Posted on 09/13/2006 7:52:05 AM PDT by harpu
WASHINGTON — In a "60 Minutes" interview on April 23, Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of the CIA's Europe division, made a sensational charge.
He claimed that President Bush and his White House ignored intelligence before the invasion of Iraq indicating that Saddam Hussein had no had weapons of mass destruction.
On the CBS-TV show, and in subsequent media interviews that appeared throughout the world, Drumheller said that the White House was excited about the fact that the CIA was getting information straight from Naji Sabri, the then Iraqi foreign minister. But when the White House found out this source was reliably saying that Saddam had no WMD, Bush and his White House weren't interested.
"He [Sabri] told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program," Drumheller told correspondent Ed Bradley in a segment called "A Spy Speaks Out."
"So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?" Bradley asked.
"Yes," Drumheller said, proclaiming himself outraged.
According to Drumheller, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice brushed aside the CIA report on what Sabri had to say because "the policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."
Drumheller saw "how the Bush administration time and time again welcomed intelligence that fit the president's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye to intelligence that did not," Ed Bradley said in the introduction to the "60 Minutes" piece.
Now it appears Drumheller's claim was untrue, according to the findings of a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigation. Rather than undercutting the Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq, Sabri's account shows how well-founded the intelligence on Saddam's weapons program appeared to be.
Ironically, just as Drumheller claimed that Bush ignored the truth about Iraq, the media have ignored the documentation in the Senate report demolishing Drumheller's claim.
An addenda to the Senate report on postwar findings about Iraq's WMD program says all the operational documents relating to Sabri indicate he told the CIA just the opposite of what Drumheller claimed. The Senate report refers to Sabri as a source with direct access to Saddam Hussein and his inner circle but does not name him.
"Both the operations cable and the intelligence report prepared for high-level policy-makers [based on interrogation of the source] said that while Saddam Hussein did not have a nuclear weapon, ‘he was aggressively and covertly developing such a weapon,'" the Senate report said.
The documents said "Iraq was producing and stockpiling chemical weapons," according to the addendum, signed by Sens. Pat Roberts, R–Kan., Orrin G. Hatch, R–Utah, and Saxby Chambliss, R–Ga. Iraq's weapon of last resort was mobile launched chemical weapons, which would be fired at enemy forces and Israel, the CIA documents said.
Moreover, there is "not a single document relating to this case which indicates that the source said Iraq had no WMD programs," the addenda said. "On the contrary, all of the information about this case so far indicates that the information from this source was that Iraq did have WMD programs."
What the source said was consistent with the CIA's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the report said. The report added: "The committee is still exploring why the former chief/EUR's public remarks differ so markedly from the documentation."
At least 134 stories and TV shows have referred to Drumheller's claims and his criticism of the CIA and Bush administration in general. One of the stories ran as the second lead of the June 25, 2006 Washington Post.
"Warnings on WMD ‘Fabricator' Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says," the headline over the Post story said. According to the story, Drumheller was dumbfounded when he saw a classified version of the speech Secretary of State Colin Powell was about to give to the United Nations citing Iraq's biological weapons factories on wheels.
Drumheller claimed he had warned George Tenet, the director of Central Intelligence, in a phone call, and John McLaughlin, the deputy director, in a personal meeting that the source for that claim, code-named "Curveball," was a fabricator.
Not until the 32nd paragraph of the Post story did the reader learn that both Tenet and McLaughlin said they had no recollection of warnings Drumheller allegedly gave them. Both men said they would have taken immediate action if he had.
While two former CIA officials said they recalled Drumheller telling them at the time about warnings he allegedly gave McLaughlin, no meeting with Drumheller appeared on McLaughlin's official calendar, according to the report of the Commission on Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, known as the Silverman-Robb commission.
Carroll & Graf is publishing Drumheller's book, "On the Brink: How the White House Has Compromised American Intelligence," written with Elaine Monaghan, on Sept. 28, according to the Amazon listing. The publisher's Web site lists the publication date as this winter.
Neither Drumheller nor a Carroll & Graf spokesperson responded to messages seeking comment.
So far, no media outlet has run the Senate committee's addendum demolishing Drumheller's claim that Bush and his White House did not want to hear the truth about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Another Ivy League leftie who should have been fired in Spring of 2001.
Would you base your policies on denials from Saddam's inner circle?
This is an edited transcript of an interview conducted by Ian Masters with Vincent Cannistaro [sic], the former CIA head of counterterrorism operations and intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, which aired on the Los Angeles public radio KPFK on April 3, 2005:
Cannistraro: Well, in this case, the Germans had told the CIA’s head of the European desk on the operations side, Tyler Drumheller, who I spoke to, but he wasn’t comfortable going on the radio.Then this:
Is it any surprise Drumheller is mentioned heavily in James Risen book exposing the NSA program, the CIA torture claims, etc? Risen seems to have direct material from Drumheller...(more at link below)
Related story from April 2006:
CIA Accuser’s Story Is A Year Old.
And aw geez...lookie here:
On the Brink: How the White House Has Compromised American Intelligence by Tyler Drumheller
Scheduled for release...{drum roll please}...September 2006.
Found another interesting tidbit about the VIPS at Stratasphere link:
I never noticed this March 2003 article before which claims that it was the VIPS who leaked the Niger forgeries to the IAEA (from the VIPS link below).Pinging the usual research crew to see if they have anything to add.The leak to IAEA came from a 25-member group of former CIA analysts and agents who call themselves the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). One could probably think of a better name for their group, but maybe after working for the CIA the name is a description of the effect of working for the CIA. After 27 years of service, former CIA agent Ray McGovern comments on the documents, “It’s been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy.” He went on to say, “It goes against the whole ethic of secrecy and going through channels, and going to the (inspector general).
Rush will do the job the drive-by media refuses to do: Get the truth out to the truth-starved masses.
I couldn't add one single thing to that superb research.
bump
Found another interesting tidbit about the VIPS at Stratasphere link:
I never noticed this March 2003 article before which claims that it was the VIPS who leaked the Niger forgeries to the IAEA (from the VIPS link below).
The leak to IAEA came from a 25-member group of former CIA analysts and agents who call themselves the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). One could probably think of a better name for their group, but maybe after working for the CIA the name is a description of the effect of working for the CIA. After 27 years of service, former CIA agent Ray McGovern comments on the documents, “It’s been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy.” He went on to say, “It goes against the whole ethic of secrecy and going through channels, and going to the (inspector general).
***Ping the Libby/CIA group!!!
Drumheller says the CIA station chief in Rome, who worked for him, told him he didn't believe it. "He said, 'It's not true. It's not; this isn't real,'" Drumheller recalls.
This Station Chief was implicated in the Abu Omar kidnapping case:
Warrant reportedly links CIA official to cleric's abduction in Italy
The article says he is still under cover even though he is retired...isn't that just a little wierd?
Ding!! Ding!! Ding!!!
Being a Democrat should disqualify a person from being a CIA employee.
Italy’s military intelligence service (SISMI) provides Jeff Castelli, the CIA station chief in Rome, with papers documenting an alleged uranium deal between Iraq and Niger. The agent, who is not permitted to duplicate the papers, writes a summary of them and sends the report to Langley. [La Repubblica (Rome), 11/11/2005; New Yorker, 10/27/2003; Knight Ridder, 11/4/2005]
Geez...the usual suspects again and again.
The next move was predictable. The Italian Government and SISMI build a dike between Forte Braschi and the tracks of the via Biaimonte squad. But its denial does not hold up. It is a known fact that in fall of 2001, SISMI monitored Rocco Martino’s every move in London. This is confirmed to La Repubblica by SISMI chief Nicolò Pollari. We monitored Martino and photographed his meetings in London. Would you like to see the pictures? So why didn’t Rome put the lie to its ex-agent and snake oil salesman? Especially since the information in the dossier was vouched for by Pollari to Jeff Castelli, CIA Station Chief. It is a known fact that a report on the bogus, made-in-Rome dossier ended up at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence—in the Office of Strategic, Military and WMD Proliferation Affairs.
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:SnXfbMviqeUJ:nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/10/berlusconi-behind-fake-yellowcake.html+Niger+documents+came+from+Rome&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2
Finally, Mr. Kristof closes with a value-added Premium Truth Select wrinkle - apparently, he has decided to provide a very subtle (unannounced, we might say) correction to his Oct 11, 2003 column. We dare not predict what tomorrow will bring, but this is from the current version of his entry, as he deplores the attacks on Joe Wilson, private citizen:And the fact is that his wife's career at CIA has been destroyed; she's never going to be Rome Station Chief.Fascinating.
I would love for somebody to explain to me how anybody can be a station chief overseas with twin toddlers!
And how long ago did WE say this:
However, some of the new material is clearly responsive to the critics. For example, Mickey wrote this:
And, as Maguire notes, a second Kristof column on June 13 says Wilson had been sent "at the behest of the office of Vice President Dick Cheney," which is a good bit wronger than the May 6 formulation--but which Kristof conveniently doesn't mention.
But wait! The Premium Truth Select version now adds this:
And in a later column I said Wilson had been dispatched "at the behest" of Cheney's office; it's true that he was sent in response to Cheney's prodding, but that wording wasn't choice because it can easily be read to mean that Cheney asked for the trip.
"That wording wasn't choice". Just so.
and this is just swell:
Kristof may have hit on the marketing breakthrough that will save TimesSelect. Call it TruthSelect. Here's the plan: Have the op-ed columns in the print edition contain flagrant inaccuracies. Figure out what the factual version of events is, but print the corrected, accurate version only on the restricted, premium portion of the Web site, where people have to pay $49.95 to get at it. The B.S. is free. The truth you have to pay for! It's so simple and intuitive it's genius.
I would like to respond to the mistatements, miscast aspersions, and omissions in the article linked below but I am swamped at work and don't have the time. All I can say is I am sorry Erik Mink . . . still has a job.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/ericmink/story/79BED3F49C8E0E01862571E80001C928?OpenDocument
refresh my memory ... this is flying past head
However, Drumheller is now at the center of a controversy first mentioned in the "Additional Views" section of the "Report of the Senate Committee on Intelligence on Postwar Findings About Iraq's WMD Programs and Links To Terrorism and How They Compare to Prewar Assessments". As previously mentioned, Drumheller had appeared on 60 Minutes and reported that a source who was a high-ranking Iraqi official with direct access to Saddam Hussein (Sabri) claimed that there was no Iraqi WMD program. But according to documentary evidence obtained by the Senate Committee on Intelligence, Sabri stated just the opposite:I then checked out the report and sure enough, on page 144 of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report, it clearly states that Drumheller's recollection of Sabri's information conflicts with information that Sabri told the Committee. Wish I could post the text here, but it is one of those darned .pdf files and it won't let me cut and paste that text."Iraq was currently producing and stockpiling chemical weapons",
"Iraq scientists were dabbling with biological weapons with limited success"
"Iraq's weapons of last resort were mobile launchers armed with chemical weapons"
According to the Senate Committee report: "The Committee is still exploring why the former Chief/EUR's public remarks differ so markedly from the documentation."[2]
Bottom line...Drumheller is repeating an old story that is a proven lie to sell his book.
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