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Ex-CIA Officer Accuses Bush Administration of Ignoring Warnings About Iraq WMD Source
A former CIA officer said senior agency officials repeatedly ignored his warnings about a source for much of the intelligence on prewar Iraq’s alleged WMD programs, the Washington Post reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 29, 2005). Former CIA European operations chief Tyler Drumheller said he warned his superiors about allegations of mobile biological weapons laboratories that originated with an Iraqi defector, code-named Curveball, who was suspected of being mentally unstable and unreliable. Despite his efforts, Drumheller said, Curveball’s claims were a key point when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made his case for the invasion before the U.N. Security Council. “We thought we had taken care of the problem, but I turn on the television and there it was, again,” he said, referring to Powell’s speech. Former CIA Director George Tenet, in a briefing with Powell before the speech, backed the validity of Curveball’s claim, according to people who attended the session. “No one mentioned Drumheller, or Curveball,” said Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff at the time. “I didn’t know the name Curveball until months afterward.” In late 2002, Drumheller was asked to seek U.S. access to Curveball from a European intelligence agency, the Post reported. The agency in question is believed to have been the German intelligence service A German official told Drumheller that Curveball was unreliable. “He said: ‘I think the guy is a fabricator,’’ Drumheller said. “He said: ‘We also think he has psychological problems. We could never validate his reports,’” Drumheller recalled. He said he warned his superiors in late 2002, which led to “a series of the most contentious meetings I’ve ever seen.” Analysts with the CIA’s Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control believed Curveball’s descriptions included too much detail to have been faked, Drumheller said. “People were cursing. These guys were absolutely, violently committed to it,” he said. “They would say to us, ‘You’re not scientists, you don’t understand.’” In January 2003, CIA headquarters wanted to know if Curveball’s allegations were reliable enough to include in a U.S. official’s speech. Berlin, Drumheller said, refused to guarantee Curveball’s information. “They said, ‘We have never been able to verify his claims,’” Drumheller said. “And that was all sent up to Tenet’s office.” A few days later, he was handed the text of Powell’s speech, the Post reported. Drumheller said he objected to John McLaughlin, then the CIA deputy director. McLaughlin said Curveball was “the only tangible source” for the biological weapons trailers and that he would quickly investigate. McLaughlin, however, later said in a statement that he had no recollection of the meeting. “If someone had made these doubts clear to me, I would not have permitted the reporting to be used in Secretary Powell’s speech,” he said. Drumheller said he also received a phone call from Tenet the night before Powell’s speech. “I said: ‘Hey, boss, you’re not going to use that stuff in the speech . . . ? There are real problems with that,’” Drumheller said. He said Tenet told him not to worry. Tenet also denied in a later statement that he had ever discussed the matter with Drumheller (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, June 25).
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