NEW YORK For more than 10 days, the U.S. media nearly ignored it, but finally the so-called “Downing Street Memo” is finally gaining traction in the U.S. press. The Los Angeles Times featured a lengthy report on Thursday, and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post followed on Friday.
The memo, obtained by the The Sunday Times in London and published on May 1, became a major issue in the closing days of the British elections but received little attention in the United States until a Knight Ridder report on May 6, which E&P carried. A Knight Ridder editor later told E&P that it received surprisingly little pickup. The New York Times has given it little notice.
The Washington Post ignored the memo until Pincus’s article, which appeared Friday on page A18. It arrived five days after Post ombudsman Michael Getler revealed that readers had complained about the lack of coverage.
Pincus opened his piece with a helpful summary: “Seven months before the invasion of Iraq, the head of British foreign intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that President Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein by military action and warned that in Washington intelligence was ‘being fixed around the policy,’ according to notes of a July 23, 2002, meeting with Blair at No. 10 Downing Street.
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http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000920839
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