According to an article by Warren Hodge and Judith Miller of the New York Times (the copy I found was published by SF Gate), Dr. David Kelly's wife has confirmed that the body found yesterday was his, and that the police have told her he committed suicide. She also noted that the police have asked her not to speak about the case.

I know most blogs have been reporting that it was him since yesterday, and it's been pretty obvious all along that it was, but on a story like this I'm trying to avoid jumping the gun on much of anything. It's going to be an explosive enough situation as it is - it doesn't need help from people passing on speculation as if it were fact. There's already a lot of haziness surrounding the story. After reading several reports in a number of British papers (The Guardian, BBC, Independent, This is London by the Evening Standard, and Financial Times), here is what I understand happened as of this point.

Andrew Gilligan, a reporter for the BBC who also works for the Daily Mail, issued a story indicating that the September dossier (which, I believe, is the same one that Bush and company are relying upon when they say that the British published a report saying that Saddam was trying to get nuclear materials from Africa), which had been compiled by the British intelligence service, had "sexed up" on the orders of Alastair Campbell, who is Prime Minister Blair's communications chief. In the story, the source was identified as a "senior intelligence official".

Immediately, Campbell started demanding that the BBC identify who had made the accusation, and demanding apologies and retractions. The BBC, however, choose to stand by the story and by Gilligan. Meanwhile, Dr. Kelly was concerned that he might have been a source for the story, and spoke to his manager at the Ministry of Defense. The MoD then gave his name to The Intelligence and Security Committee, and disclosed it to the BBC governors in a private letter. According to the Financial Times, if Parliament could show that Dr. Kelly has been the source of the report - and Downing Street felt very confident that he was - it would be very embarrassing for the BBC, because they had claimed their source was a "senior intelligence official" and that description could not be applied accurately to Dr. Kelly.

Dr Kelly's name then became public when the description of the MoD official who had admitted speaking to Gilligan was released. While his name wasn't mentioned specifically, there aren't many MoD officials who would fit the same description, so it wasn't difficult for people to figure out.

The phone calls to David Kelly's home and office from journalists began shortly after the BBC report which sparked the controversy over whether the Government had "sexed up" its Iraq dossier.

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