No 10 admits dossier blunder
IRAQ
Published: 7 February 2003
Reporter: Gary Gibbon
It took them nearly 24 hours, but Downing Street has been forced to admit it made a mistake with an intelligence dossier released on Monday..
A spokesman confessed that it should have credited the authors of the articles it used in the document, particularly Ibrahim Al Marashi - he's the graduate student whose thesis was copied -- grammatical errors and all.
'We all have lessons to learn', was the word from Number Ten on this embarrassing affair - revealed exclusively on Channel 4 News last night.
Tony Blair refused all questions about the dodgy dossier as he opened a community centre in Hartlepool. But he's on a relentless campaign to win support for his policy on Iraq and this is the last thing he needed.
Back in Downing street his official spokesman admitted mistakes had been made.
" .. in retrospect we should have acknowledged that ... parts of that were based on Dr Al-Marashi's work"
" does not throw into question the accuracy of the document as a whole"
"we all have lessons to learn from this".
The revelation that great chunks of this dossier were simply lifted from a Californian's post graduate thesis won't do much to build up confidence in the government at a time when it desparately needs to build up trust.
And it probably won't do much to build up trust when people discover that some of those working on this report were not the Iraqi experts at the Foreign office or MI6 but Downing street staffers, including those that work in Alastair Campbell's department of communications in no.12 Downing street.
Among the four names credited with working on the document is Alastair Campbell's own personal assistant Alison Blackshaw, a junior no.10 press officer Murtarza Khan, one other no.10 official and a foreign office official.
Unaware that it was a straight lift from a PHD thesis both Tony Blair and US Secretary of State Colin Powell this week paraded the dossier as quality research and a searing indictment of Saddam's regime.
This saga is already being pointed to as further evidence that the government's communications efforts are out of control. An inquiry into government media relations begins its work next week, and now added to its in tray is just how a government dossier on Iraq turned into such a propaganda own goal.
Source:
http://www.channel4.com/news/home/z/...7/dossier.html 
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