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.
[3] The term was later employed by Channel 4 News when its reporter, Julian Rush,[4][5] was made aware of Glen Rangwala's discovery[6] that much of the work in the Iraq Dossier had been plagiarised from various unattributed sources including a thesis produced by a student at California State University.
[7] 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").
[8] 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 text was affected.
During one Prime Minister's Questions, Michael Howard (then leader of the Opposition), informed Blair, "I have got a great big dossier on his past and I haven't even had to sex it up.