Posted on 06/19/2005 6:53:54 AM PDT by mabelkitty
The media and the Leftists have had a field day with the Downing Street memos that they claim imply that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence on WMD in order to justify the attack on Iraq. Despite the fact that none of the memos actually say that, none of them quote any officials or any documents, and that the text of the memos show that the British government worried about the deployment of WMD by Saddam against Coalition troops, Kuwait and/or Israel, the meme continues to survive.
Until tonight, however, no one questioned the authenticity of the documents provided by the Times of London. That has now changed, as Times reporter Michael Smith admitted that the memos he used are not originals, but retyped copies (via LGF and CQ reader Sapper):
The eight memos — all labeled "secret" or "confidential" — 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.
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.
I wouldn't doubt it!
I suppose it was just a "coincidence" that these "memos" showed up a week before the elections in Great Britian, yea right?
"If the reporter destroyed ORIGINAL British Government documents labled "SECRET" and/or "TOP SECRET"; one would think he would be in prison at this point, awaiting arraignment, at least."
Bingo! She Secrets Acts of the UK are simple. If some did something like this with a valid top secret communication, they would either be in jail, waiting arraignment, and so would their editors, publishers and board members.
"Bingo! She Secrets Acts of the UK are simple."
Should have been: "Bingo! the Secrets Acts of the UK are simple."
I also said that I wanted to see the originals. I was "cautious" after Rathergate, but even I couldn't believe it would happen again.
It doesn't automatically mean the reporter is lying and the memos are faked. But it CERTAINLY means there is no proof of authenticity whatever coming from this reporter. Even assuming good faith on the part of the reporter, he could have been duped into copying and destroying fakes. Even a lie detector test wouldn't shed light on that possibility. So what the reporter has is USELESS, since we don't have originals to authenticate.
This development of "here's a document, story, etc. of questionable authenticity - either deny it or it must be true" is troubling.
How can a government official reliably prove a negative, and say something definitely was NOT said, didn't happen, etc.? Not in the Koran case, not in this one. I don't believe the government compared the reporter's "documents" word for word with any extant "originals."
If this were done to the left they'd be screaming "McCarthyism" from the rooftops.
Also, each time they try this and it backfires, the left just goes back to the drawing board. I hope they are paying the public relations pricew for their idiocy. Bush certainly shouldn't.
All these nonexistant documents, hperbole, and downright lying just can't be accident or stupidity. Maybe Rove is pulling the strings of these people. Its just unbelievable.
I keep reading that he "destroyed the originals" which I think is impossible. Having a very small bit of knowledge about highly classified documents I know that an individual doesn't just "destroy" a document (unless they are much more casual in the UK). All such documents are logged and everyone having access to them must sign them out and return them. Destroying such a document is a specific process with witnesses and verification. So either there is a "missing" document signed out by someone and never returned or there is no original document. Regardless of missing or never returned it would be a suspect document if no guarantee or warranty of the correctness of the copy exists. I think the whole thing has blown up in their faces unless they can come up with certified originals--and they themselves say they can't!
(as I said earlier) It doesn't really matter to me weather this is true or not. Say it is true, George Bush & Tony Blair got together and decided that it was time for Saddam to go. GOOD! They were thinking and talking about this for a while, (once again) GOOD.
Well, gee, if he did that, wouldn't the hounds on the Left be baying about government attempts at censorship?
CA....
"A photo copy is as good as an original?" Someone has never sat on a Jury.
With all due respect, doesn't this scuttle the fake-memo angle?
I'm guessing the unimpeachable source for the Downing Street Memos destroyed copies of the originals, not actual top secret documents.
So you're saying that, they are not fake, they are merely recreations?
The TRUE Capitol Hill Blue story the PRESS IGNORED:'Dems plan to undermine America to beat Bush'
You may be right but if so the typed copies were made from reproductions, not from originals. This begs the question of whether the reporter ever had access to the actual originals. Anyone could cut and past a classified document and present it to a (stupid) journalist as a copy of an original. They gotta come up with the original to have any airspeed or altitude on this story.
The documents from the Cabinet Office and Foreign Office suggest that in March 2002 Mr Blair was concerned primarily about regime change rather than, as he subsequently said, weapons of mass destruction. Invasion simply for regime change would have been contrary to international law.
The Foreign Office yesterday acknowledged the documents were genuine but stressed they were only a snapshot of thinking at a particular time. Nor did they reflect the changes that took place over the following 12 months, in particular referring the issue to the UN, which the White House did at Mr Blair's behest, though it failed to get a second security council resolution authorising war. -------- "Leaks cast doubt on PM's motive ," Ewen MacAskill and Michael White, Monday September 20, 2004, The Guardian
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