"In November 2005 we produced a special report "Shafting al Jazeera," based on a leaked memo from the office of Prime Minister Blair of a conversation between him and President George.W Bush.

Just about now, the British civil servant David Keogh, and political researcher Leo O'Connor are due to go on trial under the Official Secrets Act, for allegedly leaking the document.

We forecast that the story would "run and run, well into this century," but we got that wrong, because the British Government threatened dire consequences to any of the media that published the leaked memo, which of course we have not seen.

Various explanations of Bush's comments have been offered and rebutted, as can be seen in our background below.

BACKGROUND

Extract from "The War On Al Jazeera" from "The Nation"

Nothing puts the lie to the Bush Administration's absurd claim that it invaded Iraq to spread democracy throughout the Middle East more decisively than its ceaseless attacks on Al Jazeera, the institution that has done more than any other to break the stranglehold over information previously held by authoritarian forces, whether monarchs, military strongmen, occupiers or ayatollahs. The United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001, shelled the Basra hotel where Al Jazeera journalists were the only guests in April 2003, killed Iraq correspondent Tareq Ayoub a few days later in Baghdad and imprisoned several Al Jazeera reporters (including at Guantánamo), some of whom say they were tortured. In addition to the military attacks, the US-backed Iraqi government banned the network from reporting in Iraq.

Then in late November came a startling development: Britain's Daily Mirror reported that during an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, George W. Bush floated the idea of bombing Al Jazeera's international headquarters in Qatar. This allegation was based on leaked "Top Secret" minutes of the Bush-Blair summit. British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has activated the Official Secrets Act, threatening any publication that publishes any portion of the memo (he has already brought charges against a former Cabinet staffer and a former parliamentary aide). So while we don't yet know the contents of the memo, we do know that at the time of Bush's meeting with Blair, the Administration was in the throes of a very public, high-level temper tantrum directed against Al Jazeera. The meeting took place on April 16, at the peak of the first US siege of Falluja, and Al Jazeera was one of the few news outlets broadcasting from inside the city. Its exclusive footage was being broadcast by every network from CNN to the BBC.

WIKIPEDIA ON AL JAZEERA
On April 8, 2003 Al Jazeera's office in Baghdad was hit by a U.S. missile, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub and wounding another.[48] Al Jazeera, in order to avoid coming under US fire, had informed the U.S. of the office's precise coordinates prior to the incident. Dima Tareq Tahboub, the widow of Tareq Ayyoub, continues to seek justice for her husband's death and has among other things written for the Guardian and participated in a documentary broadcast on Al Jazeera English.
On January 30, 2005 the New York Times reported that the Qatari government, under pressure from the Bush administration, was speeding up plans to sell the station. However, as of 2007, the station/network has not been sold and it is unclear whether there are still any plans to do so.

Al Jazeera bombing memo
On November 22, 2005, the UK tabloid The Daily Mirror published a story claiming that it had obtained a leaked memo from 10 Downing Street saying that U.S. President George W. Bush had considered bombing Al Jazeera's Doha headquarters in April 2004, when U.S. Marines were conducting a contentious assault on Fallujah.
In light of this allegation, Al Jazeera has questioned whether it has been targeted deliberately in the past - Al Jazeera's Kabul office was bombed in 2001 and another missile hit its office in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq, killing correspondent Tariq Ayoub. Both of these attacks occurred subsequent to Al Jazeera's disclosure of the locations of their offices to the United States.

Details of the memo
The five-page memorandum is said by the Mirror to be a record of the meeting between the two leaders which took place on 16 April 2004 at the height of Operation Vigilant Resolve, an assault on Fallujah by U.S. Marines and Iraqi security forces. Al Jazeera reporters were in the city providing video footage of the conflict. The day before the meeting, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described Al Jazeera's coverage as "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable." Al Jazeera reporters defended their live broadcasts of the civilian casualties by stating "the pictures do not lie".
The White House has dismissed the allegations made in the article. Given that Qatar is an ally of the United States and the United Kingdom in the Iraq War, many commentators have speculated that even if the reports of the memorandum are accurate, they may simply be recording a statement which the President did not intend to be taken seriously. A White House official told CNN "We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response," and a Pentagon official called the Daily Mirror report "absolutely absurd."[3] A BBC News correspondent has suggested that if President Bush did indeed make the comments they were intended as "some kind of joke."[4]
Writing in The Independent on 28 November Andreas Whittam Smith countered, observing that "official note takers don't normally record jokes". He also pointed to the alleged leaker's "25 years' experience of tough postings in place such as Islamabad and Khartoum, ... often involved in intelligence work" and concluded that he "must have felt exceptionally troubled by what he was seeing."[5]
According to a report in The Daily Telegraph[6]:

"People who have seen the document say the real reason that it is being suppressed by the Government is because it contains a potentially damaging private discussion between the two leaders about the controversial United States attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah last year."

The report also stated that, when questioned about the matter at the Commonwealth conference in Malta, Blair branded the claims a "conspiracy theory."
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 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 organizations 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[7]. On 29 November 2005, Keogh and O'Connor appeared in Bow Street magistrates' court in central London


FROM CBS NEWS 22 NOVEMBER 2005:

Did Bush Want Al Jazeera Bombed?
(LONDON, Nov. 22, 2005)
London Paper Alleges Blair Urged Bush Not To Bomb Arab TV Station

"If the report is correct then this would be both shocking and worrisome not only to Al-Jazeera but to media organizations across the world," it said.

The network said that if true the report would "cast serious doubts" on the Bush administration's explanations of earlier incidents involving Al-Jazeera journalists and the American military.

An Al-Jazeera journalist died in April 2003 when the channel's Baghdad office was struck during the U.S. bombing campaign. The State Department said the strike was a mistake.

Al-Jazeera's office in Kabul, Afghanistan, was destroyed by a U.S. missile in November 2002. None of the crew was inside. U.S. officials said they believed the target was a terrorist site and did not know it was Al-Jazeera's office.

Britain's tabloids are known for their aggressive, but not always accurate, reporting. The Daily Mirror lost some of its credibility after it printed photos last year that purported to show British troops abusing Iraqi detainees. The pictures turned out to be fake, the Mirror apologized and its top editor resigned.

The document was described as a transcript of a conversation between Bush and Blair.

Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh is accused of passing it to Leo O'Connor, who formerly worked for former British lawmaker Tony Clarke. Both Keogh and O'Connor are scheduled to appear at London's Bow Street Magistrates Court next week.

Peter Kilfoyle, a former defense minister in Blair's government, called for the document to be made public.

"I think they ought to clarify what exactly happened on this occasion," he said. "If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and it raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn't embedded with coalition forces," the newspaper quoted Kilfoyle as saying.

Sir Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats, said that, if true, the memo was worrying.

"If true, then this underlines the desperation of the Bush administration as events in Iraq began to spiral out of control," he said. "On this occasion, the prime minister may have been successful in averting political disaster, but it shows how dangerous his relationship with President Bush has been."