Downing Street Memos Lose Credibility?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The World, WarWell, this is turning into an interesting story.
Apparently the reporter who broke the story now claims that he retyped the memos to protect the identity of the author. He then said he destroyed the original memos.
Uh-oh.
From the AP:
The eight memos â€â€? all labeled “secret” or “confidential” â€â€? were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.
Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.
However, while LGF only tells you part of the story, I’ll include a key quote it omitted:
The AP obtained copies of six of the memos (the other two have circulated widely). A senior British official who reviewed the copies said their content appeared authentic. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secret nature of the material.
This next week should be very interesting…
UPDATE: The blog that “debunked” the “60 Minutes” story about the Bush National Guard documents thinks the memos are real:
Nevertheless, I very much doubt that the documents are fakes, for two reasons. First, to my knowledge no one in the British government has denied their authenticity. The “Downing Street memos” are much different from the CBS National Guard documents in this important respect: the CBS documents were ostensibly authored by Jerry Killian, who had been dead for twenty years. The Downing Street documents, on the other hand, were allegedly authored by, and relate to meetings recently conducted by, a group of men who are very much alive and well. I can’t conceive of a reason why they would fail to attack the documents’ genuineness if there were a basis for doing so.
I think we should all appreciate Power Line’s honesty. The blog goes on to state that Blair even quasi-authenticated the memos:
Q. Thank you, sir. On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened? Could both of you respond?
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Well, I can respond to that very easily. No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all. And let me remind you that that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations. Now, no one knows more intimately the discussions that we were conducting as two countries at the time than me. And the fact is we decided to go to the United Nations and went through that process, which resulted in the November 2002 United Nations resolution, to give a final chance to Saddam Hussein to comply with international law. He didn’t do so. And that was the reason why we had to take military action.
Again, this should be a very interesting week…
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August 7th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Good job.
September 3rd, 2006 at 11:39 pm
no denying bush was set on it before the nation had a reason for it. the end picture may change, however bush is still caste in the light of an individual acting individually, as king over a nation of peasants. re-call NSA phone surveillance, casually getting around to deal with Katrina etc, deciding to lift the davis-bacon act, and being reminded that he is not the soul entity in power, by having to put the act back into service. his individual ideas, are not ever for the people, more often than not, they are AGAINST the majority of america, leaving the minority wealthy pleased with his performance of protecting their money, and helping it grow. how many things has bush screwed up? well, how many aspects of legislation has he touched? good-night america, the united states has fallen to a hi-jacker.