Posted on 04/06/2005 4:53:12 PM PDT by TexKat
WASHINGTON - The CIA and members of Congress said they want to know how a presidential commission unearthed details on intelligence failures about Iraq's prewar weapons programs that previous investigations missed.
Of particular interest is information that emerged in last week's report about how doubts were handled regarding a leading source on Saddam Hussein's alleged mobile biological weapons labs — an Iraqi scientist who defected to Germany, code named "Curveball."
Porter Goss, who became CIA director last September, has instructed officials to determine what happened and why the details did not come to light earlier, said his spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise.
"It was an unhappy surprise to the director that his first understanding of this issue was when he first read" the commission's report, Millerwise said Wednesday.
Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., also acknowledged President Bush's intelligence commission had details that did not emerge during his committee's yearlong investigation into the Iraq assessments, released last July.
If Bush's intelligence commission learned "something obvious," Roberts said, "we want to make sure the intelligence community does fill in those gaps so we have a clear picture."
Other lawmakers are angrier. "As far as I am concerned, the CIA threw us a curve ball," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., also a member of the Intelligence Committee.
The White House, Congress and U.S. intelligence agencies have launched a number of investigations into the faulty prewar intelligence on the Iraq threat. The most definitive to date came last week from Bush's intelligence commission.
According to the report, CIA officials tried to tell the agency's top officials that Curveball was a suspected fabricator and may have been mentally unstable. The new information includes an alleged warning in a late-night phone call to the agency's former director, George Tenet.
Tenet and his top deputy have both released statements emphatically denying that they received such warnings. Tenet called it "deeply disturbing" that the information didn't get to him.
Levin wants Tenet to testify under oath. "I don't think the intelligence committee was given some of that detail on Curveball, but I think it should have been," Levin said.
"Tenet said he doesn't remember," Levin said. "Hey, these are life and death decisions. This is what we tell the world. That's not good enough. ... Where is the responsibility?"
U.S. intelligence agencies and the Bush administration have come under fire since 2001 for not sharing enough information with lawmakers who oversee some of the government's most sensitive intelligence activities. Some in Congress have been particularly concerned about U.S. detention policies and the botched Iraq intelligence that was used to justify the invasion.
When asked how the new investigation got more detail, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and a commission member, said that the panel conducted numerous long interviews. "We did not come up with that information early," McCain said of the information on Curveball.
Last week's report said the Defense Intelligence Agency circulated more than 100 reports from Curveball, with detailed information about mobile biological weapons labs in Iraq.
Curveball was working with German intelligence, and U.S. intelligence had limited access to him. The report said Curveball met once with a defense official and seemed to have a hangover.
The report said CIA officials contended that they tried to raise warnings about Curveball. One unnamed CIA division chief claims to have called Tenet at midnight the night before former Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his address to the United Nations, which provided the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq. The division chief recalled telling Tenet that foreign intelligence officials were concerned about Curveball's credibility.
In an unusual seven-page statement last week, Tenet said his "strong recollection" is that he did not speak with the division chief around midnight.
Tenet also said it was "stunning and deeply disturbing that this information, if true, was never brought forward to me by anyone" when the Iraq intelligence was scrutinized.
'Curveball' Debacle Reignites CIA Feud
Source 'Curveball' Blamed in U.S. Intel Failure
"That came from us" - Der Spiegel
"I question the timing of this."
Guess we need a commission to study the commission.
Only inside the Beltway.
timing.........perhaps you mean that all this did or didn't occur at the very same time as the documents that were successive drafts were made (and written on) that sandy berger removed from the archives?
Anyone else notice the roll of GERMANY in this...
Who's Who on the 9/11 "Independent" Commission
"According to a 1998 Senate testimony of former CIA director James
Woolsey, powerful financier Khalid bin Mahfouz’ younger sister is
married to Osama bin Laden,. (US Senate, Senate Judiciary
Committee, Federal News Service, 3 Sept. 1998, See also Wayne
Madsen, Questionable Ties, In These Times,12 Nov. 2001 )
Bin Mahfouz is suspected to have funneled millions of dollars to the Al
Qaeda network.(See Tom Flocco, Scoop.co.nz 28 Aug. 2002)
Now, "by sheer coincidence", former New Jersey governor Thomas
Kean has business ties with bin Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi.
Thomas Kean is a director (and shareholder) of Amerada Hess
Corporation , which is involved in the Hess-Delta joint venture with
Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia (owned by the bin Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi
clans)...
Now you would think that being a business partner of the brother in
law and alleged financier of "Enemy No. 1" would also be considered a
bona fide "conflict of interest", particularly when your mandate --as
part of the 9/11 Commission's work-- is to investigate "Enemy No. 1".
"(Michel Chossudovsky, New Chairman of 9/11 Commission had
business ties with Osama's Brother in Law,
Centre for Research on Globalization, December 2002 )
It's hypocritical of these commie scum to call it an "intelligence failure", when they purposefully promote those who want to undermine the system (John Kerry and his $6b in intelligence cuts).
Well everyone believed Iraq has WMD. [Well everyone except the inspectors on the ground]
AP needs to remind me, what was the "botched Iraq intelligence" again?
Even if "Curveball" fabricated every single thing that he ever said, it is well know that Iraq had chemical weapons (40,000 dead Kurds is proof of that). It is well known that Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons. They had scientists, a special division in the top level of govt. devoted to nuclear weapons development, and a group of buildings that were found to be so radioactive that the first U.S. Marines that stormed the area could not enter because their Geiger counters pegged from 100 yards away and had to be entered by trained technicians wearing radiation suits.
The media claims that an Iraqi invasion was never adequately justified are completely outrageous. The war is a rousing success for humanitarian reasons alone. Funny how the liberals, who are all about "saving the children", are completely indifferent to Saddam's regime executing 40,000 Kurds with nerve gas and filling mass graves with 600,000 citizens and counting. Hell, the liberals and international human rights organizations were actively lobbying for Saddam to be able to continue his activities unabated and they're mad as hell that America stopped him!!
I also find interesting the level of justification that the liberals demand for an invasion of Iraq but Klinton bombed Bosnia for 73 days and nobody knows why.
Maybe all of the fact were previously contained in Sandy Berger's pants.
I agree with you and will go even further---
I believe the WMDs are still around, in Syria and possible still in Iraq somewhere--they keep finding hugh weapons caches so no telling how much of that sandpile hasn't been really investigated yet---
I think Levin and the 9/11 Commission members are just mad that they didn't do their jobs well enough---perhaps because their objective was to find something to impeach Bush over instead of finding out the truth---
Tenet is just playing the sides against each other, because he would get in big trouble with BOTH side prolly, if the truth be known...
Dear Mr. Goss the details didnt come to light because instead of doing their jobs and co-operating with investigations too many folks in the CIA and FBI were busy covering their ass.
This is funny to me. I thought we found the mobile bio weapons labs? Of course there were no traces of any bio weapons in the labs which to me is the only place where we had faulty intel, the location of stockpiles(although if I remember correctly the trailers were found to have been recently cleaned with 'industrial strength' cleaner). And also the labs were said to have been used for hydrogen production....yeah I'm sure....a mobile lab in a trailer EXACTLY as our intel described used to make hydrogen(ummm for what?)....it makes perfect sense.
For anyone that desires to download the complete Acrobat Reader formated report...........go to:
http://www.wmd.gov/report
If you just want to examine a particular chapter on line (html) format all the chapters are hyperlinked. You can also find the chapters in html form at globalsecurity.org site.
Take the time to at least examine the front end, and perhaps Chapter One to understand what the report encompasses. If you read second hand info on what it contains as usual, you cannot be sure who is being honest verse subversive etc.. The issues revolve around the fact much of the various forms of WMD's simply where not found. We cannot get around this point. I for one had been a super supporter since day one that Saddam had tons of stuff based on what was leaking out over a period of time. Best estimates now indicate that after Desert Storm, Iraq did not reconstitute it's damaged WMD programs as believed. Hey just a week and a half ago, I made a comment on one thread, that why did our soldiers find vials of atrophine and hyperdermic needles at some previous weapons sites. All along I contended that eventually we would find hundreds of barrels of things like VX nerve agent precursors, Sarin, perhaps piles of packages of Ricin, tons of active, recent binary shells etc., etc.. But if you don't take the time to read the report, then you should not scream to high heaven how GWB, Collin etc., missed the mark. The report vindicates the administration of any wrong doing and or deceit. Clearly the burden falls on our Intel orgs.
"The U.S. stated objectives in going to war against Saddam was due to his violations of U.N. orders, sanctions, ceasefire agreements, and most importantly, Post-9/11 dictum than rogue nations would not be tolerated."
A very good set of points, which to often are forgotten, not understood to begin with, or simply ignored. We did not go into Iraq simply on the premise they had WMD programs in progress. I posted a couple minutes ago to urge folks to at least examine parts of the report. I did so, in belief one should at least know what such a report says and not take third party analysis as being factual, precicely correct etc.. The POTUS will probably not re-iterate in a carefully prepared public announcement the list by which the United States and the willing coalition partners used to decide to take the bum out. Surely WMD production was only one issue of many that took us to war. But I can say this. The report does not point a negative finger at the POTUS, nor the Department of State, nor the Congress for the authorization to take actions against the state of Iraq.
We all need to read this report, and the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's report so we can honestly rebut the criticism of our country and in particular our President.
For example, the Senate committee chronicled the entire process by which the Uranium in Africa claim made it into the Preseident's SOTU. Every intelligence agency reviewed and signed off on it after quibbling over every word. There was no distortion by the President. He simply relayed to us what he had been told.
If someone says the Administration hyped the intel or skewed it, you can show what the CIA told the President and compare it to what he told us.
Another media canard that needs debunking is that the Administration "pressured" the intelligence agencies into skewing their conclusions. This is stupid on its face since their conclusions were essentially the same across two Adminsitrations. Both investigations specifically looked for examples of this, interviewing hundreds of analysts. The only one who said he was pressured was someone dealing with Cuba. At least one analyst volunteered that the scrutiny applied by the Adminstration actually helped him/her do better work.
Read them. Be informed. Bitch slap the "Bush Lied" crowd with honest rebuttals.
Is "Curveball" a surprise to any of us. We heard this crap more than a year ago.
And we also know who Saddam's now dead brother-in-laws took us for a ride as well.
Saddam sent out many double-agents because he wanted everyone to think he was still a bad ass with all kinds of WMD.
The fact that we went to war to kick him out shows that we knew he was full of it.
Do the DEMS understand this? We went to war because we knew he didn't have the WMD to destroy entire Infantry Divisions.
"Other lawmakers are angrier. "As far as I am concerned, the CIA threw us a curve ball," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., also a member of the Intelligence Committee."
It should be obvious the so-called intelligence community which Bush inherited has big shortcomings.
It is not surprising things trickle out, over time. For Levin to suggest a conspiracy or coverup is not something he can prove. So it is usual dem political rhetoric and posturing.
More important than politics is getting to a better intelligence capability.
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