Britain's Iraq dossier was a cut-and-paste job by #166516 ..... Politics Forum # 1 [Archive]
Date: 2/10/2003 2:33:30 AM ( 21 y ago)
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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...
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