Last week, National Security Advisor Steven Hadley gave a
press briefing and had the gall to say this:
I will say on the specific intelligence, this, as you know, is something that was looked at very hard in a number of the studies I've talked about. And their judgment is that intelligence that came from the INC had a minimal impact on any judgments of the intelligence community in preparing the intelligence that went forward to the President and to others.
At this point, a member of the press should have coughed out the word "CURVEBALL" very loudly. Unfortunately, this didn't happen, so I will below, in Part II of my response to the Hadley Challenge (Part I is here):
The INC-provided defectors and Supposed Iraqi Links to al Qaeda
A very early example of an INC-provided defector turned up on October 12, 2001, one month after the events of 9/11. In an article in the WaPo titled "What About Iraq?" Jim Hoagland described "accumulating evidence of Iraq's role in sponsoring the development on its soil of weapons and techniques for international terrorism." The piece featured an interview with Sabah Khalifa Khodada al-Lami, an Iraqi army defector, who claimed terrorists were training for hijackings on a Boeing 707 parked at a terrorist training camp in Salman Pak, Iraq.
One month later, al-Lami was made available to the press by the INC via video feed from London. Described as a former colonel in Saddam's Army, he repeated the claim that terrorists were training at Salman Pak. He also added that the training camp was contaminated by anthrax. Stories about Lami later appeared in the Washington Times, the Seattle Times, and other newspapers.
This and other tales provided by Ahmad Chalabi and the INC made for excellent rhetoric and, not surprisingly, Bush Administration officials start referring to them. For example, in November 14, 2001, in a public speech, Richard Perle cited "testimony" from Dr. Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi defector who had written a book called Saddam's Bombmaker, and had declared that Saddam Hussein, in response to the 1981 bombing of the Osiraq nuclear reactor by Israel, ordered that future nuclear facilities be dispersed at 400 different sites across the nation. "Every day," Perle said, these sites "turn out a little bit of nuclear materials." He also added, "Do we wait for Saddam and hope for the best, do we wait and hope he doesn't do what we know he is capable of . . . or do we take some preemptive action?" This, of course, became the rational for what is commonly referred to as the Bush Doctrine, which reasons, "The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction-- and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."
While the allegations and stories provided by Chalabi's defectors and captured and detained terrorists often sounded great, they also tended to fail to hold up. Suspicions about INC-provided informants surfaced early. For example, on December 17, 2001, the CIA administered a lie detector test to an INC-supplied defector, Adnan Ihsan al-Haideri, who claimed that he had visited 20 secret nuclear, biological and chemical warfare facilities in Iraq. Haideri showed signs of deceptions during the test.
However, such warning signals were ignored, and the allegations began to get more play in the press. On December 20, 2001, a mere three days after the CIA gave the lie detector test, Haideri's claims first appeared in the NY Times in an article by none other than Judith Miller: "Iraqi Tells of Renovations at Sites for Chemical and Nuclear Arms." Subsequently, more INC-supplied informants come out of the woodwork. In February 2002, the INC brought to the attention of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) an Iraqi defector who claimed he had information regarding mobile biological weapons laboratories.
But, even by this time the DIA was starting to have serious doubts about some "factoids" that were being thrown around by the Administration. As Senator Carl Levin pointed out recently, the DIA issued a report stating that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons. Later, in March 2002, after interviewing another INC-supplied source on mobile biological weapons labs that the INC had identified, a DIA debriefer noted that much of the information provided seemed to be embellished and perhaps coached by the INC. Later, in April 2002, the CIA published an assessment of this same INC source that stated that they had terminated contact with him after four meetings because of suspicions he was a fabricator. Finally, in May 2002 the DIA issued a "fabrication notice" which said that the information the same INC informant had provided was "assessed as unreliable and, in some instances, pure fabrication."
The Brits, likewise, were not very impressed by efforts by Chalabi's INC and U.S. intelligence to show a link between Iraq and al Qaeda through INC-provided defectors. This is shown in the March 22, 2002, UK memo to Jack Straw that noted, "U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing."
But, the support within the Administration for INC tall tales and al-Libi's lies was unwaivering. Despite serious concerns regarding the quality of the intelligence they were providing, the Pentagon made payments of $335,000 per month, and the State Dept. paid $33 million, to Chalabi and the INC for intelligence gathering. Doug Feith also worked hard to make sure that the alleged Iraq-al Qaeda connection was repeated. On August 20, 2002, he and his staff met with intelligence community analysts to delay the publication of an intelligence community assessment on Iraq and terrorism that failed to find evidence of a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda and attempted to mold the judgments to establish a link between Iraq and the attacks carried out by al-Qaeda terrorists on 9/11. At the same time, Feith's office mounted a sort of end run around the rest of the intelligence community and presented an alternative analysis to Hadley and Scooter Libby regarding Iraq's links to al Qaeda. These meetings were discussed in the Senate Intelligence Committee Report that Administration officials even today claim shows that intelligence was not manipulated. But, the facts certainly indicate otherwise. At the very least, there was a conscious effort to hype the worst case scenarios, and ignore concerns or dissent about the intelligence.
And this strategy worked. On September 12, 2002, the White House put out a background paper, "A Decade of Deception and Defiance," that was released in conjunction with Bush's speech to the U.N. General Assembly that day. It included the allegations of the INC-supplied defector (and expected deceiver), Haideri, and cited INC-produced defectors' claims that Saddam ran a terrorist training camp outside Baghdad in Salman Pak.
Problem is, after the war, U.S. officials determined that a facility in Salman Pak was actually used to train Iraqi anti-terrorist commandos. But, before the war, it apparently was easier for the CIA to just run with the allegations of suspect INC defectors and detainee confessions that supported the reasons for war. On September 17, 2002, Tenet testified before Congress: "There is evidence that Iraq provided al-Qaida with various kinds of training - combat, bomb-making, and CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear). Although Saddam did not endorse al-Qaida's overall agenda and was suspicious of Islamist movements in general, he was apparently not averse, under certain circumstances, to enhancing bin Laden's operational capabilities. As with much of the information on the overall relationship, details on training are [redacted as classified info] from sources of varying reliability."
At least he noted that the sources were of "varying reliability," but the point was clear and strong: Iraq is training terrorists and they must be stopped.
To back up their case, the CIA produced in late September 2002 a report titled Iraqi Support for Terrorism. Not to be outdone by Tenet, on September 21, 2002, Rumsfeld, in the UK Sunday Times, tied all of the Administration arguments together: "[Saddam] has relationships with terrorist networks and there are al Qaeda currently in the country so he is a classic example of the nexus between a terrorist state and well advanced weapons of mass destruction programs and relationships with terrorists." But, Bush topped even him several days later with this nonsensical statement: "Al Qaeda hides, Saddam doesn't, but the danger is, is they work in concert...you can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."
Ari Fleischer backed up his boss and repeated the suspect al-Libi statements on September 26, 2002, during a press briefing: "We have solid reports of senior-level contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraqi officials going back a decade, and, as Condi said, of chemical and biological agent training... There is credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq to acquire chemical and other weapons of mass destruction capabilities." And, on October 7, 2002, during his infamous speech in Cincinnati, Bush referred to the intelligence from al Libi, stating, "We know that that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade...We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."
Tenet spread the al-Libi lies further in a letter he sent to Sen. Bob Graham that day. He wrote, "We have credible reporting that al-Qa'ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq had provided training to al-Qa'ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs." But, not everyone was going along with the program. On October 8, 2002, Knight Ridder reported that "a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats" had serious doubts about the Administration's case for war. They were raising doubts about "links" between Iraq and al-Qaeda. One official told the KR reporter, "Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books."
But, despite the public criticism, and ignoring the concerns expressed about the intel by his own intelligence community, President Bush remained undaunted. October 14, 2002, he said of Saddam, "This is a man that we know has had connections with al Qaeda. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al Qaeda as a forward army." But, on November 4, 2002, the public criticism by officials about the supposed al Qaeda-Iraq link continued. The LA Times quoted a top European investigator as saying, "We have found no evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda . . . we have found no serious connections whatsoever."
As for the INC favorite, Curveball, even on the day before Powell's speech at the UN on February 5, 2003, doubts were being expressed within the Pentagon. After reading a draft of Powell's speech, a DoD employee who was the only US intelligence official to have ever met Curveball back in May 2000 (at which time he thought he was an alcoholic) emailed someone within the CIA with concerns about Curveball and the veracity of his allegations, which he thought should be investigated "before we use the information as the backbone of one of our major findings of the existence of a continuing Iraqi BW [biological weapons] program!" This email was forwarded to the Deputy Chief of the CIA's Iraqi Task Force who responds, "...let's keep in mind that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say, and that the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about."
In the days after Powell used Curveball's allegations in his speech, the Administration continued to push the Iraq-al Qaeda connections, never mentioning doubts and concerns about the quality of the intel that had come from INC-provided defectors, and even referring to the suspect al Libi statements:
- February 6, 2003, Bush: "One of the greatest dangers we face is that of weapons of mass destruction might be passed to terrorists, who would not hesitate to use those weapons. Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks...Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training." And Wolfowitz: "And, worse of all, his connections with terrorists, which go back decades, and which started some 10 years ago with al Qaeda, are growing every day."
- February 8, 2003, Bush: "Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. And an al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990's for help in acquiring poisons and gases."
- February 11, 2003, Tenet: "Iraq in the past has provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to al Qaeda. It also provided training in poisons and gasses to two al Qaeda associates; one of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful. Mr. Chairman, this information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence. It comes to us from credible and reliable sources."
- February 12, 2003, Tenet: "We also know from very reliable information that there's been some transfer of training in chemical and biologicals from the Iraqi to al Qaeda."
- February 21, 2003, Feith: "There have been linkages between the Iraqi government and al Qaeda going back more or less a decade. They have involved cooperation between the Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda operatives on training and combined operations regarding bomb making and chemical and biological weapons."
- March 9, 2003, Rice: "We know from a detainee that...they sought help in developing chemical and biological weapons because they weren't doing very well on their own. They sought it in Iraq. They received the help."
But, by March 2003, the march to war was so strong nothing could stop it. The allegations of the INC-provided defectors and all of the supposed links to al Qaeda were only part of the public push that included fears of mushroom clouds. However, after the war began these allegations, which completely failed to pan out, were still in the public record, and the man who provided most of them was still in Iraq, which is probably why there was a concerted effort to politically bury Ahmed Chalabi.
But, that is another story....... Tomorrow, Part III, the The Niger Uranium Saga.