Underblog.co.uk

No time to write a background to this, but I’ve been doing a online little research on all this memo stuff. To be honest I’m a little confused.

We learned on Thursday that a former civil servant, David Keogh, and Leo O’Connor, who worked as a researcher for the ex-MP Tony Clarke, have been charged under the Official Secrets Act for their involvement in the leak of a confidential government memo. The BBC said that the contents of the memo were reported in the Sunday Times in May 2004. You can find the full memo here on the Times’ website, with a bit of searching. It is a Foreign Office document relating to the situation in Iraq which expresses concerns about the US assault on Falluja:

Heavy handed US military tactics in Falluja and Najaf some weeks ago have fuelled both Sunni and Shi’ite opposition to the coalition, and lost us much public support inside Iraq. It has spread fighting to MND(SE)’s area. The US have learnt lessons from this and are generally proceeding more cautiously.

Whilst this obviously has renewed relevence, what with the recent white phosphorous revelations, it is not the transcript of a conversation between Bush and Blair, which the Mirror reported on Wednesday, and does not mention the bombing of al-Jazeera. Yet elsewhere it has been reported that that the men were charged with the leaking of the memo reported in the Mirror. So which memo do the charges relate to?

Further confusion arises because the other damaging section in the recent memo received by the Mirror, which the media has been gagged from telling us about, also relates to British concerns about the Falluja onslaught and the danger to which it was exposing British troops. How do I know this? Because the Guardian (almost) told us so yesterday:

The meeting between Mr Bush and Mr Blair took place at a time when Whitehall officials, intelligence officers, and British military commanders were expressing outrage at the scale of the US assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja… The criticism came not only from anti-war MPs, but from Mr Blair’s most senior military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers. When Mr Blair met Mr Bush in Washington, military advisers were urging the prime minister to send extra forces only on British terms.

(The Guardian has form for telling stuff they aren’t really meant to. Recall the nonsense allegations that Prince Charles had sex with his valet Michael Fawcett which they didn’t quite tell us?)

That guardian article also refers to “separately leaked Foreign Office memo” referring to “heavy-handed” US tactics.

So why did the BBC report on the 17th of this month that the charges against O’Connor and Keogh related to the leaking of the memo published in the Sunday Times ages ago, when it appears they actually concerned a new memo that was to be published in the Mirror the following Tuesday? Was somebody trying to throw them off the scent to prevent them getting their hands on the new memo?

As for the full text of the Mirror memo, I’m still unsure as to whether to add my name to the growing list of bloggers who promise to publish it if they are sent it.