CIA Learned in '02 That Bin Laden Had No Iraq Ties, Report Says

washingtonpost.com ^ | Friday, September 15, 2006 | Washington Post Staff Writer

[endthematrix]

The CIA learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, according to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Although President Bush and other senior administration officials were at that time regularly linking Hussein to al-Qaeda, the CIA's highly sensitive intelligence supporting the contrary view was apparently not passed on to the White House or senior Bush policymakers.

[Steel Wolf]

Recently, he was pointing to the senate report saying there were no meetings or ties (discounting 1 or 2 potential meetings).

The point being, if there was more contact between Iraqi intel and AQ, it was on the same scale as the contact between any Arab/Islamic country's intel service and AQ. Tyrants like to know what's going on in their own country, and don't care who their intel guys have to meet with to find out. As you can imagine, even the CIA has been or is in contact with AQ types. "Meetings" and "contacts" between terrorists and intel services are not uncommon or nefarious in and of themselves in that part of the world.

He also goes on about no WMDs found. I have countered saying bio shells have been found. his counter was to say that the shells were unusable.

There were a few hundred chemical (not bio) 155mm artillery shells found. They're technically WMDs, and were most likely servicable. The reason no one got spun up over them is that those chemical weapons are basically WWI technology. Current high explosives are more dangerous and effective killing tools. Chemical weapons are scary because they cause people to die disfigured, and in horrific pain, but the WMDs that keep people up at night are weaponized bio agents and nuclear weapons. That's why you haven't seen any Republicans really raise the WMD banner over them.

[Senator Goldwater]

The issue isn't whether Saddam had any connection to al-Qaeda prior to 9/11.

The solution has been that after 9/11 he never will.

[Steel Wolf]

"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.

NewsMax, eh?

Drumheller's point was that Naji Sabri reported there were no active WMD projects in 2002. However, the CIA documentation shows that Sabri said there were. That's a little odd, don't you think? Most people don't lie about things that can be disproved that easily.

So, we invaded Iraq, and found no old WMDs (which is because, in all likelyhood, they're parked in Syria) and no new WMD projects.

So who's lying, again? At a bare minimum, Sabri was either lying or misinformed, unless the CIA itself somehow cherry picked or read too much into his statements. This article, as it reads, feels like something is missing.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Man that dude has more Chins than a Chinese phonebook.

Or, more rolls that a bread truck.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Man that dude has more Chins than a Chinese phonebook.

Or, more rolls that a bread truck.

[bray]

Having contact with Bin Hiden is different than having contact with Al Queda. The CIA is attempting a coup.

Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters

[kcvl]

Too bad the Washington Post only reads what THEY WANT TO BELIEVE!

[Rapscallion]

What tests of this information were made to insure CIA was not being deceived? Saddam understood and used deceptive tactics.

[Enchante]

1) What a tool..... Drumheller has been exposed as a lying tool for the Demagogues;

2) the info Dumb-heller claims was so important was not conveyed to the WH (shades of Joe Wilson);

3) even if the "source" had said exactly what Dumb-heller claims, is this former CIA dude really so stoooopid as to think the IRAQI FOREIGN MINISTER, in exactly the time period that pressure on UN inpspections and possible war is increasing, is going to be an honest source for the DENIAL of Iraqi WMDs or terror ties?? Has Dumb-heller never heard of DISINFORMATION??????

4) The Demagogues and RINOs are trying to start a full-court press and knowledgeable people must fight back now....

[Rembrandt]

"A year after retiring from the CIA, Tyler Drumheller, the agency’s former head of spying in Europe, tells CBS.."

As soon as one sees that this puke is on See BS, it's obvious that he has an anti-pub agenda. It's not right to term it an anti-Bush agenda - they are anti-Pubbies!! Bush is just a surrogate for their hate and craziness!

[Rembrandt]

"Your pal at work is just wrong.."

It's difficult to explain why Saddam would bury advanced fighter aircraft in the desert. It's difficult to explain why Saddam would hide since-discovered containers of Sarin gas. It's difficult to discuss rationally why the trucks moving around Iraq, as shown by General Colin Quisling to the UN, were never fully explained.

[Rembrandt]

Hey "Brilliant,"

Please define a WMD, then we can have a discussion.

[piasa]

ping to an old article...

Drumheller is the guy caught up in the current [2015]Hillary private server email / Benghazi scandal leaking the name of a human asset, etc...

[kcvl]

Sidney Blumenthal, a confidant who was paid by the Clinton Foundation, told the Select Committee on Benghazi Tuesday that the information he supplied the sitting Secretary of State came from a “respected former high-ranking CIA official,”

Sources close to the Benghazi investigation identified the official as Tyler Drumheller, a 25-year veteran of the CIA who retired from the agency in 2005 and has since worked in private consulting.

After retiring from the CIA, Drumheller emerged as a vocal and high-profile critic of the second Bush administration’s post-9/11 intelligence analysis and push to invade Iraq.

In his 2006 account of the buildup to the Iraq war, he accused the administration of allowing politics to distort intelligence assessments, including the vetting of testimony used by the government to make the claim that Saddam Hussein had a biological weapons program.

Since his retirement, Drumheller has also contributed to various Democratic politicians, according to records maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2005, he contributed a combined $800 to the Senate campaigns of former Sens. Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu, and donated $500 to Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-New Jersey, in 2011, the Center for Responsive Politics said.

Clinton often sent Drumheller’s memos to aides with instructions to print, or “distribute as you determine,” according to emails released by the State Department. While some featured approving commentary (“very interesting,” she wrote on an August 2012 memo on Libya’s new president), others were met with more skepticism (“This one strains credulity,” she wrote of a March 2012 memo claiming France and the United Kingdom engineered Libya’s civil war.)

In 2001 and 2002, Mr. Drumheller served as European Division chief at the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where he was a highly controversial figure whose disinformation campaigns often landed him in hot water. As investigative journalist Kenneth Timmerman has pointed out, Mr. Drumheller was at the center of the Niger uranium story later used by the left and the press to claim that President George W. Bush had “lied” about Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). “On three separate occasions,” Mr. Timmerman wrote, “he passed the Niger information up the food chain as validated intelligence, when the CIA had been warned that it was not.”

On Sept. 6, 2007, Mr. Blumenthal published a column at Salon.com in which he cited an April 2006 “60 Minutes” interview with Mr. Drumheller, who claimed that the CIA had received “documentary intelligence” from Saddam’s foreign minister that he did not have WMD. In his column, Mr. Blumenthal stated “two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller’s account to me,” leading Mr. Blumenthal to accuse Mr. Bush of “lying.”

It appears that Mr. Drumheller and Mr. Blumenthal were simpatico, at least regarding criticism of pre-war intelligence. Was that, in fact, the start of a mutually beneficial relationship? After leaving the CIA, Mr. Drumheller advised John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign; three years later, he and Mr. Blumenthal worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.