Investigative Journalist and Best-Selling Author
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Blair outside of Numbe 10
Downing Street Memo Links

This page details links to various other web sites containing information relevant to the Downing Street Memos.

If there are any other sites you feel should be linked to from here, please make contact.

Note: no responsibility is taken for the content or availability of sites linked to.

The TimesOnline webpage includes links to the text of all three documents leaked to me after I joined the Sunday Times and to all the stories we carried as a result.

»  The TimesOnline

This is the Daily Telegraph front page story on the original six documents leaked to me in September 2004.

»  The Daily Telegraph

This Daily Telegraph story uses the documents to track the advice given to Tony Blair by senior officials in the month leading up to the Crawford summit with President George W Bush in April 2002. It was not until I received the second batch of documents at the Sunday Times that it became clear that, despite all that advice, Blair had agreed at Crawford to back US plans for regime change in Iraq, something that was illegal under UK interpretation of international law.

»  The Daily Telegraph

The Downing Street Memo led to confirmation that the allies had begun the air war against Iraq in May 2002, shortly after the Crawford summit, without legal backing from either the UN or Congress, as I explained in this oped article for the LA Times.

»  The LA Times

This very good Christian Science Monitor piece examines my investigation of the secret air war in more detail.

»  Christian Science Monitor

This is an internet discussion held on the Washington Post website in which the paper's readers asked questions about the Downing Street Memos.

»  The Washington Post

An interview on the excellent US National Public Radio programme Fresh Air, hosted by Terry Gross, in which
we discussed the Downing Street Memos.

»  US NPR Interview

The failure of the Senate intelligence committee, under the then chairmanship of Republican Senator Pat Roberts, to hold a proper hearing into the administration's manipulation of intelligence ahead of the Iraq War is a measure of how easily democracy can be subverted. But the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, which is part of the Democratic leadership in the US Senate, did hold a hearing, with those giving evidence including Carl Ford, former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research and Paul Pillar, the former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia.

One of the key drivers for the hearing was the Downing Street Memo and the claim by Sir Richard Dearlove, then Chief of MI6, that the intelligence was being "fixed around the policy". As a result, Michael Smith was asked to provide evidence on the significance of the memos to the committee. This is his written evidence.

»  Written Evidence

A discussion of the Downing Street Memos on the US radio programme Open Source.

»  Open Source

There were a number of websites set up specifically to draw attention to the Downing Street Memos. downingstreetmemo.com was set up by six friends with no political axe to grind who were horrified at the evidence of how they were fooled into going to war with Iraq.

»  downingstreetmemo.com

AfterDowningStreet.org is more political in its outlook than downingstreetmemo.com. It is unashamedly on the progressive left of the Democrat Party. The organiser David Swanson has produced an extraordinary website which keeps its readers abreast of all the latest attempts to use the Downing Street Memos to impeach Bush.

»  AfterDowningStreet.org

The black humour in this amusing but worrying cartoon on the investigation into the illegal outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame draws attention to the strange attitudes to press freedom in 'the land of the free' and is one of a number produced by Mark Fiore which can be seen on his website.

»  Mark Fiore

Further Cartoons

The Downing Street Memos have also been the subject of a number of other US cartoons, many of them lampooning their own newpapers for failing to report the significance of the Memos.

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