It’s not as if what is now known as the “Downing Street Memo” had any worth to begin with — it’s not a smoking gun, contrary to what the left is trying to make of it.

But the new blogosphere chatter du jour on the right side is that the sucker is a fake. I’m not going to make that accusation, for reasons that will become clear in my post, but new information revealed today places doubt on London Times reporter Michael Smith’s ability to confirm the now infamous memo’s authenticity.

The memo, one of eight obtained by Smith, apparently was duplicated by Smith, re-typed via an old-style typewriter, and the copies then destroyed.From an Associated Press story on the memos:

The eight memos — all labeled “secret” or “confidential” — were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Sunday Times.

The Associated Press is reporting that Smith protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

The AP obtained copies of six of the memos (the other two have circulated widely). A senior British official who reviewed the copies said their content appeared authentic. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secret nature of the material.

Smith further explains the memos’ odyssey to The Raw Story, a liberal Web site:

“I was given them last September while still on the [Daily] Telegraph,� Smith, who now works for the London Sunday Times, told RAW STORY. “I was given very strict orders from the lawyers as to how to handle them.�

“I first photocopied them to ensure they were on our paper and returned the originals, which were on government paper and therefore government property, to the source,� he added.

So right away, we have a pressing question — in this age of media transparency, against the media’s will if I may pontificate, how can Smith prove to the public that the memos are in fact real? As we learned from Memogate, it’s almost impossible to determine the provenance of copies of the documents, but the re-typing of these documents makes analysis impossible. Read more:

The AP and The Raw Story try to reassure readers of the memo’s authenticity, but neither succeed. Apparently, the best that the AP can do is to have the information verified by “a senior British official who reviewed the copies” and “said their content appeared authentic.”

At least he wasn’t called an “unimpeachable source.” Remember that CBS News tried to prove the Burkett memos were authentic because a military man said the content “sounded the way business was done at the time.” Captain Ed offers the perfect criticism of the AP’s fact-checking:

The AP gets a “senior British official” to assert that the content “appeared authentic”, which only means that the content seems to match what he thinks he knows [my emphasis].

The Raw Story’s fact checking is much less detailed:

This site validated them through an independent source and with Smith.

This doesn’t tell us anything. Of course Smith is going to say they are the real thing. And an “independent source” could mean anyone.

Despite whether the memos are real or not, any skeptic of the press is allowed to raise an eyebrow in this situation, given the media’s recent antics. Smith claims he acquired the memos from a source, made copies of them and burned the copies. It rings of Bill Burkett, who claimed he acquired original memos from “Lucy Ramirez,” duplicated them then burned the originals.

If the memos are indeed authentic, it is quite possible that his source made him promise to destroy the copies. I’ve never laid my hands on a secret British document, but who knows what measures exist to track down leaks, from watermarks to control numbers? If authentic, the source must have known a little something about how the British government tracks memos. Besides the obvious control numbers and watermarks, entities have been known to place the mark in the actual text, such as a word or a number that changes with each memo and traces leaks back to an individual or office. It’s nothing new — Hollywood has done that with scripts for years.

However, there is one fact that may save Smith’s posterior end — no one in the British government has denied the memos’ authenticity. As the Powerline gang points out, unlike the long-deceased author of Burkett’s forged memos, the people involved with this memo are very much alive. Furthermore, British PM Tony Blair himself responded to questions about the Downing Street memo at a press conference without questioning their authenticity.

Powerline also speaks for me in one important regard — if a forger was risking jail time, or an unethical reporter was risking his career, the memos would say a lot more than they do. If the Downing Street memo is a forgery, it is ambiguous at best — it’s so vague that the value of its information is strictly dependent upon the politics of the reader (I weighed in on the memo in great detail here). Someone risking it all would gin up a lot sexier information.

But despite where anyone stands on this issue, the task of proving a story’s authenticity falls upon the reporter, and so far Smith has failed that test. The AP and The Raw Story have “confirmed” the memos’ authenticity through unnamed sources, which does not verify them at all. How about we hear from one of the lawyers that Smith mentioned to The Raw Story? They could help establish a chain of custody.

In short, Smith outsourced his credibility to the British government, which saved his ass. That’s not a risk a good reporter wants to take, especially if the government is in a more vindictive mood.

While I don’t think the memos are fakes, I don’t blame people who have laid out convincing cases that the memos are forgeries. Rathergate.com, a full-time media bias blog, has chronicled way too many media goof-ups and dirty tricks to take any MSM story based on anonymous testimony at its word.

So to Mr. Smith, while you scored a coup acquiring these memos, undoubtedly from someone with an axe to grind, you have essentially left it to the silence of the British government and MI-6 to prove the memos’ provenance. That’s not good journalism, and no one has any right to lampoon people who have concluded that they are fakes.

Again, them’s the wages of the media’s shattered credibility. The media has no right to whine, because they brought it on themselves.

Around the Web:

UPDATE: Wizbang weighs in twice, courtesy of a minor schism among its contributors — Paul wrote last night that the memos are questionable, and Jay Tea believes they are real, but like yours truly, still considers their content virtually meaningless.

UPDATE 1.5: This has nothing to do with anything, but once again, I had a decent showing in Wizbang’s weekly caption contest, winning second place. Sgt. Craver placed first here, and second here. I took first place for an awesome movie titling contest here.

UPDATE 2: Scrappleface acknowledges the release of the super-secret Sesame Street Memo.

UPDATE 3: The Strata Sphere sees merit in both sides’ arguments, but is leaning for now toward authenticity. But he notes that the one man who can answer the debate, namely reporter Michael Smith, should pony up a bit more about the documents.

Like Rathergate and Powerline, Strata agrees that forged memos would have a lot more meat on their bones:

The only reason I hesitate to call the memos fake is the fact they are so innocuous. Why bother faking them? The memos talk about US and UK discussions 8 months out from the actual invasion, and unsurprisingly find US plans in flux and incomplete. The UK side is not keen on regime change, and many in this European country share the same biases about the US as their fellow Europeans. Big deal.