ONDON, Feb. 7 � The British government admitted today
that large sections of its most recent report on Iraq, praised by
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as "a fine paper" in his speech to the
United Nations on Wednesday, had been lifted from magazines and academic
journals.
But while acknowledging that the 19-page report was indeed a
"pull-together of a variety of sources," a spokesman for Prime Minister
Tony Blair defended it as "solid" and "accurate."
The document, "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and
Intimidation," was posted on No. 10 Downing Street's Web site on Monday.
It was depicted as an up-to-date and unsettling assessment by the British
intelligence services of Iraq's security apparatus and its efforts to hide
its activities from weapons inspectors and to resist international efforts
to force it to disarm.
But much of the material actually came, sometimes verbatim, from
several nonsecret published articles, according to critics of the
government's policy who have studied the documents. These include an
article published in the Middle East Review of International Affairs in
September 2002, as well as three articles from Jane's Intelligence Review,
two of them published in the summer of 1997 and one in November 2002.
In some cases, the critics said, parts of the articles � or of
summaries posted on the Internet � were paraphrased in the report. In
other cases, they were plagiarized � to the extent that even spelling and
punctuation errors in the originals were reproduced.
The Blair government did not deny that any of this had happened. But
its spokesman insisted today that the government believed "the text as
published to be accurate" and that the document had been published because
"we wanted to show people not only the kind of regime we were dealing
with, but also how Saddam Hussein had pursued a policy of deliberate
deception."
He added: "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 the document had been written by government
officials and drawn from "a number of sources, including intelligence
sources."
"The overall objective was to give the full picture without
compromising intelligence sources," he said.
But critics of the government said that not only did the document
appear to have been largely cut and pasted together, but also that the
articles it relied on were based on information that is, by now, obsolete.
For instance, the second section of the three-part report, which is
described on the Downing Street Web site as providing "up-to-date details
of Iraq's network of intelligence and security," was drawn in large part
from "Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network: a Guide," an article about
the activities of Iraqi intelligence in Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, which
appeared in the Middle East Review of International Affairs last
September. Its author was Ibrahim al-Marashi, a postgraduate student at
the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.
Mr. Marashi told Channel 4 News, which first reported the plagiarism
charges, that his research had been drawn primarily from two huge sets of
documents: "one taken from Kurdish rebels in the north of Iraq � around
four million documents � as well as 300,000 documents left by Iraqi
security services in Kuwait." He also said that while he had no reason to
doubt the truth of anything he had written and believed the government
report to be accurate, no one had asked permission or informed him about
using his work.
"I am surprised, flattered as well, that this information got used in a
U.K. government dossier," Mr. Marashi said in an interview with Reuters.
"Had they consulted me, I could have provided them with more updated
information."
Dr. Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University who
has compared the British report with the articles it used as sources, said
that in some cases, the authors apparently changed phrases from the
original articles to make the case against Iraq seem more extreme.
For instance, Dr. Rangwala said, a section on the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi
directorate of general intelligence, appeared to have been lifted verbatim
from Mr. Marashi's article, except for a few tweaks. Where Mr. Marashi
mentions that the Mukhabarat's responsibilities include "monitoring
foreign embassies in Iraq," the government document speaks of "spying on
foreign embassies in Iraq." Mr. Marashi's description of the Mukhabarat's
role in "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes" becomes "supporting
terrorist organizations in hostile regimes."
Critics of the British and American policy toward Iraq said the report
showed how little concrete evidence the two governments actually have
against Iraq, as well as how poor their intelligence sources were.
"Both governments seem so desperate to create a pretext to attack Iraq
that they are willing to say anything," said Nathaniel Hurd, a consultant
on Iraq and a critic of the American position. "This U.K. dossier, which
deceptively uses outdated material and plagiarizes, is just the latest
example of official dishonesty."
Opposition politicians here attacked the report as the deceptive work
of a bumbling government clutching at straws as it tries to make a case
for war.
"This is the intelligence equivalent of being caught stealing the
spoons," said Menzies Campbell, the foreign affairs spokesman for the
Liberal Democrats. "The dossier may not amount to much, but this is a
considerable embarrassment for a government trying still to make a case
for war."
Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative Party's shadow defense secretary, said
the government had not satisfactorily addressed the concerns raised by the
disclosures.
"The government's reaction utterly fails to explain, deny or excuse the
allegations," Mr. Jenkin said. "The document has been cited by the prime
minister and Colin Powell as the basis for a possible war. Who is
responsible for such an incredible failure of judgment?"
