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| Think at your own risk. |
| Friday, December 30, 2005 |
| Wizbangistan |
Paul at Wizbang apparently thinks he's got a scoop regarding the timing of the release of the documents underlying the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan's charge that the UK benefited from anti-terror information gleaned from the torture of persons subjected to Extraordinary Rendition (Paul's link, from Wikipedia).
Paul claims the left-wing blogosphere has "been had" and that the timing of the release of the documents today is suspiciously correlated to the pending release of the fired ambassador's book. Well first off, if the bloggers were duped, the British press was, too. We know that book timing matters, as the New York Times has demonstrated. And all that falls under the umbrella of press and media has an element of theatricality to it when it comes to the timing. (Case in point, everything Bob Woodward...) But in this case, the persons most manipulating the timeline appear to be the British government. I'm on the email list of "foreign" bloggers who have received copies of these memos, which the Blair admin has declared verboten to publish inside the UK. The documents consist of confidential telegrams between then Ambassador Murray and the British foreign office, outlining his concerns about U.K. and U.S. policy in the war on terror, plus, in the words of the BlairWatch Project: "a copy of legal advice the Foreign Office sought, to see if they were operating within the Law in accepting torture intelligence, and according to Michael Wood the FCO legal adviser; it is fine, as long as it is not used as evidence."
Jack Straw and Tony Blair repeatedly have denied being a party to renditions or torture, and officially, the British government has taken a position that they oppose the practices (even feinting with fake outrage over the supposed use of UK facilities to move the CIA renditions program through Europe).
According to BlairWatch, the publication of Mr. Craig's book has been held up as legal wrangling over whether their publication constitutes a violation of Britain's strict secrecy laws rages:
The Foreign Office has had the draft of Craig's book for clearance for over 3 months now, and they are doing everything they can to try and prevent him from publishing his side of the story. Their latest attempt to cover their own backs was to inform him, the night before Christmas Eve, that these two documents cannot be published, and that he was to return or destroy all copies immediately. And Craig explains the timing of the release this way:
I am in discussion with the FCO over what I am and am not allowed to publish in my book. The FCO is seeking to gut the book of all evidence of complicity with the Uzbek regime.
With Bliar cornered on extraordinary rendition, they are particularly anxious to suppress all evidence of our complicity in obtaining intelligence from Uzbek torture.
In particular, they have demanded I do not publish the attached documents, and that I hand over all copies of them.
The obvious answer to this is to post these documents as widely on the web as possible. This is also potentially very valuable in establishing that I am not attempting to make money from these documents - you don't have to buy my book to see them, they are freely available. If you buy the book, you are only paying for the added value of my thoughts.
This will only work if we can get the [documents] very widely posted, including on sites in the US and elsewhere outside the UK … there is a chance that those who … post this stuff will get threatened under the Official Secrets Act. So which is it: a desire to stick a finger in the eye of the Blair administration by releasing documents he wants sealed or a clever ruse to use lefty bloggers to sell books? Paul makes the case that because Craig has gotten extensive publicity for his charges, and because he has made them widely, that proves that his claims of censorship are bunk... and therefore, what? Craig's story isn't true? Well, Paul, Britain's Official Secrets law doesn't cover Craig's complaints and press appearances, it covers the release of documents, which had not before been put into the public bloodstream.
Craig himself concedes that the story isn't new (It has also been on "60 Minutes') and he's released other documents pertinent to the Uzbek-U.S.-U.K. nexus story that are neither new nor secret. But how does that change the import of the story? Seymour Hersh's revelations certainly helped sell his latest book (including to me) and the same can be said of every revelatory work of non-fiction, whether from Bob Woodward or from Richard Clark. The fact that the author is using the blogosphere to get the word out -- and in this case, to scoop his own book by releasing the documents prior to publication -- in my opinion neither adds nor subtracts from the substance.
It is the Blair government that has thrown down the gauntlet at the press, starting with the Al-Jazeera memos affair, demanding that media not release memoranda damaging to the government. By Craig's having done so in this way, we simply now know a bit more about what the British and American governments have been up to. And I'd rather know more than less. I don't see how Paul's case damages Craig's...
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Tags: News, Blair, U.K., War, Terrorism, Torture |
posted by JReid @ 1:37 PM   |
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