Former top CIA official reveals new details about the run-up to the war in Iraq.

[kpete]

At our first management meeting after the 2001 inauguration, it became clear that the Bush administration had a serious interest in Iraq.

What Bush Really Knew About WMDs

by Tyler Drumheller

A former top CIA official reveals new details about the run-up to the war in Iraq.

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In late September 2002, after the NIE had been drafted, the administration, through CIA management, turned to the DO to validate Curveball’s reporting. They wanted us to ask the allies to allow our officers to speak directly with Curveball and review his reporting. This fell to me, as the Chief of Europe; it was the first time I had heard of Curveball. I spoke with our European colleagues and they turned down the request, but in doing so warned that the Curveball was merely a single source and that they had no information to confirm his account. One of them even warned that he suspected Curveball was a fabricator who had created his story out of whole cloth.

.................

Even after the speech we continued to try to validate the case. Finally, in March 2004 the Europeans relented and we sent one of our very best field officers to debrief Curveball. Within two days, he called back and warned that it was clear Curveball had fabricated the reporting. A number of senior officials in the Agency and throughout the government remained in denial until subsequent investigations revealed that when he was supposed to have seen the WMD trailers and even witnessed a fatal accident, Curveball had been fired by the Iraqi government and was outside of Iraq.

The final sad act to this affair was that in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion many senior officials involved suffered amnesia about warnings and even the existence of Curveball. He was, however, all too real and his lies provided those looking for a justification for an attack on Iraq with “hard” evidence.

Ironically, in the fall of 2002, as the Curveball debate raged in the intelligence community, one of our offices collected reporting from a senior Iraqi official stating that their WMD program was a Potemkin village. They believed they could build a nuclear weapon in eighteen months to two years, if they could obtain fissile material, which they did not have. The biological weapons program was described as being at a “chemistry set” level due to the work of the U.N. inspectors. Finally, the new source said that the chemical weapons program consisted of gas shells leftover from the first Gulf War. In sum, Saddam would have built advanced weapons if he could, but he was a long way from presenting a real threat, and there was plenty of time to deal with this in a manner that would have avoided the tragedy that occurred after the U.S. invasion.

In late September 2002, the officer who collected the report from this other Iraqi source was told by senior Agency officials that upon hearing this reporting President Bush had discounted it saying that it was contradicted by reporting from our best and most sensitive source, Curveball. The administration got and believed the intelligence it wanted.

more at:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-16/what-bush-really-knew-about-wmds/

[texastoast]

1. So much death, destruction, and waste

THAT will be Bush's legacy. A legacy of a bully fool. Thanks for the post. It's great to see some meaningful ones on the board.

[jazzjunkysue]

2. But of course no one was suspicious of a guy they called curve ball.

Why didn't they just call him "Liar liar, pants on fire?"