This morning, Joseph Andrew Stack set his house on fire before deliberately flying his plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. Whilst full details of the incident aren't yet clear, it seems that Stack left an "online manifesto" giving his reasons. The original website has been taken down, but "the entire disturbed rant" was preserved by Mashable and is embedded below.
• Doctors trying to see files consider legal challenge
• Doubt grows over suicide verdict on Iraq expert
- guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 January 2010 19.57 GMT
- Article history
Dr David Kelly arrives to give evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee over allegations the government 'sexed up' the intelligence dossier leading to war in Iraq. Photograph: Ian Waldie/Getty Images Europe
Lord Hutton's decision to classify documents about the death of Dr David Kelly is likely to face a legal challenge amid claims by experts that there are increasing grounds to question the inquiry's verdict of suicide.
The Hutton inquiry, which reported in 2004 that Kelly's death was suicide after he cut an artery in his wrist, has come under scrutiny from doctors who claim the medical account is improbable.
Five doctors who made an application to the Oxford coroner to have the inquest reopened have been told Lord Hutton made a ruling in 2003 to keep medical reports and photographs closed for 70 years. "This is a revelation," said Michael Powers QC, a former assistant coroner and expert in coronial law. "I can't think of anything that would justify these documents being treated any differently."
The doctors are trauma surgeon David Halpin, epidemiologist Andrew Rouse, surgeon Martin Birnstingl, radiologist Stephen Frost and Chris Burns-Cox, who specialises in internal general medicine. They applied for the documents with a view to applying to the attorney general to have the inquest reopened.
"We hope to get more materials from the coroner, examine those, and in the light of those materials make submissions", said Powers, who is closely involved in the case, although not party to the legal proceedings.
But a response from the coroner's legal advisers rejected the doctors' request, and revealed that the documents had been classified. "It is truly remarkable that they should be kept secret for twice as long as the other documents. I'm sure that they will meet with their legal advisers and consider the most appropriate way to deal with this," Powers said.
The doctors are also thought to be considering a challenge to the coroner's decision not to allow them to be "interested parties". Freedom of information experts say there appear to be strong grounds for the legal challenges. "If Lord Hutton was not carrying out a statutory inquiry, I can't immediately see what power he had to order that these records be closed," said Maurice Frankel, Director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information.
News of the decision to keep the documents classified has come as a surprise to lawyers. There is no mention of the decision on the Hutton inquiry website.
"If a matter as sensitive as this was not made public … it raises questions as to what else was withheld," said Powers. "You can't help but suspect that the legal advisers to the Oxfordshire coroner disclosed it inadvertently, thinking that it was already known that this material was being kept secret for such a long period."
Questions have remained around the death of Dr Kelly after an initial inquest into his death was never resumed. Instead, the Hutton findings were said to be sufficient. But the inquiry applied a less stringent test than would have used in an inquest, where a coroner has to be sure "beyond reasonable doubt" that a person intended to kill themselves.
"There should be a full inquiry. We need a proper answer," said Powers. "The medical evidence doesn't add up. I have yet to meet a doctor that will say it was even possible, let alone likely."
This is absolutely disgraceful...
The detailed three-page report implicates the Hollywood actor Peter Lawford, Monroe's psychiatrist, staff and her publicist in the plot.
The allegations suggest the 36-year-old actress, who had a history of staging attention-seeking suicide attempts, was deliberately given the means to fake another suicide on August 4, 1962. But this time, it is suggested, she was allowed to die as she sought help.
The document, hidden among thousands of pages released under freedom-of-information laws last October, was received by the FBI on October 19, 1964 - two years after her death - and titled simply "ROBERT F KENNEDY".
It was compiled by an unnamed former special agent working for the then Democrat governor of California, Pat Brown, and forwarded to Washington by Curtis Lynum, then head of the San Francisco FBI. Despite a disclaimer that it could not be sourced or authenticated, it was considered important enough to immediately circulate to the FBI's five most senior officers, including director J. Edgar Hoover's right-hand man, Clyde Tolson.
The report was in effect buried for decades as a classified document, and even the released version contains censored sections. Never before mentioned despite thousands of articles, books and documentaries about her death, it details aspects of Kennedy's on-and-off affair with the movie star, including sex parties and a lesbian dalliance, as well as her emotional departure from 20th Century Fox and descent into depression.
Critically, it raises an alleged conspiracy, apparently overseen by Lawford, for Monroe to unwittingly commit suicide with the drug Seconal, a barbiturate used to treat insomnia and relieve anxiety. The document gives no precise reason why she would be killed but hints it may be linked to her threats to make public her affair with Kennedy, as other conspiracy theories have previously claimed. It states in part: "Peter Lawford, [censored words blacked out] knew from Marilyn's friends that she often made suicide attempts and that she was inclined to fake a suicide attempt in order to arouse sympathy.
"Lawford is reported as having made 'special arrangements' with Marilyn's psychiatrist, Dr Ralph Greenson, from Beverley Hills. The psychiatrist was treating Marilyn for emotional problems and getting her off the use of barbiturates. On her last visit to him he prescribed Seconal tablets and gave her a prescription for 60 of them, which was unusual in quantity especially since he saw her frequently. On the date of her death … her housekeeper put the bottle of pills on the night table. It is reported that the housekeeper and Marilyn's personal secretary and press agent, Pat Newcomb, were co-operating in the plan to induce suicide."
It goes on to say that on the same day, Kennedy had booked out of the Beverley Hills Hotel and flown to San Francisco where he booked into the St Charles Hotel, owned by a friend. "Robert Kennedy made a telephone call from St Charles Hotel, San Francisco, to Peter Lawford to find out if Marilyn was dead yet."
Lawford called and spoke to Monroe "then checked again later to make sure she did not answer". The document claims the housekeeper, Eunice Murray, who had been hired by the actress on the advice of Dr Greenson, then called the psychiatrist.
"Marilyn expected to have her stomach pumped out and get sympathy for her suicide attempt. The psychiatrist left word for Marilyn to take a drive in the fresh air but did not come to see her until after she was known to be dead."
Officially, the actress was found by Murray in the early hours of August 5, naked on her bed lying on top of her telephone. The others are now dead, too.
The FBI report says Kennedy had promised Monroe he would divorce his wife and marry her, but the actress eventually realised he had no intention of doing so. About this time, he had told her not to worry about 20th Century Fox cancelling her contract - "he would take care of everything". When nothing happened, she called him at work and they had "unpleasant words. She was reported to have threatened to make public their affair."
Hoover, keeper of America's secrets, was obsessed with the private life of celebrities, particularly those with leftist leanings. The files show the FBI tracked Monroe from the Cold War mid-1950s to her death in 1962, but particularly after she met and married the playwright Arthur Miller, who was being watched as a possible communist.
- guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 September 2009 19.03 BST
- Article history
Chilean police said a man distraught over a break-up with his girlfriend hung himself while she watched on a web camera. Police said Simon Venegas, 26, was chatting with his former girlfriend on Friday when he pointed his camera at a tree in a courtyard of his house. Venegas hung a rope over a branch and told his ex, "Watch what I'm going to do" and "I love you, take care," before hanging himself. The 23-year-old woman called Venegas's friends, but police said they arrived too late. The couple broke up a year ago. The suicide happened in San Felipe, about 55 miles south-east of Santiago.
