When you hear about governmental ‘leaks’ on the news, have you ever wondered how they actually happen? Well, I have and I concluded that such transfer of information must take place in some secrecy and must include an element of jeopardy. In ‘The Shape of Rain’, a clandestine meeting between a United Nations weapons inspector and an English journalist is a pivotal scene in the uncovering of a conspiracy and is loosely based on real events. Let me explain.
I have been reading ‘Dark Actors: The Life and Death of David Kelly’ by Robert Lewis. It’s well-researched and written and, briefly, it’s about the mysterious death of a British scientist in the English countryside in July 2003. A death that was later officially recorded as a suicide. The fact that Dr. David Kelly had been working as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq and had been all over the news in the days leading up to his death, accused of leaking to a BBC reporter that the reasons for the war against Iraq had been deliberately falsified.
I remember well the moment I heard the news. I was driving to a meeting at a BBC Radio Station close to where he had died. I had previously worked for the BBC for many years and was, by then, running a media service directly for the British Foreign Office and, being privy to both the inner workings of the BBC and British government, I was immediately suspicious. None of the facts about David Kelly’s death seemed to add up to a suicide and I began to feel outraged at what might have occurred in reality.
As a way of using fiction to explain fact, I created a David Kelly character for my book ‘The Shape of Rain’, which puts forward a possible conspiracy theory of how the war in Iraq was ‘sold’ by the western media to the public. Much of what I included in this ‘fictional’ work actually happened and is based on actual events.
“fake news”
In a previous extract published on Bublish.com entitled ‘First Impressions’ I introduced the character of weapons inspector, Professor Alan Stebbings. In this extract I describe how he ‘leaks’ the information that the reasons that the British and US governments are using for legitimising a war against Iraq may be false.
The premise is that there is collusion between the media and shadowy departments in the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic to subvert the news agenda and influence the public with fake news.
Check out the extract on Bublish.com
Nick Hirst is the author of the conspiracy thriller ‘The Shape of Rain’ available on Amazon Kindle for £1.99 in the UK and $3.62 in the USA. UK readers click here and, if you’re in the US click here.
The Shape of Rain 
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