Saturday, December 03, 2005
Second Thoughts Iin UK
Official Secrets, Lies, and the Truth
by Raymond Whitaker and Marie Woolf
3 December
Nobody outside the Westminster village would recognize the names of David Keogh and Leo O'Connor. One is a former Cabinet Office official, the other a researcher for an MP who lost his seat at the last election. But the crime of which they are accused concerns two men who are firmly in the public eye: Tony Blair and George Bush.
On Tuesday, Mr. Keogh, 49, the civil servant, and Mr. O'Connor, 42, who worked for the former Labor MP Tony Clarke, will appear at Bow Street magistrates' court in London. Mr. Keogh is charged, under the Official Secrets Act, with sending the researcher a transcript of an April 2004 meeting at the White House between the Prime Minister and the President. When the document was shown to Mr. Clarke, then MP for Northampton South, he returned it to Downing Street.
All that occurred well over a year ago. Despite the eminence of those taking part in the discussion, the transcript did not carry the highest classification, and the case might have attracted relatively little attention were it not for subsequent events. On Tuesday, the Daily Mirror reported that Mr. Bush had told Mr. Blair in April last year that he wanted to bomb the studios of al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language satellite channel which has consistently challenged the White House line on Iraq.
With its Arab cameramen and reporters, al-Jazeera, based in the Gulf state of Qatar, has been able to go where embedded Western reporters dare not. At the time of the White House meeting, it was broadcasting bloody footage from within Fallujah, then under assault by US forces. Added to the channel's role as the outlet for statements by Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, and its coverage of on-camera executions of Western hostages by al-Qa'ida followers, it was not surprising that Mr. Bush might have been angry with al-Jazeera.
According to the Mirror, Mr. Blair dissuaded the President from any attack on the TV station. It reported conflicting views on whether Mr. Bush might have been joking or not - even if he had been prepared to disregard the international outrage it would have caused, Qatar is a key Middle East base for the Americans - although it is possible that he was suggesting a clandestine bombing.
Even this trumpeted exclusive might
by Raymond Whitaker and Marie Woolf
3 December
Nobody outside the Westminster village would recognize the names of David Keogh and Leo O'Connor. One is a former Cabinet Office official, the other a researcher for an MP who lost his seat at the last election. But the crime of which they are accused concerns two men who are firmly in the public eye: Tony Blair and George Bush.
On Tuesday, Mr. Keogh, 49, the civil servant, and Mr. O'Connor, 42, who worked for the former Labor MP Tony Clarke, will appear at Bow Street magistrates' court in London. Mr. Keogh is charged, under the Official Secrets Act, with sending the researcher a transcript of an April 2004 meeting at the White House between the Prime Minister and the President. When the document was shown to Mr. Clarke, then MP for Northampton South, he returned it to Downing Street.
All that occurred well over a year ago. Despite the eminence of those taking part in the discussion, the transcript did not carry the highest classification, and the case might have attracted relatively little attention were it not for subsequent events. On Tuesday, the Daily Mirror reported that Mr. Bush had told Mr. Blair in April last year that he wanted to bomb the studios of al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language satellite channel which has consistently challenged the White House line on Iraq.
With its Arab cameramen and reporters, al-Jazeera, based in the Gulf state of Qatar, has been able to go where embedded Western reporters dare not. At the time of the White House meeting, it was broadcasting bloody footage from within Fallujah, then under assault by US forces. Added to the channel's role as the outlet for statements by Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, and its coverage of on-camera executions of Western hostages by al-Qa'ida followers, it was not surprising that Mr. Bush might have been angry with al-Jazeera.
According to the Mirror, Mr. Blair dissuaded the President from any attack on the TV station. It reported conflicting views on whether Mr. Bush might have been joking or not - even if he had been prepared to disregard the international outrage it would have caused, Qatar is a key Middle East base for the Americans - although it is possible that he was suggesting a clandestine bombing.
Even this trumpeted exclusive might
