Deep Throat of Downing Street

The story, based on a series of Foreign Office documents from early 2002, show that Blair "was warned a year before invading Iraq that a stable post-war government would be impossible without keeping large numbers of troops there for 'many years.'"

At that time Smith reported favorably on "the grave reservations expressed by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, over the consequences of a second Gulf war, and how prescient his Foreign Office officials were in predicting the ensuing chaos."

Straw and other top Foreign Office officials supported Bush's idea of using military force to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime. But they believed that an international legal consensus for war was necessary to create a stable, democratic Iraq after Hussein was gone.

Another Smith story from last September quoted a memo to Blair from British diplomat David Manning saying, "I think there is a real risk that the Administration underestimates the difficulties [of attacking Iraq]. They may agree that the failure isn't an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.

In that article Smith hinted at one possible source for his story. He noted that "the highly confidential papers represent one of the most serious leaks Downing Street has ever had to confront - both because of the extremely restricted nature of their circulation and the embarrassment they may cause senior U.S. figures named in the memos."

Smith said "speculation" about the source of the his report was focusing on the Butler Committee which investigated British intelligence agencies erroneous conclusion that Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Committee, he noted, "was given thousands of confidential documents detailing the run-up to war."

But the very fact that Smith -- who of course knows the truth -- would label such thinking as "speculation" suggests that his source was not on the Butler Committee.

A story in The Independent last month pointed to a more plausible candidate for the British Deep Throat. Sir Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the United States, is now writing his memoirs for publication later this year, according to the liberal London daily.

"The diplomat was present when Mr. Blair met George Bush in the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in March 2002 and played a key role in the run-up to the war," the story noted.

Meyer would have had access to top secret memoranda. Documents previously leaked to Smith show that Meyer was a critic of Bush administration policy on Iraq. And friends of the former diplomat were quoted as saying his book was "likely to make uncomfortable reading for Mr. Blair." And, probably for President Bush too.

As U.S. media attention on the Downing Street Memo continues to grow, it is safe to say that we have probably not heard the last from the British Deep Throat.