A British civil servant was jailed for six months on Thursday for leaking an “extremely sensitive” memo detailing talks on Iraq between United States President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Communications officer David Keogh was found guilty at London’s Central Criminal Court on Wednesday of unlawfully passing the four-page document to Leo O’Connor, a researcher for the anti-war Labour MP Anthony Clarke.
The memo, details of which were published in British newspapers in 2005, allegedly recounted how Blair dissuaded Bush from attacking the Qatar headquarters of satellite television news channel al-Jazeera.
The court was told the four-page document was so sensitive that much of the trial had to be heard behind closed doors in the interests of national security.
O’Connor, who was found guilty of a similar charge to Keogh, was jailed for three months.
Sentencing the pair Thursday, Judge Richard Aikens told Keogh: “Without consulting anyone, you decided on your own that it was in the best interest of the United Kingdom that this letter should be disclosed.
“Your reckless and irresponsible action in disclosing this letter when you had no right to could have cost the lives of British citizens.
“This disclosure was a gross breach of trust of your position as a Crown servant. You are someone who had been specially vetted to deal with classified documents to the highest degree of sensitivity.”
He told O’Connor he had also put British lives at risk.
The talks between Blair and Bush detailed in the memo took place in Washington in April 2004, in the run-up to a handover of power to Iraqis by the US-led coalition authority.
Keogh, who thought the memo exposed the US president as a “madman”, believed it could raise questions in Britain’s lower chamber House of Commons and wanted it passed on to US presidential hopeful John Kerry, the court heard.
He copied the memo from a confidential fax which came through to the Cabinet Office while he was on duty, before passing it to O’Connor, who placed the memo in Clarke’s constituency office, prosecution lawyers claimed.
The lawmaker then handed it into Downing Street, Blair’s London office. An investigation was launched, leading to the charges and trial.
Giving evidence, O’Connor said he left the memo for his boss so he would return it to the appropriate authorities.
Keogh’s lawyer, Rex Tedd, has said his client had not acted for a political motive but had been following his conscience.
O’Connor’s lawyer, John Farmer, said his client had been a lifelong Labour Party member and was “not a man engaged in subversive politics”.
“Neither this document nor anything of its nature was actively sought by him,” he said.
Keogh, O’Connor and Clarke had all been members of a now-defunct political dining club in Northampton, east central England, where they all lived. ‒ AFP