Christian Science Monitor cygani (Irak)

[Gość: Mick]

Christian Science Monitor admits using forged documents against antiwar
British MP Galloway
By Mick Ingram
5 July 2003
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Scottish Labour MP George Galloway has issued High Court libel proceedings
against the Telegraph newspaper over a claim that he received money from
Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The move follows a public apology to
Galloway by the Christian Science Monitor for having made similar allegations
based on forged documents.

In April the Telegraph claimed that Galloway had secretly received at least
£375,000 a year from the Iraqi government. It alleged that he had made
substantial profits by receiving money from the “oil for food” programme. The
newspaper also claimed Galloway received a percentage of the profits on a
number of food contracts he had supposedly obtained with the Iraqi ministry
of trade. The Telegraph said it had evidence Galloway had a meeting with an
Iraqi agent, on December 26, 1999, at which he asked for more money, further
alleging that Galloway had used the Mariam Appeal, which he founded, as a
front to conceal his secret commercial dealings with Iraq’s intelligence
service. All of these allegations were based upon documents said to have been
discovered in the bombed-out ruins of the Iraqi Ministry of Information
building in Baghdad by Telegraph reporter David Blair.

The story was then picked up by the American newspaper Christian Science
Monitor, which claimed to have obtained its own documents showing that
Galloway had received some $10 million from the Iraqi regime over an 11-year
period for the promotion of its interests in the West.

The Monitor has now been forced to apologise for its story. Its June 20
edition published a retraction stating that the documents were forgeries. The
retraction, “Galloway papers deemed forgeries: Iraq experts, ink-aging tests
discredit documents behind earlier Monitor story,” said that after publishing
the initial article of April 25, 2003, “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 article stated.

Two of the documents dated 1992 and 1993 “were 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.”

Monitor editor Paul Van Slambrouck said, “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.”

“It is important to set the record straight: We are convinced the documents
are bogus. We apologize to Mr. Galloway and to our readers,” he declared.

An accompanying article by Van Slambrouck declared, “On this story, we erred.
Our report said what we knew, honestly and carefully. With this follow-up
story Friday, we are continuing our effort to tell what we know, as fully and
fairly as we can, to set the record straight.”

The Monitor’s apology is, however, one of the most backhanded in the history
of journalism. It launched its investigation only the British newspaper, Mail
on Sunday, ran an article May 11 that disputed the authenticity of documents
obtained from the same source as the Monitor’s documents, an Iraqi general
the Mail named as Salah Abdel Rasool. The Mail’s article said its writer had
purchased other documents from the general alleging payments 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,” the Mail said.

Galloway rejected the Monitor’s apology, saying the story went into print
without ever having been put to him. He told Sky News that “the basic checks”
weren’t made and that the paper could not now just shrug it off as a mistake.

“I want to know who forged these documents. I am calling on the prime
minister, as head of the co-occupying power in Iraq, to investigate how this
conspiracy came about,” Galloway said in an earlier statement.

“As a member of the House of Commons, indeed as a British subject, I have the
right to the protection of the British intelligence services from a
conspiracy hatched by persons unknown but whose handiwork was conducted in
foreign territory co-occupied by Great Britain.”

“I don’t accept their apology. Firstly, a newspaper of their international
standing should have conducted these basic checks on the authenticity of
these documents before they published them and not more than two months
afterwards.

“This internationally renowned newspaper published on its front page, in
virtually every country in the world, that I took 10 million dollars from
Saddam Hussein, based on papers which have proved to be forgeries.

“They did not even speak to me before publishing these allegations. My legal
action against them continues.”

Many of the Monitor’s own readers also felt that an apology was not an
adequate response and criticised the editor’s statement as seeking to justify
running the story.

“Regarding your June 20 article ‘Galloway papers deemed forgeries’: Will
an ‘apology’ repair the damage to Mr. Galloway’s reputation? As a supposedly
professional publication, you have a duty to fact check before you publish
articles that are potentially so devastating to individuals,” wrote Carolyn
Gray from Jupiter, Florida.

“Documents conveniently ‘uncovered’ in the days following the war amid heavy
looting and destruction should have been viewed with the highest skepticism—
especially when they reveal ‘facts’ about one of the most influential and
outspoken critics of the war. Is it too much to believe that someone might
have an agenda to smear such a man?” asked Gil Gillman from Pittsburgh.

John F. Garcia from Iowa City, Iowa wrote: “Let me encourage the Monitor to
hang on to this story, now that you’ve made this limited concession to the
truth. Are we to believe a has-been Iraqi general spontaneously dabbles in
Britain’s domestic politics for a mere cut of an $800 translation fee?

“Your apology is nice, but your readers would prefer you to make it up to us
by looking underneath the documents.”

Far from conducting such an investigation, the Monitor has accompanied its
formal retraction of its story with efforts to shore up the credibility of
the accusations made by the Telegraph. The June 20 article states that “the
Monitor’s documents were different in many details from those of the Daily
Telegraph, and came from a different source.”

The Monitor further reports, “After examining copies of two pages of the
Daily Telegraph’s documents linking Galloway with the Hussein regime,
Mneimneh [head of Iraq Research and Document Project in Washington]
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