Chatterbox

Whopper of the Week: Hiro Ueki

What’s your definition of “unannounced”?

“The inspectors arrive unannounced.”

Hiro Ueki, spokesman for the U.N. weapons inspection team in Baghdad, quoted in “UN Inspections Hit First Controversy; US Envoys Head To Europe,” Agence France-Presse, Dec. 1.

“Um Al Maarik Company, which the [U.N. inspection team] visited today, was notified by the IAEA team in advance[italics Chatterbox’s] that two of their technicians would review the status of the remaining video surveillance. Al Qa Qaa Company, which the IAEA team visited, was also requested on Thursday afternoon to provide assistance to facilitate removal of sampler. This type of advance notification [italics Chatterbox’s] is sometimes given to facilitate their work on monitoring equipment. It happened to the above two cases. Except for these types of cases, our inspection teams do not provide advance warning to the Iraqi side, as we have emphasized time and again.”

Ueki’s subsequent clarification, issued after an Iraqi official admitted the U.N. team had provided advance notice to the two inspection sites.

(Thanks to Eugene Volokh.)

Got a whopper? Send it to chatterbox@slate.com. To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.

Whopper Archive:

Nov. 29, 2002: Egan Acres Tree Farm

Nov. 22, 2002: Dr. Janet Travell

Nov. 16, 2002: Fox News

Nov. 15, 2002: Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y

Nov. 8, 2002: William Webster

Nov. 1, 2002: Harvey Pitt

Oct. 25, 2002: George W. Bush

Oct. 18, 2002: North Korea

Oct. 11, 2002: Michael Bloomberg

Sept. 27, 2002: Rep. Tom Tancredo

Sept. 13, 2002: Al-Muhajiroun

Sept. 6, 2002: National Republican Congressional Committee

Aug. 29, 2002: Eddie Joe Lloyd

Aug. 22, 2002: Larry Klayman

Aug. 2, 2002: Al Gore

July 26, 2002: Princeton admissions dean Stephen LeMenager

July 19, 2002: James Traficant

July 12, 2002: Maryland Lt. Gov. candidate Michael S. Steele

July 5, 2002: Hesham Mohamed Hadayet

June 28, 2002: WorldCom

June 21, 2002: Terry Lynn Barton

June 14, 2002: Tom Ridge

June 7, 2002: Former FBI Deputy Director Weldon Kennedy

May 31, 2002: Ari Fleischer

May 23, 2002: Condoleezza Rice

May 17, 2002: Robert Mueller

May 9, 2002: Karl Rove

May 3, 2002: Gen. Richard Myers

April 25, 2002: Donald Rumsfeld

April 18, 2002: George W. Bush

April 11, 2002: The Rev. Robert J. Banks, archdiocese of Boston

April 5, 2002: George W. Bush

March 29, 2002: Major League Baseball

March 21, 2002: Billy Graham

March 14, 2002: INS commissioner James W. Ziglar

March 8, 2002: Robert Zoellick and the U.S. steel industry

Feb. 28, 2002: Al Sharpton

Feb. 22, 2002: Olympic skating judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne

Feb. 14, 2002: Kenneth Lay

Feb. 8, 2002: Enron spokeswoman Peggy Mahoney

Jan. 31, 2002: Monsanto

Jan. 24, 2002: Linda Chavez

Jan. 17, 2002: George W. Bush

Jan. 10, 2002: Simon & Schuster

Jan. 4, 2002: The Associated Press

(Click here to access the Whopper Archive for 2001.)