FCO Rewrites History

Last night Channel 4 News broadcast an interview with Margaret Beckett, in which Jon Snow asked her about her about the apparent transfer of US weapons through Prestwick to Israel, without the appropriate permissions. She said she had made a robust complaint to the US, and there were other reports of a slanging match between her and Condi at a press conference.

Channel 4's Snowmail newsletter now reports that the Foreign Office has reproduced the transcript of the interview on their website, but has edited out the Prestwick questions and answers:

"And as for Mrs Beckett? Well, intriguingly the Foreign Office have reproduced our interview with the foreign secretary, conducted in Rome yesterday, but have edited out the section relating to the weapons transfer at Prestwick .

"And it's that omitted section, of course, where Mrs Becket took an apparently off-message stance by expressing anger with the Americans about the Prestwick business, which was the key part of our interview which was heavily picked up by the rest of the media. 

"Certainly ones impression today is that both Number 10 and the Foreign Office have been sharing a dig in an extremely deep hole which they have sought to bury the matter."

Fortunately, Channel 4 still has the whole thing here.

Comments

[Richard Weatherill]

Thank God for the internet. Only 10 years or so ago, our lords & masters might have been almost totally successful in 'airbrushing' the Foreign Secretary's embarrassing (in their view) remarks out of history. The only other record (apart from Channel 4's tapes) would have been limited to those sad souls who happened to have videotaped C4 News.

Mind you, 10 years or so ago they might have been less inclined to ...