Downing Street Memogate? Fake but Accurate?

Uh-oh.

The Downing Street Memos…which neither quote anyone named Bush or Blair…seem to be big fat fakes, after all.

I was going to write about them the other day, about Reason Magazine’s assertion that this so-called “damning” memo, the one that the Democrats are rehearsing impeachments over, would be DOA once people actually READ the thing.

Now, well, let LGF tell it, via the AP.

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.

Well, by the standards of modern journalism, that ought to be enough to carry on and make an enormous deal over them, then. “Secret” source, typed, copies, destroyed originals.

They meet the “Fake but accurate” criteria established by CBS and Newsweek.

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.

For Bush-haters, fake-but-accurate-unsourced-unoriginal papers are more than enough, evidence, always.

But for the rest of the world, they should not be. They should be laughed at.

Captain Ed wonders if Lucy Ramirez found the memos.

One fact certainly stands out — Michael Smith cannot authenticate the copies. And absent that authentication, they lose their value as evidence of anything.

Besides, as the AP report makes clear, the two governments sincerely worried about the deployment of WMD despite the allegations of those who fixate on one sentence of one memo. The latest issue coming from the memos, according to its proponents, is the alleged statement by Blair that WMD programs had not progressed. However, it also points out why 9/11 made all the difference in the approach to Iraq:

The documents confirm Blair was genuinely concerned about Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, but also indicate he was determined to go to war as America’s top ally, even though his government thought a pre-emptive attack may be illegal under international law.

“The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September,” said a typed copy of a March 22, 2002 memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press and written to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

“But even the best survey of Iraq’s WMD programs will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW (chemical or biological weapons) fronts: the programs are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up.”

All of the Western nations had intelligence that matched with the Bush/Blair determination that Saddam had not disposed of his WMD stocks. Prior to 9/11, the Western approach of waiting Saddam out appeared adequate. After 9/11, the existence of those WMD stocks clearly was intolerable, given Saddam’s involvement with terrorist groups in the past — including hosting an al-Qaeda convention, of sorts, in 1999.

Ed finishes thusly:

Even if these memos could be authenticated, they’re still meaningless. They could only excite the kind of idiots that would hold mock impeachment hearings with four witnesses and no authority whatsoever.

I like it when I’m thinking like Ed Morrissey.

So, if you’re keeping score:

1) Dick Durbin’s remarks are still not being denounced by ANYONE in the Democrat party…which means, I guess, that they are going to OWN his remarks throughout the party, and that no one within that party is willing to take on a difficult matter of LEADERSHIP as regards censuring him and perhaps more. Like resignation.

2) The party doesn’t see any problems with rehearsing the Impeachment they so desire…on the stength of unsourced documents, fake but accurate, with no originals.

3) The MSM has not figured out the very basic fact that when they want to report a scoop, they need to have PROOF of the scoop. Making an accusation and then expecting the target to “prove it wrong,” is not journalism. It is slander.

More interesting writing on forgers and forgery, here.

UNCoRRELATED tracked back with Downing Street Memos: Fake but Accurate?
UNCoRRELATED tracked back with Downing Street Memos: Fake but Accurate?
Point Five tracked back with Republicans to Rove: Don't Get Cocky Over DSM
The Sundries Shack pinged back with The Sundries Shack
bLogicus tracked back with Downing Street Memos were Destroyed

by TheAnchoress @ 1:13 am. Filed under Dumb Democrat moves, The Fourth Estate

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11 Responses to “Downing Street Memogate? Fake but Accurate?”

bLogicus Says:
June 19th, 2005 at 7:01 am
Downing Street Memos were Destroyed

The authentic copies, if they existed, were retyed and then destroyed by Times Reporter Michael Smith. The AP reports,The eight memos � all labeled “secret” or “confidential” � were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written …
Joseph Marshall Says:
June 19th, 2005 at 10:47 am
-If they are fake, why has the British Government refused to say so? They have real libel laws over there and people like Tony Blair are far better protected from reporting that is “false but not malicious in intent” than any leader here.
-Why have they not brought a criminal libel complaint against The Times of London? That’s where the documents are appearing, you know. Not in the Independent (the Liberal Democrat house organ), and not in the Guardian (the Labor house organ). Unlike in America, the conservatives over there don’t much like being lied to either.
-Moreover,if they were fake, and the British Government merely wished to supress them without causing a fuss with a libel suit, all it would have taken was a “D-notice”.
-The security laws of that “tight little island” permit the Government to gag the publication of anything in Britain, as a matter of security, under stiff legal penalties.
-If they are fake, why didn’t Tony Blair and George Bush say so in their press conference when they were asked about the implications of their contents?
-Why hasn’t Presidential Press Secretary Scott McClellan denounced them as fake, if Blair could assure Bush that they were fake?
-Bush and Blair didn’t do this, you know. They merely denied that the manipulation of the WMD intelligence occured. That manipulation was what Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI-6, thought Washington was doing in July of 2002.
-Blair and Bush never said Dearlove didn’t think so, that the meeting didn’t happen, or that the first memo was never written about it. They merely said, by implication, that Dearlove was wrong.
-They also never said anything about the fact that the President spent six months telling the public and the press that he hadn’t decided to invade Iraq, when the memos indicate that he had. They did not even touch the issue of the public mencacity at all.
-It was Humpty Dumpty, I believe, who said that anyone is able to believe any number of impossible things before breakfast.
-Many of my fellow Americans appear to believe that when you kill millions, you somehow make them deader than the 108 men who,the Pentagon has admitted, have died in our captivity from the beatings they were given.
-So I guess we’ll have to wait for breakfast for a very long time.
The Sundries Shack Says:
June 19th, 2005 at 11:15 am
[…] ;t verify their authenticity because he destroyed the originals. How convenient. Quoting The Anchoress, who quotes the AP. The eight […]
AJStrata Says:
June 19th, 2005 at 6:44 pm
This thing really smells bad. He has to destroy the photocopies he made of the originals (which he gave back to the source) but wants a complete copy. So does he type them into his PC (there would be no trace to his source there)? No - he gets an old typewriter which makes the memos look ‘old’, obviously. Then he needs to make PDFs for distribution - does he do this with the typewriter written pages? Apparently not (see my post http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/169), he tries to ‘age’ them some more through repeated copying/faxing then scans them in? Why? Why all this extra effort when he has PC with Word and all he needs to do is type them in? Did you know the PDFs were created in Sep 2004, the same time Rathergate broke? Did this have an impact on his timing of the release? The memos say nothing of any import. Why all the subterfuge?
Dale Says:
June 19th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
I surfed unto to your site chasing the “Downing Street Memo’s”.

I am delighted to have founded your site. I love the presentation and discussion and hope to be a regular reader here.

Thanks!
Point Five Says:
June 19th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
Republicans to Rove: Don’t Get Cocky Over DSM

“I don’t know how the liberals could have missed the joke,” says one top Republican. “Downing Street Memo, ‘DSM’. Very funny. I understand that naming your latest planted scandal after a manual for diagnosing mental disorders may be amusing, but …
newton Says:
June 20th, 2005 at 2:54 am
I don’t know - those guys want impeachment with all of their hearts, and will do or say anything - and I mean, anything - to get what they want.
UNCoRRELATED Says:
June 20th, 2005 at 9:58 am
Downing Street Memos: Fake but Accurate?

I stopped breathing for a second when I read this: 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…
TheAnchoress Says:
June 20th, 2005 at 10:05 am
Joe, I am very surprised at your comments. A man with your intelligence - forget intelligence - a man with your wisdom and education, and one who truely does try to be fair on so many other issues…I’m surprised. No matter how much you detest Bush, you have to look at this and say…something is not right, here. A smell test is not being passed. Blair HAS said the memos are false. Bush hasn’t commented, but if you noticed he does not come out, (as he would have to almost constantly, every day) to deny every accusation made of him.

And the line of demarcation should never be, “he isn’t denying it so it must be true.” That is the reasoning Dan Rather used, it’s the reasoning Newsweek used, and now the reasoning the press is trying to use again. It is not the reasoning of an ethical journalist.

I was accused of something once, of which I was completely and totally innocent. But all I had was my word, and a person unwilling to believe anything I said because he wanted so very badly to believe the worst. It was a horrible, horrible time for me, but I learned back then that it is useless to try to kill yourself convincing someone of your goodness who wants to believe only in your bad. They cannot be convinced. If their pride is involved, and you can find a way, somehow to PROVE THE NEGATIVE, they hate you all the more for showing them up.

If this journalist wants to continue to promote this vague memo that doesn’t even QUOTE ITS TWO TARGETS DIRECTLY, then he has to do better than “I retyped the memo on an old typewritter (!) and then (depending on which story you’re reading) destroyed my copies or returned them…

This is not right. It’s not fair to the people being accused.

YOU have always seemed to me to be a very fair person…except on the subject of Bush, in which case, sadly…you seem to allow your distaste for the man to overrun your instincts for fairness.

If there is something substantive to this memo - which seems not the case, then let’s get a few people on the record, somewhere. Let’s SEE the original. Let’s find out who wrote it. THEN you can make some accusations. This “I don’t have the originals, but someone else high in gov’t says they look accurate…no, you can’t have the name…” That’s NOT journalism. And it’s not fair.

It’s still adolescent and cowardly smearing. I can’t believe you would endorse it.
UNCoRRELATED Says:
June 20th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
Downing Street Memos: Fake but Accurate?

I stopped breathing for a second when I read this: 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…
Robert Says:
June 20th, 2005 at 2:33 pm
I don’t see any reason to expect President Bush to know whether the memos are authentic. Nobody who wrote them reports to Bush, nor does anyone who would have received them. I wouldn’t expect Prime Minister Blair to automatically know whether the memos are authentic, either. In either case it is not their job to authenticate the memos.