The Scary-Important Downing Street Memos: Insignificant and Fake? [Retracted]

Correction/Retraction: This story is all wrong. Reuters used a picture taken from a website and labled it a picture of the actual memos. So there seal just comes from a web-site's mock-up. (Actually, it's a picture of another report, an official one, mis-labled as a pic of the Downing Street memo.)

Thanks to Say Anything for ferring this out, and actually calling Reuters about it.

It's too early to call them fake. (It's also rather unnecessary to do so, as they're insignificant.)

But...

The reporter who got hold of these trivial memos -- reflecting the opinon of one left-wing Brit government bureaucrat (see what I mean about insignificant?) -- says he destroyed the originals, and had his secretary re-type the memos.

Why is still unclear. Perhaps so that handwritten notes-- which might compromise the source -- would not be displayed.

What's also unclear is that IF these are re-typed copies of destroyed originals, how come the re-typed copies bear an offical government seal at the top?

One can only speculate. Perhaps the seal was stamped on to make the non-originals look more authentic. But if that's the case, then the reporter involved was trying to mislead his readership, and that doesn't lend credence to the rest of his tale.

posted by Ace at 06:40 PM

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