reality-based educator

Isikoff and Hosenball over at NEWSWEEK say the "Bush wanted to bomb" Al-Jazeera story would have gone away pretty quickly if the British gov't hadn't threatened to use the Official Secrets Act on anybody else who revealed details from the Downing Street memo that allegedly transcribed Tony Blair's talking George Bush out of bombing the Arab TV network:

Nov. 30, 2005 - A British government crackdown on government leaks may have backfired by calling world attention to an ultrasensitive secret memo whose alleged contents have embarrassed President George W. Bush and strained relations between London and Washington. The document allegedly recounts a threat last year by Bush to bomb the head office of the Arabic TV news channel Al-Jazeera.

U.K. authorities consider the memo, described as minutes or a transcript of an April 16, 2004, White House meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, so diplomatically sensitive that Blair’s attorney general last week warned U.K. media by e-mail that they could face prosecution under the country's draconian Official Secrets Act if they reported on its contents. But all the legal threat appeared to do was call more attention to the still-mysterious document and, at a minimum, appear to confirm its existence.

Bush administration officials initially dismissed the memo’s allegations about Bush’s threat against Al-Jazeera as “outlandish.” U.S. officials later suggested that if Bush did talk with Blair about bombing Al-Jazeera, the president was only joking. Asked directly today about Bush's purported threat to bomb Al-Jazeera, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: "Any such notion that we would engage in that kind of activity is just absurd." McLellan did not respond to follow-up questions as to whether Bush actually said what the memo says he did.
But a senior official at 10 Downing Street, Blair’s official residence, who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, recently seemed to give credence to the Al-Jazeera threat. The official told NEWSWEEK London Bureau chief Stryker McGuire: "I don't think Tony Blair thought it was a joke."

One of the few journalists to claim to have had a detailed briefing on the memo’s contents—the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire—also says the document indicates that Blair took Bush’s threat so seriously he spent part of the meeting trying to dissuade Bush from attacking Al-Jazeera. The only significant leak so far of the document’s alleged content surfaced in the Daily Mirror, a tabloid known for its frequent criticism of the U.S. president. Last week, the Mirror reported that the memo detailed a discussion in which Bush told Blair he planned to bomb Al-Jazeera headquarters in Qatar. The satellite channel is celebrated in the Arab world for its popularity and influence but often reviled in Washington for its broadcasts of video messages by Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders.

The Bush-Blair meeting occurred as U.S. military forces were engaged in bitter fighting with Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah. According to the Mirror, Al-Jazeera had infuriated policymakers in both Washington and London by broadcasting what they saw as inflammatory pictures of the fighting from behind enemy lines, including images of dead U.S. soldiers.

But given that what the Daily Mirror knows and doesn't know about the document—its reporters have never actually seen a copy—it is likely the purported Al-Jazeera comment never would have gotten the attention it has had it not been for the British government's decision to invoke the Official Secrets Act.

...

Because of the Daily Mirror’s reputation for Bush-bashing and sometimes erratic fact-checking (the paper’s editor was fired after he approved publication of what turned out to be faked pictures showing British troops abusing detainees in Iraq), the paper’s initial report about the memo and Bush’s alleged threat against Al-Jazeera was largely dismissed or ignored—especially by U.S. media. But the Mirror’s allegations sparked an international uproar after U.K. Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith sent his e-mail to British editors last week warning them of possible prosecution if they published any more of the sensitive document’s contents. “If the attorney general hadn’t issued his warning, the story probably would have died,” one British media executive following the controversy said.

Now the suppressed document has become a cause célèbre: Maguire told the Frontline Club that bloggers and other publications from around the world have indicated a willingness to defy the U.K. government and publish the document in full—if they can only get their hands on it. A delegation of senior Al-Jazeera officials this week also visited London to investigate the seriousness of the threat against their network. Said Al-Jazeera’s director-general, Wada Khanfar: “We are taking [this allegation] very seriously because it concerns our very life and our organization. It concerns journalism as a whole and our audience all over the world so we are indeed very concerned about it … We came to London with many questions and were [looking] to find answers, but because of the attorney general’s warning against publishing the memorandum and the vague general statements that came from 10 Downing Street and the White House, we still do not know exactly what the context was nor do we do know many details aside from what has been published. So [far] we have not had any official communication from Downing Street nor the U.S. We have only heard general statements that did not really say much.”

The U.S. and the Brits are going to keep trying to cover the story up, but you eventually the whole story will leak out.

And of course if they had just come clean originally and told a plausible story about the memo (e.g., Bush was only kidding when he said he wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera - and besides, you should hear what he says about CBS!!!), I'm sure the whole thing would have pretty much blown over.

But instead they stonewalled and covered up and threatened people with the draconian Official Secrets Act and now they've managed to intrigue thousands of journalists and bloggers the world over about the story.

Stupid, really. But this is what happens when you're dealing with dishonest, nasty people whose first impulses are always to lie and/or attack opponents (or perceived opponents.)