"And a dog was put through our house" (1)

For this post I shall repeat the short piece of testimony from Mrs Kelly that I quoted in my first post on the communication masts:

Q. Did you speak to the police at all during that night?
A. Yes, all night, all night. Then a vehicle arrived with a large communication mast on it and parked in the road and then during the early hours another mast, 45-foot mast was put up in our garden.
Q. For police communications?

A. Yes, indeed. And a dog was put through our house. At 20 to 5 the following morning I was sitting on the lawn in my dressing gown while the dog went through the house.
Q. Trying to --

A. Trying to establish that he was not there. 

As touched on in my last post, assuming a reasonably orderly recollection of events by Mrs Kelly, and noting use of the phrase 'during the early hours' then it is quite likely that the communication masts had arrived before the start of the search with the dog.

Two days after Mrs Kelly ACC Page makes his first visit to the Inquiry.  Not only was he a poor witness giving a number of vague answers he, so far as is known, didn't visit the Kelly home so the report on events at the house that night provided by him was second hand.  Clearly the witness statement from Sergeant Morris should have been sent to the Inquiry and Morris called to give evidence.

Page informed the Inquiry that he received a phone call at 3.09 am regarding the missing person report on Dr Kelly.  At some time prior to his assessing the situation we learn from Mr Page that Sergeant Morris with officers from the night shift at Abingdon had made 'a reasonably thorough search of Dr Kelly's house and the surrounding grounds' . 

It seems that 'reasonably thorough' wasn't thorough enough because there is this response by ACC Page to questioning from Mr Dingemans:


Q. And what was the outcome of your review?
A. I asked for a further, more thorough search of the house and the outbuildings and the surrounding grounds to be made.
Q. We have heard from Mrs Kelly in fact I think she said 4.30, it may have been 5.30 in the morning she has to go out of the house while a police dog goes through. That is as a result of your initiative, is it?
A. Yes.

As an aside it might be asked why once again Dingemans is sloppy with the times ... the same thing had happened when evidence was given by Mrs Kelly about the time one of her daughters had called the police.  Picking up on a point made by Felix in response to an earlier post where he expressed surprise about Mrs Kelly being precise about the time the police were called we have a repeat situation here with the time of '20 to 5'.  Yet her testimony on other timings is often very vague.


Norman Baker recalls a conversation with a chief constable who described the second search with a dog as 'bizarre'.  The fact that Mrs Kelly had to vacate her home while the search was made appears extraordinary in view of the fact that she obviously had a thorough appreciation of the geography of the building.  In a letter to Mr Baker TVP, explaining why Mrs Kelly had to wait outside, said that they wanted 'to remove possible distractions from those engaged in the search'.  TVP also stated that 'a dog is used as an aid to search operations as they can detect things beyond human capability', however that should be interpreted in this context.

Although not stated by Mrs Kelly logic would suggest that the other members of the family joined her outside for the duration of the more thorough search.

Possible more sinister reasons for the Kelly family having to wait outside will be discussed in my next post.

 

The communication masts (2)

At least two investigators to my knowledge had independently made Freedom of Information requests to Thames Valley Police seeking more information about the communication masts.  The minute amount of information voiced at the Hutton Inquiry came from Mrs Kelly ... and we now know that it was wrong in detail.  Perhaps then at long last TVP would answer some FoI act questions on the masts.

It turned out to be a forlorn hope because I have found out that each of the two investigators asking questions were rebuffed - the police declaring that their questions were "vexatious" and not answering them!  There the matter stayed until the autumn of 2011 when I was surprised to see an answer on TVP's Freedom of Information log that at least gave some explanation about the use of the communication masts.

On the log was the response to a long multifaceted request - I have no idea about who the questioner was.  For the sake of simplicity then I shall only quote the first four questions and the responses to them:

Investigation into the death of Dr David Kelly

29 November 2011, 2:04 pm

Introduction

This request, reference RFI2011000746, was received on Tuesday 20 September 2011, 2:04pm.

Question

1. Who asked for the appearance of the masts at the Kelly household and when? 2. Which members of your force, or others, used such masts and for what purpose? 3. Who persuaded Mrs Kelly to give evidence to Hutton that the said masts were for Police communications? 4. Why did no member of your force who appeared before Hutton say a single word about the said masts?

Response

1& 2) The area of Longworth offered no UHF coverage so officers could only communicate via VHF which was only fitted to vehicles. This was reported to our Silver Command Suite and arrangements were made to call out the on call HQ Comms staff to deploy a mast to relay the signals. They attended and deployed a 35 foot vehicle mounted “pump up” telescopic mast on the road near the Kelly house. This did not prove to be powerful enough so an 85 foot mast was then installed in the orchard of the Kelly property and the shorter one removed.

3) This question presupposes that Mrs Kelly was “persuaded”. There is no evidence to suggest this.

4) This question does not fulfil the criteria of Section 8 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as you are seeking an opinion or judgement and not access to recorded information.

No mention of Mrs Kelly's 45 foot mast, nor Mr Baker's 110 feet one.  There is evidence of an old trick here: superficially the fairly long combined response to questions 1 and 2 gives the impression of a very adequate reply.  Analyse it though and it will be seen that the question of "when were the masts requested" has been neatly avoided.  The official narrative suggests that the police activity during the night was focussed on the Kelly's home and immediate surroundings and that a more thorough search was made of the house shortly before 5 o'clock.  Clearly with officers within hailing distances of each other a tall mast would hardly be necessary at that time!

The impression given by Mrs Kelly's testimony is that the masts appeared relatively early in the proceedings.  Now we know from her evidence about the helicopter just how far out she could be on her timings.  It wasn't right to expect her to be correct on such matters though, it was up to Hutton to get precise information from police witnesses.

Thames Valley Police have yet to tell us when a decision was made to deploy a tall communication mast.  Until they come clean on this the suspicion remains that they have something to hide.

The communication masts (1)

My last six posts have dealt with the search helicopter and one issue I have highlighted is just how inaccurate the evidence was from Mrs Kelly on this matter.  Rather than criticise her for the inaccuracies the point that needs to be made is that it was ludicrous for her testimony to be used as the primary source of a technical matter that was really the province of the police.  The question that has to be asked is why did Hutton rely on the wrong witness for this information ... one possible reason I suggest is that counsel wouldn't consider questioning her further on such things whereas a technically orientated witness might find themselves overstepping the mark with the answers they gave.

After her testimony about the helicopter Mrs Kelly moved on to the communication masts.  Once again, following Freedom of Information requests, her evidence was demonstrated to be incorrect as to the detail.  These are the questions from Mr Dingemans and her replies:

Q. Did you speak to the police at all during that night?
A. Yes, all night, all night. Then a vehicle arrived with a large communication mast on it and parked in the road and then during the early hours another mast, 45-foot mast was put up in our garden.
Q. For police communications?

A. Yes, indeed. And a dog was put through our house. At 20 to 5 the following morning I was sitting on the lawn in my dressing gown while the dog went through the house.
Q. Trying to --

A. Trying to establish that he was not there. 

It is plainly ludicrous for the Inquiry to have relied on the evidence of a non expert on communication masts when a police officer could have been asked  about it.  In his book Norman Baker relates information he was given by Thames Valley Police in a letter dated 27 February 2007: the mast was even higher at 110 feet!  He quotes them as saying it was 'to assist radio communications in an, at that time, recognised black spot'.  Mr Baker tells us that he had also spoken to a chief constable (evidently not Peter Neyroud of Thames Valley Police) who told him that he would expect a mast only 15 feet high to be used in an area of poor reception.

Whether Mrs Kelly had mentioned the masts in her police witness statements I don't know but apart from that possibility there is no indication that Hutton was provided with any detail about the masts.  Hutton might have been as much in the dark as the rest of us.  It is plainly wrong that Hutton didn't obtain the proper technical evidence about this.

Following his reply from TVP it's not surprising that Mr Baker, followed by many others, believed that this tall mast was there so that communication could be made with Mr Blair as he was flying from America to Japan.  I have to admit that I was one who subscribed to that theory, the more so because of my memory of the Portland spy furore decades earlier when it was revealed that the Krogers transmitted information to Moscow from Ruislip, Middlesex using a 74 foot aerial. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/13/newsid_4059000/4059209.stm

An indication of just how tall the communication mast appeared to be can be seen in this Getty image: http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/police-officer-walks-past-reporters-waiting-outside-the-news-photo/2186900

Later information from TVP invalidated the height figure given to Mr Baker and eventually they were more forthcoming about why the masts were used.  I will cover this in my next post.

The search helicopter - some useful information

Evidence at the Hutton Inquiry about the search helicopter was given by Mrs Kelly.  Subsequently DS Webb and ACC Page referred to the helicopter but revealed little other than at some unspecified time Sergeant Morris had called for its use.

MP Norman Baker wasn't very happy about the paucity of detail and in 2006 asked questions.  The ministerial responses were from Mr Ingram on 2 June and from Mr McNulty on 6 July and 13 September.  The respective Hansard entries regarding the three questions and answers can be read at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo060605/text/60605w0008.htm#06060519000016 and http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo060706/text/60706w0021.htm#06070727003551 and http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo060913/text/60913w0040.htm

When one reads these ministerial responses it can be seen just how far removed the facts given are from the comments made by Mrs Kelly.  According to McNulty at least the helicopter search started at 02.50 rather than at about 1 o'clock - the time that Mrs Kelly mentioned.  Also it was the Luton helicopter and not the Benson one.  There are two possibilities here it seems to me: either Mrs Kelly was hopelessly wrong or there was an earlier search that the authorities didn't want to reveal.

Number 73 in the "Schedule of responses to the issues raised" includes this information about the times of the helicopter search flights:

Two flights were made in the early hours of 18/7/03 as follows:
At 02.50 it deployed to search for Dr Kelly.
At 03.20 it arrived on scene
At 04.05 running low on fuel it went to base to refuel.

At 04.25 hrs it re-launched.
At 04.35 hrs it arrived back on scene
At 04.45 hrs it resumed back to base. (The pilot was running out of legal flying hours.)

From these figures it can be seen that the first search took 45 minutes  but that the second after refuelling was just 10 minutes because the pilot was at risk of going over his permitted flying hours.

At 5.15 on the morning of 18 July ACC Page chairs a meeting and Mr Dingemans asks him about it:

Q. What was the result of your meeting at 5.15?
A. Well the result of my meeting was that we began to establish a search pattern. As a holding measure,  I asked for officers who were reinforcement officers who were arriving about this stage -- we had between 30 and 40 officers available to us, and I asked them to start searching outward from Dr Kelly's house. I asked for the helicopter to be brought into play again.

There is no record of the helicopter being brought into play again.  As we know from the information above the pilot was running out of legal flying hours but wasn't there another pilot available?  Whatever Hutton fails to ask questions about this.

"No knowledge" of the inquest being reconvened

This is from Hansard on 30 January 2007:

David Kelly

24. Norman Baker (Lewes) (LD): If she will make a statement on the actions of the Oxfordshire coroner in August 2003 in respect of the death of David Kelly. [112044]
The Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs (Ms Harriet Harman): The Oxfordshire coroner briefly resumed the inquest into the death of Dr. David Kelly on 14 August 2003 to admit post mortem evidence. He then adjourned the inquest, in accordance with the provisions of section 17(a) of the Coroners Act 1988, having been informed by the Lord Chancellor that Dr. Kelly’s death was likely to be adequately investigated by the Hutton inquiry.
Norman Baker: I thank the Minister for her reply. She will know my view that the coroner acted in a most peculiar way and contrary to the 1988 Act in resuming the inquiry after Lord Hutton had been appointed. In a letter that I received from Lord Hutton last week, he tells me that he had “no knowledge” of the inquest being reconvened, and no knowledge of the meeting with her officials, which she was aware of, that took place at the Oxfordshire coroner’s request, in August 2003. Is this not an extraordinary situation, and does the Minister not agree that it would be helpful if the Oxfordshire coroner agreed to a meeting with the Minister and me, at which we could discuss these matters in more detail? It is clear that there are a great many loose ends.
Ms Harman: I do not agree that the coroner acted in a most peculiar way. I have looked into this issue with great care and in great detail, and I do not think it
30 Jan 2007 : Column 85
necessarily odd that Lord Hutton had no knowledge of, or information about, the meeting that the coroner held with officials from the Department for Constitutional Affairs. I know that the hon. Gentleman remains suspicious and thinks that something underhand has gone on regarding the meeting between the Oxfordshire coroner and officials from the Lord Chancellor’s Department, but I do not
30 Jan 2007 : Column 86
think that that is the case. I have so far been unable to reassure the hon. Gentleman through very detailed letters and parliamentary answers, but perhaps he should meet the officials who were involved in that meeting, who I am sure can reassure him of its propriety. Obviously, I cannot offer a meeting with the Oxfordshire coroner, who is an independent judicial official.

So, in a recent letter to Norman Baker, Hutton avers that he had "no knowledge" of the inquest being reconvened!  Compare that with the list of documents sent by the coroner to the Inquiry, which was the subject of my last post.  On the face of it Hutton is being dishonest.

Unfortunately Mr Baker links the "no knowledge" of the inquest being reconvened with no knowledge of the meeting with her officials.  Ms Harman gives an unusually detailed response to the question of the meeting between the coroner and her officials thereby giving the impression that she has given Mr Baker a very full answer.  This is a prime example of the deviousness of politicians because she has disguised the fact that the question of Lord Hutton having "no knowledge" of the inquest being reconvened is totally ignored.

I do not believe that Hutton had "no knowledge" of the inquest being reconvened on 14 August.

Falconer could have selected a different judge

In my last post I stated some reasons why I felt Lord Hutton shouldn't have chaired the Inquiry.  Lord Falconer wasn't limited to a choice of just one judge, in fact he admitted to the Select Committee on Public Administration that the number of suitable judges was in the tens.  It's also clear that he homed in on Hutton without really considering possible alternative chairmen.  This is the relevant text from the committee's examination of Falconer regarding his degree of choice in this matter:

  Lord Falconer of Thoroton: I was very conscious of the fact that the person taking on this job would be stepping into the eye of a great storm that was then raging, that the person appointed to do the job would have to be somebody of real experience, of real steadiness, and somebody whom everybody, the public in particular, would have confidence in being able to do the job in a fair and objective way. So somebody not experienced, a recently appointed, quite junior judge would not have been appropriate for the job. Somebody who had been a judge for a long time who had had experience of the potential dangers of being a judge—I do not mean physical dangers but the dangers inherent in being a judge in somewhere like Northern Ireland—and somebody who had ended up in the House of Lords Judicial Committee was plainly somebody with that experience and that weight to do the job. Was I aware of the sensitivity of the job that Lord Hutton was being asked to do? Yes I was. Was I aware of the fact that it would require incredibly sensitive handling? Yes I was.  

               - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Q187 Chairman: Before we lose the business of selecting our judge, because I think it is quite interesting to get a sense of this, let's take the Hutton case, you decided you wanted a judge, you wanted a steady judge—your words—you wanted an experienced judge. There are not an infinite number to choose from because a lot them will be judging, will they not?

  Lord Falconer of Thoroton: They will all be judging except for the retired ones. If you are going for a current judge he has got the job of a judge.

  Q188 Chairman: They will be judging either actively or passively at that precise moment, will they not?

  Lord Falconer of Thoroton: Yes.

  Q189 Chairman: You have only got a certain number from which you can choose. You do not want the junior ones, you want the steady, experienced ones, so the number has already contracted. You have got some who are actively out there on cases. The number gets fewer as you start to think about it, does it not? Just tell me how that works?

  Lord Falconer of Thoroton: If you want a sitting judge, ie somebody who is sitting as a current judge, I think the figures are something like 102 High Court judges, 34 Appeal Court judges and 12 judicial Members of the House of Lords. That is 148 senior judiciary and that is not counting those in Northern Ireland and Scotland. There are enough people—

  Q190 Chairman: Sorry to interrupt but you told us that you had already decided that you wanted a member of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords so you had brought the number down anyway.

  Lord Falconer of Thoroton: I said that was one of the attractions of Lord Hutton but I would not regard, for example, a member of the Court of Appeal as excluded from consideration in relation to it. The number is quite small, as it were tens of people who could do this particular job, but the number is not so small that the choice is unduly restricted.

  Q191 Chairman: But you did not have to ask anyone else before you asked Lord Hutton?

  Lord Falconer of Thoroton: No, he was, as it were, my first choice and he, as he said and I say, accepted it without demur on the basis of it was his public duty to do it.

  Q192 Chairman: Did you go back to the Prime Minister and say, "I have got Lord Hutton; will he do?"

  Lord Falconer of Thoroton: No. Lord Hutton was chosen and I did not speak to the Prime Minister again after. We informed all the relevant bits of the government that Lord Hutton was to be the inquirer.

There has been discussion about whether there had been any input from Peter Mandelson on the 18th.  I'm not aware of any public acknowledgement of him being involved but of course as a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland he would have been aware of Lord Hutton being a senior judge there.  Norman Baker clearly has his suspicions as can be seen by reading pages 73-74 in his book.

A final thought ... there is an old adage about selecting a person to chair an inquiry that goes something like this: "You don't want to select a person who you might have to lean on, you need a person that you don't need to lean on".  Perhaps Hutton was viewed as such a person. 
 

The lack of fingerprints

No comment was made at the Hutton Inquiry about whether there were fingerprints on the knife found near the body.  Nor indeed about fingerprints on any of the other items at Harrowdown Hill.  But Norman Baker asked Thames Valley Police about prints on the knife at least.  After some delay he received a response on 27 February 2007 stating that 'no fingerprints were recovered from the knife'

More recently it has been discovered via freedom of Information requests that similarly there were no prints on the spectacles, mobile phone, watch or from two of the co-proxamol blister packs.  (Although there were three blister packs one was retained for DNA checking - as the packets had been in a pocket of the Barbour jacket it is not too surprising that DNA believed to be that of Dr Kelly was found on it).  The packet with one tablet left was one of the two tested for fingerprints.

I have now had a witness statement dated 4 August 2003 sent to me.  This is by Renee Gilliland, a "Fingerprint Development Technician" employed by Thames Valley Police.  It is clear that she looks for fingerprints or other marks, photographs them and then these photographs are examined by someone else.  There has been understandable confusion about the process, the fact that there is a record of no fingerprints has been interpreted by some as being no identifiable prints.  Ms Gilliland has to report on any marks, it could be say a third of a smudged thumbprint, or less ... it doesn't matter. 

On Tuesday 29 July she examined and chemically treated the following objects as described by her:

AMH/2        Evian water bottle
AMH/5        Sandvik knife
AMH/4        Watch from left hand side body near left hand
NCH/17/2   Co-proxamol blister packets
NCH/17/4   Glasses
NCH/8         Belt
NCH/4         Right shoe
NCH/5         Left shoe
NCH/17/1    Mobile phone

I don't know why the belt and shoes were tested.  The first three items had a reference AMH because they were the preserve of Scenes of Crime Officer Andrew Hodgson, the remainder have a Nicholas Hunt reference.

With all this testing she found just two marks: these were near the mouth of the bottle.  Black and white photographs of the marks were forwarded to the force fingerprint bureau.  She gives a date of 4 July 2003 which is clearly way out - perhaps she was thinking of America's Independence Day for some reason!  Maybe she meant to say 4 August but would it take almost a week to have the photographs developed and sent?

She has to report on ANY marks that are revealed.  I find it difficult to believe that all she got out of the testing were two marks on the neck of the water bottle.  We don't know if  any significant conclusions were drawn from the presence of the two marks. 

Norman Baker's book

The autumn of 2007 saw the publication of "The Strange Death of David Kelly" by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker.  Mr Baker had been on the LibDems frontbench as their spokesman for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.  When he ceased to hold that role in 2006 the time thus freed up allowed him to pursue an investigation into Dr Kelly's death whilst still remaining MP for Lewes in Sussex.  His book of about 400 pages was a primary factor in getting me involved in the mystery of this suspicious death.

So what of the book?  A good attempt on collating the then known facts and trying to make sense of them I would suggest.  Inevitably I suppose there is a measure of speculation in the book, for instance Mr Baker makes the wrong suggestion about the purpose of the large communication mast erected in the garden of the Kelly's home.  We now know that because of an answer to a Freedom of Information request, although Thames Valley Police have carefully avoided giving a full answer on that subject.  More about this another time.

As with the other LibDem MPs Norman Baker voted against the Iraq War in 2003.  He has tried though not to let the war distract him from giving an unbiased view on the death of Dr Kelly.

In his book Mr Baker comes to the conclusion that, most likely, it was dissident Iraquis who saw to the demise of Dr Kelly.  I don't think that was the case and it seems that few of those who think that Dr Kelly was murdered go along with this part of Norman's analysis.

An extremely useful feature of the book is a comprehensive index of some 17 pages which just indicates the breadth of the book.  There are over 40 reviews of the book on the Amazon website, most of them favourable.

Many more facts have come to light since the publication of the book.  However as a survey of the knowledge of the time it continues to perform an indispensable service.