Reply #16: More on the Judith Milller/David Kelly saga: [View All]

You may recall the story of David Kelly, the British scientist and expert in WMD, who committed suicide in July 2003 while being investigated as the possible source for a BBC story that suggested (of all things) that the Blair government had doctored the intelligence about Saddam's WMD programs.

Judith Miller filed a story about Kelly on July 21, 2003:
Scientist Was the 'Bane of Proliferators'. The article painted a sympathetic portrait of Kelly and hinted that he believed Saddam did indeed maintain a WMD program despite the fact that no evidence of it had yet been found. Nothing in the article suggested that Miller had had contact with Kelly, nor that she had ever known him. Her story concluded with this passage:



Dr. Kelly's wife, Jan, said he had been under enormous pressure, but in e-mails sent hours before his death, he gave no hint of that, telling an associate, for instance, that he looked forward to returning to Iraq.


Thanks to news articles written by others we know more about Kelly's e-mails than Judith Miller revealed to readers of The New York Times... and more importantly, we know that Kelly wrote at least one e-mail that Miller failed to write about.

Jamie Macaskill, for example, filed a story in The London Sunday Mail on July 20, 2003 entitled: Dark Actors Playing Games:



SUICIDE scientist Dr David Kelly warned a friend that "dark actors" were working against him just hours before his death.
Dr Kelly revealed his fears shortly before killing himself after being dragged into the row over the Government's justification for war in Iraq.
In an email to American author Judy Miller, sent just before he left his home for the last time, he referred to "many dark actors playing games".
But, according to Miller, Dr Kelly gave no indication he was depressed or planning to take his own life.
He told her he would wait "until the end of the week" before deciding his next move following his traumatic appearance before a House of Commons select committee...

-snip
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/3/17138/30618