The escalating debate over the Bush administration’s use (and misuse) of intelligence has kept the White House off-balance, but nevertheless focused on a couple of key talking points. Among them is the idea that our international allies saw intelligence pointing to the Iraqi threat and agreed with the president’s conclusions.
Unfortunately for the Bush gang, this notion suffered a serious setback over the weekend when the LA Times reported in a devastating expose that German officials rejected the intelligence offered by the notorious “Curveball,” and warned the U.S. not to use it. Unfortunately for all of us, the White House ignored the warnings and built their case for war around the fraudulent claims of a charlatan.
The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein’s suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.
Five senior officials from Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.
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 German authorities, speaking about the case for the first time, also said that their informant suffered from emotional and mental problems. “He is not a stable, psychologically stable guy,” said a BND official who supervised the case. “He is not a completely normal person,” agreed a BND analyst.
Bush administration officials considered these warnings from our ally, and proceeded to dismiss the cautionary advice altogether. Curveball told them what they wanted to hear, so they went with the information — credibility and accuracy were irrelevant. As Matt Yglesias put it, “[A]ny information, no matter how dubious, that supported the conclusion they wanted to believe would just go right on through the pipeline no matter how many times somebody tried to tell them to slow down.”
It wasn’t the only setback for the Bush talking points. Also yesterday, former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), a former chairman and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, smacked the president around a little bit on the idea of shared intelligence.
At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.
Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein’s capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.
There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein’s will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.
Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States’ removing Hussein, by force if necessary.
Graham wanted his colleagues and the nation to see what he’d seen, but when Tenet came back with an unclassified version of his report, it was “an unqualified case” for WMD in Iraq.
Graham knew what others did not and he voted against the resolution to give Bush the authority to pursue a war. It’s something else to consider when you hear Bush, Cheney, and others say Dems saw “the same intelligence” as the White House.