DSM -- Retyped and original destroyed?

[Meeker Morgan]

That's the RW claim.

Please help me refute. Thank you.

[Goldmund]

1. No

The original still exists. He made a photocopy, returned the originals, re-typed it from the photocopy and then shredded the photocopy. Dig?

[ET Awful]

6. And he did so following strict instructions from attorneys for the paper

he worked for at the time.

[mzmolly]

2. The RW does not dispute the contents. The originals were destroyed

so the source was not outed.

[Dr Fate]

4. No, the originals were sent back to thier source- the UK govt.

The "originals" were never destroyed.

[mzmolly]

13. That's right!! The original "copies" were destroyed.

I was under the impression the RW was speaking about the photo copies of the originals. Sorry bout the confusion. My error.

[Dr Fate]

3. Original not destroyed- but sent back to the UK govt.

You are being lied to.

[Disturbed]

9. Rep Conyers is going to the UK.

While there he may interveiw the original source of the DSM docs and others that were at the meetings. This situation may seem like it is dead but I predict that more info will leak out, hopefully from the CIA rank and file. This may be a whole lot bigger than Watergate, after all Watergate was about a cover up of a 3rd rate break in, not lying to the Congress about false reason for an illegal invasion of a Sovereign Nation.

[deutsey]

5. UK gov't has confirmed the authenticity of the documents

Also: neither Bush nor Blair disputed their authenticity during their joint press conference. They tried to spin the relevance of DSM, in fact.

[killbotfactory]

7. The RW is full of poop, as usual.

originals are in back in the hands of the governement. He retyped a photocopy because it could have been used to identify the source of the leak.

[Scout1071]

8. Michael Smith, the reporter, made copies of the originals.

He then had a secretary re-type all of the notes from the originals on an old typewriter because markings on the originals could/would reveal his source.

Out of fear for a search warrant and his property being seized at both his workplace and home, he sent the originals back and destroyed the copies. He did not want the leak revealed.

It's well documented by both the Reporter and the attorneys at the newspaper that this was all done to protect the source and the newspaper.

[librechik]

10. He avoided doing a Sandy Berger

by never having the actual papers in his possession.

This is not an opportunity to claim falseness of the documents--there were many witnesses to this approved method of dealing with the material, and it was done this way after consultation with lawyers and editors.

[IndianaGreen]

11. The Sunday Times destroyed photocopies of the original

The original themselves were returned to its source. The reason for destroying the photocopies was to prevent the disclosure, by a process of elimination, of the identity of their source.

This is what the author of the article that accompanied the DSM revelation said on Tweety's show a couple of nights ago on MSNBC. The transcript should still be posted on the website.

[IndianaGreen]

12. Transcript of Michael Smith's interview on Hardball

GREGORY: Let me begin with new information that's come out about the Downing Street memo and your notes, your own reporting on this. It's come out that you destroyed some of your initial notes that supported the memo. Is that the case and why have you done that?

SMITH: We—I haven't destroyed any notes.

What happened was that, when I first received the first six batch—sorry—when I first received the batch of six documents back in September of last year, when I was working on “The Daily Telegraph,” I was under very strict orders from the lawyers as to how I should handle that. I had to photocopy the documents, send the originals back to whoever had sent them to me. That meant that the photocopy paper that the actual documents were now on was our property at “The Daily Telegraph” and therefore couldn't be taken away from us on that basis.

And then the lawyers, not me, the lawyers, insisted that a secretary typed up on a typewriter the actual text of the documents. And then, on the evening, as we went to press on the story, we actually shredded the photocopies of the documents. And the reason for that is that the source who had given them to us could have been identified by the particular copy of that document that they had by an elimination process. And we were anxious to protect the source.

GREGORY: But the bottom line is, the British government has never said the memo is not real or the content is wrong?

SMITH: No, they haven't, no. And all the embarrassment it's given them, they would rush immediately to say, this is rubbish, this is not a true document.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8301757/

[Meeker Morgan]

14. Thanks to all who answered.

I think I've got it straight now.