Charges in Britain for Releasing Government Memo

Two British civil servants are being charged under Britain’s Official Secrets Act for allegedly leaking the government memo from April 16, 2004 which recounted the conversation in which Bush, either jokingly or seriously, supposedly proposed bombing al-Jazeera.

Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh is accused of passing it to Leo O’Connor, who formerly worked for former British lawmaker Tony Clarke. Both Keogh and O’Connor are scheduled to appear at London’s Bow Street Magistrates Court next week.

According to the Crown Prosecution Service, Keogh was charged with an offense under Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act relating to “a damaging disclosure” by a servant of the Crown of information relating to international relations or information obtained from a state other than the United Kingdom.

O’Connor was charged under Section 5, which relates to receiving and disclosing illegally disclosed information.

Let’s just say that it turns out Bush was joking. First of all, that’s a pretty odd joke for a president to make. Secondly, that would mean that the British government has sought charges against leakers of a document which revealed a joke made in terrible taste, while the American government does its best to shield leakers of the identify of a covert CIA operative working on WMD proliferation. Sigh.

And, you know, if it was just a joke, it’s a pretty coincidental one.

Al-Jazeera offices in Iraq and Afghanistan have been hit by U.S. bombs or missiles, but each time the U.S. military said they were not intentionally targeting the broadcaster.

In April 2003, an Al-Jazeera journalist was killed when its Baghdad office was struck during a U.S. bombing campaign. Nabil Khoury, a State Department spokesman in Doha, said the strike was a mistake.

In November 2002, Al-Jazeera’s office in Kabul, Afghanistan, was destroyed by a U.S. missile. None of the crew was at the office at the time. U.S. officials said they believed the target was a terrorist site and did not know it was Al-Jazeera’s office.

Just sayin’.