Before we invaded Iraq, the CIA gave the White House unreliable intelligence that the country was an imminent threat with a burgeoning nuclear program, right? Who knew what at the CIA is a matter of some debate.
The Central Intelligence Agency was told by an informant in the spring of 2001 that Iraq had abandoned a major element of its nuclear weapons program, but the agency did not share the information with other agencies or with senior policy makers, a former C.I.A. officer has charged.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court here in December, the former C.I.A. officer, whose name remains secret, said that the informant told him that Iraq’s uranium enrichment program had ended years earlier and that centrifuge components from the scuttled program were available for examination and even purchase.
The officer, an employee at the agency for more than 20 years, including several years in a clandestine unit assigned to gather intelligence related to illicit weapons, was fired in 2004.
In his lawsuit, he says his dismissal was punishment for his reports questioning the agency’s assumptions on a series of weapons-related matters. Among other things, he charged that he had been the target of retaliation for his refusal to go along with the agency’s intelligence conclusions.
This seems like an interesting case, doesn’t it? Here’s a guy who didn’t toe the party line on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, happened to be right about Iraq, and got fired. I guess he should just be happy Karl Rove didn’t leak his identity to the world or go after his wife as punishment.
And speaking of Valerie Plame, there are some similarities.
The former officer’s lawyer, Roy W. Krieger, said he could not discuss his client’s claims. He likened his client’s situation to that of Valerie Wilson, also known as Valerie Plame, the clandestine C.I.A. officer whose role was leaked to the press after her husband publicly challenged some administration conclusions about Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. (The former officer and Ms. Wilson worked in the same unit of the agency.)
“In both cases, officials brought unwelcome information on W.M.D. in the period prior to the Iraq invasion, and retribution followed,” said Mr. Krieger, referring to weapons of mass destruction.
The truth about Iraq was available to the administration before the war was launched. They didn’t want it.