Downing Street memos are forgeries?
Fake but accurate?
The left tries a forgery again and it blows up in their faces.
Hat tips to Glenn the puppy blender at
Instapundit who links to these two blog posts.
The first is from Captain Ed at
Captains Quarters:
Did Lucy Ramirez Find The Downing Street Memos?
The media and the Leftists have had a field day with the Downing Street memos that they claim imply that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence on WMD in order to justify the attack on Iraq. Despite the fact that none of the memos actually say that, none of them quote any officials or any documents, and that the text of the memos show that the British government worried about the deployment of WMD by Saddam against Coalition troops, Kuwait and/or Israel, the meme continues to survive.
Until tonight, however, no one questioned the authenticity of the documents provided by the Times of London. That has now changed, as Times reporter Michael Smith admitted that the memos he used are not originals, but retyped copies (via LGF and CQ reader Sapper):
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.
The Lucy Ramirez reference is regarding another "memo" scandal that happened last year just before the Presidential election. Captain Ed continues:
Readers of this site should recall this set of circumstances from last year. The Killian memos at the center of CBS' 60 Minutes Wednesday report on George Bush' National Guard service supposedly went through the same laundry service as the Downing Street Memos. Bill Burkett, once he'd been outed as the source of the now-disgraced Killian memos, claimed that a woman named Lucy Ramirez provided them to him -- but that he made copies and burned the originals to protect her identity or that of her source.
The second link that Glen links to is this one from Marc at
USS Neverdock
Britain - Downing Street Memos Fake
The AP reports that the Sunday Times reporter, Michael Smith, now admits he typed the memos himself and burned the originals in order to protect the identity of the source. Yeah, right.
And some more:
So, an un-named source, without seeing the orginals, says the content "appeared authentic". Have journalistic standards slipped so far, that the Sunday Times accepted Smith's story, without asking to see the original documents, using an un-named source to verify them and whose best opinion was they "appeared authentic"? This being the case, all of the AP's assertions in the rest of the article are baseless and meaningless.
If all this sounds familiar, it should, Dan Rather of CBS, had to resign after using these same tactics in an attempt to smear Bush just before the last US presidential elections. And CBS had to issue and apology. Time for Smith to go and the Sunday Times to apologize.
After pounding the Downing Street memo drum, watch the media now play the fake but accurate horn.
And a bit more:
Smith appears to be tripping up here. He says he returned the originals because they were on government paper and therefore government property. So, photocopying a page out of a book makes the words no longer the property of the author?
Now let me get this straight. Dan Rather's forged documents were typed up on a computer using the default setting of Microsoft Word. And now Smith wants us to believe that his legal secretary used "an old fashioned typewriter" to forge the Downing Street memos? When was the last time you saw an old fashioned typewriter, let alone use one? Why would you want to type them up on a typewriter instead of a computer? Was Smith trying to make them look more authentic? Was he trying to avoid his own Rathergate?
Newsflash -- Moonbats hit bottom, start digging.
Film at 11:00
Posted by DaveH at June 19, 2005 11:23 AM