MARCH 2003 : (AUSTRALIA : ANDREW WILKIE RESIGNS FROM THE OFFICE OF NATIONAL ASSESSMENTS) [Andrew] Wilkie resigned from Australia's elite Office of National Assessments (ONA) in March in protest against the government's alleged misuse of information provided by the agency. The ONA is an elite agency which evaluates intelligence from all Australian and allied agencies and passes on that advice to Prime Minister John Howard's office. The Howard government has been a staunch supporter of the Bush administration position on Iraq and contributed troops and military hardware to the U.S.-led "coalition of the willing". - "Australia sexed-up Iraq dossier, former spy claims... WMD: Australia accused of hype," Drudge/CNN , Friday, August 22, 2003
AUGUST 22, 2003 Friday : (AUSTRALIA : ANDREW WILKIE ACCUSES AUSTRALIA OF "SEXING UP" INTELLIGENCE ON IRAQ) CANBERRA, Australia (CNN) -- The heat being generated over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction has moved to Australia with a former senior intelligence officer accusing Canberra of exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime. ...Speaking to an inquiry called by the Australian Senate, Andrew Wilkie said Friday information in intelligence reports had been distorted by the prime minister's office and "sexed up" to suit the government's political agenda. ...Wilkie told the Senate inquiry Friday that key words from ONA reports which qualified the veracity of intelligence reports on Iraq's WMDs had been removed by the prime minister's office. They had been replaced by more emotive language which supported the government's position on the threat of Iraq, he said. "The material was going straight from ONA to the prime minister's office and the exaggeration was occurring in there, or the dishonesty was occurring somewhere in there," Wilkie told the inquiry, The Associated Press reports. Asked if he was accusing Howard's office of "sexing up" intelligence, Wilkie replied, "Yes, it was sexed up." Australian National University political analyst Ross Babbage told CNN Friday that other officers within the ONA did not support Wilkie's views. He said Wilkie's allegations had changed from the claims he made when he resigned -- that humanitarian issues involved in invading Iraq were being underplayed -- to now reflect the charges being made in Britain over the Blair government's alleged distortion of intelligence information. Babbage said that it was his understanding that within the ONA Wilkie's views were "not widely shared". - "Australia sexed-up Iraq dossier, former spy claims... WMD: Australia accused of hype," Drudge/CNN , Friday, August 22, 2003
Dang, what a memory you have. I don't know the answer to your question.