July 2004 dispatch. Murray denied being responsible for the leaks. According to Murray, the Uzbek government overstated the activities of local militants and their connections to Al-Qaeda. He later wrote in The Washington Post, that the material from the CIA "revealed the same pattern of information" as the "forced confessions" of which he had become aware. In October 2004, the British government said neither it, nor the intelligence agencies, had ever used torture or encouraged others to so on its behalf. A later enquiry by The Washington Post, in connection with an interview with Murray, did not indicate the British had instituted an "absolute ban" on using information gained via torture. According to Murray, in March 2003 the Foreign Office legal team told him there was nothing to prevent their use of information gained by the Uzbeks using these methods. Disciplinary charges Some of the embassy staff were sacked in July 2003 while Murray was away on holiday. They were reinstated after he expressed his outrage to the FCO. Later during the same holiday he was recalled to London for disciplinary reasons. He was confronted with 18 charges on 21 August 2003. These included "hiring dolly birds [pretty young women] for above the usual rate" for the visa department, although Murray said that the department had an all-male staff, and Murray was accused of granting British visas to Uzbek women in exchange for sex in his office. The FCO gave him a week to resign and told him that discussing the charges would be a violation of the Official Secrets Act 1989. Representatives of the US embassy in Tashkent and the British Foreign Office later denied the American government had any involvement in Murray being recalled to London. However, a "local analyst" in Tashkent told Nick Paton Walsh, that Murray and the American ambassador John Herbst (who left his Uzbekistan post in 2003) were regularly in heated disagreement. Murray collapsed during a medical check in Tashkent on 2 September 2003 and was airlifted to St Thomas' Hospital in London. He was treated in hospital for depression having seriously considered taking his own life. After an FCO internal inquiry conducted by Tony Crombie, Head of the FCO's Overseas Territories Department, all but two of the charges (being drunk at work and misusing the embassy's Land Rover) were dropped. The charges were leaked to the press in October 2003. Murray returned to