AN AMERICAN NEWS REPORTER claims to have uncovered passages from the newly-published memoirs of former US president George W Bush that seem almost verbatim copies of memoirs from other senior aides – suggesting that the passages have been knowingly plagiarised.

Bush’s memoirs, ‘Decision Points’, had already become newsworthy for its defence of the torture technique known as ‘waterboarding’ – where victims have water poured into their airways to replicate the experiences of drowning – but now Ryan Grim, a reporter with the Huffington Post, claims there are other reasons for the book to be given more than passing thought.

A number of the offending passages refer to events at which Bush was not himself present – such as the inauguration of Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai, or a quote from his potential successor John McCain, given to reporters and not firsthand to Bush himself.

A number of the books allegedly paraphrased – including those written by Bob Woodward, one of the journalists who broke the Watergate affair – were books dismissed by Bush’s own White House administration as being potentially inaccurate.

One example:

‘Decision Points’, page 205:
“When Karzai arrived in Kabul for his inauguration on December 22 – 102 days after 9/11 – several Northern Alliance leaders and their bodyguards greeted him at an airport. As Karzai walked across the tarmac alone, a stunned Tajik warlord asked where all his men were. Karzai, responded, ‘Why, General, you are my men. All of you who are Afghans are my men.’”

Ahmed Rashid’s ‘The Mess in Afghanistan’, quoted in The New York Times’ Review of Books:
“At the airport to receive [Karzai] was the warlord General Mohammad Fahim, a Tajik from the Panjshir Valley …. As the two men shook hands on the tarmac, Fahim looked confused. ‘Where are your men?’ he asked. Karzai turned to him in his disarmingly gentle manner of speaking. ‘Why General,’ he replied, “you are my men—all of you are Afghans and are my men…’”

Another:

‘Decision Points’, page 267:
“Several months later, four men came to see me at the White House. They were members of the Delta Team that had captured Saddam. They told me the story of the hunt… ‘My name is Saddam Hussein,’ the man said. ‘I am the president of Iraq and I want to negotiate.’ ‘Regards from President Bush,’ the soldier replied.”

BBC news piece, Decemner 15, 2003, ‘How Saddam Hussein was captured‘:
“[Saddam] put up no resistance although armed with a pistol. ‘My name is Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I want to negotiate,’ he told the US troops in English, according to Major Bryan Reed, operations officer for the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. ‘Regards from President Bush,’ US special forces replied, Major Reed recounted.”

As the Huffington Post piece notes, a Time magazine story later queried whether the anecdote was, indeed, accurate at all:

‘Legends of the Fall‘, December 29, 2003:
“A U.S. intelligence official, meanwhile, casts doubt on another widely reported tale: that a U.S. soldier hailed the nemesis of two Commanders in Chief named George Bush by saying: ‘Regards from President Bush.’ This person says some officials suspect the story is ‘apocryphal.’”

The full list of alleged plagiarisms can be found at the Huffington Post’s website.