Decius wrote:
] I'm not sure what to make of this politically. I'd like to see
] what other people on MemeStreams have to say.

Yeah. Me too. I can see reasons for it, but it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth anyway. I have a feeling that there will be a steady stream of oped peices in reference to this.

] The link here makes the claim that the student's report is
] about the Iraq of 1991. That certainly would be a smoking gun,
] but it doesn't appear to be accurate. The student's report
] mentions that there are very few open sources on Iraq. A large
] number of documents were release in 1991, and these are used
] as one of the reference sources for the article, but there are
] many other reference sources, the majority of which are
] relatively recent.
]
] Furthermore, Britain ought to be using open sources, and one
] could imagine that they are careful to keep open source intel
] and closed source intel separate, and for a public report they
] would rely completely upon open sources. So one can imagine
] how this text might have crept into their report. It doesn't
] mean the information in the student's analysis is bad.

Good observation. That is one of the points I was thinking also. There is a lot of logic to keeping to two type of intel seperate. The military and intelligence community has a very black and white view of things, for good reason, so I can see them concluding that it would be best to use open sources where possible, and just only use sources that they know to be accurate and line up with their other intelligence. I can see this being an easier route, as if it was out there, they would need "less" approval to use it. I assume they would need several people in some chain of command to sign off on every damn sentence that came from a classified source, and that's time consuming. This report was likely demanded on short notice.

Work from the pool of information already available in open sources, only use what you know to be true from your other sources. Logical. You betray nothing that way.

Another way to look at it, is that the focus of the game is public perception, not truly providing proof.. They would like to reenforce the enemy having a view like "they don't know anything that we don't know they know".. And that this report was not created by their intelligence people, but rather their poltical PR people, who would not necessarly have the ability to pull from the classified intel sources. Ot at least, they would get more friction doing so. This too is likely possible.

] On the other hand, it does appear that the author of the
] British report took some amount of journalistic liberty with
] the student's words in an attempt to make things sound more
] dramatic. Furthermore, Britain should have attributed their
] sources. Both of these things are certainly dishonest. Whether
] or not they amount to a smoking gun on the war issue, I'm just
] not sure.

So, they took some liberty with the guy's words.. Isn't that the common guideline followed by the idiot plagerist? Change a few words here and there? No matter how you look at it, this paper's primary role was PR. More PR type eyes went over it then intelligence eyes. That I am sure of. The fact that they didn't attribute their sources is the part that really leaves the sour taste in everyones' mouth.. But if they did reveal their sources, the inital impact of the dossier would have been more limited, and they would have looked like fools. Of course, they look like fools now.

I can't fault them for the open/closed speration logic that this likely stems from. But this was pretty lame none the less. Its not that hard to write a paper based off information. I have a feeling the reasons for this are grounded in getting around strict rules for using intelligence information that are not easy to get around in the beaurocracy.

] What do YOU think?

I think the scene went something like this.. In some government building, behind lots of security, a group of intel workers in drab cubicles pour over intel breifs trying to peice together a report for release approval.. Drafts keep coming back because someone is unhappy about the source of a particular sentence. All of a sudden, someone flys thry the door with a stack of printouts in their arms and a big smile.. And in his/her thick british accent, proclaims:

"Bloody Google Rocks!! Best thing the Yanks got!!"

[pause.. everyone turns around..]

"I know how we can round the bloody crats.. Same way every time, college students.."

[that muffled reserved british laugh all around..]

"Ok boys, lets see who got it right.."

[hands a document to each person..]

Meanwhile, somewhere Tony Blair sips a cup of tea and wonders where the dossier he asked for two weeks ago is..

Ok, seriously.. Its more likely they have their own private database of collected open source intel that they work from for reports like this. Sort of like the way the average large corporation has a knowledge base for products that their marketing people use to build sales documents. At one point there was a sources section in this document, if for nothing other then review for the folks signing off on it.. Most likely broken down into two sections, open sources used, and classified sources that verify the info in the open sources used was accurate. Then, just before the release version, that section gets whacked. There was probably another document that was along with it, that went into impact on classified intel sources. That one was likely very short. At least, thats how I envision it..

Makes you want to write some plagiarism detection tools using the Google API and pour over every intel breif with it, dosen't it?

RE: Britain's Intelligence Dossier on Iraq was Plagiarized from a Grad Student