Mumbai: People using CIA and FBI computers have edited entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, including topics on the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison, a new programme called WikiScanner revealed.

The WikiScanner programme was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and posted this month on a web site.

The programme lets users track the source of computers used to make changes in Wikipedia topics where anyone can submit and edit entries.

WikiScanner revealed that CIA computers were used to edit a graphic on Iraq casualties to add that many figures while another entry on former CIA chief William Colby was edited to expand his career history.

Aerial and satellite images of the US prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were removed using a computer traced to the FBI, WikiScanner showed.

Computers with the National Rifle Association have also been used to alter the Wikipedia article on the September 11 terror attacks to strengthen the Bush administration's suggestion that Saddam Hussein's Iraq may have been involved.

Church of Scientology computers have been used to excise criticism of the church from Wikipedia while a CBS computer was used to falsely claim that CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer's real name is Irving Federman.

Wikipedia allows online editing and as such a variety of users including those from The New York Times, Fox News, the FBI, the CIA and many other groups and organisations have been busy editing Wikipedia entries.

Many of the edits are predictably self-interested: PCs in Scientology officialdom were used to remove criticism in the church's Wikipedia entry. But others hint at procrastinating office workers, such as the tweaks to Wikipedia articles on TV shows being made from CIA computers.

Some of the guilty parties identified by the website, such as the Labour Party, the CIA, Republican Party and the Church of Scientology, are well known for PR. But others, such as the Anglican and Catholic churches or even the obscurely titled Perro de Presa Canario Dog Breeders Association of America, are new to the dark arts of spin.

Wikiscanner, was designed by Virgil Griffith, a graduate student from the California Institute of Technology, who downloaded the entire encyclopaedia, isolating the internet-based records of anonymous changes and IP addresses.

He matched those IP addresses with public net-address services and helped uncover the world's biggest spinning operation.

While Wikipedia is being hailed for the democratisation of knowledge, the online encyclopedia has since been hijacked by forces which decided that certain things were best left unknown.

The secret of Wikipedia's phenomenal success is that anyone can edit the millions of comments, facts and statistics published on the pages of the world's most popular online encyclopaedia. But that of course is also its greatest weakness.