FPF-fwd.: The Guardian - UKEnglish MPs leaked Bush plan to hit al-JazeeraTue Jan 10, 2006 07:28
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1682258,00.html?gusrc=rss
English MPs leaked Bush plan to hit al-Jazeera
· Transcript of meeting with Blair passed to US contact
· Official and aide already charged over document
David Leigh and Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday January 9, 2006 - The Guardian
Two Labour MPs have defied the Official Secrets Act by passing on the contents of a secret British document revealing how President George Bush wanted to bomb the Arabic TV station, al-Jazeera.
The document, a transcript of a meeting between Mr Bush and Tony Blair in April 2004 when the prime minister expressed concern about US military tactics in Iraq, is already the subject of an unprecedented official secrets prosecution in Britain, against an aide to one of the MPs and another man.
David Keogh, a Cabinet Office employee, is charged with leaking information damaging to international relations to Leo O'Connor, researcher to Tony Clarke, former MP for Northampton South. The two are due to appear in court tomorrow for committal hearings.
The information was then acquired by Mr Clarke, who in turn consulted his parliamentary colleague, Peter Kilfoyle. The two politicians decided to pass on the information to a contact in the US.
Mr Kilfoyle, MP for Liverpool Walton and a former defence minister, said last night: "It's very odd we haven't been prosecuted. My colleague Tony Clarke is guilty of discussing it with me and I have discussed it with all and sundry."
Asked if he had broken the act in the same alleged way as Mr Clarke's aide who is facing charges, he said: "I don't know. But I'd be very pleased if Her Majesty's finest approached me about it."
The two MPs decided in October 2004 to reveal the contents of the transcript of the Blair-Bush meeting to John Latham, a Democrat supporter living in San Diego, California. They hoped to influence the impending 2004 US election, Mr Kilfoyle said.
In San Diego, Mr Latham, 71, a retired electrical engineer and a "contributing member" to the Democrat National Committee, told the Guardian that the MPs also wanted him to send letters with the information to newspapers in Los Angeles and New York. At a meeting at the House of Commons, he had been introduced to Mr Clarke by Mr Kilfoyle. Mr Latham, a British expatriate, and Mr Kilfoyle had attended the same school.
Mr Latham said he had never met Mr Clarke before. He added: "He mentioned that the document was a transcript of a meeting in Washington DC between Bush and Blair. There had been a proposal to take military action against al-Jazeera at their headquarters in Qatar. This was defused by Colin Powell, US secretary of state, and Tony Blair."
Mr Latham decided not to write to US newspapers at the time, in October 2004. As a result, details of the Washington meeting between Mr Bush and Mr Blair remained secret for more than a year. Within days of the charges being brought against Mr Keogh and Mr O'Connor, the contents of the memo were, however, passed on again, this time to the Daily Mirror, which put them on its front page.
Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, unsuccessfully threatened other newspapers with the Official Secrets Act if they re-published the contents of the document.
Mr Kilfoyle told the Guardian that in May 2004, Mr Clarke - still a Labour MP - consulted him after he had received the transcript of the Bush-Blair meeting revealing Mr Bush's wish to bomb al-Jazeera.
"He told me what was in it," said Mr Kilfoyle. "He agonised and was very nervous. He decided the right thing to do was to return it." It was only after police arrested Mr O'Connor - Mr Clarke's aide - that the two politicians decided they should try to reveal the memo's contents in the US.
The Bush-Blair meeting took place when Whitehall officials, intelligence officers, and British military commanders were expressing outrage at the scale of the US assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, in which up to 1,000 civilians are feared to have died. Pictures of the attack shown on al-Jazeera had infuriated US generals. London was also arguing with Washington about the number of extra British troops to be sent to Iraq.
A second, Foreign Office document, separately leaked in May 2004, exposed misgivings within the British government over America's "heavy-handed" behaviour and tactics in Iraq. That memo said: "Heavy-handed US military tactics in Falluja and Najaf some weeks ago have fuelled both Sunni and Shi'ite opposition to the coalition, and lost us much public support inside Iraq."
[andend] - Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 - Story Url.: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1682258,00.html?gusrc=rss
Google - FPF/Jazeera - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/8xu94
RELATED: Killing Journalists? - "Don't Bomb Us"!
According to former 'BBC Chief News correspondent' Kate Adie - (fired because she was honest) - who twelve years ago also covered the last Gulf War, the Pentagon attitude is: "entirely hostile to the the free spread of information." - Of course the US kills journalists - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/bkzum
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WAR ON THE MEDIA: "DON'T BOMB US"
By Danny Schechter - Editor Mediachannel.org
For some time, Mediachannel.org and other outlets have been reporting on the Bush Administration's contempt for the media and its attempts to manage and spin coverage.
Writing in this week's Nation, John Nichols and Robert McChesney catalogue the various strategies that have been deployed, charging, "with its unprecedented campaign to undermine and, where possible, eliminate independent journalism, the Bush Administration has demonstrated astonishing contempt for the Constitution and considerable fear of an informed public."
But would it actually attempt to "take-out" media institutions and kill or otherwise silence journalists? Would it bomb a TV station? How far will this government go?
We know that other governments have shown little restraint. An Indonesian and a Russian journalist were poisoned on airplanes in high profile cases. Others have been "disappeared," killed, jailed and tortured. Groups like Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of reporters compile the cases and regularly call for justice.
WHY IS THE US MEDIA SO SILENT?
In our country, the Committee to Protect Journalists has played that role well with important documentation and action alerts. Each year, usually at a fancy hotel in New York, they also have a pricey fundraising dinner hosted by network anchors in tuxedos who give prestigious awards to gutsy journalists and freedom of the press advocates. All the big media companies buy tables and pat themselves on the back for upholding the first amendment. They make videos honoring the courage of media messengers. Unfortunately, those videos and their stories rarely get on the air on their networks. In my book The More You Watch The Less You Know, I derided the annual feel-good affair as "human rights for a night."
Why aren't these companies speaking out when other media organizations like Al Jazeera are threatened and attacked? What are they doing to demand independent inquiries into the killings of journalists and media staff? The toll in Iraq now stands at 93, and the Reuters bureau chief in Baghdad says the US military poses a bigger threat to newsgathering than the insurgents. (Reuters has bravely challenged the Pentagon to tell the truth!)
INVESTIGATE BOMB THREATS
And where is the ongoing investigation of the recently leaked information about President Bush's alleged desire to bomb Al Jazeera headquarters in Qatar? Al Jazeera offices had been attacked before in Afghanistan and Baghdad. One of their journalists has been killed and others jailed. Their staff and some media groups have protested but many media outlets are not following up or expressing outrage.
Did major media outlets tune out of the story because the White House dismissed it as "outlandish?
Jeremy Schahill writes: "Is the allegation "outlandish," as the White House claims? Or was it a deadly serious option? Until a news organization or British official defies the Official Secrets Act and publishes the five-page memo, we have no way of knowing. But what we do know is that at the time of Bush's White House meeting with Blair, the Bush Administration was in the throes of a very public, high-level temper tantrum directed against Al Jazeera. The Bush-Blair summit took place on April 16, at the peak of the first US siege of Falluja, and Al Jazeera was there to witness the assault and the fierce resistance.
"A day before Bush's meeting with Blair, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld slammed Al Jazeera in distinctly undiplomatic terms:
REPORTER: Can you definitively say that hundreds of women and children and innocent civilians have not been killed?
RUMSFELD: I can definitively say that what Al Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable.
REPORTER: Do you have a civilian casualty count?
RUMSFELD: Of course not, we're not in the city. But you know what our forces do; they don't go around killing hundreds of civilians. That's just outrageous nonsense. It's disgraceful what that station is doing.
"What Al Jazeera was doing in Falluja is exactly what it was doing when the United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001 and when US forces killed Al Jazeera's Baghdad correspondent, Tareq Ayoub, during the April 2003 occupation of Baghdad. Al Jazeera was witnessing and reporting on events Washington did not want the world to see."
APPEAL FROM AL JAZEEERA STAFFERS
Al Jazeera staffers now have a blog called "Don't bomb Us." - Url.: http://dontbomb.blogspot.com/
One staffer Yousef Al-Shouly writes: "My mother (78 years old) used to tell me before going to work "my son take care", but yesterday she asked me "is it true that they want to bomb your TV station? Don't go to work."
He did. Here are some pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23885066@N00/
Their staff staged a symbolic protest. They are aware that the Clinton Administration bombed the TV station in Belgrade and the Bush Administration did the same to the Iraq TV Headquarters in Baghdad. Al Jazeera demands that the British government disclose its secret document and confirm or deny the truth of the allegations. The Bush Administration must do the same.
In the USA, more subtle means are used to stop aggressive reporting. Bill Moyers describes the pressure that came down on his PBS show NOW in the new issue of Broadcasting & Cable. He is asked about bias, responding: "We were biased, all right-in favor of uncovering the news that powerful people wanted to keep hidden."
In the past, we know that low-powered radio stations in the US were shut down by the FC...il the agency changed its mind on the issue. We also know that our government runs TV stations to put out propaganda packaged as news. BBC has just launched an Arabic service with British government funds to compete with Al Jazeera.
TELL THE TRUTH CAMPAIGN
The time has come for the world media to denounce threats and actions by governments and media companies who squelch truth-telling. Truth is often a casualty of war and that's why we need the Mediachannel's "Tell The Truth About The War Campaign."
http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/1555
Please respond to this simple appeal posed by a journalist at Al Jazeera who with his colleagues has had to face down threats, incitement, putdowns, and indifference. Yousef Al-Shouly says powerfully:
"My colleagues and I need your support. So do Tayseer, Sami, Tareq, and Rashid's kids - we want to know the truth. Simply because we are men and women who bring you the news."
Danny Schechter is "blogger-in-chief" of Mediachannel.org. His new books "The Death of Media" and "When News Lies" explore media complicity in the Iraq War. See: http:www.newsdissector.org/store. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
Full story above - Url.: http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/11/con05452.html
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