The UN Foiled by MS Word's "Track Changes" Function

Who'd have thought this obnoxious function would have any real-world impact, let alone embarrass one of the world's largest political organizations?

A brief background: on Valentine's Day 2005, former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri and 20 others were killed by a truck bomb in Beirut. The Syrians, who had directly involved themselves in Lebanese affairs for decades, were immediately suspected of assassinating Hariri. The popular furor following this forced the Syrians to withdraw from Lebanon. The United Nations began an investigation under the direction of a certain Detlev Mehlis, and Secretary-General Kofi Annan repeatedly stated, through his spokesman, that he would not interfere in the investigation in any way. Mehlis's report, documenting the involvement of the Syrian government in the plot, was released on 21 October 2005.

So far so good. But it now appears that someone at the UN made changes to the report, removing the names of suspected, high-ranking participants. Below is the publicly released Section 96 of the Mehlis report:

96. One witness of Syrian origin but resident in Lebanon, who claims to have worked for the Syrian intelligence services in Lebanon, has stated that approximately two weeks after the adoption of Security Council resolution 1559, senior Lebanese and Syrian officials decided to assassinate Rafik Hariri. He claimed that a senior Lebanese security official went several times to Syria to plan the crime, meeting once at the Meridian Hotel in Damascus and several times at the Presidential Place and the office of a senior Syrian security official. The last meeting was held in the house of the same senior Syrian security official approximately seven to 10 days before the assassination and included another senior Lebanese security official. The witness had close contact with high ranked Syrian officers posted in Lebanon.

Now contrast that to the version displayed by MS Word's "Track Changes" function (as simulated by James Taranto over at OpinionJournal):

One witness of Syrian origin but resident in Lebanon, who claims to have worked for the Syrian intelligence services in Lebanon, has stated that approximately two weeks after the adoption of Security Council resolution 1559, Maher Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleyman and Jamil Al-Sayyed senior Lebanese and Syrian officials decided to assassinate Rafik Hariri. He claimed that Sayyed a senior Lebanese security official went several times to Syria to plan the crime, meeting once at the Meridian Hotel in Damascus and several times at the Presidential Place and the office of Shawkat a senior Syrian security official. The last meeting was held in the house of Shawkat the same senior Syrian security official approximately seven to 10 days before the assassination and included Mustapha Hamdan another senior Lebanese security official. The witness had close contact with high ranked Syrian officers posted in Lebanon.

If you wish, you can download the MS Word document in question via the Washington Post, or view a reconstructed, unexpurgated version at MidEast Web.

OK, so what's the big deal? Mehlis, for his part, seems to have argued that the edits were made to protect the presumption of innocence, saying "I established a rule that any person named in witness testimony should not be named in the report unless that person has been charged with a crime." Sure. Only problem is that Gen. Assef Shawkat, a key deputy in the Assad regime, is mentioned several times in the edited report, despite never having been charged with a crime. And at the same time, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric implied that the suspicious changes were unintentional, stating "I would urge you to look toward unfortunate clerical error rather than to conspiracy."

"That's all well and good," you may say, "but surely it's not a scandal to have a large bureaucracy confused about its public statements." True, but Dujarric also let this nugget slip: "This is Mr. Mehlis' investigation. This is his report. The secretary-general has at no time made any attempt to influence the report. But it turns out that Track Changes logged some interesting activity right around the time Mehlis was meeting with Annan. According to The Times of London

Mr Annan had pledged repeatedly through his chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, that he would not change a word of the report by Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor. But computer tracking showed that the final edit began at about 11.38am on Thursday — a minute after Herr Mehlis began a meeting with Mr Annan to present his report. The names of Maher al-Assad, General Shawkat and the others were apparently removed at 11.55am, after the meeting ended.

So what do we have here? Someone at the UN removed information that could embarrass the Syrian regime--which, as even a casual reading of the whole report will show, were caught fairly red-handed--at a time that just happened to be during Mehlis's meeting with Annan (a man who had pledged not to interfere in any way).

The UN, up to its eyeballs in corruption charges, seems to be mystified why anyone would make such a big deal out of this. Kinda shows how in touch they are with the world outside of Turtle Bay.

Tags: UN, United Nations, Syria, Lebanon, News and politics