London, Feb 08: 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 last night the document was "solid".
Officials also admitted that chunks of the document - praised by US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday 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."
Bureau Report
