The minutes were meant to be kept confidential and were headed "This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents." It deals with the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, and comes at a point at which it becomes clear to those attending, that US President George W. Bush intended to remove Saddam Hussein from power by force.

The minutes run through the military options and then consider the political strategy in which an appeal for support from the international community and from domestic opinion would be most likely to be positively received. It suggests that an ultimatum

Ultimatum

An ultimatum is a demand whose fulfillment is requested in a specified period of time and which is backed up by a threat to be followed through in case of noncompliance. An ultimatum is generally the final demand in a series of requests...

 for Saddam to allow back United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 weapons inspectors be issued, and that this would help to make the use of force legal. Tony Blair is quoted as saying that the British public would support regime change

Regime change

"Regime change" is the replacement of one regime with another. Use of the term dates to at least 1925.Regime change can occur through conquest by a foreign power, revolution, coup d'état or reconstruction following the failure of a state...

 in the right political context.

The most controversial paragraph is a report of a recent visit to Washington by head of the Secret Intelligence Service

Secret Intelligence Service

The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...

 Sir Richard Dearlove (known in official terminology as 'C'):

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD

Weapons of mass destruction

A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...

. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC

United States National Security Council

The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...

 had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

The British analysis of US policy is also stated elsewhere in the minutes:

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell

Colin Powell

Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...

 this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1205

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1205, adopted unanimously on November 5, 1998, after recalling all resolutions on Iraq, particularly resolutions 1154 and 1194 concerning its weapons programme, the Council condemned Iraq's decision to cease co-operation with the United Nations Special...

 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

The main sections covering the ultimatum are:

The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

...John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.

The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.

The minutes also outlines potential risks of an invasion of Iraq:

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary."

Proponents of an inquiry

In the United States, proponents of a formal congressional inquiry say that the minutes, along with testimonies from credible witnesses, shed sufficient doubt on the actions of the Bush Administration to warrant a formal inquiry. In particular, they say that the minutes indicate that the Administration was determined to go to war with Iraq prior to considerations of legality, and with full knowledge that, at best, "the case was slim." And furthermore that they selected and exaggerated intelligence so as to confirm

Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.David Perkins, a geneticist, coined the term "myside bias" referring to a preference for "my" side of an issue...

 their policy and developed a plan to manipulate public opinion. Also, proponents say that the contents (such as "Military action was now seen as inevitable.") and the date of the memo, 23 July 2002, contradicts the official White House position that President Bush did not finally decide to carry out the invasion of March 2003 until after Secretary of State

United States Secretary of State

The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...

 Colin L. Powell presented the administration's case to the United Nations Security Council

United Nations Security Council

The United Nations Security Council is one of the principal organs of the United Nations and is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of...

, in a speech on 5 February 2003. They also say that the minutes are dated at a time when Bush stated that "we haven't made any decisions on Iraq, but all options are on the table."

Another paragraph has been taken to show that Geoff Hoon

Geoff Hoon

Geoffrey "Geoff" William Hoon is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament for Ashfield from 1992 to 2010...

 believed the timing of the war was intended to influence American elections:

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

It has been said that some of those present at the meeting believed that Iraq might possess weapons of mass destruction

Weapons of mass destruction

A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...

 (WMD) "capacity". However, the minutes explicitly state that the capability was less than that of Libya, Iran, and North Korea, and that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors.

U.S. Congress

On 5 May 2005, Congressman John Conyers

John Conyers

John Conyers, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1965 . He is a member of the Democratic Party...

 sent a letter to President Bush signed by 89 of his colleagues demanding an explanation of the revelations in the memo. No specific White House response to the letter was ever made publicly. In response to the Bush Administration's refusal to answer the congressional delegation's questions, Conyers et al. have given serious consideration to sending a fact-finding mission to the UK.

Conyers initially requested 100,000 signatures from citizens (a petition) to request that President Bush answer the questions in his letter. The letter has been getting between 20,000 and 25,000 signatures a day, which was boosted by MoveOn.org joining the campaign on 9 June. By 13 June 2005, the letter had received over 540,000 signatures from citizens, and more congressmen had signed on, bringing the total to 94. As of 16 June 2005, over 100 congressmen had signed the letter, including then-Minority Leader

Minority leader of the United States House of Representatives

The House Minority Leader is one of the party leaders of the United States House of Representatives. This title is currently held by Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi of California....

 Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi is the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives and served as the 60th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011...

.

On 16 June 2005, Conyers presided over a hearing or forum on the Downing Street memo in a basement room in the Capitol where Joseph C. Wilson

Joseph C. Wilson

Joseph Charles Wilson IV is a former United States diplomat best known for his 2002 trip to Niger to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium; his New York Times op-ed piece, "What I Didn't Find in Africa"; and the subsequent "outing" of his wife...

, Ray McGovern

Ray McGovern

Raymond McGovern is a retired CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven U.S. presidents over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House for many of them.-Early life:...

 and Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Lee Miller Sheehan is an American anti-war activist whose son, U.S. Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, was killed by enemy action during the Iraq War. She attracted national and international media attention in August 2005 for her extended anti-war protest at a makeshift camp outside President...

 among others testified. The House Republican leadership did not allow Conyers to use an official hearing room and compelled him to hold the hearing in the basement because the hearing was unofficial.

Internet

The importance of the Sunday Times publication for the US was first analyzed by smintheus at Daily Kos and MYDD on the night of 30 April 2005. By the next morning the document had become a major story at Daily Kos, where Congressman Conyers learned of its existence.

A website, www.downingstreetmemo.com, was created on 13 May to inform the public about the memo and provide context. The website also has a blog dedicated to discussing issues surrounding the memo, called downingstreetmemo.blogspot.com.

On 30 May 2005, in a "blogswarm" fueled by the memo, hundreds of blogs joined together to form the Big Brass Alliance in support of After Downing Street.
On 1 June 2005 a targeted media campaign called 'Awaken the Mainstream Media' began jointly at Daily Kos and downingstreetmemo.com. Every day it listed new contact information for three news outlets, so that readers could contact them to urge them to provide better coverage of the issues around the Downing Street memo and other released documents.

Pundits

On 18 May, conservative pundit and former Reagan Administration

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

 advisor Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as a co-founder of Reaganomics. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and...

 wrote an article calling for Bush's impeachment

Impeachment in the United States

Impeachment in the United States is an expressed power of the legislature that allows for formal charges against a civil officer of government for crimes committed in office...

 for lying to Congress about the case for war.

On 31 May, liberal consumer advocate and former Presidential hopeful Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....

 wrote an article on ZNet calling for Bush and Cheney’s impeachment under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

. Also on that day, he and Kevin Zeese

Kevin Zeese

Kevin Zeese is an American political activist who has been a leader in the drug policy reform and peace movements and in efforts to ensure a voter verified paper audit trail. He was on the ballot as the nominee of the Maryland Green Party for a U.S. Senate seat during the 2006 election, receiving...

 authored an op-ed

Op-ed

An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...

 for the Boston Globe to support the call for impeachment against Bush

Movement to impeach George W. Bush

During the presidency of George W. Bush, several American politicians sought to either investigate Bush for allegedly impeachable offenses, or to bring actual impeachment charges on the floor of the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee...

, citing the memo as part of the evidence that the possibility of deliberate deception by the administration should be investigated.

On 30 January 2006, an article entitled The Impeachment of George W. Bush, written by Elizabeth Holtzman

Elizabeth Holtzman

Elizabeth Holtzman is an American lawyer and former Democratic politician, pioneer woman officeholder, four term U.S. Representative , two term District Attorney of Kings County , and New York City Comptroller .Her role on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate scandal drew national...

 (Rep. NY-D 1973-1981, member of the House Judiciary Committee that held impeachment hearings of President Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

) was published by the left-wing periodical The Nation

The Nation

The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...

. The article makes specific references to the Downing Street memo.

Individuals

A coalition of American groups known as After Downing Street

After Downing Street

WarIsACrime.org is an organization that describes itself as "a coalition working to expose the lies that launched the war and to hold accountable its architects, including through censure and impeachment"...

, co-founded by a group of longtime progressive and/or Democratic Party activists, called on Congress to file a Resolution of Inquiry, the first necessary legal step to determine whether President Bush had committed impeachable offenses. The formal Resolution of Inquiry request was written by Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 constitutional attorney John C. Bonifaz. The request states the constitutional grounds for impeachment:

[The US President] has not given [the Senate] full information, but has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated, and by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country, and which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them.

Democrats.com raised one thousand dollars, offered as a reward to anyone who attempted to get George Bush to answer the following question:

In July 2002, did you and your administration "fix" the intelligence and facts about non-existent Iraqi WMD's and ties to terrorism — which were disputed by US intelligence officials — to sell your decision to invade Iraq to Congress, the American People, and the world — as quoted in the Downing Street Minutes?

In addition to the grand prize for eliciting a clear "Yes" or "No" answer, a number of lesser prizes were offered for lesser responses, down to a $100 reward for video evidence of having posed the question clearly to President Bush within his hearing but receiving no answer.

A Zogby

Zogby International

IBOPE Zogby International is an international market research, opinion polling firm founded in 1984 by John Zogby. The company polls and consults for a wide spectrum of business media, government, and political groups, and conducts public opinion research in more than 70 countries...

 poll in November 2005 found that 53% of US voters agree that Congress should impeach President Bush

Movement to impeach George W. Bush

During the presidency of George W. Bush, several American politicians sought to either investigate Bush for allegedly impeachable offenses, or to bring actual impeachment charges on the floor of the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee...

 if it is found that Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, while 42% disagreed. 76% of Democrats

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

, 50% of independents

Independent (voter)

An independent voter, those who register as an unaffiliated voter in the United States, is a voter of a democratic country who does not align him- or herself with a political party...

, and around 29% of Republicans

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

, agreed with the sentiment.

News coverage

The Downing Street Minutes was a major story in the British press during the last few days of the 2005 general election campaign

United Kingdom general election, 2005

The United Kingdom general election of 2005 was held on Thursday, 5 May 2005 to elect 646 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party under Tony Blair won its third consecutive victory, but with a majority of 66, reduced from 160....

 and was also covered in other countries. The story had limited coverage in the USA but has recently received greater attention in the American press. The organisation Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting is a progressive media criticism organization based in New York City, founded in 1986.FAIR describes itself on its website as "the national media watch group" and defines its mission as working to "invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity...

 has been among those that have criticized the US print media, saying they ". . .continue to downplay [the] story."

According to Media Matters for America

Media Matters for America

Media Matters for America is a politically progressive media watchdog group which says it is "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." Set up as a 501 non-profit organization, MMfA was founded in 2004 by journalist and...

, there were some early mentions in The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, the San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

, the New York Sun

New York Sun

The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...

, and the Washington Post, though coverage was slight (the Post's first article appeared in the "Style" section) and primarily aimed at the impact it would have on the British elections, rather than how it affected the Bush administration. The Knight-Ridder news service produced some reportage at the time, but independent articles were limited. The Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

 and Star Tribune

Star Tribune

The Star Tribune is the largest newspaper in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is published seven days each week in an edition for the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. A statewide version is also available across Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The...

 put local reporters on the story, and produced early articles on 12 May and 13 May, respectively.

At the Star Tribune, initial interest had been piqued after a reader e-mailed information he had seen on the Internet to the paper's ombudsman

Ombudsman

An ombudsman is a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some internal or external constituency while representing not only but mostly the broad scope of constituent interests...

, who forwarded it to others in the news department. Being quite a distance from London, editors first waited for articles to come across on wire services. Undoubtedly, many other newspapers across the country reacted similarly. After a few days of no news, however, a local reporter was assigned. The article was initially scheduled to run on 11 May, but was pushed back so that it could have greater prominence on a slower news day later in the week.

Since that time, much of the coverage about the memo has discussed the lack of coverage. One of the first reports include that topic was a 17 May article in the Christian Science Monitor. The report was one of the most extensive for a nationwide publication up until that time.

On 20 May 2005, Daniel Okrent

Daniel Okrent

Daniel Okrent is an American writer and editor. He is best known for having served as the first public editor of The New York Times newspaper, for inventing Rotisserie League Baseball, and for writing several books, most recently Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.-Education and...

, the Public Editor at the time for The New York Times, publicly assessed the coverage of the minutes in the paper in a forum on the NYT's website. He also stated that, due to continuing reader interest, the paper intends to give fuller coverage to the memo. Although Okrent stepped down at the end of May (the routine end of his term), on NewsHour on 8 June he suggested some possible explanations for why the US media had been so slow to cover what he considered a very important story. He said it may have been assigned to 'foreign news' correspondents and wasn't seen as a Bush story, or it may be the US media is still working on researching it (although he then admitted he had no reason to believe that).

Also on 8 June, USA Today

USA Today

USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...

 printed an article by their senior assignment editor for foreign news, Jim Cox, saying with respect to the memo, "We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source… There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing."

The Star Tribune revisited the Downing Street Minutes as part of the evidence in a Memorial Day

Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May. Formerly known as Decoration Day, it originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War...

 editorial. It stated explicitly,

"President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don't expect untruths from those in power. But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse....

"It turns out that former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke

Richard A. Clarke

Richard Alan Clarke was a U.S. government employee for 30 years, 1973–2003. He worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National...

 and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill were right. Both have been pilloried for writing that by summer 2002 Bush had already decided to invade."

The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 reported on the memos on 27 March 2006.

MSNBC

MSNBC

MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...

 reported on the memos on 28 March 2006.
MSNBC

MSNBC

MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...

 has an article and a video clip from NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

The Columbian newspaper El Tiempo implicated the Prime Minister's role in the Iraq war on 9 May 2007——and the Downing Street memo specifically——as "the principal reason for the UK's disillusionment with Tony Blair."

The Chilean newspaper La Segunda on 11 May 2007 called the Downing Street memo "one of the best-kept secrets in Tony Blair's

Tony Blair

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

 ten years as prime minister.

Veracity of the memo

Following the advice of company lawyers, Michael Smith, the journalist who first reported on the Downing Street Memo, has said that he protected the identity of his source by reproducing all documents and returning the 'originals' back to the source. In some cases, a document was retyped from a photocopy, and the photocopy destroyed. This has led some to question the document's authenticity, but no official source has questioned it, and it has been unofficially confirmed to various news organisations, including the Washington Post, NBC, The Sunday Times, and the LA Times. Several other documents obtained by Smith, and treated similarly (see below), were confirmed as genuine by the UK Foreign Office.

One of the first articles on the memo to appear in the US media quoted "a former senior US official", who, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the memo's account "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during the senior British intelligence officer's visit to Washington. UK Prime Minister

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...

 Tony Blair

Tony Blair

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

 denied that anything in the memo demonstrated misconduct and said that it added little to what was already known about how British policy on Iraq developed, also commenting that "that memorandum was written before we went to the United Nations".

• White House spokesman Scott McClellan
  Scott McClellan
  Scott McClellan is a former White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush, and author of a controversial No. 1 New York Times bestseller about the Bush Administration titled What Happened. He replaced Ari Fleischer as press secretary in July 2003 and served until May 10, 2006...
  
  , US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
  Condoleezza Rice
  Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
  
   and UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
  Jack Straw (politician)
  John Whitaker Straw is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Blackburn since 1979. He served as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 and Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons from 2006 to 2007 under Tony Blair...
  
   did not confirm or deny the accuracy of the memo when questioned about it.
• George W. Bush has not responded to questions from Congress regarding the memo's accuracy.
• When asked about the contents of the memo by Plaid Cymru
  Plaid Cymru
  ' is a political party in Wales. It advocates the establishment of an independent Welsh state within the European Union. was formed in 1925 and won its first seat in 1966...
  
   MP Adam Price in the House of Commons
  British House of Commons
  The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
  
   on 29 June 2005, Blair again refrained from disputing the document's authenticity, saying only "[…]that memo and other documents of the time were covered by the Butler review. In addition, that was before we went to the United Nations and secured the second resolution, 1441, which had unanimous support."
• According to CNN, currently classified documents which were dated at the same month as the Downing Street memo, March 2002, were uncovered in Iraq, and contained evidence that Russian intelligence notified Iraq about the "determination of the United States and Britain to launch military action."

US President George W. Bush

On 7 June 2005, at a joint George W. Bush-Tony Blair press briefing in the White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

, Reuters

Reuters

Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...

 correspondent Steve Holland asked, "On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened? Could both of you respond?" President Bush did not address the issue of the intelligence and facts being "fixed" around a decision to go to war, but he did deny that he had, at the time of the memo, already decided to use military force against Saddam Hussein, saying "There's nothing farther from the truth." Bush also questioned the motives of whoever leaked the memo during the British election, saying "Well, I—you know, I read kind of the characterisations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out in the middle of his race. … I'm not sure who 'they dropped it out' is, but—I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there."

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair

When the document was published, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair denied that anything in the memo demonstrated misconduct and said that it added little to what was already known about how British policy on Iraq developed.

Blair's response to Steve Holland at the joint news conference with Bush was "No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all". He also reiterated that he and Bush had continued to try to find a way to avert war, "As it happened, we weren't able to do that because — as I think was very clear — there was no way that Saddam Hussein was ever going to change the way that he worked, or the way that he acted," again without explaining the apparent contradiction with the contents of the memo. He said the same thing in a 7 June 2005 interview with Gwen Ifill

Gwen Ifill

Gwendolyn L. "Gwen" Ifill is an American journalist, television newscaster and author. She is the managing editor and moderator of Washington Week and a senior correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, both of which air on PBS. She is a political analyst, and moderated the 2004 and 2008 Vice...

 on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

PBS NewsHour is an evening television news program broadcast weeknights on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. The show is produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, a company co-owned by former anchors Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil, and Liberty Media, which owns a 65% stake in the...

.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan

On 16 May, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan

Scott McClellan

Scott McClellan is a former White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush, and author of a controversial No. 1 New York Times bestseller about the Bush Administration titled What Happened. He replaced Ari Fleischer as press secretary in July 2003 and served until May 10, 2006...

 said that the memo's statement that intelligence was "being fixed" to support a decision to invade Iraq was "flat out wrong". However, McClellan admitted that he has not read the memo, but has only received reports of what it contains.

On 17 May, McClellan told reporters that the White House saw "no need" to respond to the letter from Congress.

On 23 May, when BTC News reporter Eric Brewer asked him about his 16 May statement, McClellan said:

"Let me correct you... let me correct you on the characterisation of the quote you attributed to me. I’m referring to some of the allegations that were made referring to a report.

In terms of the intelligence, the – if anyone wants to know how the intelligence was used by the administration, all they have to do is go back and look at all the public comments over the course of the lead-up to the war in Iraq, and that's all very public information. Everybody who was there could see how we used that intelligence."

The following day, a popular political blog, ThinkProgress

ThinkProgress

ThinkProgress is an American political blog edited by Faiz Shakir that "provide[s] a forum that advances progressive ideas and policies". It is an outlet of the Center for American Progress.-Sections:...

, posted a response titled "Take the McClellan Challenge", comparing what the intelligence was with how it was used by the administration.

US Secretary of State Rice and UK Foreign Secretary Straw

On 1 May 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw were questioned on the memo, although neither was able to give a detailed answer. Straw stated that he had not expected the question to come up.

Additional documents

Previous to the appearance of the Downing Street Memo, six other British (Blair) Cabinet papers originating around March 2002 were obtained by Michael Smith

Michael Smith (newspaper reporter)

Michael Smith is a British journalist for The Sunday Times who specializes in defence and intelligence issues. He is well known for, among other things, obtaining the document known as the Downing Street memo...

 and used in two Daily Telegraph stories published on 18 September 2004. The documents describe issues relating to the meetings held between Bush and Blair at Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch in April 2002. They are:

1. Iraq: Options Paper, prepared by the Overseas & Defence Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, dated 8 March 2002, describing options available for pursuing regime change in Iraq
2. Iraq: Legal Background, prepared by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Legal Department, dated 8 March 2002
3. a report from David Manning
   David Manning
   Sir David Geoffrey Manning, GCMG, CVO is a former British diplomat, who was the British Ambassador to the United States from 2003 to 2007. He authored the so-called "Manning Memo" summarising the details of a January 2003 meeting between American president George W. Bush and British prime minister...
   
    to Tony Blair on his meeting with Condoleezza Rice, dated 14 March 2002
4. a report from Christopher Meyer
   Christopher Meyer
   Sir Christopher John Rome Meyer, KCMG is a former British Ambassador to the United States , former Ambassador to Germany and the former chairman of the Press Complaints Commission...
   
    to David Manning
   David Manning
   Sir David Geoffrey Manning, GCMG, CVO is a former British diplomat, who was the British Ambassador to the United States from 2003 to 2007. He authored the so-called "Manning Memo" summarising the details of a January 2003 meeting between American president George W. Bush and British prime minister...
   
    on his meeting with Paul Wolfowitz
   Paul Wolfowitz
   Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is a former United States Ambassador to Indonesia, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank, and former dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University...
   
   , dated 18 March 2002
5. a memo from Peter Ricketts
   Peter Ricketts
   Sir Peter Forbes Ricketts, GCMG is a senior British diplomat who currently serves as National Security Adviser to HM Government...
   
   , Political Director, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, to the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw
   Jack Straw (politician)
   John Whitaker Straw is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Blackburn since 1979. He served as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 and Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons from 2006 to 2007 under Tony Blair...
   
   , dated 22 March 2002, with background and opinion for Straw's advice to Tony Blair ahead of his meeting with George Bush
   George W. Bush
   George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
   
    in April
6. a memo from Jack Straw to Tony Blair, 25 March 2002 containing advice ahead of Blair's meeting with George Bush in April.

On receipt of the documents, in September 2004, acting on the advice of lawyers, Smith says he photocopied them and returned the originals to his source, then, after the Telegraph's legal desk secretary typed transcripts on an "old fashioned typewriter", the Telegraph destroyed their copies of the originals, in order to frustrate any future police investigation of the leaks.

The documents were widely quoted in the British press immediately following the Telegraph's story, for example in The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

 and The Sunday Herald.

On 5 October 2004, a zipped file (leaks-brief.zip), containing facsimiles of these documents in PDF form, appeared on Cryptome

Cryptome

Cryptome is a website hosted in the United States since 1996 by independent scholars and architects John Young and Deborah Natsios that functions as a repository for information about freedom of speech, cryptography, spying, and surveillance...

, provided by Professor Michael Lewis of Cambridge University

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, who had also housed the file at Iraq expert Glen Rangwala

Glen Rangwala

Glen Rangwala is a University Lecturer and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge University in England. Trained in political theory and international law, he completed a doctorate on political and legal rhetoric in the Arab Middle East...

's Middle East Reference website. The file derives ultimately from the typed transcript of the documents made by Smith and the Telegraph.

Interest in these documents was revived around 8 June 2005, following their appearance in a discussion thread at Democratic Underground

Democratic Underground

Democratic Underground, also known as DU, is an online community for U.S. Democrats and progressives. Its membership is restricted by policy to those who are generally supportive of progressive ideals and support Democratic candidates for political office. DU was established on January 20, 2001,...

 and subsequently they began to be quoted in US media, after Rawstory and NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 verified their authenticity with Smith and British government sources.

The Los Angeles Times published an article on 15 June 2005, describing several of the "new" documents; the article says that "Michael Smith

Michael Smith (newspaper reporter)

Michael Smith is a British journalist for The Sunday Times who specializes in defence and intelligence issues. He is well known for, among other things, obtaining the document known as the Downing Street memo...

, the defense writer for The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

 who revealed the Downing Street minutes in a story 1 May, provided a full text of the six new documents to the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

."

The six documents are available in PDF form from the Think Progress web site.

A further document, a 21 July 2002, cabinet office paper titled "Conditions for Military Action", which is a briefing paper for the meeting of which the Downing Street Memo is the minutes, was published (with the last page missing) by The Sunday Times on 12 June 2005.

Another document was the Rycroft email, showing the author of the Downing Street Memo actually believed that Saddam should be removed because of a threat by Iraq getting WMDs into the hands of terrorists.

The 18 September 2004, Daily Telegraph article contains the only known reproductions of the original memos (scanned from a photocopy). That article is called "Failure is not an option, but it doesn't mean they will avoid it".

On Thursday, 16 June 2005 Reuters mislabelled a photograph of what it claimed was "a copy of the Downing Street Memo".

It turned out to actually be a picture of a document found in an 28 April 2005 Guardian Unlimited story. (At this link, view this PDF:
07.03.03: Attorney general's full advice on Iraq war (pdf)) This PDF detailed Lord Goldsmith’s confidential advice on the legality of the Iraq war and does not match the text of any of the alleged Downing Street Memos. It's an entirely different document that describes legal authorisation for the invasion of Iraq under standing UN resolutions.

Criticism of the Memo

Fred Kaplan argues that this contradicts the purported "smoking gun" of the issue of WMDs being fabricated.

"For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary."

As mentioned above, shortly after the appearance of the memo, Tony Blair was asked: "The so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened?" and responded "No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all." It is not clear, however, whether this is a criticism of the assessment of his own head of foreign intelligence (Dearlove) or a criticism of a particular interpretation of Dearlove's phrase "fixed around".

"Fixed"

The interpretation of the sentence: "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." has caused debate.

Robin Niblett, a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, has said it would be easy for Americans to misunderstand the reference to intelligence being "fixed around" Iraq policy. " 'Fixed around' in British English means 'bolted on' rather than altered to fit the policy," he says. This view was seconded by Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...

 and Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan is a journalist and contributor to Slate magazine. His "War Stories" column covers international relations and US foreign policy.-Career:...

.

Others have suggested various British English usages of the phrase "were being fixed" (for example as a colloquialism meaning "to agree upon,") which are distinct from the usage (both American and British) derived from criminal argot

Argot

An Argot is a secret language used by various groups—including, but not limited to, thieves and other criminals—to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, hobby, job,...

, meaning "fraudulently altered or changed." The author of the memo, Matthew Rycroft, employed the former usage in an e-mail when talking about an appointment, This is now fixed for 0800. Some detractors from the memo have appeared to make the argument or give the impression that the "fraudulently altered" sense of "fix" is uniquely American and does not exist in British English, but this is false.

Other commenters have dismissed this, saying that context makes it clear that "being fixed around" used "fix" in the sense of "fraudulently arrange the result", a common British usage (sense 12(b) of "fix" in the printed Concise Oxford English Dictionary, given as sense 7, "deviously influence the outcome of" in the Compact OED online version.) The argument has also been made that this view is supported by negative qualification implied by the presence of the word "But" at the start of the relevant sentence: "But the intelligence and facts were being (innocently) agreed upon around the policy" is, it is said, an implausible reading because there is nothing negative, per se, about agreement, whereas "But the intelligence and facts were being fraudulently arranged ...", it is argued, appears to make perfect sense, because it fulfills the negative expectation set up by the word "but".

Fred Kaplan noted that "Either way—'fixed' or 'fixed around'—Bush and his aides had decided to let policy shape intelligence, not the other way around; they were explicitly politicising intelligence."

When asked about the memo's implication that Iraq intelligence was being "fixed", White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "The suggestion is just flat-out wrong." It should be noted that McClellan would later claim that intelligence was suited to fit the policy in a tell-all book.

An Iraq "options paper," dated 8 March 2002, states: "Despite sanctions, Iraq continues to develop WMD" (though it adds that intelligence on the matter is "poor").

In a personal message to Blair, dated 22 March 2002, Peter Ricketts

Peter Ricketts

Sir Peter Forbes Ricketts, GCMG is a senior British diplomat who currently serves as National Security Adviser to HM Government...

 wrote that, although Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs "have not, as far as we know, been stepped up," they "are extremely worrying." What has changed, he emphasises, "is not so much the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programmes but our tolerance of them post-11 September."

See also

• Bush-Aznar memo
  Bush-Aznar memo
  The Bush–Aznar memo is reportedly a documentation of a February 22, 2003 conversation in Crawford, Texas between US president George W. Bush, Prime Minister of Spain José María Aznar, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Daniel Fried, Alberto Carnero, and Javier Rupérez, the Spanish...
  
  
• Bush-Blair memo
  Bush-Blair memo
  The Bush–Blair 2003 Iraq memo or Manning memo was a secret memo of a meeting between American President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair that took place on January 31, 2003 in the White House...
  
  
• Iraq document leak 18 September 2004
  Iraq document leak 18 September 2004
  On 18 September 2004 the British Daily Telegraph ran two articles titled "" and by reporter Michael Smith, revealing the contents of six leaked British government documents – labelled "secret" or "confidential" – concerning the lead-up to the war in Iraq.The documents achieved...
  
  
• September Dossier
  September Dossier
  Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, also known as the September Dossier, was a document published by the British government on 24 September 2002 on the same day of a recall of Parliament to discuss the contents of the document...
  
   UK government report on Iraq threat pre-war
• Dodgy Dossier
  Dodgy Dossier
  Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation was a 2003 briefing document for the Blair Labour government...
  
   Follow up to September Dossier
• Peter Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith
  Peter Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith
  Peter Henry Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith, PC, QC , is a former Attorney General for England and Wales and Northern Ireland. On 22 June 2007, Goldsmith announced his resignation which took effect on 27 June 2007, the same day that prime minister, Tony Blair, stepped down. Goldsmith was the longest...
  
   - As Attorney General for England and Wales
  Attorney General for England and Wales
  Her Majesty's Attorney General for England and Wales, usually known simply as the Attorney General, is one of the Law Officers of the Crown. Along with the subordinate Solicitor General for England and Wales, the Attorney General serves as the chief legal adviser of the Crown and its government in...
  
  , Lord Goldsmith wrote a legal opinion on war b
• Office of Special Plans
  Office of Special Plans
  The Office of Special Plans , which existed from September 2002 to June 2003, was a Pentagon unit created by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and headed by Feith, as charged by then-United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to supply senior George W. Bush administration officials with...
  
  
• Operation Rockingham
  Operation Rockingham
  Operation Rockingham was the codeword for UK involvement in inspections in Iraq following the war over Kuwait in 1990-91. Early in 1991 the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq was established to oversee the destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction...
  
   Iraq intelligence gathering
• Plame affair
  Plame affair
  The Plame Affair involved the identification of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer. Mrs. Wilson's relationship with the CIA was formerly classified information...
  
  
• Yellowcake forgery
  Yellowcake forgery
  The Niger uranium forgeries are forged documents initially revealed by Italian Military intelligence. These documents seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis....
  
  
• United Nations Security Council and the Iraq War
• Iraq Inquiry

Wikisource links

• Wikisource:Downing Street memo
• Wikisource:Letter from Congress regarding Downing Street memo

Michael Smith

• Michael Smith The UK journalist who obtained and published the 'Downing Street memos'
• 'Failure is not an option, but it doesn't mean they will avoid it' by Michael Smith September, 2004
• RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war by Michael Smith 29 May 2005
• Ministers were told of need for Gulf war 'excuse' by Michael Smith 12 June 2005
• The Real News in the Downing Street Memos by Michael Smith 23 June 2005

Mainstream media coverage

• Iraq, Tony and the truth BBC Panorama
  Panorama (TV series)
  Panorama is a BBC Television current affairs documentary programme, which was first broadcast in 1953, and is the longest-running public affairs television programme in the world. Panorama has been presented by many well known BBC presenters, including Richard Dimbleby, Robin Day, David Dimbleby...
  
   21 March 2005
• 'Why has "Downing Street memo" story been a "dud" in US?' CSM 17 May 2005
• 'Memo: Bush manipulated Iraq intel' Newsday
  Newsday
  Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
  
   9 May 2005
• The decisions, policies and intelligence behind the Iraq War RealCities.com 29 October 2003

Downing Street memo websites

• AfterDowningStreet.org - After Downing Street
  After Downing Street
  WarIsACrime.org is an organization that describes itself as "a coalition working to expose the lies that launched the war and to hold accountable its architects, including through censure and impeachment"...
  
   (a coalition campaigning for the US Congress to formally investigate whether President Bush committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war)
• Cryptome.org - 'Leaked Cabinet Office papers, September 2004: Evidence of false statements made by Tony Blair to Parliament and the media' (summary and links to 6 UK cabinet papers), Michael Lewis, (June, 2005)
• DowningStreetMemo.com - 'The Downing Street Memo: Seeking The truth since 13 May 2005' (informational website with texts and other resources to put the documents in context, plus news and commentary; it also supports congressional request for investigation)
• TheFourReasons.org - 'The Four Reasons: why "We the People" must uphold the Constitution of The United States of America
  United States Constitution
  The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
  
   and hold those who violate it accountable' (impeachment
  Impeachment
  Impeachment is a formal process in which an official is accused of unlawful activity, the outcome of which, depending on the country, may include the removal of that official from office as well as other punishment....
  
  resources, etc.)