UK, The Home of the Dirty Tricks Department
We've endured the Nixon dirty tricks. We're now being lied to, cheated and schemed against by Bush's Karl Rove. But for pure chutzpah in the realm of character assassination, the Brits are definitely front runners for a place in the Hall of Sleaze.........
Anti-war activist vindicated from phony charges of bribery:
truthout.org
Go to Original: csmonitor.com
Galloway Papers Deemed Forgeries
Iraq experts, ink-aging tests discredit documents behind earlier Monitor story.
By Faye Bowers and Ilene R. Prusher
The Christian Science Monitor
Friday 20 June 2003
On April 25, 2003, this newspaper ran a story about documents obtained in Iraq that alleged
Saddam Hussein's regime had paid a British member of Parliament, George Galloway, $10
million over 11 years to promote its interests in the West.
An extensive Monitor investigation has subsequently determined that the six papers detailed in the April 25 piece are, in fact, almost certainly forgeries.
The Arabic text of the papers is inconsistent with known examples of Baghdad bureaucratic
writing, and is replete with problematic language, says a leading US-based expert on Iraqi
government documents. Signature lines and other format elements differ from genuine procedure.
The two "oldest" documents - dated 1992 and 1993 - were actually written within the past few
months, according to a chemical analysis of their ink. The newest document - dated 2003 -
appears to have been written at approximately the same time.
"At the time we published these documents, we felt they were newsworthy and appeared
credible, although we did explicitly state in our article that we could not guarantee their
authenticity," says Monitor editor Paul Van Slambrouck. "It is important to set the record
straight: We are convinced the documents are bogus. We apologize to Mr. Galloway and to our
readers."
Awash in documents
After the fall of Hussein's Baghdad government, stories based on internal Iraqi documents
appeared in many news outlets. They detailed everything from mundane aspects of control used
by local Baath Party cells to the high living of Saddam Hussein and his sons.
The name "George Galloway" figured prominently in one of the most explosive of these
stories. On April 22, London's Daily Telegraph reported that papers retrieved by their
correspondent David Blair from the ruins of Iraq's Foreign Ministry described alleged government
payoffs to Mr. Galloway, a Labour Party MP and longtime critic of the West's hardline toward Mr.
Hussein. The Daily Telegraph report received widespread attention in the European press and
throughout the world.
On April 25, the Monitor ran its own piece about papers detailing Galloway's alleged ties to
Baghdad. The documents were purported to have originated in the Special Security Section, run
by Saddam's second son, Qusay.
However, the Monitor's documents were different in many details from those of the Daily
Telegraph, and came from a different source. Monitor contract reporter Philip Smucker obtained
them from an Iraqi general, who in turn said he had captured them after his men shot their way
into a home once used by Qusay Hussein.
Galloway has emphatically denied that he was ever the recipient of Iraqi largess, a denial the
Monitor reported in its original story. He has denounced all stories to that effect, and threatened
to sue both the Daily Telegraph and the Monitor for libel.
On May 11, a report in the British paper The Mail on Sunday disputed the authenticity of
documents obtained from the same source as the Monitor's documents. The Mail's article said
its writer had purchased other documents from the general alleging payoffs to Galloway. Those
documents, unlike the Monitor's, included purported Galloway signatures.
"Extensive examination of the documents by experts has proved they are fakes, bearing crude
attempts to forge the MP's signature," said the Mail on Sunday's May 11 story.
The Monitor did not identify the general in its April 25 story because he said he feared
retribution from Qusay Hussein loyalists. The Mail on Sunday published his name: Gen. Salah
Abdel Rasool.
In light of this new information bearing on the credibility of the source of the Monitor's alleged
Galloway papers, editors decided to consult document experts in the United States to see if the
papers could be proved either false or genuine.
The Monitor first consulted a Harvard graduate student in Arabic studies, Bruce Fudge, who
had spent six months working on a Washington-based archive of captured Iraqi intelligence
documents. Along with another graduate student, Omar Dewachi, an Iraqi who was a physician
in Iraq until the late 1990s, Mr. Fudge could find no apparent problems with the documents. The
offset-printed stationery of the oldest documents correctly reflected the pre-1993 Iraqi flag while
the newer ones carried an emblem of the new flag. The rank of the signatories and the path of the
documents through the bureaucracy seemed appropriate. The dates on two of the documents
matched up to known visits of Galloway to Iraq. But these observations were not conclusive.
Ultraviolet examination
The second to examine the papers was Gerald Richards, a forensics document examiner. A
former chief of the document operations and research unit at the FBI, Mr. Richards is now an
independent consultant based in Laurel, Md.
Mr. Richards scanned the Galloway papers under ultraviolet and infrared light for obvious
physical signs of forgery.
In his tests, Richards found nothing untoward. Pen usage in the papers was consistent with
standard bureaucratic procedure, he noted. For example, the pen used to sign the documents
was different from the one that was used to write the date. That might indicate that an official
signed the document, while an aide dated them.
"There is nothing that would indicate to me they are forgeries," says Richards. "If they are, it's
somebody who knows what he's doing."
Richards cautioned that his type of examination is just one aspect of document forensics.
Another, of equal or greater importance, is textual analysis.
For that, Bruce Fudge directed the Monitor to Hassan Mneimneh. As head of the Iraq
Research and Documentation Project in Washington, Mr. Mneimneh has custody of some 3.2
million Iraqi government documents captured by the US or its allies in the 1991 Gulf War. He and
his analysts have been poring over this trove for years in an effort to learn more about Iraq's
intelligence services, military, and bureaucratic operations.
Mneimneh's first instinct was that something was not quite right about the Monitor's
documents.
"I have literally reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents, and these [are] by far the
neatest, tidiest I have ever seen," he says.
There is, for instance, the matter of the papers' handwritten dates. Purportedly, the documents
as a whole cover a period starting in 1992 and ending in 2003. Yet the dates are written in nearly
identical fashion - as if the same person were dashing them off all at once.
According to their dates, each individual document moved remarkably quickly through the Iraqi
bureaucracy. From initiation at the lowest level to approval at the top allegedly took two or three
days. Also, there are no reference numbers next to the signatures of officials who allegedly
reviewed them and passed them on to other departments, for example. The Iraqi bureaucracy
typically included such numbers for filing purposes, this expert says.
In addition, Mneimneh observes that signatures are followed by the official's name, written out,
and then that person's rank, such as colonel, rather than the customary signature followed only
by a title.
Finally, this expert found the language in the Monitor's six documents to be suspiciously
blunt. The papers describe specific amounts of money requested and paid out, and to whom.
The Iraq Research and Documentation Project has many papers detailing payments to
informers and government agents, and typically the language used in them is indirect. Invariably
they do not name the person who is actually getting the money.
"They usually use a euphemism.... Then there is a file somewhere else where they correlate
the euphemisms to actual names," Mneimneh says.
Different documents
After examining copies of two pages of the Daily Telegraph's documents linking Galloway with
the Hussein regime, Mneimneh pronounces them consistent, unlike their Monitor counterparts,
with authentic Iraqi documents he has seen.
Moreover, a direct comparison of the language in the Monitor and Daily Telegraph document
sets shows that they are somewhat contradictory.
The papers in the Monitor's possession alleged that Galloway began receiving funds from Iraq
in the early 1990s. One of the Daily Telegraph's, dated January 2000, alleges that Iraqi officials
were just beginning their consideration of a financial relationship with Galloway.
Of the Monitor's papers, he says, "My gut reaction to [these documents] is that they are
extremely suspicious."
With growing doubts about the authenticity of the Galloway documents, Monitor editors
decided to have the age of the ink analyzed, as well as to revisit the source of the documents in
Baghdad.
Determining the age of a document by dating its ink is far from an exact science. Only a
handful of US private labs do such work. Ink analysis generally isn't admissible in court.
On the recommendation of several forensic experts the Monitor turned to Valery Aginsky, an
ink chemist with Riley & Welch Associates, Forensic Document Examinations, Inc., in East
Lansing, Mich.
Dr. Aginsky first tested ink from the two alleged Galloway documents with the oldest dates -
1992 and 1993. He found that the ink components had not yet finished aging, a process that
typically takes no more than two years.
The documents tested simply could not have been prepared when their dates said they were,
according to Aginsky.
Aginsky then compared the ink from these older-dated documents with that from a document
dated 2003. He determined that they were aging at the same rate - meaning that these papers
had most likely been written at approximately the same time and not over a period of a decade,
as their written dates claimed.
"It is 90 percent probable that these documents have been prepared recently," he says.
Meet General Rasool
In Baghdad, Monitor reporter Ilene Prusher met with General Rasool, the source of the
Monitor's documents. Rasool repeated most of the account he had earlier given Smucker.
In April, the general had told Smucker that his whole family had been killed by the Hussein
regime, and that he himself had served time in prison. When the Americans neared Baghdad,
and the Baath Party melted away, Rasool said, he and some associates had stormed into a
house used by Qusay Hussein.
Rasool said that they were in pursuit of deeds to property stolen from him by Hussein's
henchmen. While in the house, they carted off numerous sacks of official-looking paper,
according to the general.
As the discussion with Ms. Prusher progressed from there, a number of things became
apparent:
• The general was offering other documents alleging malfeasance on the part of a wide array
of foreign public figures noted for their support of the Hussein regime. (When Smucker met the
general earlier, Rasool denied having documents dealing with any foreign politicians other than
Galloway.)
• The papers from Qusay's house also "proved" that six of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers learned
to fly in Iraq, according to the general.
• Rasool did not directly ask for money, but he described current negotiations to sell
documents to other parties.
After the Mail on Sunday published its May story questioning the veracity of documents from
Rasool, and acknowledged paying for its own alleged Galloway papers, the Monitor published a
short piece summarizing the Mail story and adding that "the Monitor did not pay for any of the
Iraqi documents in its possession, nor was any payment ever discussed."
In fact, it's now clear that statement was technically accurate but incomplete. There was no
direct payment to the general. But he let Smucker carry off three boxes of files, including the
Galloway papers, only after Smucker paid the general's neighbor $800 to translate the
documents during the next two days.
Smucker recalls that it was the general who brought up George Galloway's name first at their
initial meeting. After the reporter indicated an interest, the general said he knew where those
documents were, and that he could have them for Smucker in 24 hours. Smucker says Rasool
told him that one of his neighbors, who left Baghdad to attend a Shiite pilgrimage in Karbala, held
the documents.
Upon Smucker's return the next day, the general showed him the Galloway documents as well
as the boxes of others on various subjects. After hiring the neighbor, Smucker left with the
boxes.
"I had no knowledge that the general received any of the $800, though now that I know the
documents are forgeries, I have my suspicions," says Smucker. "At the time I was operating on
the premise that these were entirely authentic."
Staff writers Faye Bowers in Washington and Ilene R. Prusher in Baghdad contributed to
this report.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.) |
