The problem? The reporter who broke this story, Michael Smith of the London Times, has admitted to basing his reporting of the memos on copies his secretary typed of them after reading the originals. He claims to have destroyed the originals.
So if the originals are gone and the only existing copy of one Smith's secretary re-typed, how in the world did Reuters get a photo of the memo on paper with a government seal on it? To this point, none of the PDF's I've seen have this seal on them.
Did Reuters stage this photo for dramatic effect?
Is Smith lying? Are the originals still in existence?
Did Smith's secretary type them on paper bearing the government seal? If so, why? Was the intent to lend the memo's false credibility?
I'm not drawing any conclusions at this point, but there is something fishy going on.
Wizbang and the Free Republic forms have more.
Update:
According to earlier reporting Michael Smith's secretary re-typed the memo using a typewriter, not a computer. Meaning that any subsequent digital PDF copy of said reproduction would be a scan. And any scan would be the equivalent of a photocopy and would include the government seal seen in the picture above.
I've emailed several people at Reuters but have not yet received anything back.
Update:
Looks like this was just a case of mistaken identity.
...the document in question is not the Downing Street Memo. The PDF shown in the Reuters photo comes from an April 28, 2005 Guardian Unlimited story (which predates the original DSM story in at Times Online) detailing Lord Goldsmith's (the British attorney general) March 7. 2003 confidential advice on the legality of the Iraq war.
More:
There are 6 documents from September that Michael Smith took copies of, returned to the government, then retyped, then destroyed the copies. At least two of these are quoted by the Butler Commission Report, and Michael Smith covered the contents of all of them in his September 18, 2002 news stories with the Daily Telegraph. These news stories featured partial pictures of the copies of two of the originals.
There are two more documents that there is no information on when they were received by Smith. These are the Downing Street Memo, and the Briefing Paper. There are no PDFs for these, and there is no indication that they were copied from originals, either.