Episode 5 explores a very strange occurrence concerning Dr Kelly’s dentist. And Miles and Sam look back, in detail, at the infamous Hutton inquiry
Episode 5 explores a very strange occurrence concerning Dr Kelly’s dentist. And Miles and Sam look back, in detail, at the infamous Hutton inquiry
An Inconvenient Death – Podcast Episode 5 script
Sam - Welcome back to the series examining the mysterious death of Dr David Kelly with me Sam Eastall and the journalist and author Miles Goslett.
Sam – As we’ve heard, a tremendous number of things happened from the time David Kelly left his house to go for a walk at 3pm on Thursday the 17thof July 2003, and midnight on Friday the 18th of July, when the post mortem on his body was concluding.
Activity did not let up after that.
By the time the sun rose in Oxfordshire on Saturday the 19th of July, The New York Times had published the first and, to date, only ever newspaper interview given by Janice Kelly. Miles, what can you tell us about this?
MILES – Well this newspaper report is noteworthy for several reasons.
First, it was written by Dr Kelly’s American journalist friend Judith Miller. You may remember, on the morning of Thursday the 17th of July, a few hours before he was last seen, Dr Kelly had sent Judith Miller an email telling her he felt his life was being compromised by what he referred to as QUOTE “many dark actors playing games”.
Miller spoke to Mrs Kelly by telephone during the evening of Friday the 18th of July, just hours after Dr Kelly’s body was discovered. Mrs Kelly told Miller that Thames Valley Police had informed her that her husband had committed suicide.
She declined to say what led police to that conclusion. She also said they had asked her not to discuss details of her husband’s death.
The NYT report further observed that Mrs Kelly had no indication that her husband was contemplating suicide but added that in her opinion he had been under enormous stress.
SAM – Did this New York Times report have anything to say about that cryptic email Dr Kelly had sent to Miller?
MILES – It did. It said he had sent that email…it quoted those strange words – “many dark actors playing games - and it also said he had given no indication that he was depressed.
SAM – So what’s the relevance of this, would you say?
MILES - Under the circumstances it seems astonishing that on the same day that Dr Kelly had been found dead, Mrs Kelly had given any interview to any newspaper reporter. It was odder still was that she told Miller not only of her own certainty, and the police’s, that her husband had taken his own life, but also of her fears of upsetting Thames Valley Police by explaining publicly how they, and indeed she, were so convinced of this.
SAM – You mean because of when Mrs Kelly had this conversation with the New York Times?
MILES – Yes. Taking into account the five-hour time difference between Britain and New York, at the same time that she would have given Judith Miller that interview, the post mortem being conducted on Dr Kelly’s body would almost certainly have been under way. So – there still wouldn’t have been absolute confirmation of the reason for Dr Kelly’s death.
SAM – What else happened on Saturday 19th July?
MILES – We know that Mrs Kelly and her daughter, Sian, were driven in an unmarked police car to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford to formally identify Dr Kelly’s body.
And at the same time, a team of police officers in white forensic overalls continued to search at the bottom of Dr Kelly's garden and also checked his car, which was parked in the driveway of the house.
While the Kellys were at the hospital, a second Thames Valley Police search team arrived at their house. It comprised seven men and one woman. They carried several silver-coloured cases to the back of the property. They were looking for documents relating to Iraq. One of the officers has said they were looking for politically sensitive documents.
SAM – Was there anything else?
MILES – When the Kellys returned to the house that Saturday lunchtime Sian Kelly was asked to give a sworn statement to Thames Valley Police confirming that her father was right-handed in order to prove, presumably, that he had been capable of cutting his own left wrist.
SAM - At 2.05pm the Press Association reported that, according to Thames Valley Police, Dr Kelly had bled to death from a cut to his wrist.
Twenty minutes later, speaking on the steps of Wantage Police Station, Acting Superintendent David Purnell said in a statement:
“I can confirm that the body on Harrowdown Hill found yesterday at 9.20am has been formally identified as Dr David Kelly, 59, of Faringdon, Southmoor, Abingdon. A post-mortem has revealed that the cause of death was haemorrhaging from a wound to his left wrist. The injury is consistent with having been caused by a bladed object. We have recovered a knife and an open packet of coproxamol tablets at the scene. Whilst our inquiries are continuing there is no indication at this stage of any other party being involved. We would ask the Press to respect the privacy of Dr Kelly’s family at this difficult time.”
SAM – Miles, do you find this statement irregular for any reason?
MILES – Bearing in mind Mrs Kelly told the New York Times the police were certain it was suicide and then requested she didn’t talk about this…yes, a bit. I mean – looking at it now, it seems unusual that no thought was given by the police to the idea that Dr Kelly’s death would have to be considered by a coroner’s inquest or – in this case – a public inquiry. But they were really quite specific, even naming publicly the brand of painkiller he had allegedly swallowed.
SAM – Just after 5 o’clock, the Kelly family released a statement through Thames Valley Police. It was again read out at Wantage Police Station in Oxfordshire by Acting Superintendent David Purnell. The full statement ran:
“We are utterly devastated and heartbroken by the death of our husband, father and brother. We loved him very much and will miss his warmth, humour and humanity. Those who knew him will remember him for his devotion to his home, family and the community and countryside in which he lived. A loving, private and dignified man has been taken from us all. David's professional life was characterised by his integrity, honour and dedication to finding the truth, often in the most difficult of circumstances. His expertise was unique and universally respected and his life and achievements will always be a source of great pride to us. Events over recent weeks made David's life intolerable and all of those involved should reflect long and hard on this fact. We have been deeply moved by the many expressions of support from friends, family and the local community. We would also like to pay tribute to the professionalism and compassion of the officers of the Thames Valley Police force. It is hard to comprehend the enormity of this tragedy. We appeal now to everyone to afford us the privacy to grieve in peace and to come to terms with our loss.”
SAM – Now, while all this had been going on, Tony Blair was feeling the heat in Japan, wasn’t he Miles?
MILES – Blair had touched down in Tokyo on Friday the 18th of July seemingly determined to carry on with an eight-day tour of the Far East.
On the Saturday he made a statement during a press conference in which he described Dr Kelly's death:
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as “an absolutely terrible tragedy” and said he was “profoundly saddened for David Kelly and for his family”. He then paid tribute to Dr Kelly, saying: “He was a fine public servant who did an immense amount of good for his country in the past and I'm sure would have done so again in the future. There is now, however, going to be a due process and a proper and independent inquiry and I believe that should be allowed to establish the facts. And I hope we can set aside the speculation, and the claims and the counter-claims, and allow that due process to take its proper course. And in the meantime all of us, the politicians and the media alike, should show some respect and restraint. That's all I intend to say.”
SAM – So what do you think he meant by that?
MILES - This was a clear attempt to block any awkward questions from the reporters travelling with him. But one of them, Jonathan Oliver, then the deputy political editor of The Mail on Sunday, had other ideas. He put Blair on the spot at a joint press conference later that day in a really memorable way.
Blair was at the front of the packed room alongside the Japanese prime minister, Junichio Koizumi. Oliver stood up as the press conference was nearing its end and asked:
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Sam - So just to be clear the reporter said there ‘have you got blood on your hands prime minister? Are you going to resign over this?’
MILES - It was one of those moments where, as the cliché, has it, time stood still. Even watching it on tv you can sense how stunned Blair was. He gave the impression that he hadn’t heard the question but he was obviously unsure what to say, so said nothing. The press conference was pretty swiftly wound up.
SAM – And you think this would have had the effect of reinforcing many people’s view that the circumstances surrounding this death were unusual.
MILES – Yes, and also that Blair’s government was mired in this death one way or another.
SAM – So in the previous episode, we talked about Dr Kelly’s dentist, Dr Kanas, who was unable to find Dr Kelly’s dental records. What more can you tell us about this side of the story?
MILES – Well Dr Kanas had first looked for the records on the Friday morning, just a few hours after Dr Kelly’s body was found. She couldn’t see them anywhere. She apparently spent a considerable amount of time looking for the records that day and someone who worked at the surgery at that time has even told me she laid out on the floor of the practice every set of her patients’ records – hundreds of records in other words - in an effort to find Dr Kelly’s, without success.
She then spent the weekend worrying about this.
SAM – Was there anything in particular that caused her to worry?
MILES - The previous week, she had noticed that one of the surgery’s windows had been left open all night because it was warped. It didn’t appear that anyone had broken in through the window, but Dr Kanas apparently couldn’t rule out a connection between this and the apparent disappearance of Dr Kelly’s records which I suppose was quite a natural conclusion to draw.
On the afternoon of Sunday 20 July, Dr Kanas returned to the surgery to have another look. Once again she opened the filing cabinet. This time she noticed that the notes of the patient next to Dr Kelly’s were raised by three-quarters of an inch. Immediately behind them, in their correct place, were Dr Kelly’s records. Nothing appeared to be missing from the cardboard envelope. Even a postcard which he had once sent to Dr Kanas from Iraq was still there.
SAM – Did she tell the police?
MILES – She did eventually, she waited for several hours. Then, at almost half past ten at night on Sunday 20 July, she rang Thames Valley Police and told this slightly confusing story over the phone.
SAM – Do you know what she told them?
MILES - She said she had looked for Dr Kelly’s notes two days earlier, on the morning that his body had been discovered at Harrowdown Hill, and found nothing, but had returned to her surgery that Sunday afternoon and found them in their rightful place – despite her lengthy search for them.
SAM – Because we’re going through this story sequentially, we will hear more about the dental records, but it’s safe to say that sixty hours after Dr Kelly’s body was found, a new and potentially criminal line of inquiry had been opened into Dr Kelly’s death thanks to the conscientiousness of his dentist.
What happened next then Miles?
MILES - On Monday 21 July a coroner’s inquest was opened by the Oxfordshire coroner Nicholas Gardiner. This was routine. It would happen in the event of any sudden, violent or unnatural death. None of Dr Kelly's family attended the hearing, which lasted only four-minutes.
A coroner’s officer said that a preliminary post-mortem examination revealed the likely cause of death had been an incision wound on Dr Kelly’ left wrist, pending the results of toxicology reports. This was based on the initial conclusions of the pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt. As is routine, the inquest was adjourned.
SAM – And did anything else happen that day?
MILES – Yes, Lord Hutton put out a press release confirming the terms of reference of his public inquiry and explaining what steps he had taken to get it up and running.
SAM – And what were the terms of reference?
MILES – ON that day they were to QUOTE: ‘urgently to conduct an investigation into the death of Dr Kelly.’
They were subsequently changed to: “urgently to conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly”.
SAM – Hmm…but not the CAUSE of Dr Kelly’s death?
Miles - No
SAM –OK. And what about Tony Blair?
MILES – He was still in the Far East, accompanied by journalists. He had successfully avoided the press since that devastating question about whether he had blood on his hands was put to him. On 22 July he was asked whether he was involved in unmasking Dr Kelly. Blair apparently reacted angrily, saying: “That's completely untrue ... That is emphatically not the case. I did not authorise the leaking of the name of Dr Kelly. I believe we have acted properly throughout.” etc etc...
SAM – But is that true?
MILES – Well…we covered this in a previous episode. You’ll recall that a couple of weeks earlier Dr Kelly’s identity as Andrew Gilligan’s source only became known because the Ministry of Defence press office was instructed by officials to confirm it to any journalist who guessed it correctly. It’s what we called the name game.
And the meeting at which the decision was taken for this name game to go ahead was chaired by Tony Blair in Downing Street on 8 July.
So the government – with Blair’s authority - had helped reporters to learn Dr Kelly’s name but in such a way as would allow anyone else involved at an official level to claim that, technically, the government had not actively provided Dr Kelly’s name to the Press. So Blair was waking a very fine line by denying authorising the leaking of Dr Kelly’s name.
He then said let’s allow the Hutton Inquiry to do its work.
SAM – And then something else happened on 26 July that you find noteworthy.
MILES – Yes, on Saturday 26 July, 8 days after Dr Kelly's body had been found, Lord Hutton and James Dingemans, the young barrister who as we have said had agreed to be senior counsel to the inquiry, left London and headed for Southmoor to see Dr Kelly’s widow and three daughters at home.
SAM – Was this normal?
MILES – Well, they spent an hour with the Kelly family. It has been explained that Hutton wanted to inform the Kellys exactly how his inquiry would function but, with no written record of the meeting, it is impossible to know exactly what was said during this visit. I would say it was unorthodox, whatever the official line on this is, for the man supposedly to be leaving no stone unturned in his quest for the truth of this suspicious death to be meeting with Dr Kelly’s family is unusual. Put it this way: no coroner would have thought it acceptable to start taking testimony of any kind – no matter how trivial - from a widow in such an informal way.
SAM - Less than a week later, on the morning of Friday 1 August, Hutton opened his inquiry with a preliminary session lasting about two hours.
The inquiry was held in Court 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice in Central London. Miles, there was obviously a lot of interest as the inquiry got underway.
MILES – Of course. It was a huge event. Some of London’s top lawyers were there as representatives for each witness; there were hundreds of journalists; and scores of members of the public. People would camp out overnight in the hope of getting a ticket.
SAM – I can see that in his opening statement, Hutton first said that a minute’s silence should be observed as a mark of respect to Dr Kelly. He then explained the ground rules. What were the rules, Miles?
MILES – Hutton said that he alone would decide which witnesses would be called to give evidence, and in what order. He confirmed that witnesses would not swear an oath as he had no power to compel them to do so, which I find very significant.
SAM – Remind us why that's significant.
MILES – Because it meant that anyone who lied wouldn’t face a penalty if they were caught doing so. If you lie under oath, you commit perjury, you could in theory go to prison. Everyone at a coroner’s inquest swears an oath. But at the Hutton Inquiry, nobody did…so in essence people were free to say what they wanted.
SAM – And just name a few of the people who appeared at the Hutton Inquiry?
MILES – Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, Geoff Hoon, Andrew Gilligan and Janice Kelly were among the witnesses.
SAM – Was it televised?
MILES – No. An application for it to be televised was also lodged that day by ITN and other commercial television companies, which was rejected on Tuesday 5 August.
Also tucked away in his opening address was an acknowledgement by Hutton that he had been “given information” by Mrs Kelly during the visit he and Dingemans had made to her house the weekend before. Hutton did not elaborate on this at the time.
SAM – So tjis public inquiry was being kept quite private by the fact it wasn't televised, how were people made aware of what was discussed in there?
MILES - The Hutton Inquiry claimed it wanted to set new standards in how it used technology and, as a result, how transparent it was compared to other public inquiries. All evidence submitted to the inquiry was fed into a database which could be retrieved immediately and displayed on monitors for the public and media in the hearing room. Transcripts and evidence were published twice daily on the inquiry's website so that the public could follow proceedings so in a way it was the next best thing to televising it I suppose.
SAM – How was the inquiry actually run?
MILES – It was divided into two parts. The first phase consisted of neutral examination of witnesses by counsel to the inquiry. It began on Monday 11 August and lasted for 15 working days, until 4 September. Its purpose was to establish the sequence of events from September 2002, when the government published the “45-minute” dossier, up to Dr Kelly’s death in July 2003. Witnesses were invited to give evidence, with their invitation specifying the areas on which they would be questioned. They were also asked to submit a written statement and, if necessary, documents, beforehand. None of the witness statements has ever been published, so in fact a qualified kind of transparency operated.
SAM – And what about stage 2?
MILES - At the end of stage one, Hutton decided which witnesses might be liable to criticism in his report. They were told about this and invited to appear in phase two of the inquiry so that they could answer those criticisms. The second phase ran across eight working days between 15 September and 25 September, the day on which Hutton made his closing statements.
SAM - In total, 110 hours of evidence was heard from 74 witnesses across 23 separate days, after which Hutton began writing his report. And Miles, in practical terms the inquiry was generally considered to have gone well, wasn’t it, until something happened.
MILES - On 27 January 2004, four months after its conclusion, there was a leak. The Sun newspaper was given a read-out of the essential conclusions of Hutton’s report the day before Hutton was able to announce his findings personally to the public.
The Sun’s story, billed as a world exclusive, appeared in its first edition on Wednesday 28 January. Its top lines were that Tony Blair had been “cleared of using [a] sneaky ploy to name Dr Kelly”; the BBC was “at fault”; and Andrew Gilligan’s report was “unfounded”.
SAM – Did the Sun get it right?
MILES – Yes. Hutton had let the government off the hook. To the amazement of most, it was Gilligan and the BBC who came in for the heaviest criticism from Hutton.
SAM – What is known about this leak, which is obviously very significant.
MILES - An inquiry into the leak took place but the source has never been identified. So who leaked the Hutton Report and why? It does not seem unreasonable to suggest that someone close to the government was responsible.
SAM – Why do you say that?
MILES – Well by the time Hutton was about to deliver his findings in January 2004, increasing numbers of questions were being asked about Dr Kelly’s supposed suicide by doctors and others who felt it didn’t stack up. In fact on the front page of The Evening Standard the afternoon before there was a story headlined “Was Dr Kelly Murdered?”. The Standard’s article focussed on a letter written by three medical professionals and published in that day’s Guardian which raised doubts about the manner of Dr Kelly’s death. These doctors – surgeon David Halpin, radiologist Stephen Frost and anaesthetist Searle Sennet - said it was “improbable” that Dr Kelly could have died by slashing his wrist and called for a full coroner’s inquest. If the leak to the The Sun was part of a plan to switch attention back to Hutton’s findings, it certainly worked.
SAM - As The Sun had warned, over 750 pages comprising 13 chapters and 18 appendices, Hutton’s report determined that Dr Kelly had taken his own life and that nobody could have anticipated this. His report said that “the principal cause of [Dr Kelly’s] death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body.” It added: “It is probable that the ingestion of an excess amount of coproxamol tablets coupled with apparently clinically silent coronary heart disease would have played a part in bringing about death more certainly and more rapidly than would have otherwise been the case. I am further satisfied that no other person was involved in the death of Dr Kelly and that Dr Kelly was not suffering from any significant mental illness at the time he took his own life.”
The report lambasted Gilligan, declaring that the allegations he had made against the government were baseless. Gilligan quit the BBC shortly afterwards. Hutton also drove a stake into the BBC’s management and editorial processes, labelling them “defective”. This resulted in the immediate resignations of its chairman, Gavyn Davies, and director-general, Greg Dyke.
At the same time, the government was cleared of any “underhand strategy” to name Dr Kelly as Gilligan’s source. In Hutton’s view the September dossier had not been “sexed up”, as Gilligan had claimed, but reflected the available intelligence. The Ministry of Defence was lightly admonished for not telling Dr Kelly it would give his name to any journalist who guessed it. Having cleared the government, Hutton said that any failure of intelligence assessment was outside the remit of his inquiry, essentially allowing the intelligence services to escape censure.
Following this lengthy build-up, Hutton’s findings were greeted with widespread derision by the Press. Many concluded that his inquiry had been an Establishment “whitewash”.
Hutton’s inquiry, however, which cost at least £2.5 million and was conducted and written over five months, had reached a very definite conclusion. For better or for worse, the controversy surrounding the death of Dr Kelly was at an end as far as the government was concerned.
Or was it, Miles?
MILES – I would say it was not at an end. Because what nobody knew at this point was that when he had finished writing his report, Hutton made a secret request to the State. He asked that all records provided to his inquiry which were not produced in evidence be closed to the public for 30 years. Added to this, he sought permission for all photographs of Dr Kelly’s body and all medical reports relating to his death - including Dr Kelly’s post-mortem report – to be sealed for 70 years.
All of this came to light six years later, by chance. So the overwhelming question is: what was it about Dr Kelly’s death that Hutton should have seen fit to hide this material away without the public knowing?
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SAM - In the next episode we leave the official narrative aside to explore some facts that have come to light which cast major doubt on our understanding of what really happened to Dr Kelly.