The Inquisitor Vindicated As Galloway Accusations Unravel

A major US newspaper has issued an apology to George Galloway, the left-wing British member of Parliament accused of accepting cash from Saddam Hussein. The Inquisitor first examined these allegations last month and found them highly suspicious

By Richard Evans, The Inquisitor's Editor: 24 June 2003

The Christian Science Monitor, a Boston-based international newspaper, has issued an apology to George Galloway, and retracted the claim that the acid-tongued anti-war politician might have accepted as much as $10 million from Saddam's regime over the past ten or eleven years. Representatives of the newspaper have also admitted that the documents upon which it based its stories were now proven to be forgeries.

Paul Van Slambrouck, the Christian Science Monitor's editor, has issued an apology to both Galloway and the paper's readership. "It is important to set the record straight," he said. "We are convinced the documents are bogus. We apologize to Mr Galloway and our readers."

For his part, Galloway intends to press on with a lawsuit already lodged against The Christian Science Monitor. Under US law, however, intent to libel must be proven so that it must be demonstrated that the newspaper knowingly published false information. Yet it may also be that the forged documents, supposedly originating from the Iraqi foreign ministry, were fed to the paper by unknown intelligence operatives for their own purposes. In this case, with the paper publishing in good faith, libel could be difficult or impossible to prove.

In May, the Inquisitor published a story examining the evidence against George Galloway and found it unconvincing. According to Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper, which also published allegations against Mr Galloway, documents bearing the Labor Party MP's name and mentions of payments to him via the UN's Food for Oil program were found in box files in the burned-out remains of the Iraqi foreign ministry in Baghdad. But even The Daily Telegraph reporter who found them could not explain how these specific and damning files remained intact while countless others had been incinerated by US bombing.

Galloway, an outspoken opponent of both the war against Iraq and the previous UN sanctions had already infuriated British government officials by referring to Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Bush as "wolves" in an interview with an Arab television network. He had also called the invasion of Iraq a "dirty illegal war." Galloway was suspended from the Labor Party last month pending an investigation into his behavior.

The evidence against Galloway looks more suspicious with each passing week. Experts examining the letters and other papers found in the Baghdad files first noted that signatures of alleged Iraqi officials were either illegible or did not match the names of known foreign ministry personal. Further, representatives of The Christian Science Monitor have admitted, chemical analysis of documents dated between 1992 and 1993 indicated that they were in fact no more than a few months old.

Examination of the documentary evidence against Galloway will likely intensify in the coming days and weeks. Britain's Parliamentary Standards Commissioner is currently conducting an investigation into the accusations against him.