Daily Mail report.

A former Russian spy's dossier which suggests that Government scientist David Kelly was 'exterminated' in a planned assassination is being studied by the Attorney General.

Boris Karpichkov, who fled to Britain after 15 years as a KGB agent, claims a London intelligence contractor linked to MI5 told him Dr Kelly's death was not suicide.

David Hughes' Telegraph blog.

In his statement to the Commons on September 24, 2002, Tony Blair was unequivocal about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. He told MPs that the Joint Intelligence Committee had concluded:

…that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population, and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.

Chilling stuff. How does it measure up against today's testimony from Baroness Manningham-Buller at the Chilcot inquiry? The former MI5 chief has revealed that she advised officials a year before the war that the threat posed by Iraq to the UK was "very limited" and that the intelligence on Iraq's weapons threat was "fragmentary". And she added: "If you are going to go to war, you need to have a pretty high threshold to decide on that."

Guardian report.

The true extent of the Labour government's involvement in the illegal abduction and torture of its own citizens after the al-Qaida attacks of September 2001 has been spelled out in stark detail with the disclosure during high court proceedings of a mass of highly classified documents.

Chris Ames in the Gaurdian's CiF.

Ross rams the point home at the end of his statement when he addresses the inquiry's failings:

"It is striking that in my preparations for this testimony, I found several documents germane to the inquiry whose existence was not revealed by earlier witnesses, including those who authored them. Other documents by certain officials contradicted the testimony they have given at this inquiry and yet these witnesses were not questioned about these contradictions."

Independent report.

Britain and the US did not believe Iraq's weapons programmes posed a "substantial threat" before launching the 2003 invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein, the inquiry into the war heard today.

Former UK diplomat Carne Ross claimed that the Government "intentionally and substantially" exaggerated its assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in public documents.

PA report.

Tony Blair "very much exaggerated" Iran's role in supporting al Qaida insurgents in their attacks on British and American forces in Iraq, a former ambassador to Tehran has said. And Sir Richard Dalton said that the UK and US misread the intentions of the Iranian regime, believing it would inevitably be hostile to their mission in Iraq when in fact Tehran wanted them to succeed in installing a stable government in Baghdad.

Mark Curtis in the Guardian.

But Whitehall's view of Islamist militants as handy weapons or shock troops is far from historical. In 1999, during Nato's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, the Blair government secretly trained fighters in the Kosovo Liberation Army to act as Nato's soldiers on the ground. The KLA was openly described by ministers as a terrorist organisation, and worked closely with al-Qaida fighters who joined the Muslim cause; their military centre was in the same camp network in Kosovo and Albania where the SAS were providing training. One KLA unit was led by the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden's right-hand man. This murky feature of Blair's "humanitarian intervention" remains conveniently overlooked in most accounts of the war.

Guardian report.

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who established the Commons All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, said: "I am appalled but not entirely surprised by the extent of British involvement in extraordinary rendition which these documents appear to reveal. I was extremely concerned to read the telegram [giving the go-ahead for removing those detained in Afghanistan to Guantánamo] attributed to Jack Straw. If it is from him, it reveals that as foreign secretary in 2002 he stated that the transfer of UK detainees to Guantánamo Bay was the 'best way' and should take place 'as soon as possible' after the detainees had been interviewed by a British team."

"Yet Jack Straw subsequently claimed that he had no knowledge of any British involvement in rendition. Worse, he dismissed the concerns of those of us who had raised this issue over many years as 'conspiracy theories'. "I hope there is a good explanation. In the absence of one, for a Foreign Secretary to have issued such denials, after having apparently endorsed the rendition of UK detainees three years earlier, would further erode the public's trust in politics. That has already been badly damaged by the Iraq war."

Richard Sanders in the Guardian's CiF

But Camp David was a turning point. It was here that Blair firmly committed Britain to military action and it would be surprising if Blair's staff were unaware of this. The summit explains one of the great mysteries of the Iraq war -- why the Americans were so lacklustre in their attempts to get a second resolution at the UN in March 2003. They knew the British would be with them whatever happened. Blair had played his hand too early and from September 2002 Washington knew it could take Britain for granted.

Strangely, the Camp David summit was entirely omitted from the Chilcot inquiry's questioning of Blair in April. It may be an area it now wants to return to.

Craig Murray writes.

An FCO source warns me this morning that a vicious rearguard action is being fought within the FCO, to ensure that any government inquiry excludes my evidence and does not consider whether there was a policy of complicity with torture. Rather the security services wish it only to look at individual cases like Binyam Mohammed and assess compensation for them. The cover-up that these individual cases were accidents would be maintained.

Telegraph report.

The documents have been kept secret since the war but were released to the Chilcot Inquiry, which is holding hearings into the Iraq conflict, after Sir Gus O'Donnell, the head of the civil service, ruled that they raised "unprecedented" matters of public interest.

They show that in the months running up to the war, Lord Goldsmith repeatedly made clear that he had concerns about the legality of an invasion.

Daily Mail report.

Our new revelations include the ambiguous nature of the wording on Dr Kelly's death certificate; the existence of an anonymous letter which says his colleagues were warned to stay away from his funeral; and an extraordinary claim that the wallpaper at Dr Kelly's home was stripped by police in the hours after he was reported missing - but before his body was found.

Craig Murray writes.

There is a peculiar symmetry about the Bloody Sunday inquiry into the killing by soldiers of unarmed demonstrators concluding just as the Israeli inquiry into the shooting of unarmed peace activists is set up. But there is another fascinating common factor - David Trimble.

[...]

It is therefore no surprise at all that it was that indefatigable - and extremely well remunerated - Friend of Israel, Tony Blair, who gave Netanyahu Trimble's name as a safe pair of hands for the cover-up.

Daily Mail story.

The investigation into the death of weapons inspector David Kelly is likely to be reopened, it has emerged.

The case has 'concerned' Attorney General Dominic Grieve and - as the highest ranking law officer in England - he is considering an inquiry to review the suicide finding, Whitehall sources say.

At the same time, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke is considering a request from campaigning doctors to release medical files relating to the death.

Independent report.

A study by a senior Army officer into the lessons of the invasion of Iraq has been suppressed because its comments were too critical even for a restricted Ministry of Defence readership, it was reported last night.

The paper by Lieutenant General Chris Brown looked at the circumstances surrounding the invasion of Iraq and the criticisms were said to be so embarrassing that defence chiefs want it kept secret. They are concerned that the members of the Chilcot Inquiry into the 2003 invasion, who are aware of the report's existence, will demand to see the report and that full secrecy will be lost.

Craig Murray writes.

I am delighted today that Teresa May has called in the McKinnon case for consideration - something New Labour refused to do. It does appear that Conservatives and Lib Dems are going to keep their promises and stop the McKinnon extradition.

This is great news. Even better news is that page 14 of the full coalition agreement promises to change Blair's vassal state extradition treaty in the UK.