- A Senior Defense adviser has been sacked after refusing
to write media briefings that supported claims that Iraq possessed weapons
of mass destruction.
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- Engineer and analyst Jane Errey was an adviser to former
Chief Defense Scientist Dr Ian Chessell and wrote briefings for Defense
Minister Robert Hill. Her job at Defense gave her access to secret intelligence
on Iraq's weaponry from the Defense Intelligence Organisation and the Office
of National Assessments.
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- Ms Errey claims that on the day before the Iraq war started,
she was asked to write what she believed was "sexed-up" propaganda
about Iraq's capabilities.
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- The next day -- March 20 last year -- she went on holiday
rather than write what she claimed would have been a misleading briefing.
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- But she was sacked last Monday, after more than nine
years at Defense, on "performance grounds".
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- "I felt like I was part of the propaganda machine.
As a public servant I shouldn't be expected to write propaganda,"
she told the Sunday Herald Sun.
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- A superior had instructed her to compile media advice
on WMDs for Senator Hill, advice Ms Errey said would have misled the public.
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- "Anything that I was doing with respect to the war
was making me uncomfortable," Ms Errey said. "Then to have to
brief the minister and fundamentally give him -- even though I didn't write
it -- lines of propaganda that I didn't believe with respect to the war
was beyond what I was prepared to do. I wouldn't lie or mislead the public."
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- The next day, as the war began, she submitted a leave
application. Ms Errey said that Dr Chessell suggested that, considering
her views on the war, maybe she should not be working at Defense.
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- "He told me that he was prepared to sign the leave
form, but he thought that I should consider whether working for Defense
was the right job for me," she said.
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- Ms Errey's leave ran out and after taking sick leave,
she applied unsuccessfully for leave without pay. Since July, she has worked
at a community organisation.
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- As Dr Chessell's senior executive adviser, Ms Errey --
an electrical engineer -- had access to classified reports on Iraq's weapons
programs.
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- "I had access to those reports. I used to read them
before I'd take them in to Dr Chessell," she said.
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- "There wasn't enough substantiated evidence from
the reports I was seeing to justify the war."
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- Ms Errey is the second disillusioned official to go public
with doubts about the Howard Government's claim that Iraq's weapons represented
a threat. Andrew Wilkie, an analyst at the Office of National Assessments,
quit in opposition to the war last year.
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- In July last year, Britain's Blair Government was at
the centre of a scandal after the suicide of Dr David Kelly, a senior Defense
scientist. Dr Kelly was publicly accused of leaking a story that claimed
intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "sexed up"
to justify the war.
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- Ms Errey, 43, explained her views to a parliamentary
committee, but her testimony was not mentioned in the committee report.
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- She said she was a highly regarded official within the
Defense Science and Technology Organisation until her opposition to the
war became known.
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- She worked on the Collins Class submarine project and
in DSTO's international division and had access to all the reports submitted
to Dr Chessell. She also had the responsibility to brief him on issues
of importance, including what Senator Hill needed to know.
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- "Something that was going to Chessell, a letter
for him, I would read and generally draft a reply before I even showed
it to him," she said. "If I thought the minister needed to be
aware of an issue, I'd draft the ministerial briefing."
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- Ms Errey said there was debate in Dr Chessell's office
in the months before the war over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
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- "His staff were the weapons inspectors, part of
Hans Blix's UN team," she said. "So Chessell had a duty of care
because his staff were the inspectors.
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- "The UN team was saying 'We haven't found any WMDs.
Let us finish our job'. That was different advice to what the intelligence
reports were saying.
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- "The Government was saying, 'Look, the Americans
are right and it's time to go in'. I didn't agree."
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- Ms Errey received a letter from Defense on Monday that
terminated her employment "on performance grounds". But she said:
"The real reason is I took a stand against the war. If I hadn't taken
that stand, I'm sure I would have been given leave without pay."
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- At the start of the war, Mr Howard said: "We are
determined to join other countries to deprive Iraq of its weapons of mass
destruction, its chemical and biological weapons."
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- A spokeswoman for Senator Hill said: "Ms Errey's
case was a matter for the Defense Department and the Public Service Act."
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- http://heraldsun.com.au
- http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,9244449%255E661,00.htm
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