London: British government's embarrassment over its Iraq "intelligence" dossier
deepened with the disclosure that key sections were cobbled together by junior
communications unit staff, but a spokesman of Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted on
February 7 night that the document was "solid".
Officials also admitted that chunks of the document – praised by US Secretary of
State Colin Powell on February 5 for its "exquisite detail" – were copied word-for-
word from an article by a 29-year-old Californian academic.
The sentences were lifted from an article by Ibrahim al-Marishi, an Iraqi-American,
in the September edition of 'Middle East Review of International Affairs'.
He, in turn, sources his information to a 1999 book by the former weapons inspector
Scott Ritter, who opposes US President Bush's Iraq policy.
Tony Blair's spokesman accepted that it may have been wiser properly to source the
material used in the report and said the Internet version might be amended to
acknowledge its origins.
"It was a pull-together of a variety of sources. In retrospect, we should, to clear
up any confusion, have acknowledged which bits came from public sources and which
bits came from other sources," he said.
Refusing to say who had been responsible for alleged plagiarism, the spokesman said
the dossier was "accurate" and that the government had never claimed exclusive
authorship.
He said, "The document was solid. The overall objective was to give the full picture
without comprising intelligence sources."
PTI
