www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/8197462.htm
Landay and Tish Wells KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS WASHINGTON - The former Iraqi exile group that gave the Bush administration exaggerated and fabricated intelligence on Iraq also fed much of the same information to leading newspapers, news agencies and magazines in the United States, Britain and Australia. A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles based on information provided by the INCs Information Collection Program, a United States-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq. The assertions in the articles reinforced President Bushs claims that Saddam Hussein should be ousted because he was in league with Osama bin Laden, was developing nuclear weapons and was hiding biological and chemical weapons. Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraqs illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden. In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, werent confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department. Nevertheless, United States officials and others who supported a pre-emptive invasion quoted the allegations in statements and interviews without running afoul of restrictions on classified information or doubts about the defectors reliability. Other Iraqi groups made similar allegations about Iraqs links to terrorism and hidden weapons that also found their way into official administration statements and into news reports, including several by Knight Ridder. Knight Ridder, which obtained a copy of the INC letter, reviewed all of the articles in what the document called a summary of ICP product cited in major English language news outlets worldwide October 2001-May 2002. The Information Collection Program ICP was financed out of the more than $18 million that Congress approved for the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmad Chalabi, now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, between 1999 and 2003. The INC letter said that it fed ICP information to Arab and Western news media and to two officials in the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the leading invasion advocates. The information bypassed United States intelligence channels and reached the recipients even after CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and FBI officers questioned the accuracy of the materials or the motives of those who supplied them. The articles made numerous assertions that so far havent been substantiated 11 months after Baghdad fell, including charges that:. Saddam collaborated for years with bin Laden and was complicit in the Sept.
Michael Scott Speicher, missing since the 1991 Gulf war, was seen alive in Baghdad in 1998. The case remains unresolved, but the Navy last week said there was no evidence that Speicher was ever held in captivity. The Associated Press and others also wrote stories based on INC-provided materials. Other United States and international news media picked up some of the articles. By mid-January 2002, polls showed that a solid majority of Americans favored military force to oust Saddam. Many of the stories noted that the information they contained couldnt be independently verified. In at least one case, the INC made a defector available to a journalist before his information had been fully reviewed by United States intelligence officials.
Senior United States officials said United States arms inspectors have found no fake wells or a laboratory under the hospital. Some secret rooms have been located under villas, mosques and palaces, but the officials, who asked not to be identified, said they werent among locations that Haideri claimed to know about. Several requests to The New York Times to speak to Miller were not answered. INC leader Chalabi and other officials have insisted that the group screened all defectors as thoroughly as they could. US intelligence officials have determined that virtually all of the defectors information was marginal or useless, and that some of the defectors were fabricators or embellished the threat from Saddam. Many of the articles relied on interviews with the same defectors, who appeared to change facts with each telling. For instance, one defector first appeared in several stories as a Iraqi army former captain, but a later story said he was a major. Another defector told one interviewer that the aircraft fuselage on which Islamic extremists received training in hijacking belonged to a Boeing 707 and was quoted in a later story as saying that it came from a Russian-made Tupolev. Intelligence debriefers look for such differences when trying to determine the reliability of defectors, who sometimes exaggerate their importance or try to tell interviewers what they think the interviewers want to hear. Some articles cited in the INC letter were based on transcripts the INC provided. An article in The Kansas City Star, for example, quoted an unidentified INC member as saying he had information that Speicher was seen alive in Baghdad in 1998. A March 17, 2002, Sunday Times of London article on Saddams alleged illicit weapons was based on a 3,000-page transcript of the preliminary INC debriefing of Haideri. The article also reported claims in a videotaped interview made by unnamed Iraqi opposition officials with a second defector that Saddam had mobile biological warfare laboratories disguised as milk and yogurt trucks. Marie Colvin, a co-author of the article, said the INC insisted to her that all defectors were scrutinized as fully as possible before being passed on, and that it was up to reporters to decide how to use their information. Over seven years, I would not say there was a story I was fooled on. Many articles quoted defectors as saying that Saddam was training extremists from throughout the Muslim world at Salman Pak, outside Baghdad. We certainly have found nothing to substantiate that, said a senior United States official. Instead, he said, United States intelligence analysts believe that Iraqi counterterrorism units practiced anti-hijacking techniques on an aircraft fuselage at the site.
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