John Kokal state dept suicide - the American Dr Kelly?

Hmmm... it certainly seems like being a middle-east specialist in the
employ of the US or UK governments is a risky old business these days.
Still, it was considerate of Iraq analyst John Kokal to take his shoes
off before climbing out of a locked window, and 'throwing himself off'
the roof of the US State Department building where he worked.

The Fox News report is at
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102563,00.html

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>From http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112003_kokal.html:
November 20, 2003 (FTW), WASHINGTON -- In a case eerily reminiscent of
the death of British Ministry of Defense bio-weapons expert, Dr. David
Kelly, an official of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence
and Research Near East and South Asian division (INR/NESA), John J.
Kokal, 58, was found dead in the late afternoon of November 7. Police
indicated he may have jumped from the roof of the State Department.
Kokal's body was found at the bottom of a 20 foot window well, 8
floors below the roof of the State Department headquarters near the
23rd and D Street location. Kokal's death was briefly mentioned in a
FOX News website story on November 8 but has been virtually overlooked
by the major media.

Interestingly, the FOX report states that State Department officials
confirmed Kokal's death to The Washington Post yet the Post -
according to an archive search - has published nothing at all about
Kokal's death. A subsequent search revealed that the Post had made a
short three-paragraph entry the death in the Metro section on November
7,  2003. However, the Post entry stated that Kokal did not work in
intelligence and the story does not show up in the archives.

Kokal's INR bureau was at the forefront of confronting claims that
Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington police have not
ruled out homicide as the cause of his death. Kokal was not wearing
either a jacket or shoes when his body was found. He lived in
Arlington, Virginia.

However, a colleague of Kokal's told this writer that the Iraq analyst
was despondent over "problems" with his security clearance. Kokal
reportedly climbed out of a window and threw himself out in such a
manner so that he would "land on his head." At the time Kokal fell
from either the roof or a window, his wife Pamela, a public affairs
specialist in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, was waiting
for him in the parking garage. Mrs. Kokal had previously worked in
Consular Affairs where she was involved in the stricter vetting of
visa applicants from mainly Muslim countries after the Sept. 11
attacks.

State Department officials dispute official State Department
communiquis that said Kokal was not an analyst at INR. People who know
Kokal told the French publication Geopolitique that Kokal was involved
in the analysis of intelligence about Iraq prior to and during the war
against Saddam Hussein.

Another INR official, weapons expert Greg Thielmann, said he and INR
were largely ignored by Under Secretary for Arms Control and
International Security John Bolton and his deputy, David Wurmser, a
pro-Likud neo-conservative who recently became Vice President Dick
Cheney's Middle East adviser. Kokal's former boss, the recently
retired chief of INR, Carl W. Ford, recently said that Bolton often
exaggerated information to steer people in the wrong directions.

A former INR employee revealed that some one-third to one-half of INR
officials are either former intelligence agents with the CIA or are
detailed from the agency. He also revealed it would have been
impossible for Kokal to have gained entry to the roof on his own. INR
occupies both a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) on
the sixth floor that has no windows and a windowless structure on the
roof that has neither windows nor access to the roof, according to the
former official. The other windows at the State Department have been
engineered to be shatter proof from terrorist bomb attacks and cannot
be opened.

INR and other State Department officials report that a "chill" has set
in at the State Department following Kokal's defenestration. A number
of employees are afraid to talk about the suspicious death. It also
unusual that The Northern Virginia Journal, a local Arlington
newspaper, has not published an obituary notice on Kokal.

(Wayne Madsen, a frequent FTW contributor, is a former US Naval
officer and intelligence analyst who is currently an author, freelance
writer and commentator in Washington, D.C.)