Downing Street Mock-up

It turns out that the Downing Street Memos that were released were not exactly what they purported to be. They were hand-typed copies of copies of originals.

Huh?

Some people have already pronounced that the memos are complete fabrications. Others think that they must be real because there is so little to them. Yet more think that they are real because no one in power has denounced them as fakes.

I agree that they probably are real. There are several differences between these memos and the Killian memos that were the center of the Rathergate story. The author of these memos was supposed to have written the memos for his own personal files and has since died. The Downing Street Memos are supposed to be part of the official record. The White House could not confirm or deny what someone who is now dead wrote in private. The British government can confirm or deny what is part of the official (although secret) record.

There are a couple of questions and a few possibilities. Why make a copy of a copy and why use a manual typewriter? This makes the memos impossible to verify. Does this really circumvent British law about secret records?

Now, the possibilities: 1) The memos are fake but are close to real events. 2) The memos are real but slightly altered. In either case, why bother? Because the only way to answer them would be to make the full records public and let reporters crawl through all of the records looking for an off-word that would indicate deception. If I was a conspiracy theorist I would believe that someone in the Left did exactly this - created or doctored memos in order to open up the real secret records.

But I'm not so I will believe that the memos are real and probably un-altered. Of course, there is no way to know for sure...