Death of a spy: David Kelly story

Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports. This report was authored by Gordon Thomas, a regular G2 contributor who knew David Kelly personally.

David Kelly

LONDON – David Kelly was devoted to his wife, Janice, but could not resist looking at a well-turned calf. His office had some of the prettiest secretaries in government service, according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

He had his salt-and-pepper beard trimmed wherever he was. The exception was Iraq: he feared a barber there could have been bribed to slit his throat. He had come used to fear.

He had a trencherman's appetite for fine dining yet at home liked nothing better than a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.

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Within the closed world of MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the scientists at Porton Down, he was Britain's expert on fighting Osama bin Laden's threat to unleash biological warfare on the world.

He died six years ago this weekend leaving more mystery than the airport thrillers he bought and never finished.

In the 50 years I have written and broadcast on intelligence, I have met and interviewed many of its officers. But there was no one like David Kelly. He regularly emerged from his dark world of secrets to share some with me. He did so, he said, as long as I played by his rule.

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"Write nothing until I tell you," he said, in his crisp tone of England's middle-class.

From the day we had first met in Baghdad after the first Gulf War. I found David Kelly knew how to draw facts out of conjecture. To do so he used snatches of overheard conversations and satellite images relayed halfway from the moon and then added his own careful judgment. He made the incomprehensible understandable.

It was during one of our meetings when he had returned from his 37th trip to Iraq, David Kelly revealed he had decided Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction – the very reason Britain had gone to war against the dictator.

"Raw intelligence is being used to politicize support for Blair's claim that Saddam could launch weapons of mass destruction. Only scraps of intelligence that I have provided is being used to fit the government's case," he told me.

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On a spring day in 2003 David Kelly indicated he planned to write his book. He asked if I would help him, I said I would. But I also cautioned him that he was bound by the Official Secrets Act and could never be allowed to publish it in this country.

His response had been typical. "Remember Peter Wright."

Wright had been the MI6 officer who wrote "Spycatcher" after fleeing to Australia. His revelations rocked the intelligence community.

David Kelly told me he planned to go to America and publish there. He knew he would find a good job in the biological research field. His reputation was renowned among microbiologists. It also meant that Janice would "get the finest treatment for her serious medical condition."

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