax, milled into a fine powder, and virtually identical to that which was sent to members of Congress. A comparison of Dugway anthrax to that in the congressional letters found 50 out of 50 identical genetic markers. And the FBI now knows Dugway has frequently transported its anthrax to other facilities around the country, meaning many other persons could have gained access to it.
Anthrax War
Part 6:
The biodefense market has been flooded with $50 billion since the anthrax attacks.
Has the unprecedented boom in biodefense research made the country less secure by multiplying the places and people with access to dangerous germs? "We are putting America at more risk, not less risk," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of a House panel that has investigated recent safety lapses at biolabs.
FBI investigators have long speculated that the motive for the attacks, if carried out by a biodefense insider like Ivins, might have been to draw public attention to a dire threat, attracting money and prestige to a once-obscure field.
If that was the motive, it succeeded. In the years since anthrax-laced letters were sent to members of Congress and news organizations in late 2001, almost $50 billion in federal money has been spent to build new laboratories, develop vaccines and stockpile drugs. For example, an experimental vaccine Ivins had spent years working on moved from the laboratory to a proposed billion-dollar federal contract after the attacks, which killed five people.
Anthrax War
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