Official Secrets and UK Publication Ban
David Keogh, a civil servant at the Cabinet Office, and Leo O'Connor, a research assistant to former Labour MP Tony Clarke, have been charged under the Official Secrets Act 1989 for the unauthorised disclosure of the memo (Keogh under section three, O'Connor under section five). When O'Connor gave the memo to Clarke, Clarke returned it to Downing Street. All news organisations in the United Kingdom have been warned by Attorney General Lord Goldsmith against further publication of information from the leaked memo; Goldsmith has mentioned the possibility of prosecution under section five of the Official Secrets Act 1989 if published details from the memorandum are considered to damage interests of the United Kingdom abroad. On 29 November 2005, Keogh and O'Connor appeared in Bow Street magistrates' court in central London. Following a 15 minute hearing the case was adjourned until 10 January. (CNN) On the 10 May 2007, Keogh was found guilty on two counts of making a "damaging disclosure" by revealing the memo and was sentenced to 6 months in jail. He was also ordered to pay £5000 in costs to the prosecution. O'Connor was sentenced to 3 months in jail. (Reuters)
Boris Johnson, the Conservative MP for Henley, editor of The Spectator and a supporter of the war, has stated that he will publish the memorandum if he receives a copy of it in the hope it will put speculation about what Bush may or may not have actually said to rest. Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, made a similar promise on the 25 November edition of Have I Got News For You (recorded the previous day) in an exchange between Johnson and himself.
The trial judge made an order under Section 11 of the Contempt Of Court Act 1981, banning in perpetuity any connection in the UK media between the trial and Al Jazeera. "Any journalist will have to ensure in his own mind that they are not making an impermissible link", he said. There have been no U.K. reports linking the trial and remarks by David Blunkett on Channel 4 stating that "taking out" Al-Jazeera was discussed in a conversation with Tony Blair at the start of the Iraq war. Reporters Without Borders has condemned the ban .
In an appeal against the ban, logged by a group of UK Media companies, the lord chief justice Lord Phillips partly lifted this ban. The UK media will now be able to repeat previously published allegations, but it will still be illegal to suggest that these allegations accurately represented evidence given in secret during the trial. It will also be illegal to print a particular phrase uttered in open court by Keogh when he was asked about the document.
Read more about this topic: Al Jazeera Bombing Memo
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