1. A meeting between Home Office officials and the Oxfordshire Coroner
In a post from 2006 on Rowena Thursby's blog, I believe David Kelly did not commit suicide - and I will prove it, we find Norman Baker MP making the following comment:
A parliamentary question I asked has now revealed that this meeting followed an unusual, even irregular, meeting between Home Office officials and the coroner on August 11. Doubtless the officials were able to help guide the coroner on the way forward.
The original article by Norman Baker MP appeared in the Mail on Sunday, I understand.
According to the BBC's Conspiracy Files, the meeting was with officials from the Department of Constitutional Affairs.
Is it possible that Nicholas Gardiner met with officials from both departments?
2. A meeting between Lord Hutton and Janice Kelly
According to the BBC's Conspiracy Files we read for 26th July 2003,
Lord Hutton has a private meeting with Janice Kelly and immediate family members which lasts an hour. He is accompanied by James Dingemans QC, senior counsel to the Inquiry.
In 2003 we certainly seem to have been living in interesting times!
Lord Hutton states this meeting with Mrs Kelly took place in his opening statement on Aug 1 2003 This only alludes to meeting Mrs Kelly, but this report from Lord Hutton's native Northern Ireland hinted at also meeting "other close family members to explain to them how the inquiry would function."
ReplyDeletePerusal of that opening statement is instructive because it also reads like the verdict in places, yet the Inquiry has not heard any evidence!
On the same page, I was intrigued to find one of his aims was to discover why electrode pads (paddles in the witness statements) were on Dr Kelly's chest. Could this simply have been answered by a quick phone call? (Dave Bartlett said they always leave them on although Vanessa Hunt said she asked the police " I said would they like us to leave the electrodes in situ, they requested that we did " Or am I missing something? What was the significance of highlighting this fact? There is something odd around these pads. Perhaps you can do a post on them sometime,Andrew.
Thanks Felix.
ReplyDeleteIn the opening statement, Hutton states the meeting was on 26th July 2003.
There is a Norman Baker quote supposedly from Hutton from the Inner Temple Yearbook 2004:
Lord Hutton was to confess that he had not bothered looking into the death very deeply.
Writing in the Inner Temple Yearbook 2004, he unashamedly observed: ‘I thought that there would be little serious dispute as to the background facts [about Dr Kelly’s death].
'I thought unnecessary time could be taken up by cross-examination on matters which were not directly relevant.’
So key questions went unasked, conflicting and contradictory evidence abounded, and no attempt was made to tie up the countless loose ends.
Readers of this blog will recognise the truth in Norman Baker's immediately preceding paragraph.
So Hutton states, "I thought that there would be little serious dispute as to the background facts [about Dr Kelly’s death]".
Either Hutton is an idiot or a liar.
I don't believe he's an idiot.