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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A single laptop can reveal much, and so it is with the digital treasure chest that Colombian commandos found in the jungle quarters of slain rebel leader Raul Reyes. Files in the computer seized in Saturday's raid into Ecuador that claimed the lives of Reyes and 23 of his comrades offer an intimate portrait of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's desire to undermine Colombia's U.S.-allied government. If authentic, the documents show that sympathies Chavez first aired publicly in January grew out of a relationship that dates back more than a decade. But Chavez is not one of...

LONDON - An early version of a British dossier of prewar intelligence on Iraq did not include a key claim about weapons of mass destruction that became vital to Tony Blair's case for war, the newly published document showed Monday. The 2002 document insisted Saddam Hussein's regime had acquired uranium and had equipment necessary for chemical weapons, but does not contain a claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes — an allegation crucial to Blair's push to back the 2003 U.S.-led invasion — that later was discredited. Campaigners allege that the 45-minute claim was inserted...

The purpose of this post is to begin providing links, tools, and tactics which we can all use to educate the public, fellow citizens, and neighbors about Hillary Clinton.It is a work in progress- I have provided a starting point, but want others to chime in with more links, stories, and information.It is the product of conversations with a number of other members, from which several salient tactical points emerged:1- keep it as contemporary as possible- the old Whitewater and similar items are stale and dead to the public.2- keep it civil, please- within the board guidelines, or better. We...

Police officers are being forced to make "ludicrous" arrests in an attempt to hit Home Office targets, it has been claimed. Ridiculous examples include the case of a Cheshire man who was cautioned for being "found in possession of an egg with intent to throw". In Kent, a child was arrested for throwing a slice of cucumber from a tuna sandwich at another youngster, while a was boy arrested for throwing a cream bun on a school bus.

Litvinenko 'killed over dossier' Saturday December 16, 06:34 AM An ex-business associate of Alexander Litvinenko has said that the former Russian spy was murdered because of information he held on a powerful Kremlin figure. Ex-spy Yuri Shvets said Mr Litvinenko was commissioned by a reputable UK firm to provide information on Russia. He told BBC Radio 4 that Mr Litvinenko was poisoned after his dossier containing damaging details was deliberately leaked to the high-ranking Moscow figure. Mr Litvinenko died in London on November 23 from polonium-210 radiation poisoning. Mr Shvets said: "I cannot really be 100% sure, but I am...

Toronto woman 'shocked' to see her personal data in secret Chinese report JIM BRONSKILL Fri Jun 17, 5:41 PM ET OTTAWA (CP) - A Toronto woman says she was shocked and annoyed to see her personal information in a secret report to Chinese officials. Jillian Ye, a database consultant in suburban Scarborough, found herself at the centre of a storm Friday over allegations of Chinese espionage in Canada. The 39-year-old Ye, a longtime practitioner of Falun Gong, was the subject of a September 2004 report to security officials in China, where many say followers of the ancient meditative practice have...

Greg Dyke, former director general of the BBC, has claimed that the British Government "tried to kill" Andrew Gilligan. Reporter Gilligan broke the story that British intelligence had "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq that sought to justify Britain's support for US-led invasion of the country. "The Government tried to kill him," claimed Dyke about Gilligan, who was forced out of his job at the BBC in January in the wake of the Hutton report that inquired into the death of scientist David Kelly. Kelly was the main source for Gilligan. Dyke was speaking at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature...

Iran's ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna said a declaration it gave the UN watchdog in October, once described by Tehran as complete, was never intended to be a complete picture of Iran's atomic past. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the UN nuclear agency's governing board, ambassador Pirooz Hosseini said Iranian officials had been "misquoted" by the press last year as saying the October dossier was complete. "We were not at the time of October 21 to say everything, because what we announced at that time was based on our obligations under the Safeguards...

<p>WASH TIMES 2/11 Rep. Sam Johnson, Texas Republican, who spent nearly seven years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Vietnam, said yesterday the photograph of Mr. Kerry with Miss Fonda will hurt him nevertheless. "I think it symbolizes how two-faced he is, talking about his war reputation, which is questionable on the one hand, and then coming out against our veterans who were fighting over there on the other," Mr. Johnson said. Mr. Johnson recalled that his North Vietnamese captors played recordings of Miss Fonda telling U.S. troops to give up the war. "Seeing this picture of Kerry with her at antiwar demonstrations in the United States just makes me want to throw up."</p>

BBC chief resigns over Iraq weapons adviser report ( ) LONDON, Jan 29, 2004 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- British Broadcasting Corp. chief Greg Dyke resigned Thursday, the second top BBC official to step down after a judicial inquiry harshly criticized the broadcaster's journalistic standards. On Wednesday, senior judge Lord Hutton criticized the 81-year-old network for an "unfounded" report it broadcast last year accusing the government of "sexing up" a prewar dossier about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction with information it knew was wrong. Gavyn Davies, the chairman of the BBC's board of governors, resigned Wednesday - the first time...

BBC apologises to Blair John Plunkett Thursday January 29, 2004 The BBC has offered an unreserved apology to the government over the way it handled its complaint about the Andrew Gilligan story, which Tony Blair immediately accepted, adding the government could now "draw a line" under the whole episode. The BBC acting chairman, Lord Ryder, issued the statement on behalf of the board of governors, which also confirmed the appointment of Greg Dyke's recently appointed deputy, Mark Byford, as acting director general. Lord Ryder said the Hutton report had highlighted "serious defects in the corporation's processes". "On behalf of the...

BBC chairman Gavyn Davies is to resign in the wake of Lord Hutton's criticisms of the corporation's reports. BBC political editor Andrew Marr said Mr Davies would tell the corporation's governors of his decision when they met at 1700 GMT. It comes after Lord Hutton said the claim in BBC reports that the government "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq's weapons was "unfounded". And he criticised "defective" BBC editorial processes over defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan's broadcasts of the claims on the Today programme. Lord Hutton also said he was satisfied Dr Kelly had killed himself after being named as the...

LONDON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - David Kelly, the weapons expert whose suicide rocked the British government, believed Iraq did pose an immediate threat, the BBC said on Wednesday, just days before a critical report into his death. Kelly told the BBC before the war that Iraq's weapons could have taken "days or weeks" to deploy. But he did not back Prime Minister Tony Blair's notorious claim that they could be fired in 45 minutes. The failure to find Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- the primary Anglo-American motive for war -- has eroded public trust in Blair, putting him in...

Panorama turns fire on Dyke Jason Deans Wednesday January 21, 2004 Dyke: comes in for strong criticism in documentary BBC director general Greg Dyke will tonight be accused of "betting the farm" on Andrew Gilligan's "sexed up" Iraq dossier story, without having checked whether it was accurate in a remarkable Panorama documentary. The special show will also highlight the near panic at senior levels within the BBC when Mr Dyke and other executives finally realised the firestorm Gilligan had started in late June 2003, after Downing Street's director of communications, Alastair Campbell, had launched a scathing attack on the corporation's...

<p>Media organizations prepared Tuesday to oppose any efforts by the Justice Department to subpoena journalists and their notes to learn who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent to columnist Robert Novak.</p> <p>Subpoenas could be challenged on the basis of First Amendment guarantees of freedom of the press, said Bill Felber, editor of The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury and freedom of information chairman for the Associated Press Managing Editors. But they could also be challenged, he said, if they were too broad or if the information could be obtained in other ways.</p>

Gilligan admits dossier row errors BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan has admitted making mistakes in live broadcasts reporting claims the government had "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Mr Gilligan stood by the story he based on a conversation with government weapons expert Dr David Kelly. But under tough cross-examination at the Hutton inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, Mr Gilligan said he had made "slips of the tongue" in unscripted broadcasts. He was followed into the witness box by BBC director of news Richard Sambrook, who said there were errors in the BBC's strongly-worded response to the...

LONDON - A British Broadcasting Corp. reporter — and not a top government weapons adviser — was the one who suggested during an interview that a top aide of Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) was behind an exaggeration of the threat posed by Iraq (news - web sites), an arms expert said Thursday. That testimony by Olivia Bosch contradicted statements by the BBC's Andrew Gilligan, who said adviser David Kelly suggested the name of key Blair aide Alastair Campbell without prompting. Bosch, testifying at an inquiry into Kelly's apparent suicide, said Kelly told her during a phone...

The security chief responsible for the Government's controversial dossier on Iraq has described how intelligence indicated that Saddam could deploy weapons of mass destruction in just 20 minutes. John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, was giving evidence to the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Government scientist Dr David Kelly. He described to Lord Hutton how the dossier published last September and used by the Government to make the case for war on Iraq was drawn up. Before it was published, new intelligence came to light suggesting Iraq could deploy the weapons within a maximum of 45 minutes...

<p>CANBERRA, Australia (CNN) -- The heat being generated over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction has moved to Australia with a former senior intelligence officer accusing Canberra of exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime.</p> <p>Speaking to an inquiry called by the Australian Senate, Andrew Wilkie said Friday information in intelligence reports had been distorted by the prime minister's office and "sexed up" to suit the government's political agenda.</p>

Alastair Campbell said he had been assured by senior MI6 officers that the Government had the full support of the intelligence agencies over its decision to publish the dossier on Iraqi weapons. Giving evidence to the inquiry into the death of Government weapons expert David Kelly, the Downing Street communications chief confirmed that he had offered "presentational" advice on the production of the dossier. But he said that the intelligence material in the dossier had been the work of the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee John Scarlett. And he insisted he had not been involved in any way in...

Top Blair Aide Reveals Debate Over Iraq Threat LONDON (Reuters) - The dossier on which British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) justified war against Iraq (news - web sites) contained no proof of any threat from Baghdad, according to an e-mail from a top Blair aide released on Monday. The e-mail is the first public sign of debate within Blair's inner circle about the strength of intelligence used to justify a war that most Britons opposed. "The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from (Iraqi President) Saddam (Hussein)," Blair's chief...

Downing Street authorised a "substantial rewrite" of the Government's Iraqi weapons dossier in the run-up to its publication, according to evidence presented to the inquiry into the death of the Government scientist David Kelly. Documents released to the inquiry showed that it was decided that the dossier should be restructured "as per TB's discussion" - an apparent reference to Prime Minister Tony Blair. The inquiry, headed by Lord Hutton, also heard how Mr Blair himself chaired crisis talks in No 10 after it emerged that Dr Kelly could be the source of a BBC story claiming the dossier had been...

Andrew Gilligan’s story that Downing Street had “sexed up” the dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been “marred by flawed reporting,” according to the editor of the Today programme where his reports first appeared

A new intelligence dossier is being prepared on the progress made in finding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, it was reported today. The Economist magazine reports that the MI6 document will contain evidence, based on interviews with Iraqi scientists, that Saddam Hussein had produced quantities of biological weapons. The report, which would come out one year after last September's controversial dossier - which the BBC alleged No 10 "sexed up" to support the case for war - is also said to contain hard evidence of cover-up programmes designed to conceal WMDs. A "Whitehall source" told the Economist: "We would hope...

  Home > Top Stories > World Friday, July 18, 2003   |  Nation |  Business |  Indo-Pak Face Off |  Entertainment |    World   British scientist who ‘briefed’ BBC reporter on Iraq dossier found dead H.S. Rao (Press Trust of India) London, July 18: British government's defence advisor David Kelly, suspected to be a source behind BBC's report that the Blair government had "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq's weapon capabilities, was found dead on Friday, four days after he was grilled by the foreign affairs committee on the issue. The body of 59-year-old Kelly, who was missing since Thursday, was...

Police searching for the weapons expert named by the government as the possible source for a BBC story on Iraq say they have discovered a man's body. The body was found at 0920 BST by a member of the police team searching for Dr Kelly in a wooded area at Harrowdown Hill, near Faringdon, Oxfordshire, but has not yet been identified. Government adviser David Kelly, 59, went missing from his home in Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, at about 1500 BST on Thursday. The body was found around five miles from his home. Earlier this week, Dr Kelly denied being the BBC's...

The man named as the possible Whitehall "mole" for a BBC report claiming the Government "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has denied he was the source of the story. Dr David Kelly, a Government adviser on Iraqi weapons, said he had met the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan a week before he broadcast his story on the Radio 4 Today programme. However, he told the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that Mr Gilligan's account of his conversation with his source was so different from their conversation that he did not believe that he could be the source....

Straw defends dossier uranium claims Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has defended the Government's decision to include in its first Iraqi dossier claims that Saddam Hussein tried to get uranium from Africa. CIA director George Tenet has apologised for allowing President George Bush to refer to the alleged trade between Iraq and Niger in his most recent state of the union address, after it emerged that evidence for the claim was based on forged documentation. Mr Straw acknowledged that the CIA did express reservations about the use of the claim in the British Government's September dossier. But he insisted that it...

<p>LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government did not mislead parliament or doctor evidence to justify the war on Iraq, a parliamentary committee concluded Monday.</p> <p>The Foreign Affairs Committee, which has been probing charges officials exaggerated intelligence on Iraq's weapons to strengthen the case for war, cleared Blair, a top aide and ministers of the allegations, made on the BBC.</p> <p>But the committee did slap the government's wrists for giving undue prominence to questionable intelligence in a September dossier on Iraq's weapons and for plagiarizing a student thesis for a second dossier published in February.</p>

A parliamentary probe criticised Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) for the way he presented the case for war against Iraq (news - web sites), but cleared the government of misleading the country over the threat posed by Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee investigated two dossiers published by the government in the run-up to war, one of which included the controversial claim that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were deployable within 45 minutes. Deputies also probed a BBC report quoting an intelligence source who said that the 45-minute claim was...

Dyke summoned to BBC crisis meeting Governors demand Iraq dossier row answers Matt Wells and Michael White Saturday July 5, 2003 The Guardian Greg Dyke, the BBC's director general, has been summoned before the corporation's board of governors to explain his strategy of brinkmanship with Downing Street, as the broadcaster prepares for its biggest constitutional crisis in recent history. The Guardian has learned that a rare weekend meeting, called by the BBC chairman Gavyn Davies, will take place tomorrow, the day before the Commons foreign affairs select committee publishes its crucial report on the government's use of intelligence information in...

THE BBC was preparing for defeat last night in its battle with Downing Street as it became apparent that a report by MPs will clear Alastair Campbell of “sexing up” the intelligence dossier on Iraq. Corporation executives have acknowledged to The Times that “heads may roll” after such a verdict from the Foreign Affairs Committee and that they will have to broadcast a correction over the most contentious charge levelled at Downing Street. This was a report by the defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan that Downing Street forced the intelligence services to include “unreliable” information about Iraq’s capacity to deploy weapons...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ex-minister backs Campbell over dossier Matthew Tempest and agencies Thursday July 3, 2003 The row over a the government's Iraq dossier took another twist last night, as a backbench Conservative MP claimed the head of the intelligence services told him there had been no interference from the Downing Street communications director, Alastair Campbell. Sir Nicholas Soames, a former defence minister, told the Press Association last night that it was "totally and entirely untrue" that the government had altered or exaggerated intelligence information. Mr Campbell has been accused, by an anonymous intelligence source on the BBC Today programme, of "sexing...

LONDON -- In a mystery novel, there's the scene when the master detective assembles all the suspects in one room. In Westerns, there is the showdown on Main Street at high noon. In British politics, there is a half-hour called Oral Questions to the Prime Minister. On Wednesday, pestered Prime Minister Tony Blair faced down his critics in the House of Commons at high noon. Well, he kind of faced them down. Blair's critics -- antiwar tax-and-spend leftists and pro-war conservatives, who oppose Labor's "stealth taxes," such as the rise in national health-care rates -- had been eager to draw...

Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications chief admitted Wednesday that a mistake was made when a government dossier on Iraqi weapons included material lifted from a graduate thesis on the Internet. Controversy over the dossier, a key part of the government's argument for military action in Iraq, intensified as Blair was under fresh pressure to get troops out of the region following the deaths of six military policemen. Campbell told a parliamentary committee said the inclusion of work from a graduate thesis in the dossier, which outlined the weapons of mass destruction threat posed by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, published by...

LONDON (Reuters) - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Tuesday that a dossier on Iraq's weapons, partly plagiarized from a student thesis, had proved an embarrassment to the British government and should never have been published. Straw apologized to the author of the thesis, an Iraqi, and said a "very substantial error" was made with its compilation. But during a grilling by a parliamentary committee, he rubbished claims that the government had "sexed up" evidence of Iraq's banned weapons and denied that the prime minister had misled the country. "This episode has been of very great embarrassment to the government,"...

<p>Following is a transcribed excerpt from Fox News Sunday, April 27, 2003.</p> <p>SNOW: Mr. Chalabi, last week you told me you believed that Saddam Hussein is still alive and somewhere in Iraq. Do you still believe that's the case?</p> <p>CHALABI: Yes, I do.</p>

For the past few weeks it has been impossible to escape some glum pundit demanding that the President of the United States "explain" why the United States needs to make war on Saddam Hussein. Nor can the soul rest, faced with the serried ranks of Pax Christi, the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, all furrowed brows over the need for enlightenment and a temporal blessing from the United Nations and the EU. If this were genuine, one could make a fortune on a quick edition of Iraq for Dummies. But whether it is the Financial Times, Jon Snow...

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair was accused Friday of playing the same propaganda games as Saddam Hussein after chunks of an "intelligence" dossier on Iraq turned out to have been plagiarized from academic papers. The dossier, published this week on a government Web site, said Iraq had mounted a massive campaign to deceive and intimidate U.N. inspectors hunting for banned weapons. The latest in a series of British documents focusing on the alleged threat from Saddam and rallying support for a possible U.S.-led war, it was praised by Secretary of State Colin Powell in the U.N. Security...

Downing St dossier plagiarised Iraq Published: 6 February 2003 Reporter: Julian Rush The government's carefully co-ordinated propaganda offensive took an embarrassing hit tonight after Downing Street was accused of plagiarism. The target is an intelligence dossier released on Monday and heralded by none other than Colin Powell at the UN yesterday. Channel Four News has learnt that the bulk of the nineteen page document was copied from three different articles - one written by a graduate student. On Monday, the day before the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell addressed the UN, Downing Street published its latest paper on Iraq....

The United States and Britain are piling the pressure on Saddam Hussein, accusing the Iraqi leader of falsehood" and omissions in his weapons declaration to the United Nations. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Wednesday that US President George W Bush was "concerned" about gaps in the Iraqi report. UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also criticised the declaration, saying it was not "the full and complete" version demanded by the UN Security Council.This should be seen as the end of the inspections charade - Ivan "This will fool nobody," Mr Straw said in a statement on Wednesday. "If Saddam...

LONDON/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Monday Iraq could still avoid war, but British officials were quoted as saying they were "very disappointed" by Baghdad's declaration of its arms programs. Iraqi opposition figures, meeting in London, haggled over plans for a possible interim leadership of their country should President Saddam Hussein be toppled. They have already agreed on a political blueprint calling for a federal, tolerant Iraq. In Iraq, U.N. arms teams set out again for suspect sites after the country's oil minister said it would cooperate fully with the renewed inspection effort to disprove U.S....

IRAQ defied American warnings to disclose its weapons of mass destruction by denying their existence yesterday in a 11,807-page dossier that a senior British diplomat immediately dismissed as “the mother of all gobbledegook”. The dossier was handed to United Nations inspectors in Baghdad as Saddam Hussein apologised for the first time for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which triggered the Gulf war the following year. In an attempt to rally Arab opinion behind him, Saddam said he was sorry for the occupation and urged ordinary Kuwaitis to join him in any struggle against “foreign armies” on their soil, a reference...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --  British charges that President Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction are empty propaganda, Iraq said Wednesday.</p> <p>In a 29-page rebuttal given to reporters in Baghdad, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said the British allegations were "a series of lies and empty propaganda which are totally inconsistent with the facts and reports by the (U.N. inspectors') Special Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency teams."</p>

Berlin, Sept 25, IRNA -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program has not altered Germany's opposition to a United States assault on Baghdad. "We did not see anything new (in the dossier) but we will carefully review it," government spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye said here Wednesday at the weekly press briefing The Blair dossier highlights Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capabilities based upon British intelligence and military assessments. The British prime minister had earlier voiced support for military actions against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein as the 'last resort'.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - President Saddam Hussein's cabinet condemned on Wednesday as "lies and allegations" British Prime Minister Tony Blair's dossier, saying Baghdad will respond in detail to the document, Iraqi state television said. "This dossier is full of false propaganda which lacks material and convincing evidence," said a statement issued by a cabinet meeting chaired by Saddam and carried by the television.

Tony Blair secured the cautious backing of MPs last night for action to force Saddam Hussein to disarm after the Government disclosed that Iraq's armoury of chemical or biological weapons could be activated at 45 minutes' notice. Labour divisions on Iraq were exposed when backbenchers staged one of the biggest revolts since Mr Blair came to power to register their opposition to the prospect of military action. Mr Blair told the Commons that the world must stop Saddam developing more weapons of mass destruction before it was too late. But the emergency debate revealed a deep undercurrent of concern about...

Key pictures from the UK Government's dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons programme. Photograph of children's bodies, found dead where they had been playing in their village of Halabja. It was bombed by Iraqi warplanes in March 1988 when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against his own people. "In places," the dossier says, "streets were piled with corpses." The Ibn Sina Company and Tarmiyah, one of a number of centres which the dossier says are "dual-use facilities, which are capable of being used to support the production of chemical agent and precursors". Project Baiji in north-west Iraq at al-Sharqat which, the...

A DOSSIER of evidence against Iraq released by the British government provides compelling proof of the need to act against Saddam Hussein, Prime Minister John Howard has said. Mr Howard said the dossier, which showed that Iraq was preparing plans to hide chemical weapons from UN inspectors, backed his conviction that Saddam had to be stopped. After a half hour meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London Mr Howard said his views had not changed. "I think it is very important that the world try very hard to achieve a diplomatic and political solution," he said. "Nobody wants...

BAGHDAD, Sep 24, 2002 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- Iraq on Tuesday strongly denied accusations contained in a "dossier of evidence" released by British Prime Minister Tony Blair earlier in the day accusing Baghdad of possessing weapons of mass destruction, calling such charges "nothing but false lies." In the first official reaction to Blair's charges, Culture Minister Hamed Yousif Hummadi told reporters here, "The so-called dossier made public by British Prime Minister Tony Blair is nothing but false lies and part of a Zionist international campaign." The Iraqi minister said former U.N. weapons inspectors have officially confirmed that Iraq does not...