Channel 4 News - London,UK ***Video included***

[MelissaB]

Officially secret

Published: 23 Nov 2005
By: Channel 4 News

It's a top secret memo so sensitive that we can't tell you what it says: editors who publish the details have been threatened with jail.

>>Watch the report here

According to the Daily Mirror, it records President Bush suggesting a military strike against the Arab television station al-Jazeera and Tony Blair arguing against an attack.


There are calls for Downing Street to publish the transcript, as executives from the Qatari-based network demand to know exactly what happened.

The two men who leaked the document have been charged under the Official secrets act, and its understood the government want their case to be heard in secret to stop any more revelations.

Go here to watch the video: Channel 4 News - London,UK

[Straight Shooter]

1. To stop any more revelations?

Good gawd! Who were they talking about assassinating?

That's the only thing I can think of that could be worse than bombing the Al-Jazeera station.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. Yeah wouldn't you love to know what else is on this tape

that they don't want us to know?

[Straight Shooter]

7. You bet I want to know.

bush thinks because of his position that he can get away with doing any damn thing he wants. Whatever is in that transcript has got to be far worse, and more shocking, than bombing A-J. (As if that isn't shocking enough. Honestly, my jaw dropped when I first read about it.)

[NanceGreggs]

2. Just watched the Video clip ...

... thanks for the link!

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Quite interesting

The WH thought there was a connection between al qaeda and aljezeera. So I take it they think that since THEY control the media here that al qaeda controls aljezeera. LOL

No wonder dubya wanted to attack aljezeera.

Will intelligent leadership EVER return to the WH???

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

9. Also, from Clive Stafford Smith, US wanted to infiltrate al-Jazeera

The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about alleged attempts by the U.S. military to recruit a detained journalist as a spy. London's Guardian newspaper reported that U.S. military interrogators allegedly told a journalist for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera that he would be released if he agreed to inform U.S. intelligence authorities about the satellite news network's activities.
The Guardian published the allegation on September 26. CPJ later interviewed the military and the journalist's lawyer and reviewed letters said to have come from the journalist.

The journalist, Sami Muhyideen al-Haj, an assistant cameraman for Al-Jazeera, was arrested by Pakistani authorities along the Afghan-Pakistani border while on assignment for the network in December 2001. He was later transferred to U.S. custody. Al-Haj has since been brought to the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, where he is being held as an accused "enemy combatant," according to his London-based lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith.

"There is very little against him in terms of the official allegations," Smith told CPJ. "They are mostly trying to get Sami to become an informant against Al-Jazeera."

U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chris Loundermon declined to respond to the lawyer's charge or to confirm al-Haj's detainment. "I'm not going to get into an intelligence conversation," said Loundermon, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command, which administers the Guantanamo military facility.

http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/USA26oct05na.html

[depakid]

5. This is actually getting interesting

the more they try to suppress this- the louder the outcry become- and the more press the story gets.

Much better than the DSM memo's.

I hope they try to keep the lid on longer- it'll only make the noise that much louder when it finally blows....

[MelissaB]

6. The irony is that I got this in email because of a google news

subscription for the DSM.

[AuntiBush]

13. Excellent Point!

[BamaBecky]

30. Oh Boy - this Bushit is hitting the fan!!

making popcorn!
Bama

[AuntiBush]

8. Thanks.

Watched it as well. Un-real.

[babylonsister]

10. And this is getting worldwide airplay, people from

several countries are getting really pissed. I'm hoping this squeaky wheel will get the grease and the UK will have to spill. Who knows? It might put Blair in a better light than he's in now.
We all need to get the lowdown on what these documents contain; I don't see how they can be suppressed with all this attention.

[MelissaB]

11. The last couple of minutes of this clip are full of info.

I'm paraphrasing here:

It speaks ill of the media that everybody is buckling down and accepting this lying down.

In the day of the internet you would have thought somebody would have it out on the web. Tune in...

It doesn't fit. It's messy. The gov. looks on the back foot, and the media ought to feel extraordinarily threatened by this because it's either absurd or really sinister.

Any assistance from our viewers would be appreciated.

[psychopomp]

25. I just saw that, too

Amazing, isn't it?

[glitch]

31. Absurd AND sinister describes the entire bush experience. nt

[dzika]

12. Great clip!

Be sure to watch it all.

[MelissaB]

14. I'm not familiar with Peter Preston, so I'm googling.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Archive/0,5673,-23,00.html

Looks like some interesting "stuff" here.

[MelissaB]

16. Wikipedia

Peter Preston - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaProfile of the Guardian editor and columnist includes his best-known investigative journalism cases and a list of his books.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Preston

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. He didn't cover himself in glory in the Sarah Tisdall case

A court ordered him to hand over the documents that had been leaked to The Guardian, he did, and she was identified and sent to jail, under the Official Secrets Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Tisdall

[haydukelives]

15. Thanks for the link

kick

[PDJane]

17. Outrageous........

this is just simply outrageous, and I'd like to see this blow up in their faces.

Crap.

[MelissaB]

18. From a news blog in England

News round-up: Put the memo on the web

Posted: 24 November 2005 By: Jemima Kiss

Email: [e-mail]

For Dog's sake would someone please leak this bloody memo on the internet so we can all get over it and move on.

Someone has it... an inconspicuous blank-looking CD, in pride of place in the middle of very busy desk. Just put it on your blog already!

All those fascinating details... whether that remark about bombing Al-Jazeera's HQ was actually a joke - probably followed, as Peter Preston quipped on the news last night, by a remark about doing the same to the BBC.

I will keep sniffing round the usual places, but for much of today the most popular link topic on Technorati has been the death of a 14-year-old ugly dog. Great. Thanks.

Link: http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story1614.shtml

[LizW]

28. "...leak this bloody memo..."

LOL! I totally agree!

Someone has it, and it's gonig to be leaked eventually.

Just do it! Leak it! Somebody leak it and let's see the "joke" once and for all!

Let the world judge the Little Emperor's sense of "humor"!

[tuvor]

19. What fence-sitting, or pro-bush American will care one way or the other?

It doesn't help bush, sure, but it's not going to sway his 34%, either.

[Stephanie]

22. He wanted to MURDER journalists in a nation that is our ALLY

He wanted to commit an act of TERRORISM against journalists. You think folks wouldn't be interested in that?

[tuvor]

24. Maybe you're right.

However, the minority that still supports bush, my feeling is that they regard Al-Jazeera as one of the enemy.

[EuroObserver]

26. And don't forget al-Reuters

According to the increasingly famous Michael Ledeen, eg: "From al-Reuters, we have a masterpiece of disinformation" (National Review)

[gordianot]

20. The flood is coming.

The depth the same allies who ended Nazi Fascism have sunk. We are all becoming what we fear the most.

[Englander]

23. Steve Bell cartoon -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,1650498,00.html

[SpiralHawk]

27. The only way BushCo & Blair can defuse this memo is to come clean

all the way -- and apologize. Otherwise it is going to hang around for days and days and undermine their culture of corruption further and further.

Bit I do not think they have it in them to do the right thing and take four-square responsibility. Hell, at this point I am convinced they do not.

the more they weasel around on this, the messier it will get.

[confludemocrat]

29. RW hack Frank Gaffney called AJ "fair game" for a good bombing

on BBC radio on Tuesday. Justification was that they are a "propaganda arm" for terrorists, "supporting Bin Lauden, Zarqawi", etc. On air, he was opposite an Al Jazeera editor or bureau chief, who replied rightly that "no decent human being" would suggest such a thing!

this site: http://thewashingtonnote.com/ mentions this tack by this guy in their 23 Nov entry

[mzmolly]

32. Tell the truth - go to jail.

Justice!

[buddysmellgood]

33. Well that confirms it for me. God knows how much worse the memo must be.

[spindrifter]

34. A fantastic clip--

the fact that we haven't see4n the memo on the net yet, makes it look all the more like the Brits are reverting to the old school secrecy techniques.