The British government should publish the minutes of a meeting where George Bush said he wanted to bomb the Arab satellite station al-Jazeera, regardless of the consequences, a tabloid journalist at the heart of the story has said.
The government should “be courageous” and publish a secret memo on president George Bush’s alleged desire to bomb an independent TV channel based in an allied country says the journalist at the centre of the story.
Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the London Daily Mirror, says the memo should be released, despite the personal damage it could do to Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Maguire intimates that the top-secret memo also contained embarrassing revelations about Blair’s role in the build-up to the devastating US-led attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in April 2004.
“We all know it exists, we know what’s in it, the only way to resolve this is to be courageous and publish it in full”, Maguire told an audience at the Frontline Club in west London in early December.
Maguire was prevented from saying more by the possibility of being prosecuted for breaching the Official Secrets Act — and because of “professional considerations — I may want to publish it in future!”
He added: “Is someone morally culpable for an act that has not yet been taken, but has been planned? Absolutely. Publish the memo so we can have this debate, so we can scrutinise every word, so we can know what is going on.
He added: “This shows the sort of democracy that George Bush wants. Without a prime source, which I can’t unmask, we would not have known about this.”
Possible test case on governments & free expression
Maguire told the audience that the Mirror did not possess a copy of the five-page document, but its contents had been verified by a reliable source who was “one of the few people to have read it”. The document was “top secret” and would only have been available to Blair, his close circle of advisers, including military and intelligence chiefs, he confirmed.
Maguire also appeared live on al-Jazeera with the station’s director general Wadhah Khanfar, who said if the station got hold of a transcript they would broadcast it. He said: “We want all of the material relevant to al-Jazeera published. It could be a test case on how the governments handle freedom of expression for the future. If it was leaked and we could verify it, we would publish it without question.”
He said that despite all the criticism they had attracted from the US administration, al-Jazeera never thought they would be directly targeted.
Publication blocked by Official Secrets Act
Maguire said he felt the government’s use of the Official Secrets Act to block further publication was the “best confirmation of the story possible”. He added that he originally heard about George Bush’s outburst before two men were charged under the Act for leaking the document.
After Maguire had verified the contents of the memo he went to the government for a comment, which was not forthcoming — on or off the record. “The next day they rolled out the artillery, the lawyers working for the Attorney General literally giving us 45 minutes to give certain undertakings or they would put an injunction on us.
“We assured them that we did not have the memo itself and that if we were going to publish any more details that we would contact them before we did so, which in my opinion is standard journalistic practice. We think that they then hoped it would be buried on page 19 or forgotten about.
“The White House said it was ‘outlandish’ and I’m prepared to agree with them… there’s nothing more outlandish than the president of the US threatening to bomb an independent TV station in a friendly country.”
Al-Jazeera’s Khanfah said that the criticism his station has received since its launch in 1996 proved they were doing their job correctly. “Our reporters maintain a code of ethics and professionalism at all times. The Americans have said that our reporters use the phrase ‘the enemy’ to describe their forces in Iraq. This is not true. A commentator on our channel may use this language, but our reporters never do.”
He added that al-Jazeera´s broadcast of video messages from Osama bin Laden was done selectively. He said: “We scrutinise every angle and ask: what is of news value here? From a 40-minute tape we may broadcast three minutes, or nothing at all.”
Maguire told the audience they had been inundated with offers from people prepared to take the risk of publishing the document. “But we haven’t got it, and if we did they would have to get in a queue.
“If we did try to publish it my feeling is that the government would go to court and get an injunction on us, and once they have been put on they are very hard to lift, which is why we agreed to the undertakings”
Communication breakdown, fracture in the government, or a desire to play down significance?
According to the US media US officials have claimed the president was joking when he said he wanted to bomb the TV channel. Maguire said: “That official was trying to play down the significance of the event. Since then I have spoken to someone who was in a position to know that if it was a joke, it wasn’t taken as such by Tony Blair.”
The revelations followed extensive media coverage of a memoir by a former British ambassador to the US which accused Blair of weakly complying with Bush’s political & military demands. This has led some to suggest that the leaking of a document that allegedly shows Blair standing up to Bush might have been officially sanctioned.
Maguire said: “There was no sign that they [Blair’s office] wanted it released. We had three theories as to why they didn’t prevent the original publication. Firstly that there was a communication breakdown. We know this government can be fractured, and one hand doesn’t know what the other was doing. Or secondly, it could have been that they didn’t believe we had what we had.
“Or thirdly that they thought they could get through it by playing it down and pooh poohing it, but when Washington woke up to it, they were furious.”
