Germany: CIA knew 'Curveball' was not trustworthy | csmonitor.com

Germany: CIA knew 'Curveball' was not trustworthy | csmonitor.com
German intelligence alleges Bush administration repeatedly 'exaggerated' informant's claims in run-up to war.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
Five top German intelligence officers say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly ignored warnings about the veracity of the information that an Iraqi informant named 'Curveball' was giving about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The Los Angeles Times, in a massive report published Sunday, reports that "the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq." They also say that 'Curveball,' whom the Germans described as "not a psychologically stable guy," never claimed that he had produced germ weapons, nor had he ever seen anyone do it.

According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.

Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm. "This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."

The Times report also says that the White House ignored evidence presented by the United Nations that showed that Curveball was wrong, and that the CIA "punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and [the CIA] refused to admit error until May 2004, 14 months after the invasion." Much of the information Curveball gave to the CIA later turned out to be stories he had gleaned from research on the Internet.
The Independent reports that proof of Curveball's lack of credibility came when the US sent its own team of inspectors to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They discovered the informants's personnel files in Baghdad.

It showed he had been a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted. Moreover he had been dismissed in 1995 ? just when he claimed to have begun work on bio-warfare trucks.

The Independent also provides what it calls its list of "intelligence red herrings." There was Curveball himself. There was Ahmed Chalabi, who brought to US attention defectors that "proved to be false, as was his claim that US invaders would be met with bouquets." There was the Niger-Iraq uranium story, which later turned out to have been fabricated by a former Italian spy. And there was Iraq's possession of aluminum tubes, which the administration said were for nuclear weapons, yet turned out to be for small conventional military rockets.

David Wise, author of "Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America," writes in a separate article in the Los Angeles Times that the argument over the war has taken on a simplistic "either/or form." Either the CIA provided bad intelligence, or the Bush administration "exaggerated and shaped" the intelligence. Wise argues that both things actually happened.

Another startling example of the administration's use of bad intelligence to promote its cause originated with the Iraqi defector aptly codenamed "Curveball." The defector, though discredited as being a fabricator, claimed he was an eyewitness to Iraq's production of biological weapons in mobile labs. The "intelligence" found its way into then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 that helped build the case for war.

Once again, the intelligence was wrong, but the administration seized on it to ballyhoo its arguments. Had the White House bothered to ask, it would have learned that the CIA had never talked to "Curveball" before Powell's speech. When the agency did seek to interview the source, whose reports were provided by the German intelligence service, it was told, "You don't want to see him because he's crazy." Yet "Curveball" was the principal source that the administration relied on in claiming to the world that Iraq had biological weapons.

On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld struck back against those who have charged the administration with manipulating prewar information, saying that "it does great disservice to the country." The Washington Times also reports that Mr. Rumsfeld refused to set a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq, and that "such talk encourages the terrorists and sends the wrong message to the Iraqis."

"Think of the enemy listening to an argument that we should withdraw immediately, or soon," he said. "All they would say to themselves is, 'Fair enough. All we have to do is wait 'em out.'?"

"Put yourself in the shoes of the Iraqis, the Iraqi people, who risked their lives to run for public office and to go out and vote to ratify a constitution, and who are getting prepared to have an election," Mr. Rumsfeld told CBS' "Face the Nation."

The Guardian reports that Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice both denied Sunday that they had told Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward about the CIA identity of former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valarie Plame. The Washington Post's ombudsman criticized Mr. Woodward yesterday for withholding what he knew about the leak investigation from his editor and for making public statements that were dismissive of the Plame investigation without disclosing his involvement.

Deborah Howell said the newspaper took a "hit to its credibility" and called for Woodward's work to be overseen. "He has to operate under the rules that govern the rest of the staff - even if he's rich and famous," she wrote.

Finally, the Associated Press reported Friday that the Inspector General's office for the Department of Defense said it had begun an investigation into the "Pentagon team [known as The Office of Special Plans] that former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith used to build the US case against Saddam Hussein and plan the Iraq war."

In a letter Wednesday to Feith's successor, Eric Edelman, and to Rumsfeld's intelligence chief, Stephen Cambone, the inspector general's office asked for points of contact for the investigation no later than Dec. 1.

"The overall objective will be to determine whether personnel assigned to the Office of Special Plans from September 2002 through June 2003 conducted unauthorized, unlawful or inappropriate intelligence activities," the letter said. A copy was released by the Pentagon late Friday afternoon.

Mr. Feith called the allegations "groundless," and said that the matter had been "carefully reviewed already," referring to a bipartisan congressional inquiry in 2004.