British dossier on Iraq copied academic paper

A British government dossier intended to show how Iraq is obstructing of UN weapons inspectors via an “infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation” has been revealed to have lifted significant sections from academic papers.

The document was issued by the UK in January 2003 and described as drawing “upon a number of sources, including intelligence material”. It aims to demonstrate “how the Iraqi regime is constructed to have, and to keep, weapons of mass destruction”.

But a number of pages of the document were copied virtually word for word from a paper published in the journal Middle East Review of International Affairs in September 2002. This was written by Ibrahim al-Marashi, an academic at the Centre for Non-proliferation Studies in California in the US.

Further sections of the dossier were copied from articles written by Sean Boyne and Ken Gause that appeared in the military journal Jane’s Intelligence Review in 1997 and 2002.

Military analysts and opposition politicians in the UK have described the copying as “scandalous”, saying the dossier was presented as being the product of the very latest government intelligence.

(…)The revelation is particularly embarrassing as US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave special mention to the dossier in a key presentation of evidence against Iraq at the UN Security Council on Wednesday. New Scientist