Friday 4 February 2011

The Death of David Kelly - The vanishing "safe house"

One of the interesting contemporary pieces of evidence that both Thames Valley Police and the Hutton Inquiry seem to have ignored is the statement attributed to Janice Kelly via Tom Mangold on 18th July 2003 indicating that David Kelly had been held (with his consent or, more plausibly, against his will) in a "safe house" at some point in the period preceding 17th July 2003.

The Guardian, Body matches Kelly's description, in a "2.45pm update" quotes Mr Mangold as stating that Janice Kelly told him the following in a telephone call on the morning of 18th July 2003:

Mr Mangold told ITV News: "She [Dr Kelly's wife] told me he had been under considerable stress, that he was very very angry about what had happened at the committee, that he wasn't well, that he had been to a safe house, he hadn't liked that, he wanted to come home.


Interestingly, neither Janice Kelly nor Tom Mangold mention the "safe house" nor the distress it caused David Kelly in their oral evidence to the Hutton Inquiry.

The following interpretations occur to me to explain this discrepancy:


  1. The Guardian misquotes Tom Mangold and his evidence (and that of Janice Kelly) to Hutton was honest and complete.

  2. Tom Mangold invented Janice Kelly's supposed statement about the "safe house" for reasons of attention seeking or otherwise, and his evidence (and that of Janice Kelly) to Hutton was honest and complete.

  3. Tom Mangold accurately reported what Janice Kelly told him on the morning of 18th July 2003. If that is the case then both the evidence of Janice Kelly and Tom Mangold to the Hutton Inquiry fail with respect to accuracy and completeness, since neither mention the "safe house" in their oral testimony.



Option 1., above, doesn't appear to hold water since the Independent of 19th July 2003, The death of a civil servant, a casualty of war, quotes Tom Mangold using almost identical wording:

Mr Mangold said Dr Kelly's wife had told her that her husband was infuriated and made deeply unhappy by the way events unfolded. "She told me that he was very, very angry about what had happened at the committee," Mr Mangold said, "that he wasn't well, that he had been to a safe house, he hadn't liked that, he wanted to come home."


With respect to the evidence that Janice Kelly gave to Hutton the following questions arise in my mind:


  • Had she forgotten David Kelly's stay in the "safe house"?

  • Had she decided, following "coaching" or otherwise, to mislead the Hutton Inquiry by withholding what she knew about David Kelly's supposed stay in the "safe house"?


I find it astonishing that both Thames Valley Police and the Hutton Inquiry failed through incompetence, pre-meditated or otherwise, adequately to explore the evidence suggesting that David Kelly had been held in a "safe house" at some point in the days before his death.

Whether David Kelly was murdered or committed suicide I believe it is important to establish the truth, or otherwise, of the "safe house" story including the identity of those organisations and individuals who were party to what appears, ipso facto, to have been the kidnapping of David Kelly.

4 comments:

  1. It beggars belief that Dr David Kelly did not have any email access in 2003 during the time he reportedly cut and run and stayed variously in Somerset , Cornwall or with his daughter in Oxford, and, if we are to believe it, only caught up on light social gossip on the morning of 17th July.

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  2. Andrew

    I just cannot believe the story that Dr Kelly spent those nights at his daughter's in Oxford when it is reported at FAC/1/0013 that Dr Kelly can't answer questions for the FAC because he has no access to his diaries in nearby Southmoor. (surely the alleged journalists have all packed up and gone, and I doubt they ever came anyway apart from that fishy journalist caught trespassing in the grounds by Rachel)

    My feeling is that Dr Kelly was not a free man at this stage and perhaps earlier too.

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  3. The identical wording of Tom Mangold is also used in the Daily Telegraph of 19 July 2003 The Pressure" By Michael Smith, Toby Helm, Andrew Sparrow and Ben Brogan

    Did Mangold send a press release round Fleet Street?

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  4. Andrew, it is worth repeating some of the words in THE PRESSURE by Mick Smith et al above:

    It was not long before both the foreign affairs committee and the intelligence and security committee said they wanted to talk to a by now very unhappy Dr Kelly who had been taken to an MoD "safe house".

    The MoD insisted that he was being protected from the press and would not be going home "for quite a while". He resurfaced to face the foreign affairs committee on Tuesday, looking tired and thoroughly demoralised.

    ..... and to make sure that he did not say anything else inconvenient to the press, he was accompanied by two quite obvious minders, who sat behind him throughout the proceedings.

    They were almost certainly Ministry of Defence policemen. After the hearing was over, they bundled Mr Kelly off as quickly as they could.

    The Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay demanded ferociously that Dr Kelly provide a list of all the journalists he had spoken to in the last six months.

    It was Mr Mackinlay's list, due to be delivered to the committee yesterday, which Dr Kelly had spent the past week compiling, the MoD said. "His line manager, the Head of the Proliferation and Arms Control Unit was talking to Dr Kelly putting the list together," a spokesman said. No doubt there were more questions to be asked. What had he said to that journalist? Who had authorised this conversation?


    [Er, he was compiling it for nearly a week before Mackinlay had asked him to???]


    By now the pressure of living in the MoD "safe house" was getting to him. He was a family man, happiest at his home in the Oxfordshire village of Southmoor where his wife Janice was a local historian.

    Tom Mangold, a television journalist and close friend, said Mrs Kelly had told him her husband was deeply unhappy and furious at how events had unfurled.

    "She told me he had been under considerable stress, that he was very, very angry about what had happened at the committee, that he wasn't well, that he had been to a safe house, he hadn't liked that, he wanted to come home."


    Shades of Gareth Williams. Did Dr Kelly die in the safe house and the story about visits to Cornwall, family meals, sending emails, meeting Mrs Absalom a load of balderdash???

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