Wednesday 25 May 2011

The Death of David Kelly - The Tom Mangold approach to storytelling

Tom Mangold was prominent in the media on 18th July 2003 regaling his audience with tales about David Kelly.

How reliable a witness is Tom Mangold?

The following quote from Birthdays: Aug 20 is worrying:

He [Tom Mangold] says: “If you want to know why I keep going, it’s because I love telling stories and I’ll be begging, phoning, cajoling, lying, cheating every day.”


Quite!

4 comments:

  1. I understand the motives of those, who became journalists, recruited by MI5&6 from Oxford and Cambridge. It makes sense for them to regurgitate the government’s misinformation and dispel the truth sayers as conspiracy theorists.

    But Tom Mangold doesn't fit into that category. He certainly had close links with Peter Horrocks and the security services at the time of David Kelly's death

    http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/bbc/bbc_5_0199to0201.pdf

    Mr Mangold certainly had access to intelligence

    http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/tvp/tvp_7_0408to0410.pdf

    (Mr Horrocks now the Director of the BBC's World Service, recruited by the BBC in 1981 after graduating from Christ's College Cambridge with a double first in History, he is sent off to Northern Ireland as a news trainee to learn his trade)

    No, Mr Mangold seems more driven by fear than ideology. He isn't a obvious bedfellow to the likes of Rentoul, Aaronovitch, Gilligan et al but he sings from the same hymn sheet.

    Therefore in response to your question;
    How reliable a witness is Tom Mangold?

    My answer is not very.

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  2. In this interview shortly before the Hutton Report was publshed, we read: In 2003, (Jane) Corbin was granted exclusive access to follow the Iraq Survey Group -- a U.S.-led coalition group numbering more than 1,000 military and intelligence specialists -- as it scoured post-war Iraq for WMD.

    Shades of Judy Miller.

    Jane Corbin of the BBC is married to Michael Mates MP, a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee which interviewed Dr Kelly on 16 July 2003.

    Corbin also mentions in that interview a list of countries which always seem to be redacted (one assumes) in documents released to the Hutton and Chilcot Iraq Inquiries:
    "and we know, for example, that North Korea has plans in this direction, [as well as] Iran, Syria and Libya"

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  3. Felix,

    I think Jane Corbin is married to John Maples.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sorry, Andrew, was mixing up the name and the two committees, yes, of course Jane Corbin is married to John Maples who interviewed David Kelly at the Foreign Affairs committee on 15 July 2003. Apologies.

    ReplyDelete