Britain's Iraq dossier was a cut-and-paste job

Britain's Iraq dossier was a cut-and-paste job: report
Thu Feb 6, 4:08 PM ET

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer

LONDON - A dossier released by the British government purporting to show how Iraq is deceiving U.N. weapons inspectors was based on old information, including an article by an American university lecturer, a British news program said Thursday.

Channel 4 News said the 19-page report — entitled "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation" and posted Monday on Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s Web site — contained large chunks lifted from other sources.

Channel 4 said the "bulk" of the document was copied from three articles, including one in Jane's Intelligence Review and another by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, that appeared last September in the Middle East Review of International Affairs.

In response to the Channel 4 report, Blair's 10 Downing St. office said the dossier had been "put together by a range of government officials." The office said, "We consider the text as published accurate."

Julian Rush, a Channel 4 reporter, compared a six-paragraph passage from al-Marashi's article with an identical passage in the government's dossier. Other passages contain very minor alterations, and typographical errors in al-Marashi's article are repeated in the dossier.

Al-Marashi said he had not been approached by the British government about using his research,

"It was a shock to me," he told The Associated Press.

The article looked at Saddam's security apparatus over the past three decades, and drew on a range of sources including information that was recent at the time of publication in September, al-Marashi said.

The government's dossier purported to detail ways in which the Iraqi regime has blocked the work of weapons inspectors currently in Iraq. The government said it was based on "a number of sources, including intelligence material," but did not give details.

The dossier said that while the United Nations (news - web sites) has only 108 inspectors in Iraq, Saddam has 20,000 intelligence officers "engaged in disrupting their inspections and concealing weapons of mass destruction."

Among its claims, it said Iraqi security agents had bugged every room and telephone of the weapons inspectors in Baghdad and hidden documents in Iraqi hospitals, mosques and homes.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) cited the dossier on Wednesday as he addressed the United Nations with evidence of Iraq's weapons programs.

Chris Aaron, editor of Jane's Intelligence Review, told Channel 4 he had not been asked for permission to use material from his article in the dossier.

Al-Marashi said he was not angry at the copying, but hoped the British government would now credit his work "out of academic decency."

"I hope they do the right thing," he said.

On the Net:

Government Iraq dossier: http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7111.asp

Ibrahim al-Marashi's article: http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue3/jv6n3a1.html

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=524&u=/ap/20030206...