The reasons for that preference are opaque to me.
Mr. A. who seems to have been associated with the Ministry of Defence was granted anonymity. See the entry for the afternoon of Wednesday 3rd September 2003 here: Hearing Transcripts.
The following quote from the Daily Mail article, David Kelly's closest female confidante on why he COULDN'T have killed himself, is relevant:
But in fact she stipulated: ‘If specific information [in the statement] is deemed relevant to the coroner’s inquiry into the death of David Kelly, I am willing for Thames Valley to reveal the information in a non-attributable way.’
If the primary barrier to Mai Pederson giving evidence was her desire for anonymity why not make her Ms. B?
Could it be that one reason for not proceeding in that manner was that Mai Pederson's evidence would tend to cast doubt on the comforting (for some) suicide theory?
[Thanks to someone for pointing this aspect out to me.]
It seems retrospectively from the evidence of Mr A (I wasn't following the case at the time) that he could only have been one of about three people, and one of those was Dr Kelly and the other had given evidence which was listed among interviews to the TVP which were not admitted to the Inquiry. He was later identified by Norman Baker though I guess it was no secret (even though there is an extraordinary dearth of links on the internet re Mr A's identity.
ReplyDeleteFelix,
ReplyDeleteI haven't read Norman Baker's book (partly a conscious decision on my part to keep my mind "independent" and "fresh") so I don't know who he identified.
I understand that "Mr. A." may have been someone called Rod Godfrey. I haven't had sufficient interest in Mr. A's identity to check that out.
Is that the same name as Norman Baker gives?
It's possible that Mai Pederson, given that she appears to have wanted (at the time) to preserve her anonymity would have had fears that she, like the putative "Rod Godfrey", would in time have been publicly identified.
Felix,
ReplyDeleteSorry I mentioned "Rod Godfrey" before clicking on your link.
It seems that Mr. A was/is Rod Godfrey. Either that or we're all making a similar mistake.
I have never seen it denied, and I am not sure of the relevance of it being known or not. Mr A did allege that Dr Kelly made a diversion to Wiltshire (NOT!)en route between Weston-super-Mare to Mevagissey in Cornwall to visit him on a curious pretext.
ReplyDeleteFelix,
ReplyDeleteI think the conflicting evidence isn't just whether David Kelly made a diversion to see Mr A or not.
It's on my To Do list, but it seems to me (provisionally at least) that Janice Kelly says David Kelly was on his way with her to Cornwall at the same time that Mr A says he was with him in Wiltshire.
I need to look at it all a little more carefully before constructing a post.
And I don't see it as high priority at the moment since it relates to 10th July 2003, if I remember correctly.
I can't currently find a worthwile hypothesis as to why either Janice Kelly or Mr. A would lie in evidence to Hutton about something that took place on 10th July.
Maybe there is a simple mistake by Janice Kelly or by Mr A. But, one thing I've learned about the David Kelly saga is that discrepancies often become illuminating if you can succeed in viewing them from the right angle.