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Britain: Two charged under Secrets Act for leaking Bush threat
to bomb Al Jazeera
By Julie Hyland
3 December 2005
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Two men have been charged under the Officials Secrets Act (OSA)
over the alleged leak of a top-secret government memo. Civil servant
David Keogh, 49, a former communications officer at the Cabinet
Office, was charged with making a damaging disclosure of
a document relating to international relations without lawful
authority. Keogh did not indicate how he would plead.
Leo OConnor, 42, was charged with having received a document
while acting as a researcher for former Labour Member of Parliament
Anthony Clarke, through its disclosure without lawful authority
by a Crown servant. OConnor said he intended to plead
not guilty.
Both were bailed to return to Bow Street Magistrates Court
on January 10 on condition they do not travel outside the UK and
do not contact each other.
The court heard that the Official Secrets Act was allegedly
violated between April 16 and May 28, 2004. Under the act, a civil
servant is guilty of a criminal offence if he makes a damaging
disclosure regarding international affairs without lawful permission.
Anyone receiving such information is also guilty of a criminal
offence should he disclose it to another party, knowing that it
breaches the OSA. A disclosure is considered to be damaging if
it could endanger UK interests abroad, or the safety of British
citizens overseas.
The proceedings had a Kafkaesque quality. No details of the
memo were given in court and OConnors lawyer Neil
Clark has said he does not know what is in the alleged document,
and has never seen it. Calling for the government to release the
information, he said he needed to know the case against
his client as it would be impossible to defend him
otherwise.
Prosecutor Rosemary Fernandes has said she will seek reporting
restrictions on the case if information in the memo is likely
to be disclosed in court.
The veil of secrecy was lent an absurd quality because the
memos alleged contents have at least in part been made public.
On November 22, the Daily Mirror published a front-page
exclusive under the headline Bush Plot to Bomb his Ally.
According to the newspaper, the memo was a secret minute of
a conversation held between President George W. Bush and Prime
Minister Tony Blair on April 16, 2004, in which the US leader
threatened to bomb the headquarters of Arab TV station Al Jazeera
in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Qatar, but was dissuaded by Blair.
The newspaper wrote that the memo turned up in
2004 at Clarkes office, who had taken an antiwar stance
over Iraq and subsequently lost his seat in the May 2005 election.
Keogh and OConnor are accused of passing the memo on to
Clarke, who returned it to its source.
The revelations were extremely damaging, but the governments
response to the Mirrors story and the secrecy surrounding
the opening of the trial of Keogh and OConnor indicates
that it may contain even more damning material. Immediately following
the newspapers exclusive, Britains Attorney General
Lord Goldsmith threatened the Mirror and other newspaper
editors with prosecution under the OSA if they disclosed any further
details from the memo.
This is the first time that an attorney general has threatened
the media with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. Usually
the government can resort to a host of other censorship means
to keep a story under wraps. These include issuing D
notices (a voluntary system of guidance on publishing),
contempt of court proceedings (where a story may prejudice a trial)
or a law of confidence civil action, with massive
financial penalties against the publishers concerned. In this
instance, newspaper editors were apparently issued with copies
of the Act.
Resort to the OSA against civil servants is also unusual. Former
intelligence officer David Shayler was prosecuted and imprisoned
under the act, after he disclosed that Britains MI6 had
backed a failed plot to assassinate Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi.
Several journalists have queried whether the governments
extreme measures to silence reports could backfire, as they appear
to confirm the existence of the memo and the contents already
reported. However, the move was successful for the government
in one key respect, in that newspaper editors agreed to comply
with Goldsmiths demands. The government has thus far succeeded
in suppressing further revelations and setting yet another dangerous
precedent in its ongoing attack on democratic rights.
Mirror journalist Kevin Maguire co-authored the newspapers
exclusive. Addressing a public meeting at the London Press Club
last week, he indicated that he did not have a copy of the memo
but had been briefed on its content. According to a Newsweek
report on the meeting, Maguire confirmed that it had been written
by officials at 10 Downing Street and carried markings indicating
it was classified Top Secret.
The Mirror journalist also reported that bloggers and
international publications had said they would defy the UK government
and publish the memo in full if it were passed on to them. However,
Maguire declined to give any further information relating to the
memo, Newsweek reported, indicating that he was legally
bound from discussing further details.
Senior Al Jazeera officials visited London last week to investigate
the seriousness of the threats allegedly made against their network.
However, its director general, Wada Khanfar, acknowledged that
because of the attorney generals warning against publishing
the memorandum and the vague general statements that came from
10 Downing Street and the White House, we still do not know exactly
what the context was nor do we do know many details aside from
what has been published.
Al Jazeeras officials have consulted lawyers over the
disclosures made in the memo and sought to petition Blair for
a meeting during their visit, and submitted a request to Downing
Street that it reveal the truth about the document.
Instead, Khanfar wrote in the Guardian December 1, Officials
in Britain have come up with nothing, and their silence is likely
to reinforce suspicion and mistrust.
Other newspapers have queried whether the government would
benefit by publishing the memo, especially when it apparently
records Blair restraining a gung-ho US president. Should the memos
contents be true, they have argued, it is at last evidence that
Britain carries some influence with its more powerful ally.
The November 27 Independent on Sunday went so far as
to argue that it remains curious, however, that the Attorney
General should try so hard to suppress information that, so far,
does not reflect badly on the Prime Minister, whilst Simon
Jenkins in the Sunday Times said what was heartening
is that Blair appears to have opposed the attack, and that
Britons will surely welcome this evidence of Blairs
much-vaunted cojones on display in Washington.
Such arguments serve to divert attention not only from the
issues already raised by the memo, but also from what else it
may contain.
In general, the media has treated claims that Bush should have
wanted to bomb Al Jazeera as self-evident. Numerous reports have
detailed previous attacks by the US on the network, including
the bombing of its offices in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in
2003, killing its correspondent. One of its reporters is currently
locked up without charge in Guantánamo Bay.
As to the memos full contents, writing in the Independent,
Andreas Whittam Smith noted that Keogh was a civil servant
with 25 years experience of tough postings in places such
as Islamabad and Khartoum, who was often involved in intelligence
work.
If such a man did leak the document... [he] must have
felt exceptionally troubled by what he was seeing.
Even if the disclosures already made were proved to be true,
then the heads of two of the most powerful nations in the world
are caught on record discussing the pros and cons of carrying
out a war crime.
Al Jazeeras head office is in Qatar, a country not at
war with either the US or Britain, but rather one of Washingtons
most reliable allies. Those injured or killed in a US attack would
have been journalists and civilians of a friendly power, and therefore
not legitimate targets under international law. Should the alleged
conversation be verified, it would provide compelling evidence
that previous attacks by the US against Al Jazeera were deliberate
rather than accidental, as Washington has claimed.
Blair has dismissed allegations over the leaked memo, stating
theres a limit to what I can say due to sub
judice laws. He then went on to disparage conspiracy theories.
In fact, the entire Iraq war was a conspiracy from beginning
to endplanned and commissioned by a cabal in Washington
and aided and abetted by their counterparts in London, who ran
roughshod over democratic procedures, using threats, lies and
disinformation to establish geo-political control in the oil-rich
region. The efforts to suppress the memo are a continuation of
this campaign.
See Also:
British government threatens
prosecution to suppress claim that Bush sought to bomb Al Jazeera
[24 November 2005]
US menaces Al Jazeera
over Iraq reportage
[27 August 2003]
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