STRANGE AND UNEXPLAINED DEATHS AT THE HANDS OF THE SECRET GOVERNMENT

It is therefore terrible to contemplate a scenario where death comes not by natural causes, but at the hands of an assassin, sent with the sole purpose of murder. Not just any kind of murder. Not a murder of passion, or the accidental death from an anonymous robbery for the contents of a wallet or purse; but a secret murder. Homicide for the reason of silence, political or social justifications - murder to shut a mouth forever.

Excerpt:

David Kelly was a British Ministry of Defence (MoD) weapons expert and scientific adviser to the proliferation and arms control secretariat for more than three years. He was an expert in arms control, working as a weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, following the first Gulf War.

Dr. Kelly became senior adviser on biological warfare for the UN in Iraq in 1994, holding the post until 1999. He was sufficiently well respected to have been nominated for a Nobel peace prize by the man who led the Iraq weapons inspections for much of the 1990s, Rolf Ekeus.

During a lecture Dr. Kelly once said: "When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, little did I realize that Saddam Hussein would dictate the next 10 years of my life." He also led all the visits and inspections of Russian biological warfare facilities from 1991 to 1994 under the 1992 Trilateral Agreement between the U.S., UK and Russia. His friends knew him as a quiet man who did his job with the highest professional standards.

Part of his job was to brief journalists on defense issues. And he also had contact with MI6 director Sir Richard Dearlove and others within the Secret Intelligence Service. Perhaps it was his contacts with British journalists that lead to his problems and eventual suspicious death.

In 2003, the BBC reported that Downing Street had "sexed up" a September dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction against the wishes of the intelligence service. BBC defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan later accused the government's director of communications, Alastair Campbell, in a newspaper article of hyping intelligence to justify the war, in particular a line that Iraq had the capability of launching a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes of an order being given. Gilligan had quoted an unnamed senior British intelligence official as the source of the information. The source said the 45-minute claim was a "classic example" of how uncorroborated evidence was given undue prominence, especially as it allegedly came from only one source.

The Blair government fiercely denied the allegation in an increasingly bitter row between itself and the BBC. The government demanded to know the name of the source, accusing the BBC of poor journalistic practice. It said allegations that intelligence had been invented to back its case for war were "absurd."