Court hears how ‘personal’ Bush-Blair note was ‘leaked’
A Cabinet Office communications officer went on trial yesterday, charged with leaking a secret record of talks on Iraq between Tony Blair and George Bush to an MP’s researcher.
David Keogh passed the “secret and personal” record of the talks to his friend Leo O’Connor at a Northampton dining club, the jury at the Old Bailey was told.
Mr Keogh, 50, and Mr O’Connor, 44, from Northampton, are charged under the Official Secrets Act of 1989. Mr Keogh denies two charges of making a damaging disclosure of part of a government document in his possession as a Crown servant without lawful authority. Mr O’Connor, then a researcher for the former Northampton South Labour MP Tony Clarke, denies a charge of making a damaging disclosure of a document passed to him illegally.
David Perry QC, for the prosecution, said the record of the meeting between Mr Blair and Mr Bush in Washington on 16 April 2004 was sensitive and was concerned with the US and UK policy towards Iraq.
He said: “This document contained information about this nation’s defence interests and this nation’s international relations.”
Mr Perry said the memo, drawn up by Matthew Rycroft, Mr Blair’s private secretary for foreign affairs, was marked “secret and personal” on each page. He told the jury the note was to be sent to specific people in the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the British ambassador to the US, the United Nations in New York and the British representative in Iraq.
“Mr O’Connor put the copy into the parliamentary papers of the MP for whom he worked, Anthony Clarke … on about 28th May 2004 … The police became aware of the existence of the document and recovered it from Mr Clarke the following day,” he told the jury.
He added: “We live in a democratic society, not the Wild West. It is not for people to decide they are going to be the sheriff in town.”
The case continues.
Have Your Say: Court hears how ‘personal’ Bush-Blair note was ‘leaked’
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report here.
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 4:25 pm and is filed under War & Terrorism News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Translations
Loading ...Related News
- Memo leak was to ‘reveal truth’
- Civil servant guilty over Bush-Blair memo leak
- Diana inquest coroner to sum up
- Blair went to war on a lie, law lords told
- De Menezes shooting trial jury out
Email This Page To A Friend
Latest Headlines
- More People are Catching on to Corporate Media Lies
- Bisphenol A Chemical in Plastic Bottles Harms Children, Feds Conclude
- Class War Bonfire Night 2008
- US out of Iraq by … “2011″
- ‘MI6 & Weapons of Mass Destruction’
- RIPA Surveillance Law Misused On Merseyside
- Britain: Security Service “facilitated” torture of Guantánamo detainee
- Blackwater-linked firm to train Canadian troops
- Pledge: Refuse To Comply With ID Scheme
- Why can’t energy firms pick up the bill?
More Breaking News
Archive
