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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 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.

Captain Ed commnets,

Why would a reporter do such a thing? While reporters need to protect their sources, at some point stories based on official documents will require authentication -- and as we have seen with the Killian memos, copies make that impossible. The AP gets a "senior British official" to assert that the content "appeared authentic", which only means that the content seems to match what he thinks he knows.

It is hard to imagine why Smith would destroy the original documents unless there was additional information included in them that he chose not to duplicate. We now have a highly controversial story, orginating from an anonymous source and no means of authentication.

What's worse is that the memos are being spun as evidence that President Bush lied about the intelligence on WMD to justify the invasion of Iraq. Yet, nothing in them actually proves the Bush administration knew that the Iraq WMD intelligence reports they acted upon were flawed.

The American Mind, The Anchoress and BlogsforBush have more.

Posted by tim at June 19, 2005 4:21 AM

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Comments

It's so loony! Smith does have someting to hide.

And the Dems held a mock impeachment trial last Friday highlighting those fake but accurate memos as the smoking gun much like the Watergate tapes. The timing is amazing.

Posted by: Daily Inklings at June 19, 2005 4:03 PM