Another indication that the Iraq war is
Topic One in the US today, this is page one, ‘above the fold’ lead headline on
the LA Times today, also top of the most emailed list. A timeline follows this
extract. Please contact me if you
want a full copy in reader-friendly format. - Kwc
How U.S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball'
The Iraqi informant's German handlers say they told U.S. officials that
his information was 'not proven,' and were shocked when Pres. Bush and Colin L.
Powell used it in key prewar speeches.
By Bob Drogin and
John Goetz, Special to The LA Times,
November 20, 2005
BERLIN — 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.
Curveball was the chief source of inaccurate prewar U.S. accusations that
Baghdad had biological weapons, a commission appointed by Bush reported this
year. The commission did not interview Curveball, who still insists his story
was true, or the German officials who handled his case.
The German account emerges as the White House is lashing out at domestic
critics, particularly Senate Democrats, over allegations the administration
manipulated intelligence to go to war. Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney
called such claims reprehensible and pernicious.
In Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is resuming its
long-stalled investigation of the administration's use of prewar intelligence.
Committee members said last week that the Curveball case would be a key part of
their review. House Democrats are calling for a similar inquiry.
An investigation by The Times based on interviews since May with about 30
current and former intelligence officials in the U.S., Germany, England, Iraq
and the United Nations, as well as other experts, shows that U.S. bungling in
the Curveball case was worse than official reports have disclosed.
The White House, for example, ignored evidence gathered by United Nations
weapons inspectors shortly before the war that disproved Curveball's account.
Bush and his aides issued increasingly dire warnings about Iraq's biological
weapons before the war even though intelligence from Curveball had not changed
in two years.
At the Central Intelligence Agency, officials embraced Curveball's account even
though they could not confirm it or interview him until a year after the
invasion. They ignored multiple warnings about his reliability before the war,
punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and refused to
admit error until May 2004, 14 months after the invasion.
After the CIA vouched for Curveball's accounts, Bush declared in his 2003 State
of the Union speech that Iraq had "mobile biological weapons labs"
designed to produce "germ warfare agents." Bush cited the mobile germ
factories in at least four prewar speeches and statements, and other world
leaders repeated the charge.
Powell also highlighted Curveball's "eyewitness" account when he
warned the United Nations Security Council on the eve of war that Iraq's mobile
labs could brew enough weapons-grade microbes "in a single month to kill
thousands upon thousands of people."
The senior BND officer who supervised Curveball's case said he was aghast when
he watched Powell misstate Curveball's claims as a justification for war.
"We were shocked," the official said. "Mein Gott! We had always told them it was
not proven…. It was not hard intelligence."
In a telephone interview, Powell said that George J. Tenet, then the director
of central intelligence, and his top deputies personally assured him before his
U.N. speech that U.S. intelligence on the mobile labs was "solid."
Since then, Powell said, the case "has totally blown up in our
faces."
Many officials interviewed for this report, including the German intelligence
officers, spoke on the condition they not be identified because they were bound
by secrecy agreements, were not authorized to speak to the news media or
because the case involved classified sources and methods.
Curveball lives under an assumed name in southern Germany. The BND has given
him a furnished apartment, language lessons and a stipend generous enough that
he does not need to work. His wife has emigrated from Iraq, and they have an
infant daughter.
The BND has relocated him twice because of concerns that his life was in
danger. They still watch him closely. "He is difficult to integrate"
into local society, said a BND operations officer. "We are still busy with
him."
Curveball could not be interviewed for this report. BND officials threatened
last summer to strip him of his salary, housing and protection if he agreed to
meet with The Times. "We told
him, 'If you talk to anyone on the outside… you are out and you get no more
help from us,' " the BND supervisor said.
CIA officials now concede that the Iraqi fused fact, research he gleaned on the
Internet and what his former co-workers called "water cooler gossip"
into a nightmarish fantasy that played on U.S. fears after the Sept. 11
attacks. Curveball's motive, CIA officials said, was not to start a war. He
simply was seeking a German visa.
German journey
The Curveball chronicle began in November 1999, when the dark-haired
Iraqi in his late 20s flew into Munich's Franz Josef Strauss Airport with a
tourist visa. The Baghdad-born
chemical engineer promptly applied for political asylum in Arabic and halting
English. He told German immigration officials he had embezzled Iraqi government
money and faced prison or worse if sent home.
The Germans sent him to Zirndorf, a refugee center near Nuremberg once used for
Soviet defectors, where he joined a long line of Iraqi exiles seeking German
visas. Abruptly, his story
changed.
He once led a team, he told BND officers, that equipped trucks to brew deadly
bio-agents. He named six sites where Iraq might be hiding biological warfare
vehicles. Three already were operating. A farm program to boost crop yields was
cover for Iraq's new biological weapons production program, he said.
Germany provided Europe's most generous benefits to Iraqi refugees, and several
hundred arrived each month. But few had useful credible intelligence on
Baghdad's suspected weapons programs. Intelligence agents became accustomed to
exaggerated claims.
"The Iraqis were adept at feeding us what we wanted to hear," said a
former official of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency who helped
debrief about 50 Iraqi emigres in Germany before the war. "Most of it was
garbage.''
But for this defector, the Germans assigned two case officers as well as a team
of chemists, biologists and other experts. They debriefed him from January 2000
to September 2001.
Since the Iraqi had arrived in Munich, U.S. liaison with German intelligence
was assigned to the local DIA team. Their clandestine operating base was an
elegant 19th century mansion known as Munich House. There he was assigned his
codename: Curveball.
The base cryptonym "ball" was used to signify weapons, two former
U.S. intelligence officials said. An earlier informant in Germany, for example,
was called Matchball. In DIA
files, Iraqi sources were listed as "red" if U.S. intelligence could
interview them. Curveball was a "blue" source, meaning the Germans
would not permit U.S. access to him.
Curveball said he hated Americans, the Germans explained.
As a result, the DIA — like the BND — never tried to check Curveball's
background or verify his accounts before sending reports to other U.S.
intelligence agencies. Despite that failure, CIA analysts accepted the incoming
reports as credible and quickly passed them to senior policymakers.
The reports had problems, however. The Germans usually interviewed Curveball in
Arabic, using a translator, although the Iraqi sometimes spoke English. "But a case officer wants to speak
directly to his source," said the senior BND officer. "Curveball
began to learn German, and thus there was a big mix [of languages] that went
on. This explains some of the confusion."
It got worse, like a children's game of "telephone," in which
information gets increasingly distorted. The BND sent German summaries of their
English and Arabic interview reports to Munich House and to British
intelligence. The DIA team translated the German back to English and prepared
its own summaries. Those went to DIA's directorate for human intelligence, at a
high-rise office in Clarendon, Va.
Clarendon passed 95 DIA reports to the Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation
and Arms Control Center, known as WINPAC, at CIA headquarters in nearby
Langley. Experts there called other specialists, including an independent
laboratory, to help evaluate the data. Spy satellites were directed to focus on
Curveball's sites. CIA artists prepared detailed drawings from Curveball's
crude sketches.
The system led to confusion, not clarity. "Analysts were studying drawings made by artists working
from descriptions by a guy we couldn't talk to," explained a former senior
CIA official who helped supervise the case and the postwar investigation.
"It was hard to figure out."
"Our fear is that as it was analyzed and translated and reanalyzed and
retranslated, and comments got added, it could have gotten sexed up by
accident," agreed a former CIA operations official.
The British Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, blamed the BND for
omitting what a Parliamentary inquiry called "significant detail" in
the reports they sent to London. At issue were Curveball's trucks.
In an e-mail to The Times, Robin Butler, head of the British inquiry into
prewar intelligence, said "incomplete reporting" by the BND misled
the British to assume the trucks could produce weapons-grade bio-agents such as
anthrax spores. But Curveball only spoke of producing a liquid slurry
unsuitable for bombs or warheads.
At the CIA, bio-warfare experts viewed the defector's reports as sophisticated
and technically feasible. They also matched the analysts' expectations.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-curveball20nov20,0,943136.story?track=hpmostemailedlink
Key developments
1991: Gulf
War ends
Saddam Hussein loses the Gulf War and orders aides to destroy stocks of
germ-filled bombs. Regime officials lie to U.N. inspectors about prewar program
and hide evidence of biological warfare factories.
1992: U.N. acts
A U.N. weapons inspector speculates in a memo that Iraq may be using mobile
germ production facilities to hide its bio-warfare program. U.N. launches
unsuccessful raids to find the suspected germ trucks.
1994: Curveball gets job
Curveball is hired out of engineering school at Baghdad University to work at
the Chemical Engineering and Design Center. He says he is first in his class,
but records later show that he was last in his class.
May 1995: Enter 'Dr. Germ'
Curveball says he is assigned to help his boss, Dr. Rihab Taha, also known as
"Dr. Germ," as she begins planning for secret assembly of vehicles
that can brew deadly germs and avoid detection.
July 1995: An Iraqi admission
Regime officials admit to U.N. inspectors that Iraq produced and weaponized
anthrax, botulinum toxin, aflatoxin and other biological poisons before the
Gulf War. CIA analysts suspect Baghdad has secret mobile labs.
July 1997: Germ truck
Curveball says he helped assemble a germ-production unit on trucks at Djerf al
Nadaf. But the Iraqi says he did not see the unit in use, and did not know what
germs it was designed to produce.
Fall 1998: Accident rumors
Curveball says an accident at Djerf al Nadaf kills 12 bio-warfare technicians.
The CIA later says Curveball witnessed the accident and was injured, but
Germans say he only heard "rumors" of incident.
November 1999: Move to Germany
Curveball applies for political asylum in Germany. He tells German intelligence
for first time that he built germ weapons trucks. U.S. investigators later
conclude he conjured up story to obtain visa.
January 2000: Curveball talks
German intelligence officers first interrogate Curveball. They refuse to let
U.S. operatives meet him. But summaries of his information are quickly provided
to senior U.S. policymakers.
May 2000: Doubts raised
Doubts emerge about Curveball. A CIA doctor, posing as a German, meets the
defector and reports he spoke "excellent English." German officials
say Curveball has emotional problems.
September 2001: 9/11 raises profile
The Germans complete interrogations of Curveball. 9/11 terror attacks raise
U.S. concerns about Saddam Hussein. CIA reassesses Curveball reports and sharply
increases warnings of Iraq's germ weapons.
Fall 2002: A CIA warning
A German intelligence official tells Tyler Drumheller that Curveball may be a
fabricator. Drumheller tries to warn others at the CIA. But U.S. intelligence
concludes that Iraq has greater bio-warfare capabilities.
February-March 2003: Powell speaks
Colin Powell warns U.N. that the mobile labs Curveball described can kill
thousands of people. U.N. inspectors visit Djerf al Nadaf and other sites in
Iraq but find no evidence. U.S. invades Iraq.
May 2003: Bush affirms WMD
U.S. find two trucks with lab equipment. Curveball identifies some items.
President Bush announces finding weapons of mass destruction. CIA determines
the vehicles cannot be used for biological weapons.
Fall 2003: Story unravels
CIA-led investigators discover Curveball was fired in 1995, and could not have
worked on bio-weapons. Friends call him a liar and a fraud. "Jerry,"
a CIA official, tries to convince senior officials of their mistake.
March-May 2004: CIA closes case
Germans allow the U.S. to interview Curveball. He refuses to admit deceit, but
CIA case officer is convinced he is lying. CIA declares Curveball a fabricator
and withdraws all reports based on his accounts.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-curveball20nov20,0,943136.story?track=hpmostemailedlink
