The arms expert at the center of a dispute about whether the British government doctored intelligence reports on Iraq’s weapons programs was found dead Friday morning near his home, his wife said.
The weapons specialist, David Kelly, whose death is believed to be a suicide, left his home Thursday afternoon saying he was going for a walk and never returned, his wife, Janice Kelly, said in a telephone interview Friday.
Janice Kelly said the police had confirmed that the body was her husband’s and that the cause of death was suicide. She declined to say what led police to that conclusion, saying they had asked her not to discuss details of her husband’s death.
The body was discovered on a woodland path 5 miles from the Kelly residence in the village of Southmoor, which is northwest of London. The acting superintendent of the Thames Valley police, Dave Purnell, said that a formal identification would be made Saturday but that the description of the body matched that of David Kelly. Calling the case an “unexplained death,” Purnell declined to discuss possible causes.
More Top Picks Bocce Ball
Janice Kelly said her husband had worked Thursday morning on a report he said he owed the Foreign Office and had sent some e-mail messages to friends.
“After lunch, he went out for a walk to stretch his legs as he usually does,” she said.
She had no indication that her husband was contemplating suicide, she said. “But he had been under enormous stress, as we all had been,” she said.
David Kelly, 59, an Oxford-educated former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq with a specialty in biological weapons, faced tough questioning Tuesday from the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. He was asked whether he had been the source of an accusation broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corp. that the British government had doctored intelligence findings in its campaign to gain public support for going to war in Iraq.
David Kelly, whose title was senior adviser on weapons of mass destruction, might have become caught up in a political storm for which his experience as an expert on bioterrorism and his life as an intensely private family man had not prepared him.
The implication of the questions from the committee was that the scientist had been set up to rebut the reports by the BBC.
He was pressed repeatedly by committee members to say whether he was the “fall guy” in the bitter dispute that has pitted Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government against the BBC.
No signs in e-mail
In an e-mail message to a reporter sent hours before he left for his walk, David Kelly gave no indication that he was depressed. He said that he was waiting “until the end of the week” before judging how his appearance before the committee had gone, and referred to “many dark actors playing games.”
Based on earlier conversations with Kelly, the words seemed to refer to people within the Ministry of Defense and Britain’s intelligence agencies with whom he had often sparred over interpretations of intelligence reports.
Blair was told about the discovery of the body during a flight to Tokyo from Washington on Friday, and upon his arrival, his spokesman said, “The prime minister is obviously very distressed for the family.”
Tom Mangold, a journalist for the British news network ITV and a friend of David Kelly, said that he had spoken on Friday morning to Janice Kelly, who said her husband had been “very, very angry about what had happened at the committee” Tuesday.
“She didn’t use the word `depressed,”‘ Mangold said, “but she said he was very, very stressed and unhappy about what had happened, and this was really not the kind of world he wanted to live in.”
The case that put David Kelly in the public eye arose from a report broadcast on May 29 asserting that a high-ranking Downing Street official had “sexed up” a government intelligence dossier by inserting a claim that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons that could be deployed in 45 minutes.
BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, who covers military affairs, said the insertion had been made against the wishes of intelligence agencies. The weapons claim was the highlight of the report published by the government to persuade a dubious British public that military action was needed in Iraq.
Gilligan attributed his account to a senior weapons scientist he had met at a downtown London hotel. He did not identify the high-ranking Downing Street official on the air but subsequently wrote in a newspaper article that it was Alastair Campbell, Blair’s powerful communications and security director.
Apology demanded
Campbell reacted with fury and challenged Gilligan to produce his source. Campbell collected denials from the intelligence agencies involved, demanded an apology from the BBC and testified before the committee that later was to hear from David Kelly.
When David Kelly volunteered to Defense Ministry managers in early July that he met with Gilligan at a downtown hotel May 22, Campbell seized the opportunity to challenge the BBC to say whether he was Gilligan’s source for the report.
The BBC refused, citing its practice of not identifying people who provide information on condition of anonymity.
The foreign affairs committee then invited David Kelly to testify, and he appeared on Tuesday, saying that he did not believe that he was the “main source” for the report .
As a witness, David Kelly sat hunched over the desk in front of him, looking troubled and uncomfortable under the pointed questioning of members of the parliamentary panel. On several occasions lawmakers asked him to raise his voice so they could hear his responses.
More Top Picks Best Raised Garden Beds
“I reckon you’re the chaff thrown up to divert our probing,” Andrew Mackinlay, a Labor Party member, said to David Kelly as he squirmed in the witness chair. “Have you ever felt like the fall guy? I mean, you’ve been set up, haven’t you?”
David Kelly said quietly that he was in no position to answer the question.