Dodgy Dossier

Iraq – Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation (more commonly known as the Iraq Dossier, the February Dossier or the Dodgy Dossier) was a 2003 briefing document for the British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party government. It was issued to journalists on 3 February 2003 by Alastair Campbell, Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy, and concerned Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Together with the earlier September Dossier, these documents were ultimately used by the government to justify its involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The term Dodgy Dossier was first coined by online polemical magazine Spiked in relation to the September Dossier. The term was later employed by Channel 4 News when its reporter, Julian Rush, was made aware of Glen Rangwala's discovery that much of the work in the Iraq Dossier had been plagiarised from various unattributed sources. The most notable source was an article by then graduate student Ibrahim al-Marashi, entitled Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis.

Whole sections of Marashi's writings on "Saddam's Special Security Organisation" were repeated verbatim including typographical errors, while certain amendments were made to strengthen the tone of the alleged findings (e.g., "monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq" became "spying on foreign embassies in Iraq", and "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes" became "supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes").

In its opening paragraph the briefing document claimed that it drew "upon a number of sources, including intelligence material." Before the document's release it had been praised by Tony Blair and United States Secretary of State Colin Powell as further intelligence and quality research. The day after Channel 4's exposé, Blair's office issued a statement admitting that a mistake was made in not crediting its sources, but did not concede that the quality of the document's content was affected.

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