www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/11/20/12242/343
I am proud to say that I did what I could to help him and his partner Bob Drogin with this. This story is a massive piece of the jigsaw puzzle that only now is begin ning to be solved for the benefit of the understanding of the American p eople as to why they are now at war in Iraq. That Kiplingesque, far away , tribal land was made into a haven and breeding ground for enemies dete rmined to harm us. Only the truly pacifist have many doubts about the ne cessity that caused US intervention there. In the case of Iraq, the US went to war becau se the American people became convinced that Iraq was a direct threat to the American homeland. They were convinced of that through an artfully orchestrated campaign of half-truths which used evidence from dubious so urces to make the case for Iraq as a threat to the US. Paul Wolfowitz ad mitted as much in public when he said (paraphrasing) that WMD was sold t o the American people as a threat because it COULD be sold and that noth ing else would serve to take us to war. CURVEBALL, the Iraqi source of the German intelligence (BND) became an es sential element in the campaign of distorted and manipulated information . DIA said they did not believe him, but the Bush Administration evidently did believe him. Goetz and Drogin's story in the Los Angeles Times lays out the sad story of incompetence and deception which centers, at least in part, around th is man. Some samples from the article: "The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most impor tant informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destructi on say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq. Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned US intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produ ce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so. ""Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his informatio n was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm. "This w as not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence officia l "We made clear we could not verify the things he said." The German a uthorities, speaking about the case for the first time, also said that their informant suffered from emotional and mental problems. "He is not a stable, psychologically stable guy," said a BND official who supervi sed the case. "He is not a completely normal person," agreed a BND anal yst." MORE below: "The senior BND officer who supervised Curveball's case said he was agha st when he watched Powell misstate Curveball's claims as a justificatio n for war. In a te lephone interview, Powell said that George J Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and his top deputies personally assured him be fore his UN speech that US intelligence on the mobile labs was "sol id." "" "CIA officials now concede that the Iraqi fused fact, research he gleane d on the Internet and what his former co-workers called "water cooler g ossip" into a nightmarish fantasy that played on US fears after the S ept. Curveball's motive, CIA officials said, was not to sta rt a war. ""The Iraqis were adept at feeding us what we wanted to hear," said a fo rmer official of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency who helped debrief about 50 Iraqi emigres in Germany before the war. "We thought maybe they had the smoking gun," recalled the BND supervisor, who watched Powell on TV. "My gut feeling was the Amer icans must have so much from reconnaissance planes and satellites, from infiltrated spotter teams from Special Forces, and other systems. "" ""Powell's speech failed to sway many diplomats, but it had an immediate impact in Baghdad. "The Iraqis scoured the country for trailers," said a former CIA official who helped interrogate Iraqi officials and scien tists in US custody after the war. The y were terrified that this was real, and they couldn't explain it." An explanation was available within days, but US officials ignored it. The raid by the American-led biological weapons experts lasted 3 1/2 hours. "UN teams also raided the other sites Curveball had named. They interrogated managers, seized document s and used ground-penetrating radar, according to UN reports. inspectors "could find nothing to corroborate Curveball's reporting," the CIA's Iraq Survey Group reported last year. On March 7, 2003, Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector, told the Security Council that a serie s of searches had found "no evidence" of mobile biological production f acilities in Iraq. The leader was "Jerry, " a veteran CIA bio-weapons analyst who had championed Curveball's case at the CIA weapons center. They found Curveball's personnel file in an Iraqi government storeroom. Curveball was last in his engineering class, not first, as he had claimed. He was a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted. Most important, records showed Curveball had been fired in 19 95, at the very time he said he had begun working on bio-warfare trucks . A former CIA official said Curveball also apparently was jailed for a sex crime and then drove a Baghdad taxi. Jerry and his team interviewe d 60 of Curveball's family, friends and co-workers. Curveball's former bosses at the engineeri ng center said the CIA had fallen for "water cooler gossip" and "corrid or conversations." "The Iraqis were all laughing," recalled a former me mber of the survey group.
bedroom and it was filled with posters of America n rock stars. Take note: The Iraqi government was frightened and surprised by Powell's assertions at the UN about mobile bio-weapons production facilities. They searched the country looking for whatever it was we were talking about. they seem to have been afraid that there was something going on that they did not know about. We should be ashamed that we ar e so childish and easily manipulated that CURVEBALL's supposed story and that of all the other shoddy sources and rumor mongers were so easily " sold" to us by a band of political extremists. Our gullibility raises th e issue of our collective worthiness to be the sovereigns of the commonw eal of whom Jefferson wrote. Pat Lang .........................................................................
Lang was the f irst Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Acad emy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the Presid ential Rank of Distinguished Executive.
Curveball the Eight Ball | 28 comments (28 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hi dden) Re: Curveball the Eight Ball ( 400 / 2) Thanks for this post Pat. For me, you summed it up perfectly here: We should all be ashamed in this country. We should be ashamed that we a re so childish and easily manipulated that CURVEBALL's supposed story a nd that of all the other shoddy sources and rumor mongers were so easil y "sold" to us by a band of political extremists. Our gullibility raise s the issue of our collective worthiness to be the sovereigns of the co mmonweal of whom Jefferson wrote.
Parent I would add to the "truly pacifist" ( 400 / 5) also the truly anti-imperialist and those who are not so childish and eas ily manipulated as to unquestioningly believe the Washington warlords' p ress releases regarding the 911 events.
Sun Nov 20th, 200 5 at 12:30:52 PM EDT Re: I would add to the "truly pacifist" ( 400 / 3) Yes, and. supposedly we went into Afghanistan to catch Bin Laden and s top the Taliban. Not only have we failed in those supp osed objectives, but apparently we purposely stopped short of getting th em done. From here, Afghanistan like nothing more than a deceptive launc hing stage for moving our troops from here to there and then to the real destination all along--Iraq.
The US government went to war and co untless people are now dead, in part because of the lies of this nutcase . What use is our intelligence service if the adm inistration makes their decisions based on garbage like this.
Sun N ov 20th, 2005 at 12:39:48 PM EDT Re: Curveball the Eight Ball ( 400 / 2) You had to know there...
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