Politics and Plagiarism

... ...

Profiles in Plagiarism: Politics

________________________________________________________________________________

Sali Berisha

Orange: High Risk

Converting from loyalty to the former communist government to active involvement in the Democratic Party

Early in 2006, the Prime Minister of Albania was caught on TV parroting a speech of his "famously verbose" predecessor Fatos Nano.

Suspicion was aroused by certain phrases which seemed to be un-characteristic of Berisha, "formulation[s] in Albanian that reeked of Nano's prolix speech". As noted by the editor of Top Channel TV, Bledar Zaganjori, "We looked at the previous strategy speech . . . and found out the texts were almost identical" ("Copy-and-paste speech exposes double-talk" Reuters).

As Top Channel reported, the "cryptic wording" of Berisha's energy policy speech, when checked against the previous speech by Nano, was found to be a verbatim repetition of the same lines.

Had Berisha been running for political office rather than sitting comfortably in his appointment as Prime Minister, this incident of parroting might have had the potential for inflicting serious damage on his political ambitions (c.f. the case of American politician Joe Biden below, for which TV footage existed to make an "attack video").

As a doctor and university professor, Berisha has a number of publications to his credit including textbooks and scientific articles. These were written in the 1980s well before the Postmodern Age of Cut and Paste. What interesting things will initiatives such as the Google Library Project reveal about many texts written before the Internet? How many new plagiaries have yet to be discovered through such digitization initiatives, formerly hardcopy-only-texts being transformed into the same digital format which has enabled cheat-detection on a scale never seen before?

References

End Profile PLTC-2006-SB

... ...

________________________________________________________________________________

Joe Biden

Red: Severe Risk

Glib oratorical skills and speechmaking

Joe Biden’s history of plagiarism and “stressless scholarship” gave plenty of ammo to his enemies, one of them choosing to circulate a so-called “attack video” to demonstrate Biden’s outright plagiarism of a British politician’s speech. But this appropriation from Neal Kinnock was not the first occurrence of unacknowledged lifting by the senator from Delaware.

In 1965 Biden plagiarized while writing a paper as a student at the Syracuse University Law School in a legal methods course which he failed because of that copied paper. Such “stressless scholarship” as it is euphemistically called has become all too common in the modern Internet era with countless cheatsites and “research services” offering to sell students papers on topics from A to Z.

Biden’s case demonstrates that student plagiarism is nothing new. Only the methods of cheating have changed. Today, cheating has gone digital with the proliferation of Internet based paper filing and distributions systems, but the principles—or lack thereof—are the same. And as the Biden case illustrates, getting caught for such academic dishonesty may have serious ramifications for one’s political career. Joe Biden’s failed bid for the Democratic ticket is a case in point.

“Stressless scholarship” may seem like a pretty good idea at the time that many students make that decision to ‘crib’, copy, or dowload a paper off the Internet, but in Biden’s case the plagiarism of his student days came back to haunt his bid for the democratic presidential nomination like a spectre from his past.

In an article entitled “Biden’s Belly Flop”, Newsweek printed Joe Biden’s yearbook picture from his college days and a copy of his law school transcripts with the big “F” in his transcripts circled. Biden was given a chance to repeat his legal methods course, and above the “F” his retake grade of 80% was eventually penciled in. Being a repeat offender when it came to plagiarism made things much, much worse for Biden than they might have been otherwise in his failed bid for the Democratic presidential ticket in 1987.

Senator Biden’s plagiarism of a speech by British Labor Party leader Neal Kinnock took place at a campaign stump at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. In closing his speech, Biden took Kinnock’s ideas and language as if they were his very own inspired thoughts, prefacing Kinnock’s ideas with the phrase “I started thinking as I was coming over here . . . “. Little did Biden suspect that video footage of this speech would be spliced together with footage of Kinnock’s speech in an “attack video” which would be distributed by members of the Dukakis campaign.

Making the headline news in the New York Times, and the evening news on TV, the video was a stab in the back for Biden by his democratic competitor, and although he insisted that “I’m in this race to stay. I’m in this race to win,” the resulting publicity surrounding his unacknowledged use of Neal Kinnock’s speech was what eventually forced him out of the race. Name recognition was no longer a problem for Biden, but not the kind of name recognition which would assist his campaign for the democratic presidential nomination. His name was now a byword for plagiarism. His situation became a classic example of plagiarism for high school teachers and college instructors across the nation lecturing on the evils of unacknowledged source use.

Biden initially denied any wrongdoing, claiming that this was just an inadvertent lack of acknowledgement. Yet there were other instances of rhetorical borrowing from speeches made by Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. And the fact that Biden had given other speeches using the Kinnock passages without acknowledgment suggested that the lifting was more than just an inadvertent oversight.

As with Al Gore’s case, the perception existed in the public mind that Biden just wasn’t the real thing. He wasn’t authentic, didn’t have thoughts and ideas of his own, and was a malleable piece of clay being molded by his handlers to suit the political whims and fancies which they thought would appeal to voters. A Time magazine article by Walter Shapairo was pretty much on the money in offering the speculation that “In the end, Biden may be remembered as the candidate who truly offered the voters an echo and not a choice.”

William Safire, former speechwriter for Richard Nixon, gloated in the New York Times over Biden’s demise, quoting a supposedly “embittered Democrat” who said, “I’m going back to Gary Hart . . . At least he didn’t steal that girl from some far-lefty in England.” And he concluded his op-ed column with a swipe at Biden’s ability to think apart from his speechwriter: “So my advice to candidates like Joe Biden is this: Do justly, love perorations and walk humbly with thy speechwriter. (I forget where I got that, but it has a nice ring to it.) ”

With all the press he was receiving over his Neal Kinnock plagiarism courtesy of the Dukakis “attack videos”, Biden was quickly becoming the “most famous political plagiarist of our time”, as Thomas Mallon describes the unfortunate Delaware senator. It was just a matter of time before Biden would have to bow out of the democratic primary.

Biden himself thought that all the attention to his rhetorical borrowing was “frankly ludicrous”, and the media analysts generally agreed, stating that is was “hardly a capital offense”, but as William Safire put it, “times have changed; you can’t get away with borrowing anything these days – not even an oratorical technique, much less a phrase or paragraph – unless you are willing to give the attribution.” If Gore’s loss of the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 was more indirectly related to plagiarism, it is evident that Biden’s case is without question a direct result of his unacknowledged use of Kinnock’s speech as if it were his very own. This instance of plagiarism and the public exposure it received cut short the presidential aspirations of an otherwise gifted orator and statesman.

References

End Profile PLTC-1965-JRB

... ...

________________________________________________________________________________

Tony Blair, Number 10 Downing St.

&

Colin Powell

Orange: High Risk

Blair has had a successful political career in politics with Britain’s Labour Party. He has also come to be known for his staunch support of the US “War on Terror”

Prior to his work as US Secretary of State, Powell had a distinguished military career marked by moderate inclinations militarily speaking, as well as loyalty to government policy in spite of personal disagreement

Sex, the apparent suicide of a former UN weapons inspector, and a looming war in Iraq. This case has more elements of mystery and intrigue (and sorrow) than a James Bond movie! As the responsible figures for advocating war against Iraq in their respective governments, Tony Blair and Colin Powell represent the public faces associated with a plagiarism scandal which surfaced after the release of several government intelligence dossiers, the first dossier in question having been released in September 2002, the second in February 2003 prior to the invasion of Iraq.

On the British side of “the pond” Prime Minister Tony Blair was widely rumored to have “sexed up” the case for going to war against Iraq. On the American side at the UN Security Council in New York, Secretary of State Colin Powell faced similar charges as he outlined the case for ousting Saddam Hussein, pointing to intelligence which suggested that Iraq still maintained an active WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) program.

Shortly after Powell’s reference to the nineteen page Downing Street intelligence dossier of February 2003 as a “fine paper . . . which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities”, it was discovered that this dossier had obviously been plagiarized from several sources.

These sources included articles from Jane’s Intelligence Review as well as a MERIA (Middle East Review of International Affairs) paper authored by a U.S. graduate student. Chunks of language had been lifted from the student’s paper, typographical and grammatical errors included. As this plagiarized dossier scandal unfolded, it proved to be a major embarrassment for both the British and American governments.

In the end, with regard to the “sexing up” allegations, it turned out that the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) had been the ones doing the “sexing up” of their own reporting. Tony Blair was acquitted after an inquiry by Lord Hutton of “sexing up” the case for war with Iraq, if “sexing up” is taken to mean “embellished” with information “known or believed to be false or unreliable” as Hutton himself put it.

The plagiarism charges against Number 10, Downing Street were clearly justified, but in Lord Hutton’s view the “sexing up” charges were not—that is, not against the British Government. Against the BBC, yes. But not against Downing Street (Despite the findings of the Hutton inquiry, public mistrust lingered, some suspicions surfacing about a possible “whitewash” or government cover-up).

The California graduate student whose work had been plagiarized, Ibrahim al-Marashi, observed that the two Downing Street dossiers had “undermined serious research conducted by think-tanks and policy centres” but Marashi argued at the same time that the dossier controversy should not be allowed to “obscure the nature of Iraq’s past weapons capabilities” and he suggested that “a smoking gun document or documents may exist, proving that the Iraqi regime had little intention of dismantling its weapons programme.”

Downing Street admitted their plagiarism blunder only after initial denials of any wrongdoing, stating “In retrospect we should have acknowledged its source”.

The backdrop for this case of plagiarism in a government intelligence dossier was the conflict with Iraq dating back to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent coalition forces operation to free Kuwait in 1991. The coalition forces decided against going all the way to Baghdad in this first Gulf War, opting instead for a policy of containment. The wisdom of this policy has come to be questioned since it left in power a dictator with clearly malevolent intentions toward the West, the United States in particular.

The resulting hostilities also meant that the intelligence picture of Iraqi weapons capabilities would become a somewhat murky one over the next decade. And in the months leading up to the second conflict with Iraq, that intelligence would come under harsh criticism. The support for this second U.S. led war against Iraq was not as forthcoming as it was after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. France, Germany, Russia and other nations dug their heels in, resisting the rationale for war, and arguing that UN inspections under Hans Blix should be given a chance to continue. The dossier scandal only made it that much more difficult to obtain support for the war, and it instilled a high degree of mistrust in the public mind about whether the justifications for going to war had been concocted by Washingon and London politicians.

Against this backdrop of the buildup for support of the latest war with Iraq and the need for solid intelligence to give government leaders an exact picture of Iraq’s weapons capabilities, two British government intelligence dossiers were released. The first was released in September 2002, the second in February 2003. Both dossiers raised questions of plagiarism and “sexing up” of the claims made regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities. But it was the February 2003 dossier which was found to contain extensive plagiarism of a paper by U.S. graduate student Dr. Ibrahim al-Marashi.

And it was the September 2002 dossier which the British media accused Downing Street of using to “sex up” the case for war against Iraq. Nevertheless, both dossiers came under fire for the general “sexing up” claims and plagiarism accusations brought to light in the media.
Called into particular question were claims such as the “45 minute” claim—the assertion that Iraq could deploy WMDs on short notice. Dr. Al-Marashi took issue with what was then commonly referred to in the media and tabloids as the British government’s embellishment of the case for war with Iraq:

It is understandable that magazines or tabloids were ‘sexed up’ during the crisis with Iraq to sell more copies. However, two government dossiers justifying a war against my native Iraq is a serious matter. These are not matters to be ‘sexed up’

Dr. al-Marashi also noted that “The dossiers’ authors have plagiarised and manipulated open-source materials, by inflating figures, and exaggerating the capabilities of Iraq’s weapons programme.” These charges reached all the way to Downing Street with accusations that the Prime Minister himself might have asked for the dossiers to be bolstered in order to build public support for the war.

With these charges that the war dossiers had possibly been embellished came pressure on the British government to prove it had not “cooked up” the evidence for war, and there was also pressure exerted on the primary source of these highly controversial charges. The BBC’s (British Broadcasting Corporation) Andrew Gilligan was the source of this disputed story, and he insisted that his information sources were reliable and trustworthy.

One of Gilligan’s sources was a well known scientist and former UN weapons inspector in Iraq by the name of Dr. David Kelly, whose name was leaked by the government and by Andrew Gilligan as being the primary source, claimed by Gilligan to be “one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the dossier”. Three days after appearing before members of the British Parliament and denying that he was the source of the “sexing up” allegations against Downing Street, Dr. David Kelly was found dead of an apparent suicide.

Kelly’s death compounded the developing dossier scandal exponentially. Before his death, he had been named publically as the source for this disputed dossier story, both the British government and the BBC dropping hints as to the identity of the dossier story’s source. Denying that he was the primary source of the dossier story throughout a “brutal hounding” in front of the Foreign Affairs select committee as they tried to get to the bottom of the dossier leak, Kelly was described after this ordeal by family and friends as being “unwell and angry about being exposed to public scrutiny”.

The BBC basically made Dr. Kelly out to be a liar for his denials before the Foreign Affairs select committee, and the BBC came out after the fact of Kelly’s suicide appearing more concerned with protecting their own reputation and “sexing up” their own news coverage than being duly concerned about the effects of an individual’s public exposure as the supposed source of a controversial story of quite dubious authenticity. Politicians were also to blame in the events leading up to Dr. Kelly’s suicide as expressed by a family member: “I think the politicians have a lot of questions to answer.”

In Colin Powell’s eighty minute speech to the UN Security Council arguing the case for war against Iraq, Powell made reference to the disputed British Iraq dossiers. Referring to the nineteen page February British intelligence dossier as “the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities”, Powell’s speech left no doubt that the US government intended to bring an end to the deception infrastructures and concealment of weapons programs by Iraq, not through the easily thwarted UN inspections teams, but through regime change in Iraq.

Having been stung by 9/11, the U.S. was not in a mood to toy around with the possible threat of WMDs being used in nuclear or biological terror attacks, realizing that a mushroom cloud over an American city or a smallpox epidemic were no longer far-fetched scenarios, as Colin Powell put it in his speech to the UN Security Council: “The United States will not and cannot run that risk [WMDs] to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.” US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld echoed these thoughts at a later date: “We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on September 11.”

The motives of countries such as France, Germany and Russia for witholding support for the war to oust Saddam Hussein were suspect by many Amercan experts who cited repeated violations of the UN sanctions since the first Gulf War and the rampant corruption in the “oil for food” program which they believed was continuing to finance Hussein’s ongoing development of proscribed weapons. At the end of his one hour and twenty minute UN presentation, Powell left up a final slide for an uncomfortable period of several minutes once he had finished talking. That slide in the hushed silence which followed spelled out in capital letters the US intentions:

IRAQ
FAILING TO DISARM

The implications were unmistakeable. The US government believed Saddam Hussein to be in possession of lethal WMDs, and it was not going to sit idly by as the Iraqi regime continued to thwart UN inspections while developing chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons capabilities.

Providing fresh fodder for months of tabloid reporting, the revelation that the British Government’s February 2003 dossier contained massive amounts of plagiarism came as a great shock to Number 10, Downing Street. Shortly after the dossier was released, Britain’s Channel 4 news broke the story with academic sources claiming that the dossier was nothing but a cut and paste compilation of papers and articles from what is called the “open source” literature.

A Cambridge University lecturer by the name of Glen Rangwala, being familiar with some of the sources plagiarized from in the February intelligence dossier, recognized the text from an article he had previously read in the Middle East Review of International Affairs. That article happened to have been written by a U.S. graduate student, Dr. Ibrahim al-Marashi, who had written the article as part of his doctoral research. Nearly eleven pages of the nineteen dossier were copied directly from al-Marashi’s article, with some very subtle changes being made in order to present the research as being cutting edge, when actually it dated back to the first Iraq war in 1991. Moreover, the grammatical infelicities and the very same typographical errors made by al-Marashi in his paper were copied directly into the British intelligence dossier!

The unacknowledged use of Ibrahim al-Marashi’s research paper in this important war dossier provoked a strong reaction. At a time when public support was being sought for the impending war with Iraq, the plagiarism allegations, in combination with the “sexing up” allegations on the part of British intelligence and Downing Street, served to instill a deep mistrust of the government’s intentions. It also cast serious doubt on the capabilities of the British intelligence services. If this was the best intelligence they had on Iraqi weapons capabilities, namely a student’s research paper consisting of twelve year old data, MI6 and the government were in pretty sorry shape as far as having a grasp of the situation on the ground in Iraq.

British citizens—and others around the world— rightly wanted to know why such questionable sources were being used to drum up support for the war against Iraq. In response, Downing Street maintained that whether or not proper acknowledgment of al-Marashi’s work had been made, the data were reliable in both the Februay 2003 and the September 2002 dossiers. Downing Street was left with little choice but to publicly apologize for this lack of acknowledgment, and they admitted, “In retrospect we should have acknowledged any references to material we used that had been written by Dr. Ibrahim. We have learnt an important lesson.”

Not only were the very grammatical slips and typographical errors copied from al-Marashi’s paper, there were also some quite serious incidences of textual manipulation to suit Downing Street’s case for war. Such textual manipulation does not in and of itself prove that someone at Downing Street had specifically asked for the data to be “sexed up” as was claimed by Andrew Gilligan in his disputed report, but the circumstantial evidince is pretty strong that someone high up in the chain of command was asking British intelligence to fiddle around with the data in order to get the public to go along with their ambitions for war. The intentions and willingness of Saddam Hussein’s regime to thwart UN inspections were clear after more than a decade of delaying, stalling and concealment tactics. But the exact WMD capabilities of the Iraqi regime were somewhat of a dilemma for coalition intelligence, perhaps precisely because Hussein’s tactics had worked so well.

Al-Marashi himself noted the textual manipulation which had changed the wording of his article, stating that

The dossiers’ authors have plagiarised and manipulated open-source materials, by inflating figures, and exaggerating the capabilities of Iraq’s weapons programme. For example, in my original article, I wrote that one of the responsibilities of the Iraqi intelligence service was ‘aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes’. The Number 10 dossier ‘borrowed’ this sentence and changed the wording to ‘supporting terrorist groups in hostile regimes’. By changing these few words, the February 2003 dossier attempts to convince the reader that the Iraqis had the infrastructure to support groups such as al-Qa’eda.

While the allegations of outright plagiarism in the February 2003 intelligence dossier are substantiated by undeniable proof in the form of side-by-side comparisons with the original sources, the Septemer 2002 dossier is not such a cut and dried of a case of either plagiarism or of “sexed up” war-mongering. Questions were raised about the September 2002 dossier’s being based on, or lifted from, open sources originating both in the UK and the US. Downing Street stood by their original assertions that the September 2002 dossier was accurate, valid, and definitely not “sexed up” as alleged by the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan whose controversial report created such a stir at the top levels of government, set in train a series of events including the suicide of a former UN weapons inspector, and ultimately led to resignations of top figures at the BBC for what turned out to be more a case of “sexed up” news reporting as opposed to allegedly “sexed up” war-mongering.

The Lord Hutton inquiry findings basically cleared Tony Blair of some quite serious allegations which might have spelled the end of his political career had the “sexing up” allegations proven to be substantiated. As it turns out, plagiarism and “sexed up” war-mongering were charges which just would not stick with regard to the September 2002 British intelligence dossier.

The main effect of the proven allegations of plagiarism in the February 2003 dossier was to undermine public trust in the government institutions responsible for acquiring intellegence on Iraq’s weapons capabilities. But the effects reached far beyond Downing Street all the way to the UN where Colin Powell made such glowing reference to a plagiarized war dossier in what was probably the most important speech of his career before the UN Security Council in the days leading up to the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Red faces in London and Washington notwithstanding, the British and American governments went ahead with their plans to end the cruel regime of Saddam Hussein with hopes for establishing a democracy in the hub of the Middle East, an ambitious political plan with profound implications for the entire region.

Number 10, Downing Street apologized for the acknowledgment oversight, and maintained the stance that the information in the plagiarized dossier was correct even if the sources had not been properly acknowledged. After the plagiarism incident broke on Channel 4, Downing Street’s initial response was to dither somewhat, perhaps because the plagiarism allegations had the effect of blindsiding the Prime Minister and his entourage at a time when support for the looming war was critical.

The plagiarized dossier in question was quickly removed from Downing Street’s website, an apology was made, and an admission tendered that valuable lessons had been learned about proper acknowledgment of sources. Almost like a bad schoolboy getting caught for cheating, Downing Street hastily mumbled an apology and tried to move on as quickly as possible from a major scandal caused by more than a little bit of cribbing in a government document by an obscure, un-named intelligence research analyst.

The inquiry into whether the British government attempted to deceive the public and misconstrue the threat from Iraq was presided over by a senior British judge, Lord Hutton, who in the end vindicated Prime Minister Tony Blair and harshly criticized the BBC for its failure to maintain high journalistic standards of integrity in news reporting. Basically, the “sexing up” charges backfired on the BBC, creating one of its worst scandals ever. After Lord Hutton’s findings, Gavyn Davies, the BBC’s chairman of the board of governers, resigned immediately.

In addition to castigating the BBC, Lord Hutton also had harsh words for the Ministry of Defense related to the suicide of Dr. Kelly—specifically for not being straightforward about the way his name was dropped to the public as the source for Andrew Gilligan’s disputed report. As far as the semantics of the “sexing up” charges, Lord Hutton found that these words could be used if the meaning intended was to make “the case against Saddam Hussein as strong as the intelligence in it permitted.”

However, Lord Hutton stated that if the intended meaning was to suggest that the government “embellished” the dossier with information “known or believed to be false or unreliable . . . I consider that the [‘sexing up’] allegation was unfounded.” After this vindication, Tony Blair expressed relief at the exoneration of the British government, stating that the accusation regarding embellished intelligence and false pretexts for going to war “is itself the real lie—I simply ask that those who made it and reapeated it withdraw it.”

Although they were the public faces in their respective governments most closely associated with the plagiarized intellegence dossier of February 2003, Tony Blair and Colin Powell were not actually the authors of these intelligence reports. For that matter, neither were their intelligence analysts the authors in the case of the February dossier. This is not to say, however, that government leaders such as Colin Powel and Tony Blair do not share a role in the actual production and development of such dossiers.

Lord Hutton hinted as much himself in stating that the government was interested in making a strong case, “as strong as the intelligence in it permitted”, for going to war against Saddam Hussein. The public may never know how many times the intelligence dossiers were sent back by Downing Street for further strengthening of the wording to increase the perceived threat of Iraq, and to make the case for war.

On the US side of things, Colin Powell and the US government were doing the same thing in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, making reference to intelligence of their own as well as to British intelligence documents, including the plagiarized February dossier.

Barry Rubin, the editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs wrote a brief response to the plagiarism of al-Marashi’s article entitled “British Government Plagiarized MERIA Journal: Our Response.” Rubin added a bit of humor in observing, “The fact is that the report [by al-Marashi] was a good one. The information was correct and highly useful. If I may be permitted a humorous note, perhaps the world and the Middle East would be a better place if more governments used MERIA to explain current developments and inform their people . . . however, we do appreciate being given credit.”

The student author of the MERIA article was also “disenchanted” at not having been cited by the British government when they lifted his research: “ . . . any academic, when you publish anything, the only thing you ask for in return is that they include a citation of your work. There are laws and regulations about plagiarism that you would think the UK Government would abide by.”

While the British government has generally been vindicated of the “sexing up” allegations, the fact that the intelligence dossier authors lifted chunks of language verbatim from various open sources without proper acknowledgment remains a blot on the integrity of the British intelligence services, all the more so since the documents were made available to the public in such a way as to suggest that the dossier language represented the research efforts of the British government.

The reverberations of this plagiarism incident are still being felt today. For example, after a speech by former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix at the University of Edinburgh, Ian Macwhirter suggested that the latest Iraq war was “Britain’s worst foreign policy disaster since Suez” and speculated that “at root Iraq was a war based on intellectual failure or intellectual dishonesty.” One can only hope that the “valuable lessons” learned by Number 10 will extend well beyond Downing Street, well beyond Colin Powell’s speech at the UN, to make the world we live in one more characterized by integrity and honest dealing among people and nations rather than deception, concealment, and hidden evil motivations.

Confronting the evil dictator of Iraq might have had more public support if only that un-named intelligence anlyst working for Downing Street had properly cited his or her sources! Not to mention the “sexing up” allegations which backfired on the BBC while creating some major headaches for Tony Blair and George W. Bush and their plan to transform the political landscape of the Middle East, with or without the blessing of that generally ineffective organization known as the United Nations.

[Note: This profile overview was accepted for presentation at the October 2004 meeting of the Michigan Linguistic Society.]


Link to Powerpoint Presentation on "Tony Blair, Colin Powell and the Case of the 'Sexed Up' British Intelligence Dossier: A Linguistic Analysis" presented to the Michigan Linguistic Society, October 2004

References

End Profile PLTC-2002-TB/CP

... ...

________________________________________________________________________________

Omer Dincer

Working as the top figure in the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

A high ranking public servant in Turkey has been "banned from working as a university lecturer in the future" reports TurkishPress.com ("Top aide to Turkish PM found guilty of plagiarism, underscoring tensions").

Omer Dincer, undersecretary to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was accused of plagiarizing parts of a textbook bearing his name. As a result of an investigation which followed, Turkey's Higher Education Council ruled that he should no longer be allowed to teach within the Turkish university system.

But as reported in the Turkish media, the case would seem to represent more than mere professorial pilfering in a textbook. Rather, this ruling against Dincer by the HEC represents a struggle for power between factions in the Turkish government and the Turkish academy.

As TurkishPress.com reported, there are "high-running tensions between the government and the academic community", and Dincer's ousting from the university system is likely a political move intended to make a statement to Erdogan's government in response to the arrest of university president Yucel Askin the week before for alleged corruption. After Dincer's revocation of his right to teach, Prime Minister Erdogan "defended his Undersecretary . . . [and said] that the move was done as retaliation" ("Erdogan, The Rector and the E.U.").

Tit-for-tat. You arrest one of ours for corruption, we'll stick it to one of yours for plagiarism.

Such political maneuvering takes place within the context of other longstanding controversies such as the banning of Islamic headscarves for women in Turkish schools, an issue which has cost some academics their very lives at the hands of Islamist minded activist-murderers on occasion, as in the case of a professor being thrown out of a window some years ago now for challenging this symbol of Islamic and Islamist identity (i.e. Muslim women covering their heads with scarves).

Such challenging of Islamist activism appears to have been the downfall of Askin. In addition to the plagiarism allegations against Omer Dincer, the response to Askin's arrest has been one of protest:

"The academic community has denounced Yucel Askin's arrest as illegal . . . a politically-biased onslaught against a man with a reputation as a staunch secularist who has worked to purge his university from allegedly Islamist personnel".

Without further specific information on the plagiarism allegations, it's really hard to say just how valid these might be. Valid or not, for now these politically motivated allegations have spelled the end of one public servant's teaching gigs within Turkish universities.

[Note on terminology: As opposed to the more general descriptor Islamic, the word Islamist is used here in the sense of political, jihadist, radical Islamic belief]


References

End Profile PLTC-2005-OD

... ...

________________________________________________________________________________

Al Gore

Blue: Guarded Risk

A “wooden” personality and in-authenticity, being a “sore loser”

In the case of Al Gore, an ambitious aspirant to the US presidency, the plagiarism allegations were not quite as serious as other notable cases of political plagiarism. There seems to be only one documented instance of outright plagiarism in which the P-word is specifically mentioned, yet Gore's bid for the presidency was greatly affected by a plagiarism-related tendency to take credit for ideas and projects belonging to others, and this apparent self-aggrandizement at the expense of others cast Gore as a typical politician lacking in authenticity.

He just wasn’t real enough for voters—too “wooden”, too condescending, and too lacking in genuine convictions to get those few extra votes which might have given him the presidency.

Of all the ludicrous things to claim credit for, Al Gore claimed in a widely publicized interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to have been the impetus behind the creation of the Internet. Gore’s association with an “unusually good liar” of a president, Bill Clinton, only complicated matters more for the VP as he sought to distance himself from the scandals of an impeachment-stained presidency. Correction of the historical record was swift in coming with regard to Gore’s Internet claims. Gore found himself as a national laughingstock. Articles with quite un-flattering titles such as “Al Gore, inter-nitwit”, “Bore for president”, “Stretching the fabric”, “Albert the Brainiac”, “Who stole Al Gore’s website?”, “(T)Ruthless Al Gore” and “The VEEP is a truth-stretcher too” made Gore the butt of many jokes across party lines.

Against this backdrop of truth-stretching, Al Gore’s bid for the presidency faltered. The plagiarism allegations were by no means as serious and substantiated as the allegations against Joe Biden, but the results were the same. In-authenticity and perceived deficits in a candidate’s credibility can be a disastrous element of any politician’s record.

In the same Newsweek article which reported on Joe Biden’s plagiarism by including a copy of Biden’s transcripts, reference was made to an instance of language lifting by Al Gore, still a senator back then in 1987. This alleged language lifting happened long before his claim to have invented the Internet "[taken] the initiative in creating the Internet" (Blitzer, W. interview with Al Gore). It happened long before his claims to have been the source for Love Story. And it was still a few more years before he would serve as Vice President under that “unusually good liar” by the name of William Jefferson Clinton.

Newsweek’s Mickey Kaus devoted several lines to “Gore’s gaffe”, an apparent instance of Gore borrowing a story from another politician:

Sen. Albert Gore, another Democratic candidate blatantly stole a trademark anecdote of Congressman Morris Udall’s, got caught and was punished with only a few back-page paragraphs. But nobody suspected Gore of dangerous glibness. They did Biden.

It is interesting to note here the comparison being made between Gore’s lifting of someone else’s anecdote, and an essentially identical form of linguistic theft perpetrated by Biden. Senator Biden wasn’t just borrowing a speech, “He was borrowing Kinnock’s life” as former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, Peggy Noonan, explained Biden’s lifting. But isn’t a personal, trademark anecdote also part of someone’s life? Wasn’t what Gore did back then in 1987 just as plagiaristic and derivative as what Biden did?

In Gore’s case, no “attack video” footage existed to document the gaffe. Additionally, there was no history of derivation and in-authenticity upon which to draw as there would be in Biden’s case. But for Gore, the instances of in-authenticity were growing. By the time Gore was running for president in 2000, these plagiarism-related charges of in-authenticity, a “wooden” personality, and so forth necessitated an image makeover for the Gore campaign.

By 2000, Gore had also claimed credit for the Internet among other things, and his spin doctors were getting worried. Robert Reich put it this way: “Gore’s make-over is still in progress . . . He’s gone from being wooden and ponderous to being almost hyperkinetic, from dark blue suits to brown and from white shirts to softer colors, from standing stiffly at the podium to moving into the audience to take questions.”

Gore never received publicity for a plagiarism scandal in the way that Biden did, but his in-authenticity was beginning to catch up with him, and even an image make-over wasn’t going to change enough minds for him to seem “real” enough to win the election.

For Al Gore, it was not an instance of plagiarism which cost him the presidency. Rather, it seems more to be the general perceptions held by the public about his authenticity as an individual who really believed in something and stood by his principles. There were just too many instances of Gore taking credit for something that he had no right to claim any credit for. There were just too many questions about what Gore really believed and where he would take a stand once the political winds started to shift.

If he could so easily change his convictions on the spur of the moment, standing one moment by his sister’s bedside while she died of lung cancer, vowing to fight tobacco the rest of his life, and only a few years later exuberantly talk about the joys of growing tobacco, what would he do as President of the United States when it came time to take a stand for something?

Gore’s attempted makeovers only compounded the public perceptions of his in-authenticity. When the time came to go to the polls, Al Gore paid a dear price for these perceptions which his own actions had fostered in voters’ minds. By many experts’ calculations, Al Gore should have been the next president of the United States. The economy was strong. In a pre-9/11 era there were no major overseas entanglements or foreign policy morasses.

Americans were generally happy with the state of the union. But hanging chads and all, Gore lost the presidency because he just didn’t come across to voters as a genuine and authentic candidate. He would do anything, say anything, change anything about himself and his beliefs just to get himself to the Oval Office. And it wasn’t the hanging chads, Jeb Bush, or the Supreme Court who handed George W. Bush the presidency. It was Al Gore himself.

For Al Gore, attribution was not so much the point—aside from his lifting of Morris Udall’s trademark anecdote—it was rather a political habit of claiming more credit than he should have that needed to be curbed. He shouldn’t have laid claim to fathering the Internet. Rather, he should have acknowledged that the Internet was the creation of many, many people reaching back to the days when Gore was still in college. Additionally, Gore should have tried to create less of a mismatch between his words and his deeds, a mismatch which provoked jibes such as the following by Margaret Carlson: “A Gore appearance should be closed-captioned with the truth.”

Truth—now there’s an interesting concept that gets to the heart of plagiarism! Plagiarism is an untruth, a lie, an attempt to deceive readers or listeners into believing something that is not so. Telling the truth is not always an easy thing to do, and it’s quite a human trait for people to want themselves to appear better, smarter, more important than they actually are. And this general observation might help to explain more than just a few cases of plagiarism. But somewhere beneath the deception of plagiarism is the truth waiting to be discovered. Discovery of the truth, whether all of a sudden or through a little-by-little process of revelation, is a discovery which will come to light eventually for all plagiarists. Even if for the moment the plagiarist thinks himself to be the only one aware of that truth.

References

Note: Plagiarists of different political affiliations [i.e. GOP, Green, Socialists, Communists, Fascists, Democrats, Right Wing, Left Wing, Moderate, Conservative, Liberal . . . ] are considered for profiling at FamousPlagiarists.com. FamousPlagiarists.com does not discriminate based on race, religion, color, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, physical impairment, disability, or veteran status in the development of these profiles in plagiarism. Comments or questions should be directed to Dr. Lesko.

Update: Instead of invented the Internet, read "I [Al Gore] took the initiative in creating the Internet" (Blitzer, W. interview with Al Gore). Al Gore did not actually claim that he "invented" the Internet. Rather, he stated, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." With thanks to Bill Smith <bill.smith@comcast.net> for bringing this to my attention. Read Bill's interesting letter to Dr. Lesko here, including Dr. Lesko's response.

End Profile PLTC-1987-AG

... ...

________________________________________________________________________________

Ralph Klein

Yellow: Elevated Risk

Leadership in Canada’s Progressive Conservative Party, Important Governmental Reforms

Commenting on a politico-plagiarist feeding frenzy which erupted on the Canadian political scene in 2004, Alberta Provincial Liberal Party leader Kevin Taft remarked, “The last couple of months here have been like living in a Doonesbury cartoon strip”.

Taft was referring to the fallout surrounding an alleged incident of plagiarism involving the Premier of the Province of Alberta, the Right Honourable Ralph Klein. Apparently, Klein got caught for doing what many university students do on a regular basis these days—cut and paste from the Internet in the process of writing up their term papers and other research projects.

The fact that it was not just any college student, but the Premier of Alberta himself engaging in a bit of cut and paste plagiarism, made for some scandalous headlines across most major Canadian newspapers. From composition instructors to university students, everyone wanted a chance to weigh in on this case of plagiarism involving Alberta’s Premier.

University students in particular were outraged that Klein was able to slide by with a 77% for such a derivative paper, and many academics criticized Athabasca University for not adhering to its own policy on “Intellectual Ownership and Honesty”. This case is a practical illustration of how a simple cut and paste composing strategy can quickly morph into a major political brouhaha involving Canadian university officials, top government officials, professors, university students, and members of the general public.

The alleged plagiarism in Klein’s paper came to light after some highly controversial comments about the Pinochet regime on the floor of Alberta’s legislature. With members of the Chilean-Canadian community demanding an apology from their Premier for his insensitive remarks, Klein made what he thought was a noble gesture intended to demonstrate that he knew what he was talking about and that he intended no offence toward his Chilean-Canadian constituents.

In this gesture, Klein offered up his paper for public scrutiny. This turned out to be a move he would deeply regret, since perceptive readers in this expanded public audience were quick to note that large sections of the paper had been copied from Internet sources without proper acknowledgment. The paper in question was a thirteen page discussion of “Allende, Pinochet and the Chilean Media” which Klein had submitted for a communications course he was taking from Athabasca University.

Once the allegations of plagiarism were brought out into full public view, Athabasca University had no choice but to conduct a review of such allegations. At one point in this review, Klein’s paper was submitted to Turnitin.com for an originality check. This originality report verified the previous allegations. Klein’s paper had been composed using a basic cut and paste strategy, and the chunks of lifted text lacked proper citation and quotation marks to indicate that portions of source text were being reproduced verbatim. Since Klein had made his paper available for close scrutiny by the public, there was no taking back the essay once the plagiarism had been discovered.

Many university students expressed dismay at Klein’s evident plagiarism. Students thought he should have received an “F” for such a cut and paste job on a university level research paper. One student remarked, “We as students get kicked out of school for that [plagiarism]”, making reference to Klein’s seemingly preferential treatment by university officials reviewing the case.

A social studies teacher from Edmonton wrote in a letter to the editor of a prominent Canadian newspaper, “My own (junior high) students could have done a better job citing their sources than the premier did”.

University professor Nancy Robbins thought that the passing grade of 77% which Premier Klein received on his paper was rather “generous” and that “for a premier, it says a lot about the type of politician that is running our province.”

Another instructor, Laurie E. Harnick, stated emphatically, “I would have failed him on my course”.

Meanwhile, the outrage and dismay over Klein’s academic infraction continued to be accompanied by demands from the Chilean-Canadian community that Klein apologize for his ill-advised remarks about Pinochet basically being “forced” to stage a coup to put an end to the socialist Salvador Allende’s rule. With regard to these comments--made during a legislative discussion about auto insurance--opposition leader Kevin Taft remarked, “I don’t know what connection was going on in his brain, it [the Pinochet remark] was just so bizarre it just left people shaking their heads.”

For Athabasca University officials, this was an indescribably embarassing moment. To have such a spectacle as the Premier’s plagiarized essay in full public view was nothing less than a public relations nightmare. Klein’s own office staff went into damage control mode and Klein’s line was “I did the paper according to the instructions received, submitted my paper, it was marked by a university professor, end of story. What is the big deal?”

For Athabasca university, however, it was not just “a big deal”. It was a really, really, big, BIG deal. Especially when their phone lines were bombarded with “calls complaining that large portions of the paper were copied straight from the Internet” reported CTV.

With pressure mounting, Klein is on the record as saying “This is crap!” at one news conference where he was pressed for more information on the plagiarism debacle. Expletives and outbursts notwithstanding, Klein’s attempts at damage control seem to have had some influence, particularly as the university review members would be quick to conclude that Premier Klein had done nothing wrong.

References

End Profile PLTC-2004-RK

... ...

________________________________________________________________________________

Mark Latham

Serving as the Opposition Leader in Australian politics; Running against John Howard for the position of Prime Minister; "making something of a career of anti-Americanism" (P. Costello)

Australian politician and Opposition Leader Mark Latham went to "Yankee land for his ideas" and pinched a State of the Union address from Bill Clinton if the allegations of Prime Minister John Howard and other government figures are to be believed.

As evidence, Latham's accusers point to near word-for-word similarities between Bill Clinton's 1997 State of the Union address and a speech delivered by Latham in April 2004 to the Globe Foundation in Sydney, Australia. Of that speech to the Globe Foundation entitled "A big country: Australia's national identity", the Liberal Party's Tony Abbott said "Here he is, he's giving a speech about [Australia's] national identity and he lifts large sections of it from a speech from an American president."

Latham denied that he had copied Clinton's speech, and retorts by his political supporters pointed to the Howard government's alignment with the "warmongering" policies of the U.S. government's President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Leading up to the elections as Latham campaigned for a chance to lead Australia as Prime Minister, the allegations of plagiarism became potent indicators of ineptitude and an inability of alleged plagiarist Latham to think outside of Internet search engine capabilities.

As expressed by Cristina Huesch in an opinion letter, heavily influenced by American ideas as was her intent:

Two score and three years ago a father brought forth upon this continent a new boy called Mark [Latham], conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

And we were highly resolved that this nation, under Mark [Latham], shall have a new birth of plagiarism and that government of the people, by the unoriginal, from the Google, shall not perish from this Earth (Opinion Letters, www.smh.com.au).

As another opinion letter from Peter Maresch put it, "Given the tendency of copying everything American, with minor cosmetic change our new motto should be: 'In Mark [Latham] we don't trust'" (Opinion Letters, www.smh.com.au).

Mark Latham lost the 2004 election to John Howard, giving Howard a fourth term as Prime Minister. This new motto "In Mark [Latham] we don't trust" [not yet imprinted on Australian currency] was validated in the elections with Prime Minister Howard's government holding on to their position of strength for the time being, the status quo continuing in that love-hate sort of relationship much of the world seems to indulge in when it comes to good ole American productivity, military might, idealism, and ingenuity: pop culture [lip sync-galore], democratic ideals [and hanging chads], materialistic ambition [a Hummer in every garage], business acumen [ahem, just forget about Enron, WorldCom, etc ] . . . and well formulated State of the Union addresses too [not to mention well formulated denials of Oval Office improprieties].

So is Latham a plagiarist? That all depends on what the definition of is is.

Latham: "G'day! I abso-bloody-lutely never Googled that speech!"

References

End Profile PLTC-2004-ML

... ...

________________________________________________________________________________

Alvin L.

Outgoing and likeable personality helped Alvin L. to win the class of 2004 presidency

Similar to cases which have tainted the reputations of professional politicians, the case involving Alvin L. and his running mate Nick G. resulted in the swift resignations of the newly elected 2004 president and vice-president at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As reported in the MITech Newspaper by Emily M. Craparo, the class president accepted full responsibility for plagiarizing nearly the entire political platform of the 1999 candidates Sean C. Fabre and Hugo B. Barra. Fabre questioned why the 2004 candidates resorted to such a "severely unethical" political maneuver, a wholesale lifting resembling Joe Biden's appropriation of a British politician's speech in 1987.

After being informed of the plagiarized political platform, the class council at MIT demanded the resignation of both President A.L. and Vice-President N.G. After tendering his resignation, Alvin L. crafted a letter of apology for his "very, very stupid mistake." But this apology also contained a further instance of plagiarism, namely a line lifted verbatim from a speech made my President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair:

It constituted a critical lapse of judgement and a personal failure on my part, for which I am solely and completely responsible.

Meanwhile, President L.'s running mate contested the charges of plagiarism, claiming that Alvin L. had written up the political platform statement: "Platforms are fluff, and I didn't want to bother writing the fluff . . . [Alvin L.] volunteered to write the fluff." With the VP ticket being un-opposed, Alvin L.'s running mate felt comfortable with letting him draft the entire political platform statement, a decision he would come to regret later.

Vice-president Nick G. maintained that he should not be held accountable for President L.'s plagiarism, and yet, because both of their names were on the un-opposed political ticket, the class council held both Alvin L. and Nick G. responsible and demanded that they both resign, threatening to begin the impeachment process if the Vice-President did not submit his resignation.

This particular case seems to illustrate that friends and co-authors can end up being held jointly responsible for plagiarism. As Nick G. said of his presidential running mate, Alvin L. demonstrated "a lack of integrity that I am paying for now." Some thought the punishment was too harsh for Nick G., since technically, he was not the plagiarist. Yet the class council's response was that "Nick attached his name and liability to the platform statement and should be held accountable."

This lesson, although one which is important for students, also seems to contain some highly significant ramifications for scholars, educators, and researchers. As Nick G. subsequently lamented in regard to his name becoming attached to a plagiarized political platform: "you must be very, very careful about trusting others when they are in a position to submit writing in your name . . . I truly believe that your 'name' is the only thing that you carry with you throughout your life, and now I realize that it doesn't have to be your own actions that can cause your name to be blemished."

[full names withheld to protect identity of students who have learned from this plagiarism incident and will hopefully lead productive careers after completing their education]

References

End Profile PLTC-2004-AL

... ...

________________________________________________________________________________

Bruce Logan

Yellow: Elevated Risk

Conservative lobbying on social policy issues with the "think-tank" Maxim Institute

The Director of the Maxim Institute has been forced into early retirement by allegations of plagiarism made by the Association of Rationalists and Humanists ("Maxim Director Admits to Plagiarism").

Conservative lobbyist Bruce Logan admitted his unacknowledged derivation and issued a public apology after allegations of "plagiarism in Logan's newspaper opinion pieces and Parliamentary Bill submissions" ("Maxim Director Admits to Plagiarism").

The board of trustees accepted Logan's letter of resignation, a positive move for the Maxim Institute at a time when "editors were loathe to use anything written by [Logan]" due to the taint of plagiary (van Beynen, M. "Maxim's Logan to Retire").



References

End Profile

... ...

________________________________________________________________________________

Steve Pearce

In the 108th Congress, Pearce served as an Assistant Majority Whip; Also served on the Homeland Security Committee, Financial Services Committee, and Resources Committee; A member of the Prescription Drug Task Force and the Task Force for Affordable Natural Gas as well as the House Energy Action Team (HEAT); Now in his second term as a NM Congressman

It is well known that most political figures job out the laborious task of speechwriting, delegating other writing tasks as well to competent subordinates. Although many politicians are gifted orators and skilled at interacting with their constituents, they do not always have a similar set of skills when it comes to drafting effective texts for publication or oral delivery. Hence the need for gifted speechwriters and press secretaries.

And an incredible amount of trust and confidence is placed in these speechwriters and press secretaries. Their bungle, is the politician's bungle. Although they may write the speech or draft the opinion column, the text appears under the byline of the politician. Although the "little guy" is doing the work, it is the VIP who gets the credit--or takes the rap, in the case of incompetent underlings.

As reported in the Albuquerque Journal by Michael Coleman, U.S. Republican Congressman Steve Pearce recently found himself standing in the shoes of a plagiarist. Jan Deininger, a perceptive reader, noticed the language derivation in El Defensor Chieftain. Evidently, Pearce's press secretary copied an online text for use in a regular column submitted by Representative Pearce to the El Defensor Chieftain newspaper. This regular opinion column, entitled "Straight Talk", was anything but straight talk on April 23. The straight talk of the congressman was reduced to crooked cut-n-paste, a "word-for-word repeat"--of an energy policy column lifted from the website of the Heritage Foundation.

The crooked cut-n-paste turned out to have been the work of Pearce's Press Secretary Jim Burns, who immediately resigned, admitting that "It was a colossal error in judgment. Rather than stay on and embarrass the congressman, I am leaving." Burns also admitted that he might have plagiarized in other speeches and opinion columns written for Pearce, an indication that this plagiarism flap is not over just yet.

Dana Bowley, editor of the El Defensor Chieftain, took issue with the jobbing out of the congressman's opinion columns: "The problem is that the column was presented as the congressman's when it was not." A check of previous press releases before Burns came on as press secretary has revealed prior instances in which parroting of other sources without acknowledgement seemed to be condoned. As Jan Deininger suggests, such recycling of source materials creates the impression that mere party propaganda is being promulgated rather than thoughtful reflection being offered in columns such as Pearce's "Straight Talk" ("Did Pearce Condone Burns' Plagiarism?".

Politicians and other VIPs, take note! You'd better double-check those speeches and columns before delivery with your name attached.

References

End Profile PLTC-2005-SP/JB

... ...

________________________________________________________________________________

Vladimir Putin

Orange: High Risk

Service as President of the Russian Federation; previous service in the Soviet era with the KGB

Newspapers including The Washington Times, The Moscow Times, The Pittsburgh Tribune Review and other sources have gone public with the clandestine details behind President Putin's obtaining the Russian equivalent of a PhD degree in economics from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. "The official Kremlin biography says Putin obtained a Ph.D. in economics in 1997 . . . [based upon] the [plagiarized] thesis, which Putin scholars have tried for years to examine and Brookings obtained by subscribing to a Moscow technical library that had a copy in its electronic files" ("Putin Accused of Plagiarizing Thesis", The Moscow Times).

The thesis in question, entitled "Strategic Planning of the Reproduction of the Resource Base", allegedly copies language and diagrams from the 1978 book Strategic Planning and Policy which was authored by University of Pittsburgh professors William King and David Cleland ("Putin Accused of Plagairizing Thesis" The Moscow Times).

While some theorize that Putin himself lifted the material from King and Cleland's book, others suspect that the Russian President may have paid someone to write his dissertation for him, evidently a very shoddy piece of work for his money: "poorly organized . . . poorly written . . . poorly researched, second rate" in the words of Clifford Gaddy, the Brookings Institute scholar who discovered the plagiary after noticing the disjointed style of Putin's PhD thesis (Corwin, J.A. "Russia: U.S. Academics Charge Putin With Plagiarizing Thesis").

Timothy Dodd of Duke University's Center for Academic Integrity asks "Is anybody surprised here?" as he observes "This was a Soviet-era spy. What do spies do? They utilize whatever means necessary, use whatever deceptive facts they have to, and misrepresent themselves in order to reach a desired end" (Heinrichs, A.M. "Putin plagiarized from Pitt professors." Pittsburgh Tribune-Review).

If Putin did indeed pay for someone else to write his thesis for him, a very common practice today not just in Russia (judging by the thousands upon thousands of online "research services" enterprises), his case exemplifies the dangers inherent in students jobbing out their academic work. Aside from the dishonesty involved and the lack of individual accomplishment, many online "research services" outfits do little more than a patchwork job for their clients, simply copying and pasting bits and pieces of text together from whatever sources seem relevant in the hasty process of *composing* to the assignment deadline.

Attempts to smooth these patchwork jobs out with minimal paraphrase and synonym substitution are not always entirely successful, and this seems to have resulted in the disjointed textual features which caught the eye of the perceptive Brookings Institute scholars in Putin's case. And, it should be said here that one need not be a Brookings Institute scholar to notice such disjointedness, discrepancies, and other textual incongruencies in a plagiarized paper.

Plagiarist and President, Vladimir Putin got taken in by those "dubious academic credential-build[ers]" who offer their services to those who "don't feel like spending months in a library and days and nights in front of a computer composing a dissertaion" (Yablokova, O. "$7,000 Buys Dissertation and Flashy Degree." The Moscow Times).

"No Plagiarism Guarantee" notwithstanding, these dubious research services outfits are not to be trusted. They are not the bargain they advertise themselves to be. Rather than visiting DissertationExperts.com or similar enterprises, students would be much better advised to write their own work than to trust the prolific plagiarists of the termpaper mill and research services industries, online bastions of counter-intelligence.

References

End Profile PLTC-2006-VP

... ...

________________________________________________________________________________