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By Root 956 0

area a short distance from his house where his body was found, the song doesn’t seek to answer the question it poses over whether his death was a result of suicide or assassination, but in a gesture of self-identification it considers the role of the ‘intelligence gatherer’ and the vocational crisis that can often come with a determined commitment to be, in word and deed, reality-based. Kelly’s attempt to be faithful to his own job description was placed under duress and clearly compromised when, having been asked to proofread the Weapons of Mass Destruction dossier that would contribute to the popular justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, his dispute over the claim that Iraq was capable of firing chemical and biological weapons within forty-five minutes of receiving an order to do so went largely unaddressed. When The Observer went to press with his observation (as an unnamed source later confirmed) that it would be impossible to manufacture biological weapons within the two mobile laboratories he photographed and examined on an official visit to Iraq in June of 2003, his determination to be true to what he knew to be the facts on the ground, expert witness that he was, was no longer politically expedient.

Within the space of a month, he entered the crosshairs of the Ministry of Defence and found himself in the media spotlight of a public relations disaster. On the day of his death, he received e-mails from supporters as well as superiors within the Ministry demanding further details concerning his conversations with journalists. In an email he wrote back to a journalist at the New York Times, he expressed appreciation for the supportive words and spoke of “many dark actors playing games.”22

Sung primarily in the first person, “Harrowdown Hill” warns of the ways people are “dispensed with” when their witness to what they know to be true proves inconvenient to particular high-powered interests. Are the pressures placed by those in power on the truth-tellers, even accidental whistleblowers like David Kelly, murderous in effect if not intent, consigning human lives to the Orwellian memory hole along with what they knew to be true? Don’t ask me, Thom Yorke asserts. Ask the Ministry. But most movingly, the chorus strikes a note of solidarity that is anthemic to the degree that it speaks for the millions of people, even further from the command console of war-making than David Kelly, who also sensed (or, like Kelly, knew) that the intelligence was cooked in the selling of the war: “We think the same things at the same time / We just can’t do anything about it.”

Yorke’s determination to commemorate Kelly’s expert witness is like the sounding of an alarm. Another extended footnote, if you like, to the one-word chorus of In Rainbows’s “House of Cards,” that mantra any self-respecting Radiohead follower should have within arm’s reach whenever taking in what is popularly called the news: “Denial!” Eulogizing David Kelly’s life, especially in view of his costly decision to be true to the truth, conjures that space Radiohead is always creating, the space where we turn our attention and pay heed to all the ways other witnesses are kept out of the witness box of public awareness, all that crowns itself “global development,” all that sees fit to file human life (individuals or entire civilian populations) under the term “inconvenient.”

When “Harrowdown Hill” ends with a repeated “I feel me slipping in and out of consciousness,” we’re reminded that the work of ethical remembrance is an ongoing summons to vigilance, a vigilance we forsake at the risk of losing a witness to life, to what’s there, to all that might yet be redeemed on behalf of the future. Bearing witness, in this sense, isn’t offering proof or positing an argument. It’s the practice of being present to the time, paying attention, paying heed, and keeping good faith by making a record of the moment, a witness to a witness like David Kelly.

Playing a Part versus Giving Voice

“Crushing truths,” Albert Camus once observed, “perish from being acknowledged.”23