CIA THE BLAME GAME As the CIA search for Iraq s WMD ends without success, a furious row over who is to blame has irrupted inside the corridors of the US intelligence community...
and reliability; and that Curveball had had a nervous breakdown. Further the representative of the foreign service is said to have worried that Curveball was ‘a fabricator’. The representative reportedly cautioned the CIA division chief that the foreign service would publicly and officially deny these views if pressed, because they did not wish to be embarrassed. “It is both stunning and deeply disturbing that this information, if true, was never brought forward to me by anyone in the course of the following events.” The problem is, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell vouched for Curveball’s claims in a crucial address to the United Nations Security Council on the eve of war. From that point on, the decision to tackle Saddam was irreversible. “The fact is there was yelling and screaming about Curveball,” said James L.
Agent Curveball Starts US Intel Wars
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t’s little wonder President Bush insisted on creating an intelligence czar. Since the turn of the year, a secret war of words has seen some of the most powerful men in the intelligence world clash over the accuracy of US intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. As the last few officers from the CIA’s Iraqi Survey Group (an agency established to find Saddam’s WMD) trickle back home, former CIA chief George Tenet has provided a most detailed account why his organisation insisted the weapons were real. This, despite a plethora of warnings over the prime source of that intelligence - ‘Agent Curveball’. Mr Tenet is adamant that he was not aware of numerous reports provided by other services that Curveball was not to be trusted. Regardless of who is telling the truth, the saga reveals an astonishing breakdown in communication
Former DCI George Tenet refuses to take all the blame
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Tyler Drumheller, former head of the CIA European Division, also issued repeated warnings about Curveball’s accounts. They too were reportedly ignored.
James L. Pavitt Pavitt, deputy director of operations and head of the clandestine service until he retired last summer. “My people were saying: ‘We think he’s a stinker’.” Pavitt also said he did not relate his own concerns to Tenet because, it was only after the invasion in March 2003, he discovered Curveball was the primary source of intelligence used in prewar CIA WMD assessments provided to President Bush, Congress and the public. “Later, I remember the guffaws by myself and others when we said, ‘How could they have put this much emphasis on this guy’? He wasn’t worth [anything] in our minds,” Pavitt said.
Hitting back, George Tenet listed an array of reports that were published that could and should have exposed Curveball’s reliability. Mr Tenet focused upon Iraq’s so-called mobile chemical production labs. The following list of briefings, reports and assessments all mentioned the labs - with no reference to the quality of the intelligence. 1. The coordination and publication of a classified National Intelligence Estimate 2. The declassification and publication of the NIE’s key judgments and findings 3. The production and publication of an unclassified White Paper on Iraq’s WMD capabilities 4. The preparation of testimonies both closed an open before the Senate Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees 5. The briefings provided to members of
between several of the world’s most powerful security services. In April 2005, following fierce criticism by former CIA officials that he had ignored warnings over Curveball, former DCI George Tenet said: “I learned for the first time from the Silberman-Robb Commission (commission on intelligence and Iraqi weapons), the account of a conversation that allegedly occurred in late September or October of 2002 between a CIA Directorate of Operations Division Chief and the representative of a foreign service regarding a CIA request to secure direct access to Curveball.
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The ‘mobile chemical-producing’ truck - there was no evidence to suggest the machinery inside ever produced WMD
“The representative of the foreign service [Germany’s BND], it is now reported, responded to CIA’s division chief responsible for relations with the foreign service with words to the effect of ‘You do not want to see him (Curveball) because he’s crazy. Speaking to him would be a waste of time’. The representative reportedly went on to say that his service was not sure whether Curveball was telling the truth; that he had serious doubts about Curveball’s mental stability
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