Jimmy Carter under fire for alleged plagiarism

Posted By Blake Hounshell Monday, December 11, 2006 - 10:37 AM Share

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Jimmy Carter came under fire last week when a former advisor resigned in protest at the publication of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The onetime executive director of the Carter Center slammed Jimmy's book as "replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions and simply invented segments."

Among the allegedly copied materials: maps from Dennis Ross' book, The Missing Peace. Ross told Fox News that "it certainly appears as if they were taken from my book. Those maps are maps that I created. They didn't exist."

Carter responded to these and other charges in the LA Times, but only in a general way:

With some degree of reluctance and some uncertainty about the reception my book would receive, I used maps, text and documents to describe the situation accurately and to analyze the only possible path to peace: Israelis and Palestinians living side by side within their own internationally recognized boundaries. These options are consistent with key U.N. resolutions supported by the U.S. and Israel, official American policy since 1967, agreements consummated by Israeli leaders and their governments in 1978 and 1993 (for which they earned Nobel Peace Prizes), the Arab League's offer to recognize Israel in 2002 and the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace," which has been accepted by the PLO and largely rejected by Israel.

On CNN, he apparently said he had never read Ross's book.

Readers: what do you think of this controversy? Email Passport with your comments.

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