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The 'al-Jazeera Bombing Memo' - Request for FOIA Internal Review Delayed Again.

Posted April 9th, 2006 by ringverse
in

You may recall Steve from the FOIA blog asked for a detailed internal review of the Cabinet Office's decision not to release the so called 'al-Jazeera Bombing Memo' under the Freedom of Information Act.
You might also remember the decision not to release the document was rather revealing, in that it confirmed that there was a document recording a conversation between Bush and Blair about bombing the al-Jazeera in studios in Qatar.

This might be the reason the Cabinet office have delayed answering Steve's detailed request - again.

I wrote to my MP about the

On April 10th, 2006 Davide Simonetti says:

I wrote to my MP about the Al-Jazeera memo last year, who passed it on to Jack Straw. I finally got a reply, on March 16, not from Jack Straw, but from Ian Pearson, Minister for Trade and Foreign Affairs, and apparantly, the Minister responsible for our relations with the United States.

The answer I got was predictably curt:

The Prime Minister has made clear, in answer to a Parliamentary Question on 28 November 2005, that he did not receive any information on action that the United States Administration allegedly proposed to take against the Al-Jazeera network.

So how does that compare with "the cabinet Office holds information which is relevant to your request", the answer that Steve from the FOIA blog got? Not very well as far as I can make out.

The answer in question is

On April 10th, 2006 goatchurch says:

The answer in question is here. I think he's getting tired of being Prime Minister, don't you?

It all depends on what your definition of "information" is. People like us who don't have years of legal training don't understand the intricate parsings of these different words, the difference between that and lying.

It's possible he doesn't consider a private chat with that nutter as as receiving "information". If the Parliamentary question had asked about whether there had been a "conversation" concerning this action, the response would have been: "it is not our policy to disclose the contents of private conversations."

This whole word game is fascinating to many intellectuals. However, the health response is to be very irritated with it.