Posted on 05/10/2007 12:19:24 AM PDT by Int
A leaked government document at the heart of an Official Secrets Act trial contained a “stinking fish” that had the potential to cause political embarrassment to President Bush, a defence barrister told the Old Bailey yesterday.
Rex Tedd, QC, acting for David Keogh, a 50-year-old civil servant who read the document and took a copy of it out of his office, said that his client had handed it over to a friend because its contents had preyed on his conscience.
The document was a recorded minute, in the form of a letter, of a two-hour meeting about Iraq between Tony Blair and Mr Bush, at the White House, on April 16, 2004.
The letter, written by Mr Blair's private secretary for foreign affairs, was faxed to 10 Downing Street from Washington and then relayed to a Cabinet Office communications centre, where Mr Keogh was on duty.
Mr Tedd was not allowed to disclose the contents of the document in open court.
The jury has seen it, but all questions relating to the document have been restricted to in camera sessions, from which the press and the public are barred.
However, in summing up the defence case, Mr Tedd quoted a poem that refers to a "stinking fish that sits in the sun". He said that this was how Mr Keogh felt when he read the document.
What he read he found "utterly wrong", Mr Tedd said, and he took the risk of losing his job, his pension and even his liberty by disclosing it.
Mr Keogh and Leo O'Connor, 44, a researcher for a Labour MP, are charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act 1989 by making an unauthorised disclosure of a secret document likely to cause damage to Britain's defence and international relations. They have pleaded not guilty, but have admitted being in possession of a copy of the document.
Mr Tedd focused his summing-up on whether disclosure of the document could have caused real damage, at a time when revelations were emerging about the ill-treatment by American military personnel of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
A copy of the fax that Mr Keogh received at the 'Pindar' communications centre in Whitehall was handed to Mr O'Connor in Northampton, where they both lived.
The original intention, the court was told, was for Mr O'Connor to send it to John Kerry, the Democrat candidate for the 2004 US presidential election. However, Mr O'Connor slipped the document into a pile of parliamentary papers on the desk of Anthony Clarke, Labour MP for Northampton, for whom he worked as a researcher. Special Branch was called in.
Mr Tedd said that there was nothing in the document that related to British troop action in Iraq, and denied that there was anything in it that could have led to an increased risk to British soldiers.
He said: "On May 1 [2003] President Bush proclaimed the end of major combat operations and a banner behind him said, 'Mission accomplished';. By April 2004, the period concerned, you might think a fair description would be 'Mission in trouble'"
The trial continues.
Kerry, huh? Why isn’t that a surprise?
>>“The main person in my mind was Mr John Kerry, who at the time was American candidate for the US presidential election in 2004,” Keogh had testified. <<
So he was trying to influence the U.S. election... Not kosher.
Not this “After Downing Street” leftist moonbat crapola, again! I’m convinced that there is a concerted effort between George Soros, the MSM, the defeatocrats, academia, and the crazies (Rosie O’Donut, Cindy Sheehan, etc.) to get an impeachment trial going, no matter what they say.
I think he is a liar and he had far more nefarious intentions. George Bush joking about bombing Al Jazeera wouldn’t have helped Kerry. Actually, it may have helped Bush. I know I don’t lose a lot of sleep worrying about media with a very suspect link to terrorists being bombed.
Huh?
Somehow I get the feeling this guy is connected to the George Soros 13 Pieces of Silver for your Soul fund.
[Keogh] gave the document to O'Connor, 44 - a researcher for anti-war MP Anthony Clarke - who placed the memo in the MP's paperwork.
But their plans were foiled when Mr Clarke handed the document over to Downing Street.
---
Keogh said he thought O'Connor would have the contacts to get maximum publicity and that far from damaging British troops, the document would simply embarrass Bush.
By contrast O'Connor had claimed to have been terrified, and wanted to get it back to its original home.
His method was to conceal the documents in Mr Clarke's papers and later to tell police he hadn't "got a scooby" how it had got there.
From The Guardian:
Mr Clarke found the document in a pile of his papers, put there by Mr O'Connor. The MP, a police special constable, alerted Lady Sally Morgan, then a Downing Street aide. Mr Blair thanked him.
A traitor stole secret documents to help Kerry. He and Kerry should both be hanged for treason. Not likely.
In all fairness to Kerry, this guy appears to have been operating independently of him. Of course what Kerry did after his return from Vietnam should have at least earned him a stay in prison.
Thanks for the info!
The bottom line is that we don’t permit individual consciences to determine what should or shouldn’t be classified.
Why?
1. Disclosure of classified info can kill or injure.
2. It would make it easy to pretend conscience when actually one is attempting to betray one’s nation to the enemy or to a high-paying customer.
Shoot the plick!
I fail to see the big deal about this if all the flap is about the fact that they ‘discussed’ bombing Al-Jazeera? Since when is ‘discussing’ something a crime? DUmmies ‘discuss’ killing Pres. Bush all the time.
Bombing Qatur, a completely different country wasnt authorized by the either government nor the UN.
In other words, yet another trumped-up TANG attack by the Kerry Campaign and its liberal media co-conspirators.
The article linked in the first post states that authorities differred on whether the comments made by Bush were intended to be serious. That’s one thing that’s hard to get out of a memo. Seems kinda odd to be joking about bombing Al-Jazeera, but then Reagan was joking when he said “The bombing begins in 15 minutes.”
NO ONE IN THE MSM ever mentions this, of course.
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