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Germans: Bush misused data to justify Iraq war
Informant's handlers say they repeatedly warned of unreliability.
By Bob Drogin and John Goetz
Special to The Morning Call
11/20/05 "McCall" -- -- 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 before
the Iraq war.
Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service,
or BND, said in interviews with the Los Angeles 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
claims in his pre-war 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 second-hand 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 pre-war U.S. claims
that Baghdad had a biological weapons arsenal, a commission
appointed by President Bush reported earlier this year. U.S.
investigators did not interview Curveball, who still insists his
story was true, or the German officials who handle his case.
The German account emerges as Washington is engaged in a political
battle over pre-war intelligence. The White House lashed out last
week at Senate Democrats and other critics who allege the
administration manipulated intelligence to go to war. Democrats have
forced the Senate intelligence committee to resume a long-stalled
inquiry. Democrats in the House 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 shows that U.S.
bungling in the Curveball case was far worse than official reports
have disclosed.
The White House, for example, ignored evidence that United Nations
weapons inspectors disproved virtually all of Curveball's accounts
before the war. President Bush and his aides issued increasingly
dire warnings about Iraq's germ weapons as the invasion neared, even
though intelligence from Curveball had not changed.
At the Central Intelligence Agency, senior officials embraced
Curveball's claims even though they could not verify them or
interview him until a year after the invasion. They ignored multiple
warnings about his reliability, punished in-house critics who
provided proof that he had lied and refused to admit error until May
2004, 14 months after invasion.
After the CIA vouched for Curveball's information, President Bush
warned in his State of the Union Speech in January 2003 that Iraq
had ''mobile biological weapons labs'' designed to produce ''germ
warfare agents.'' The next month, Bush said in a radio address and a
statement that Iraq ''has at least seven mobile factories'' for germ
warfare.
Curveball told his German handlers, however, that he had assembled
equipment on only one truck and had heard second-hand about other
sites. Moreover, he could not identify what the equipment was
designed to produce.
''His information to us was very vague,'' said the senior German
intelligence official. ''He could not say if these things
functioned, if they worked.''
David Kay, who headed the CIA's post-invasion search for illicit
weapons, said Curveball's accounts were maddeningly murky. ''He was
not in charge of trucks or production,'' Kay said. ''He had nothing
to do with actual production of biological agent. He never saw them
actually produce agent.''
Powell also highlighted Curveball's ''eyewitness'' account when he
warned the U.N. Security Council on the eve of war that Iraq's
trucks could brew enough weapons-grade microbes ''in a single month
to kill thousands upon thousands of people.''
The BND supervisor said he was aghast when he watched Powell
misstate Curveball's information as a justification for war.
''We were shocked,'' the German official said. ''Mein Gott! We had
always told them it was not proven. … It was not hard
intelligence.''
In a telephone interview, Powell said CIA director George J. Tenet
and his top deputies personally assured him before the Feb. 5, 2003,
speech that intelligence on the mobile labs was ''solid.'' Since
then, Powell said, the case ''has totally blown up in our faces.''
Powell said no one warned him that veterans in the CIA's clandestine
division, including the European division chief, had voiced growing
doubts to supervisors about Curveball's credibility.
''This is one we really pressed on, really spent a lot of time on,''
Powell recalled. ''We knew how important it was.''
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