Gideon Remez: Discovers error in Pentagon history. Pentagon admission.

To its credit, the Defense Intelligence Agency promptly withdrew an official DIA history that mistakenly described the 1981 Israeli attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor in the 1980s as an attack on Iran (Secrecy News, March 26). As soon as the error became public, DIA replaced the entire document with an updated account.

In an email message yesterday to Israeli author Gideon Remez, who discovered the error, DIA webmaster David Baird wrote:"You are correct that the historical fact is wrong. We did not realize it until you pointed it out. We are taking steps to correct it."

By yesterday afternoon, the 1996"Defense Intelligence Agency: A Brief History," which contained the error, had been replaced on the DIA web site by a 2007"History of the Defense Intelligence Agency." Both documents can be found on the FAS web site here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/dia/index.html