From The New York Times:

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November 25, 2008

Iraq Ally Lists Were Altered, Study Shows

By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — Before invading Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration mounted a significant diplomatic offensive to rally international support, and officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department went to great lengths to trumpet those nations that joined what they termed “the coalition of the willing.”

But historians researching those early alliance-building efforts say they are troubled by what seem to be deletions of and alterations to the early official lists of nations that supported the war effort. The lists were posted on the White House Web site.

While administration officials acknowledged that the number of nations supporting the war changed over time, academic researchers say three official lists appear to have been changed, yet retained their original release date, making them appear to be unaltered originals.

Two other White House lists appear to have been taken off the Web site, according to a study of the documents by Scott L. Althaus and Kalev H. Leetaru of the Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

There were 45 coalition members on the eve of the Iraq invasion, but subsequent deletions of the earlier lists and revisions to critical documents made it seem that there were 49, the researchers found.

Two other countries that appeared on early lists of alliance partners were removed, but those updated rosters carried the original date and no mention that they had been changed.

White House officials confirmed Monday that the names of two countries were removed from the list of coalition partners initially listed on the Web pages, an action taken at the request of those nations. Costa Rica and Angola were dropped, but Angola subsequently reappeared.

In recent years, the White House has adopted a policy that requires its official Web site to note when such changes are made to an online item, a spokesman said Monday.

But that appears not to have been in effect for posts released early in the war effort.

In their study, the two University of Illinois researchers wrote that “whether by design or neglect, the result is the same: The removals and revisions of White House documents distort the historical record of what our government has said and done.” In the new study, the researchers traced five online documents that listed the number and names of coalition partners.

The researchers report finding that two were removed, one in late 2004, and another in late 2005 or early 2006. “These two ‘missing’ lists represent earlier and smaller lists of coalition members,” the researchers said.

One list posted by the White House on March 21, 2003, identified 46 countries in the coalition, including the United States. In April 2003, the list was updated to add Angola and Ukraine, bringing the total number of coalition countries up to 48, the researchers found.

“But instead of issuing a new list with a new date, the White House took the unusual step of retroactively revising the original March 21 press release, without indicating that the document had been modified from its original form,” the researchers wrote.

On or before April 13, 2003, the White House posted an updated alliance list that added Tonga to the previous list of 48. This list was temporarily removed from public view in 2004, but by Nov. 3, 2004, the list had been restored with changes.

The revised list also carried a publication date of March 27, 2003, more than a year and a half before the revisions were made, the researchers report. The backdated list was modified again by changing the number of coalition countries back to 49, even though the document lists only 48 by name — without Costa Rica.