Two charged for leaking UK government memo to paper News
Two charged for leaking UK government memo to paper

[JURIST] Two men have been charged for leaking a UK government memo that led to a newspaper report Tuesday that said UK Prime Minister Tony Blair [official profile] had talked President Bush out of bombing the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera [official website]. The memo, which reportedly was a transcription of a conversation between the two leaders in the spring of 2004, was the centerpiece of a news story [text] in the UK's Daily Mirror. David Keogh, a civil servant in the Blair government, and Leo O'Connor, a previous employee of former MP Tony Clarke, were both charged by the Crown Prosecution Service [official website] under the Official Secrets Act [text] for leaking the document. Keogh allegedly passed the memo on to O'Connor before Clarke later returned it to No. 10 Downing St. [official website]. According to the Mirror report, sources differed over whether Bush was serious when he made the comments. Both Blair and Bush's office refused to comment on the memo. Some in the UK, including former defense minister Peter Kilfoyle, called for the memo to be released to the public. NBC News has more.