2 men Jailed for leaking Memo between Bush and Blair.

Akrasia

If you were to believe the 'honest' and 'unbiased' BBC, You would think that the men were reckless and irresponsible and could have cost the lives of 'innocent' British soldiers

Judge Mr Justice Aikens said Keogh's "reckless and irresponsible" actions could have cost British lives.

The BBC also reports

Few details of the "highly sensitive" memo, which is known to have included discussions about military tactics, have been made public.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/northamptonshire/6641983.stm

Except we do know the substance of the memo, it was reported widely at the time (amongst the non corrupt non corporate press) and again today in Democracy Now.

Pair Found Guilty of Leaking Al Jazeera Bombing Memo
In Britain, two men have been found guilty for leaking a memo detailing a conversation in which President Bush reportedly tells British Prime Minister Tony Blair he wants to bomb the Doha headquarters of the Arabic television network Al Jazeera. David Keogh, a former civil servant, and Leo O’Connor, a former parliamentary researcher, were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act. Most of the trial was held in secret with reporters barred from the proceedings. Bush and Blair’s meeting was recorded by Blair’s adviser on foreign affairs. The memo came with a note reading “This must not be copied further and must only be seen by those with real need to know.”

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/10/1418221

For those who don't know much about Geography, Doha is in Qatar, not Iraq, and for those not informed about international law, It is a war crime to deliberately target civilian infrastructure and the media.

These two men have now been sentenced to jail for attempting blow the whistle on the activities of war criminals, meanwhile the men responsible for the death of more than 650,000 people still walk free and hold the highest office

Ciaran500

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4459296.stm

"The allegations were made by an unnamed source in the Daily Mirror newspaper." Hmmm

Judt

So President's and Prime Ministers don't joke and come up with fanciful suggestions then?

The Official Secrets Act is there to protect lives, and also to allow PM's and President's to hold Real Politik discussions without fear of opinion polls. We saw in that famous open mic gaffe that they talk to one another like real human beings, but that's not acceptable to Joe Media and Public.

If you allow one breach of the official secrets act then the whole thing is fair game, and as the old world war saying went, "Loose lips sink ships." Same today.

jonny72

Judt wrote:

So President's and Prime Ministers don't joke and come up with fanciful suggestions then?

The Official Secrets Act is there to protect lives, and also to allow PM's and President's to hold Real Politik discussions without fear of opinion polls. We saw in that famous open mic gaffe that they talk to one another like real human beings, but that's not acceptable to Joe Media and Public.

If you allow one breach of the official secrets act then the whole thing is fair game, and as the old world war saying went, "Loose lips sink ships." Same today.

Joe Media and Public have a false perception of these people in charge, I would prefer if things were more open, so we don't get anymore of this cloak and dagger ****. Naive? look at Maliki in Iraq, jesus christ, that man is worse than Saddam.

dloob

Akrasia wrote:

If you were to believe the 'honest' and 'unbiased' BBC, You would think that the men were reckless and irresponsible and could have cost the lives of 'innocent' British soldiers

Can't say I see anything wrong with the BBCs report. They repeat what the judge in the case said as part of his judgment and carry quotes from both sides. It's not like they came up with the reckless and irresponsible line by themselves.

As to the case well it was a top secret document that they leaked, potentially selectively and out of context.
I'm surprised they got off so light.

Akrasia

dloob wrote:

Can't say I see anything wrong with the BBCs report. They repeat what the judge in the case said as part of his judgment and carry quotes from both sides. It's not like they came up with the reckless and irresponsible line by themselves.

As to the case well it was a top secret document that they leaked, potentially selectively and out of context.
I'm surprised they got off so light.

You're surprised they got off light even though you admit you don't know anything about the memo they leaked?

There is a huge difference between reporting facts, and reporting the truth.

The content of the leaked memo is public information now and has been for a long time now. They refused to tell one side of the story in favour of the official state line. That can not possibly be described as 'balanced' or fair.

The BBC have been appallingly biased in favour of the British war effort in Iraq (They do criticise American war policy, but they rarely if ever have anything critical to say about the British military activities in Iraq and whenever they are forced to criticise the British political foreign policy decisions, they almost always spin the story to suggest that the British are just victims, trapped in a circumstance that they didn't want to be a part of, as if they have no responsibility for anything that has happened.)

If you don't believe me, have a look through their own archives.
http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?scope=all&edition=i&q=Iraq+War&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=go

Fratton Fred

I don't see the problem here. A guy who is responsible for sensitive communications decides to break the official secrets act and gets banged up for it. What if the memo had included details of an investigation into a planned terrorist attack?

The BBC reports on the case in their usual manner. The Beeb is quite often at logger heads with the government for the biased reporting, usually because it is anti government, not pro.

The Mirror, well, what can you say. these are the same guys who made up photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq to sell a few newspapers.

Akrasia

Fratton Fred wrote:

I don't see the problem here. A guy who is responsible for sensitive communications decides to break the official secrets act and gets banged up for it. What if the memo had included details of an investigation into a planned terrorist attack?

Then he wouldn't have leaked it.

He didn't go public because he wanted the attention or for personal gain, he leaked the document because the public have a right to know what criminal activities our leaders are doing in our name.

What you are saying is that government officials should blindly follow the rules and regulations no matter what the consequences are for innocent people. That kind of authoritarianism is what led to the holocaust.

The only reason Governments are able to get away with lying to us ALL THE TIME, is because there are enough civil servants and officials out there too apathetic or afraid to blow the whistle on their lies and deceptions. We all know now that the 'justifications for the Iraq war' were a complete fabrication. If there had been more brave whistleblowers out there before march 2003, perhaps Tony and Bush might have been prevented from launching this catastrophy in the first place and up to a million people would have been spared brutal horrific deaths. (not to mention those countless and uncounted men women and children who have been maimed for life, displaced, widowed and orphaned.

It turns out they didn't attack Qatar after all (the leak might have been part of the reason for that) But if they had, as Bush apparently wanted to do, Blair and the media would have gone along with some Bullsh1t story about how there were terrorists training there or the attack was because of some faulty intelligence, or there was a terrible mistake and they didn't mean to hit that building, just like the excuses Bush gave every other time his army deliberately targeted Al Jazeera in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Again, These two men are going to jail for telling the truth, While we're holding fecking Awards Ceremonies for mass murderers.

Fratton Fred

Akrasia wrote:

What you are saying is that government officials should blindly follow the rules and regulations no matter what the consequences are for innocent people. That kind of authoritarianism is what led to the holocaust.

That is exactly what I am saying. It is not their decision, they do not make policy. If they don't like it, then they leave.

Akrasia

Fratton Fred wrote:

That is exactly what I am saying. It is not their decision, they do not make policy. If they don't like it, then they leave.

That's such an excellent idea. If every man of principle leaves the government and civil service, it'll make it so much easier for despots to take control.
And we all love a good despot don't we.

Fratton Fred

Akrasia wrote:

That's such an excellent idea. If every man of principle leaves the government and civil service, it'll make it so much easier for despots to take control.
And we all love a good despot don't we.

How can you talk of principles, then complain tha someone who broke the official secret act got sent to jail, for what are relatively short setntences?

The principle of not breaking the law is a pretty strong one.

Akrasia

Fratton Fred wrote:

How can you talk of principles, then complain tha someone who broke the official secret act got sent to jail, for what are relatively short setntences?

The principle of not breaking the law is a pretty strong one.

Blind obedience is not a virtue.

What is right/wrong and what is Legal/Illegal are by no means the same thing.

In Nazi Germany there was a law forcing Jewish people to wear a gold star and forcing them to live in Ghettos from where they were shipped off to death camps. Are you suggesting that a Jewish person living in germany at that time would have been acting immorally or without principles by refusing to wear the gold star or for evading arrest and internment?

Are you suggesting that a German soldier who refused to round up Jewish people for extermination would have been acting without principle?

Fratton Fred

Hang on a minute, these guys were civil servants in a stable democratic government, not a fascist state intent to wiping out an entire race.

We don't know what was in the memo, there are spurious reports of it being about Blair persauding Bush not to bomb Qatar. It could have been about a planned terrorist attack and he was leaking it to Al Qeada for all we know.

If you sign the official secrets act and you break it, you go to prison.

r3nu4l

I must admit that I admire whistle-blowers and quite often when they do leak information it is important and necessary that the general public knows.

I don't know the full content of what they leaked but regardless I have to say 'if you do the crime, do the time'. It's very unfortunate but that is life. They knew what they were doing, they knew the potential consequences and they now have to accept the punishment.

That doesn't mean that I don't applaud them, admire them and feel sorry for theire predicament, I do, but the OSA is important too.

Akrasia

Akrasia wrote:

The BBC have been appallingly biased in favour of the British war effort in Iraq (They do criticise American war policy, but they rarely if ever have anything critical to say about the British military activities in Iraq and whenever they are forced to criticise the British political foreign policy decisions, they almost always spin the story to suggest that the British are just victims, trapped in a circumstance that they didn't want to be a part of, as if they have no responsibility for anything that has happened.)

LoL-thats right Andrew Gilligan never worked for the BBC...and wasn't so stoutly defended by them that Greg Dyke had to resign.

If you don't believe me, have a look through their own archives.
http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?scope=all&edition=i&q=Iraq+War&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=go

Having had a gander through that I still don't believe you.

Akrasia

Fratton Fred wrote:

Hang on a minute, these guys were civil servants in a stable democratic government, not a fascist state intent to wiping out an entire race.

You raised a philosophical point about obeying the law. They might have been civil servants in a stable democracy, but the leak pertained to a criminal act of aggression and terrorism against a media outlet in another country.

We don't know what was in the memo, there are spurious reports of it being about Blair persauding Bush not to bomb Qatar. It could have been about a planned terrorist attack and he was leaking it to Al Qeada for all we know.

Nonsense. the memo was leaked to the media. That's what they were jailed for. If they had leaked information about a planned terrorist attack, then that is what would have been reported in the media.

If you sign the official secrets act and you break it, you go to prison.

only because the State are the people prosecuting you, not because of the confidentiality agreement itself. You can not contract to break the law. If the 7/7 bombers had signed a confidentiality agreement with a third party and then told them about their plans to attack london, that agreement would have been no defence in court if the third party was prosecuted for being an accessory to the crime.

r3nu4l

Akrasia wrote:

If the 7/7 bombers had signed a confidentiality agreement with a third party and then told them about their plans to attack london, that agreement would have been no defence in court if the third party was prosecuted for being an accessory to the crime.

A confidentiality agreement is far different to a state law. Signing the Official Secrets Act constitutes a contract between you and the state. A specific law covering that contract exists and was put into play.

The two are not comparable.
The 7/7 bombers could not have used their contract to defend their actions but they could have successfully sued the third-party who breached the agreement.

brianthebard

Godwin's law strikes at post 12. Its happening sooner and sooner these days...

Judt

Then he wouldn't have leaked it.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps if you loosen the system, other people will leak other things. The Official Secrets Act prevents lives from being lost in so many ways it's unimaginable, and it protects the state. In reality the public cannot know everything that government does, because then the government cannot do its job properly. There are things the security services do that government doesn't know about. That's how you keep the country safe, and we've not fallen into dictatorships in Western Europe for some time since the end of the second world war.

The Official Secrets Act is God. There's no other way to do it. If you leak official secrets, then you go to jail. During wartime they'd line you up against a wall and shoot you. Start making exceptions to that rule and you'll have spies turning up dead with their nuts shoved in their mouths and foreign powers firing our own missiles at us.

Diogenes

Judt wrote:

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps if you loosen the system, other people will leak other things. The Official Secrets Act prevents lives from being lost in so many ways it's unimaginable, and it protects the state. In reality the public cannot know everything that government does, because then the government cannot do its job properly. There are things the security services do that government doesn't know about. That's how you keep the country safe, and we've not fallen into dictatorships in Western Europe for some time since the end of the second world war.

The Official Secrets Act is God. There's no other way to do it. If you leak official secrets, then you go to jail. During wartime they'd line you up against a wall and shoot you. Start making exceptions to that rule and you'll have spies turning up dead with their nuts shoved in their mouths and foreign powers firing our own missiles at us.

I'm sorry it was a civilian building, in a country that was an ally and staging post for the invasion of Iraq. It was a reckless, illegal and insane act, a breach of the Geneva convention, and I cannot believe the head of a democracy needed to be talked out of doing that.

Friends of mine work for Al Jazeera, and could have been killed in that attack.

Fratton Fred

Diogenes wrote:

I'm sorry it was a civilian building, in a country that was an ally and staging post for the invasion of Iraq. It was a reckless, illegal and insane act, a breach of the Geneva convention, and I cannot believe the head of a democracy needed to be talked out of doing that.

Friends of mine work for Al Jazeera, and could have been killed in that attack.

But he was, apparantly, talked out of it. It was not going to happen. So why does this need to become public knowledge in the country that talked him out of it??

this is not about an alledged proposed attack though, that in itself would have inexcusable

jonny72

Fratton Fred wrote:

Hang on a minute, these guys were civil servants in a stable democratic government, not a fascist state intent to wiping out an entire race.

We don't know what was in the memo, there are spurious reports of it being about Blair persauding Bush not to bomb Qatar. It could have been about a planned terrorist attack and he was leaking it to Al Qeada for all we know.

If you sign the official secrets act and you break it, you go to prison.

In the last 5 years, I really don't know any leaks that have 'compromised national security' do you? strangely enough though they all seem 'potentially damaging' to the image of the "stable democratic governments" in question. Not a coincidence.

Can I make a general assumption that you don't support the idea of whistleblowers? What if it was spurious reports of the Russian government about to poison someone, who does that protect?

Manic Moran

The Whistleblower Protection Act in the US is there to protect people who blow the whistle on illegal activities, not matters of policy. I submit that this is a reasonable standard.

Now, Akrasia is going to retort (as she has claimed a couple of times above) that this wasn't just a matter of policy, it was an illegal activity. Expressing an opinion is a matter of policy. Actually organising and carrying out a strike might be another issue.

I submit that the correct standard for a government employee should be the same as that which a soldier is held to for refusing orders: That the person knew that the activity was illegal, or that a person of reasonable sense and understanding knew that the activity was illegal. In the event of 'It might be, it might not be', the default is a presumption of legality. Given that there is no dominance of opinion of illegality (i.e., there's no indication that the comments ever even reached the level of 'conspiracy to commit'), the default thus should be that there is no whistleblower protection in this case.

NTM

Judt

If the order had been given, but it wasn't. If commanders can't discuss options without fear of having their heads lobbed off in the media, that's a problem.

sovtek

Judt wrote:

The Official Secrets Act is God. There's no other way to do it. If you leak official secrets, then you go to jail. During wartime they'd line you up against a wall and shoot you. Start making exceptions to that rule and you'll have spies turning up dead with their nuts shoved in their mouths and foreign powers firing our own missiles at us.

Can you name one single case where the Official Secrets Act was used to prosecute someone recklessly leaking information that put the country or people in danger?

Manic Moran

That's a pretty broad challenge, isn't it? I mean, I could go back to 1903 and look up older convictions, like Sarah Tisdall in 1983.

However, the most recent version of the OSA is 1989 I believe, so the first high-profile conviction was a chap named Michael John Smith, who got 20 years in 93 or so.

Richard Tomlinson was convicted for a year in 1997 for publishing a list of names of MI6 agents. He also tried writing a book, which didn't go down too well.

Apparently there is great difficulty in securing convictions as finding enough evidence that a particular person was the leak.

NTM

Akrasia

Manic Moran wrote:

Now, Akrasia is going to retort (as she has claimed a couple of times above) that this wasn't just a matter of policy, it was an illegal activity. Expressing an opinion is a matter of policy. Actually organising and carrying out a strike might be another issue.

Conspiracy to commit a terrorist act is illegal.
And the public have a right to know what their leaders are planning to carry out in their name. What if Bush is planning to Nuke Iran, wouldn't you like to know before it happens (so that perhaps he can be stopped) instead of waiting until after the mushroom cloud is already rising?

I submit that the correct standard for a government employee should be the same as that which a soldier is held to for refusing orders: That the person knew that the activity was illegal, or that a person of reasonable sense and understanding knew that the activity was illegal. In the event of 'It might be, it might not be', the default is a presumption of legality. Given that there is no dominance of opinion of illegality (i.e., there's no indication that the comments ever even reached the level of 'conspiracy to commit'), the default thus should be that there is no whistleblower protection in this case.

If there were no plans, then why did the judge say the leak endangered the lives of soldiers? I assume he wasn't making a general point about 'all leaks endanger soldiers' or saying that releasing false accusations puts soldiers at risk of retaliation from pissed off Al Jazeera employees.

You talk about the standards we should set for government employees. What about the standards we should set for the leaders of government?

Even discussing the idea of bombing a civilian Media station for political purposes (again) should be gross misconduct, just because it's said in secret doesn't make it any less appalling.
Oh, and by the way, I'm not a girl (sorry for ruining your fantasies)

Akrasia

Fratton Fred wrote:

But he was, apparantly, talked out of it. It was not going to happen. So why does this need to become public knowledge in the country that talked him out of it??

this is not about an alledged proposed attack though, that in itself would have inexcusable

Well, the U.S. have repeatedly attacked Al Jazeera. They shelled the Hotel palestine where they knew for a fact that it was being used as a headquarters for independent journalists and Al Jazeera. They bombed the Al Jazeera offices in Baghdad and in Kabul. They have also imprisoned several Al Jazeera reporters and are even keeping some of them at Guantanamo Bay and have banned the station from operating out of Iraq.

Liam Byrne

To me, ANYONE who exposes the ****e that goes on behind closed doors and in Bush's mind is worthy of support and appreciation.

OK, if the rules say that you get jailed for it, fair enough, it's worth being in jail.

Just imagine how many lives would have been saved if someone had had the guts to stand up a few years back and say "Bush is lying through his teeth; Iraq has no WMDs and Bush is making stuff up in order to justify an invasion that he's hell-bent on going ahead with no matter what".

If I'd had the facts back then, I'd have gladly leaked them, and I'd have put up with being in jail as a consequence considering the overall good that would have been achieved; for feck's sake, jail is nothing compared with the sentence that David Kelly got as a result of being ridiculed :mad:

Now, years later and showing the level of learning-from-mistakes that a 2-day-old infant would surpass, Bush wants to bomb even more innocent people to some self-indulgent unknown end.

Imagine the outrage that would result if someone in Iraq or elsewhere came out and said that they wanted to bomb Fox News because of their verbatim coverage of Bush's propaganda! They'd be labelled terrorists immediately! But if Bush does it, he's doing it to "save democracy :rolleyes: "

Fred pointed out that it wasn't going to happen, so there was no need for the public to know; Saddam's WMDs weren't going to happen either, but that didn't stop Bush letting all of the public "know" that b]he thought[/b they had WMDs. So fiction is OK to release to the public, but fact isn't ? Why the double-standards ?

Fair play to the two guys, that's what I say!

There's a reason why "The War Against Terrorism" (as imagined by Bush) has the acronym that it does......

T.W.A.T.

nacho libre

Judt wrote:

If the order had been given, but it wasn't. If commanders can't discuss options without fear of having their heads lobbed off in the media, that's a problem.

A leader of a Democratic country should not be even contemplating such a reckless and illegal attack which is an affront to Democracy. This is afterall a guy who is fond of saying they hate us for our freedom
Imagine if it came out Putin contemplated bombing the BBC for aring an interview with Boris Berezovsky. Would you welcome this disclosure?

Judt

nacho libre wrote:

A leader of a Democratic country should not be even contemplating such a reckless and illegal attack which is an affront to Democracy. This is afterall a guy who is fond of saying they hate us for our freedom
Imagine if it came out Putin contemplated bombing the BBC for aring an interview with Boris Berezovsky. Would you welcome this disclosure?

Only because he's our enemy The end of the cold war has made people too soft about these things. I miss the days when somebody would leak something that'd help the Soviet's and they'd spend the rest of their lives in jail, or have a coincidental car crash shortly afterwards.

In this particular case, yes, leaders should be allowed to discuss options without fear of recrimination. There's a difference between an option and an order. Secondly, if you break the OSA in certain parts, then it can be breached in others. How would you feel if somebody leaked nuclear launch codes?