'UK officials wanted to gag weapons expert'

[Nottingham]

'UK officials wanted to gag weapons expert'

August 20 2003 at 04:51PM



By Dominic Evans and Peter Griffiths

London - Government documents released on Wednesday show that top officials tried to stop scientist David Kelly airing his doubts about the controversial Iraq dossier on which British Prime Minister Tony Blair based the case for war.

The documents emerged in an inquiry into the suicide of weapons expert Kelly, sucked into the heart of a furious row between Blair's government and the BBC over whether intelligence was "sexed up" for political ends.

Kelly was outed as the source for a BBC journalist's report accusing Blair's inner circle of hyping evidence about Iraq's weapons capability to win over a sceptical public.

'Strongly recommend that Kelly is not drawn on his assessment of the dossier'
An official note, written on July 14, the day before Kelly was due to testify to a parliamentary committee, made clear that Kelly would be told to keep his views to himself.

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