The Matt Simmons Theory

I'm not a conspiracy monger, but the death of Matthew Simmons, the most critical voice of BP's oil spill disaster, is a little too convenient. Sure, he was old, and old-age is the leading cause of death, but why now? Why in the middle of the BP oil crisis, of which Simmons has played an influential role. Could it be just a coincidence?

Simmons did not back off BP's handling of the crisis for one minute. He said BP killed the gulf, and that the only remedy to stop the spill would be to inject a small nuclear bomb in the well. Washington's Blog has an incredible post from a month ago that covers Simmons's criticisms of BP.

Maybe his death was an accident, or explained by natural causes. But we can never be too sure about the death of any man who creates too many enemies. Western governments and corporations are capable of murder on a large scale, and on a small scale. According to Michael Shrimpton, a UK intelligence insider, British scientist and weapons expert David Kelly was murdered. Kellly had informed the BBC's Andrew Gilligan that Saddam's storehouse of WMDs, which was the principal cause for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, was greatly exaggerated.

On January 24, 2010, Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote:

"Kelly's death was extremely convenient for Blair, Cheney and a myriad of other ultra ruthless people. It paved the way for war. We should not forget how very crucial the WMD issue was in convincing enough reluctant New Labour MPs to go along. Without the UK there would have been no coalition - most of the other Europeans would have quickly dropped out too. It is by no means clear that, despite Cheney's bluster, the Americans would have invaded Iraq alone.

So Kelly was the first man killed in the Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands of people died in Iraq after Kelly. Arms manufacturers, mercenary companies and the security industry made tens of billions in profit. That's a powerful motive to remove an obstacle. The Western oil companies are getting back into Iraq.

We will never know if Kelly would have gone on to repeat his - perfectly correct - doubts about Iraqi WMD, or if he would have shut up, as ordered by Tony Blair through the MOD. I do know, as many doctors have attested, it is extremely unlikely to bleed to death by cutting a wrist. I do know that the paramedics who attended said there was very little blood at the scene. I do know that the painkillers he took were a tiny proportion of a fatal dose and were not an anticoagulant. I do know that a chemical weapons expert like Dr Kelly would know better ways to kill himself."

In October 2007, Norman Baker, a British Member of Parliament who investigated Kelly's death for a year, wrote in the Daily Mail:

"Increasingly concerned, I decided to give up my post on the Liberal Democrat front bench to look into Dr Kelly's death.

My investigations have since convinced me that it is nigh- on clinically impossible for Dr Kelly to have died by his own hand and that both his personality and the other circumstantial evidence strongly militate against suicide.

Given that his death was clearly not an accident, that leaves only one alternative - that he must have been murdered.

This is not a conclusion I have come to lightly. I simply set out to examine the facts, to test the evidence, and to follow the trail wherever it took me.

The account I give in this series may not be correct in all respects, but I suggest that it is rather more credible than the verdict reached by Lord Hutton.

I certainly believe there are enough doubts, enough questions, enough of a smell of stinking fish to justify re-opening this episode officially."

Baker wrote a book about his findings called, "The Strange Death of David Kelly."

In January, 2010, Lord Hutton ordered the evidence surrounding Kelly's death to be kept hidden for 70 years. The Daily Mail:

"Vital evidence which could solve the mystery of the death of Government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly will be kept under wraps for up to 70 years.

In a draconian – and highly unusual – order, Lord Hutton, the peer who chaired the controversial inquiry into the Dr Kelly scandal, has secretly barred the release of all medical records, including the results of the post mortem, and unpublished evidence.

The move, which will stoke fresh speculation about the true circumstances of Dr Kelly’s death, comes just days before Tony Blair appears before the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War.

It is also bound to revive claims of an establishment cover-up and fresh questions about the verdict that Dr Kelly killed himself."

For more about David Kelly's strange death, read "The Death of David Kelly and the "Sexed Up" WMD Report," by Paul Brandon, C Stephen Frost, David Halpin, and Christopher Burns-Cox.