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ticks off several possible assassins, and focuses most of all on Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress--who might have been ticked off at Kelly making them liars on Saddam's WMDs. I don't know. I think that is very roundabout. And I think he's letting Blair and M16 off too easily (and he never mentions the Bush Junta itself). After Kelly started whistleblowing anonymously to the BBC, Kelly's bosses hunted him down through government, interrogated him at a "safe house" and threatened him with the Official Secrets Act, then, after forcing him to partially recant before a committee of parliament, they outed him to the press and sent him home that same afternoon without protection and apparently without surveillance. This last sticks in my craw the way the NORAD stand-down on 9/11 does. It's just not right; standard operating procedure was grossly violated. How could they NOT have had David Kelly under surveillance after all this fracas about national security secrets? It makes no sense. And if he WAS under surveillance, where was that team of watchers as he bled to death all night under a tree near his home?
Sometimes the thread in the tapestry, that will unravel it, is just a tiny bit of string that didn't get woven right--that snags a little. Pull it, and....?
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But here's another bit of thread--one that is glowing incandescent red:
July 6, 2003: Joseph Wilson publishes his article exposing the phony Niger/Iraq nuke allegation.
July 7, 2003 (the next day): Blair is informaed that David Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things" (to the parliamentary committee)--"COULD say," not "HAD said. (Hutton Report)
July 14, 2003: Valerie Plame outed (by Novak)
July 18, 2003: Kelly found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances; his office and computers are searched.
July 22, 2003: Novak ADDITIONALLY outs the entire Brewster-Jennings WMD counter-proliferation network, putting all of Plame's covert agents and contacts at great risk of getting killed, and disabling all their projects.
What is the thread that ties these astonishingly coincidental events together? Panic. Panic by the Blairites. Panic by the Bushites. Panic at what? At a few ripples in the corporate newsstream--a news/disinformation stream that they entirely dominated in the summer of 2003?
Naw. Everybody knew they had at least exaggerated, and probably lied, about the threat. That was not a secret. And why didn't they just do their normal routine of "swift-boating" the opposition---in this case, a few lonely voices crying in the wilderness? Or plantng cocaine in their pockets? Or burning their bank accounts? What were they so afraid of, that caused the Bushites to risk the wrath of the CIA--and put so many top Bushites at risk of treason charges--and caused the Blairites to hunt Kelly down and treat him like an "enemy combatant"? There is something more here. And, in looking at these two events side by side, perhaps we can see it more clearly. One theory--that I favor--is that the Niger-Iraq nuke forgeries were part #1 of a dirty, rotten 2-part scheme to PLANT nukes in Iraq--to be "found" by the U.S. troops that were "hunting" for them, after the invasion--but part #2 of the plan (the actual planting of the nukes) got foiled. And what they feared from both Plame and Kelly was EXPOSURE of that rotten scheme. It may also be that they couldn't pin down who had actually foiled it, and thus outed the entire counter-proliferation network--to punish the foiler(s), get people killed and send an ice-chill through the others.
Chalabi may be a good suspect, but not for the vague reason that Kelly questioned his WMD lies. He had little to fear from that. But what if he was an operative in an elaborate scheme to plant the weapons--a scheme that got foiled and made him look a fool? That would be motive to be used as an operative again, this time to stuff Kelly's mouth. But, a) would he do that without authorization from Rumsfeld? (Is this why Rumsfeld is gone, with no change of policy in Iraq?), and b) would M16 let that kind of operative do a "hit" in the UK, against an insider white guy, if they hadn't approved it? (--how could they not have been surveilling Kelly, and how can they have not noticed operatives stalking him--especially in the super-paranoid, super-vigilant post-9/11 atmosphere?).
Anyway, I think the thing to follow on Kelly is WHY? What could he have known that could have gotten him killed? And, putting the two cases together--Plame and Kelly--there is a lot of commonality on possible motives. Was it merely a coincidence that Kelly and Wilson were whistleblowing on the same subject, at the same time, and Kelly got whacked and Wilson's wife's CIA network got outed within four days of each other? Yes, it COULD be. But it's much more likely that they are connected. And I haven't even gotten into some direct connections (for instance, Judith Miller's friendship with David Kelly, to whom he wrote his last email, on the day he died, expressing concern about the "many dark actors playing games." What was THAT about?)
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