WMD and bad intel
 

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."

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."

According to the German press' anonymous source...

Bot

Since many of this administrations advocates for war with Iraq had laid out their plans to attack Iraq in the Project for the New American Century, long before they ever came to power, it is clear to me that whatever 'intelligence' they used to justify the invasion was basically propaganda. If they were honest, they would have presented the American people with their vision of US imperialism and let the electorate decide whether an American Empire was in their interests or not, rather than attempting to scare the populace with images of Hussein bombing the US.
Their deceitfulness lies not so much in their use/misuse of intelligence as in their unwillingness to be forthcoming about their vision of the global future.

And you claim to have no faith?

You invest such enmity into something that is clearly unworthy of that dear an investment. Have you actually read their stuff? I don't see what the big deal is or was. They like democracy. they hate despotism. They think we should do something about it. They had a plan. Good for them.

The country bought into tehir ideas, twice. Don't like it? Fine, get your team elected.

Bot

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.

Faith?????
They clearly wanted to establish a US military presence in the Middle East/Central Asia to preserve US interests there. Is this is what you call democracy, then I agree. This administration was/is interested in preserving US interests in the region and calling it democracy.
As I recall, you've been in favor of the war because it preserves US oil interests in the region so I'd expect you to agree with Cheney,Wolfowitz and pals.

The issue is whether it was honest to disguise this rationale with talk of mushroom clouds.

Have you read it?

In all of your postings, have you ever responded to the substance of anyone's argument? Ever?

EDIT: Now that I think of it, it is inaccurate to say that you never respond to the substance of people's arguments. You just seem to prefer to attack messagers than to attack their messages.

The voters, for reasons I'll never understand, bought into the PNAC vision in 2004, but I don't think many of them new about PNAC when they elected W in 2000. His public pronouncements were contrary to the PNAC's express mission of world domination. Remember his talk of having a "humble foreign policy"? Seems like ancient history. In W's defense he might not have known in 2001 that he had packed his administration with PNAC people.

Maybe if Clinton had not gutted the Military and the intellegence services during his 8 long years fewer mistakes would have been made. And the record show that nearly every Democrat to the person agred with the intelligence BEFORE Bush was ever elected...and that never changed before 9/11....

Democrats are responsible for this yet not one of them is man enough to admit it.

So by saying "responsible for this"...you are admitting there is something wrong with what is happening...?
Well that's a step in the right ....uhmm...correct direction....

Intelligence is never a field of certanties.....its a field of probibilities...

Had massive cuts not been made in the mid 90's and Clinton passing law the restricted what people they are allowed to deal with it would have been more accurate....it takes longer than 8 years to fix the damage done under Clinton...

No of course not. I never say anything of substance. Just like you.

We all know how reliable anonymous sources are. I believe everything everybody says who is too cowardly to allow his name to be used only so long as it agrees with my world view.

Just like you.

B

Why bother answering my comments, you know, that have no substance?

B