UK police: Spy whose body was found in padlocked gym bag probably died by accident
Source: Associated Press
LONDON — More than three years after the naked, decomposing body of British spy Gareth Williams was discovered stuffed inside a locked gym bag at the bottom of his bathtub, the mystery over his bizarre death lingers, and a police investigation has done little to clear it up.
London’s Metropolitan Police said Wednesday that their investigation had found that Williams likely died in an accident with no one else involved. But the tentative conclusion, which the police hedged by acknowledging many gaps haven’t been filled in, is unlikely to calm conspiracy theories surrounding the case.
Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt said Williams, whose remains were discovered in August 2010, was “most probably” killed in an accident, a verdict which conflicts with a coroner’s inquest that concluded last year that Williams was probably killed by another person in a “criminally meditated act.”
Hewitt said the police position “is that, on balance, it is a more probable conclusion that there was no other person present when Gareth died.”
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/uk-police-spy-whose-body-was-found-in-padlocked-gym-bag-probably-died-by-accident/2013/11/13/3177f99c-4c53-11e3-bf60-c1ca136ae14a_story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Williams had recently qualified for operational deployment, and had worked with U.S. National Security Agency and FBI agents. The U.S. State Department asked that no details of Williams's work should emerge at the inquest. The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, signed a Public-interest immunity certificate authorising the withholding from the inquest of details of Williams's work and U.S. joint operations.[13]
No sign of forced entry could be found, but it was also noted that the door and locks had been removed by the time police experts had become involved.
The coroner was highly critical of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command (SO15), who failed to tell the senior investigating officer before the inquest began of the existence of nine memory sticks and other property in Williams's SIS office.
The coroner concluded that another party placed the bag containing Williams into the bath, and on the balance of probabilities locked the bag. No fingerprints were found around the bath. The coroner was critical of SIS for failing to report Williams missing for seven days, which ... led to the loss of forensic evidence.[2][28][29]
...a senior Yard officer announced that despite a re-examination of all evidence and the investigation of new leads no definitive answers had been obtained as to the cause of Mr Williams's death and the "most probable scenario" was that he had died alone in his flat in Pimlico, central London, as the result of accidentally locking himself inside the bag.[32]
All quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams (my emphasis).
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British intelligence is perfectly capable of offing their own, or, at a minimum, looking the other way while someone else does their dirty work for them. In the case of the murder of David Kelly (top British WMD expert, offed after he whistleblew to the BBC about Iraq, circa May 2003), British intelligence deliberately withdrew protection from Kelly after outing him to the media, and, also, SEEMINGLY withdrew his "watchers" which is simply not believable. Ergo, his "watchers" watched him being murdered and did nothing.
In addition to hundreds of serious anomalies in that so-called 'investigation' (the "Hutton Report"
--which ALSO included ignoring experienced coroners (as well as first-hand witnesses)--the lack of information about Kelly's "watchers" (for surely they were watching him) struck me from the beginning as the biggest "black hole" in that farce. And if he committed suicide, as they allege--also, not believable--the question remains: What were his "watchers" doing while he slowly bled to death from minor wrist wounds, all night, outdoors, near his home?
Jeez.
This coverup looks similar. A British agent rotting away in locked sports bag, in a British intelligence SAFE HOUSE, for seven days, while evidence is disappeared, withheld and lied about, and disinformation (about "cross dressing" and sex games) is promulgated?
Besides all the obvious questions, I think we need to ask about U.S. involvement, since there was clearly U.S. interference in the investigation. (There likely was U.S. involvement in Kelly's murder as well, which has a very close time-line paralleling the Plame/Brewster-Jennings outings.) U.S. and U.K. police-state agencies are intertwined like Siamese twins. And both are so extremely compromised by the use of private contractors that, who knows, these days, who is doing what or for whom?
I think we need to step back, at times, and resist the temptation to consign our democracies to "chaos"--that is, to yield to the notion that our governments--or, rather, our "military-industrial complexes"--are so out-of-control that there is no getting them back into control ("of, by and for the people"
. We need to have faith that the truth will prevail and that democracy will reassert itself.
To that end, I would recommend James Douglass' "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters." Douglass not only convincingly nails the CIA for JFK's murder (disentangles and solves all the mysteries of that coverup), he addresses the spiritual rot within our country's "military-industrial" establishment and its secret agencies that led to that horror.
It is still with us.
We need to start there, I think, as to understanding who and what is in charge now. And we also need to start--as to immediate political action--with the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines that were spread like a plague throughout our land during the 2002 to 2004 period, now almost all controlled by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation (ES&S, which bought out Diebold). We CAN'T HAVE a Congress with a 9% approval rating. That is NOT democracy. That is RIGGED elections!
Incidents like Gareth Williams' murder, and David Kelly's murder, and all the rest--and I'm sure most good and honest people have their own lists of anomalous outrages that ravage their spirits and can lead to despair--must not lead us to despair. My own list is getting very long, just for the last decade. It includes names some may not even recognize (for instance, John Wheeler, an acknowledged murder, of a top cyber-security consultant and the force behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, still unsolved--and, believe me, covered up; has to do with drones, I think--he was working at the corp that created their software and the systems that control NORAD and almost all military and civilian airports in the world.)
Knowing things, or having good reason to suspect many things about our government, must not lead us to despair. The history of democracy that they don't teach us in school is full of moments of potential despair, to which our forebears did not yield. Study the history of civil rights, labor rights, women's rights, the anti-slavery movement, the environmental movement, the "New Deal," the anti-corporate and "slow food" movements today, and back further than all these, the history of democracy itself, in all its fits and starts. We have notions of democracy and human rights and scientific and social progress today because of all those people before us who DIDN'T DESPAIR, no matter how difficult or hopeless things looked at the time.
Peace 
Thank you for your informative post.
I hope it wakes some people up.
- Upon which no fingerprints were later found....
> (Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner) Hewitt said the police
> position “is that, on balance, it is a more probable conclusion that there was
> no other person present when Gareth died.”
Even putting aside the weasel words ("on balance", "more probable" the key
point in this "statement" is the phrase "when Gareth died".
It completes a nice hand-wave over the minutes immediately before he died
in order to project the impression that the entire thing happened while he
was alone.
The coroner was right. The corrupt copper is involved in yet another cover-up.
