White House knew there were no WMD: CIA
By AAP
04/21/06 "NineMSN"
-- -- The CIA had evidence Iraq possessed no weapons
of mass destruction six months before the 2003 US-led invasion
but was ignored by a White House intent on ousting Saddam
Hussein, a former senior CIA official said, according to CBS.
Tyler Drumheller, who headed CIA covert operations in Europe
during the run-up to the Iraq war, said intelligence opposing
administration claims of a WMD threat came from a top Iraqi
official who provided the US spy agency with other credible
information.
The source "told us that there were no active weapons of mass
destruction programs," Drumheller said in a CBS interview to be
aired on Sunday on the US network's 60 Minutes.
"The (White House) group that was dealing with preparation for
the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested,"
he was quoted as saying in interview excerpts released by CBS on
Friday.
"We said: 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said: 'Well,
this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change',"
added Drumheller, whose CIA operation was assigned the task of
debriefing the Iraqi official.
He was the latest former US official to accuse the White House
of setting an early course toward war in Iraq and ignoring
intelligence that conflicted with its aim.
CBS said the CIA's intelligence source was former Iraqi Foreign
Minister Naji Sabri and that former CIA Director George Tenet
delivered the information personally to US President George W
Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top White House
officials in September 2002. They rebuffed the CIA three days
later.
"The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were
looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," the former CIA
agent told CBS.
US allegations that Saddam had WMD and posed a threat to
international security was a main justification for the March
2003 invasion.
A 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, to which the CIA was a
major contributor, concluded that prewar Iraq had an active
nuclear program and a huge stockpile of unconventional weapons.
No such weapons have been found, however, and US assertions that
they existed are now regarded as a hugely damaging intelligence
failure.
But Drumheller, co-author of a forthcoming book entitled On the
Brink: How the White House Has Compromised American
Intelligence, rejects the notion of an intelligence failure.
İAAP 2006
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