Reply #14: So, which is the cart here and which is the horse? [View All]

[Ghost Dog]

It appears interesting, something of which I was not previously aware, that the Judy Miller article quoted above and published on July 2, 2003 states that "the United States began a secret project to train Special Operations units to detect and disarm mobile germ factories of the sort that Iraq and some other countries were suspected of building, according to administration officials and experts in germ weaponry" three years previously - which would imply that some intelligence to that effect had been gathered, evaluated, and the decision taken to start the described secret project, before or during the summer of the year 2000.

Such 'intelligence', as far as we know (according to the 'official' story), could only have come from the source known as CURVEBALL, identified as one Rafid Amed Alwan by CBS News in November 2007 as described in the following document (excerpts):

THE RECORD ON CURVEBALL
Declassified Documents and Key Participants Show the Importance of Phony Intelligence in the Origins of the Iraq War

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 234
Edited by John Prados
Posted - November 5, 2007
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB234/index.htm

Washington, DC, November 5, 2007 - CBS News’ 60 Minutes exposure last night of the Iraqi agent known as CURVEBALL has put a major aspect of the Bush administration’s case for war against Iraq back under the spotlight.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan’s charges that Iraq possessed stockpiles of biological weapons and the mobile plants to produce them formed a critical part of the U.S. justification for the invasion in Spring 2003. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s celebrated and globally televised briefing to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003, relied on CURVEBALL as the main source of intelligence on the biological issue.

Today the National Security Archive posts the available public record on CURVEBALL’s information derived from declassified sources and former officials’ accounts.

While most of the documentary record on the issue remains classified, the materials published here today underscore the precarious nature of the intelligence gathering and analytical process, and point to the existence of doubts about CURVEBALL’s authenticity before his charges were featured in the Bush administration’s public claims about Iraq.

...

The intelligence backstory needs a brief sketch here because it bears on the question of CURVEBALL’s veracity. Alwan arrived in Munich from North Africa in November 1999, requesting political asylum. That automatically led to interviews with authorities and vetting by the German foreign intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). It was the BND to whom he told his tale of Iraqi weapons plants. That service in turn shared its reporting with the DIA in the Spring of 2000. The DIA subsequently shared the information with CIA.

The CIA’s Directorate of Operations is responsible for all intelligence collection of this type, and the presence of this source in Germany placed responsibility with the European Division chief, Tyler Drumheller. In his memoir, Drumheller recounts that he first heard of CURVEBALL in the fall of 2002 and made inquiries with the German liaison representative in Washington, who privately warned him of doubts about the source. Both John McLaughlin and George Tenet, in statements made after publication of the Drumheller memoir, deny that anyone made them aware of BND doubts on CURVEBALL in late September or October, when the division chief asserts that this exchange took place. Tenet in his own memoir adds that the BND representative, asked several years later about his 2002 meeting with Drumheller, denied having called CURVEBALL a fabricator, simply warning that he was a single source whose information could not be verified. (Note 7)

According to various sources, by late December the CIA was making official inquiries of the BND as to whether the U.S.—and the White House—could use the material. Drumheller’s aide, Margaret Henoch, expressed her own concerns in an e-mail circulated within CIA headquarters. Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John McLaughlin ordered subordinates to meet and reconcile their positions on CURVEBALL and his information. Analysts at CIA’s prime analytical unit in this area, the Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) criticized the Directorate of Operations for questioning this information. WINPAC had already used it for its contributions to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi weapons programs and by now had a stake in CURVEBALL’s veracity. (Note 8) The meeting resulted in an impasse between CIA officers from the different units.

On December 20 a cable from the CIA station chief in Berlin arrived at headquarters. It contained a letter to Director Tenet from BND President August Henning saying that CURVEBALL refused to go public himself, and reiterating that BND would not permit direct American access to the source. According to Tenet, the cable went to Drumheller and was never forwarded to the CIA director. The station chief’s requests for a reply went unanswered. Tenet writes, “I had never seen the German letter but had simply been told that the German BND had cleared our use of the Curve Ball material.” (Note 9)

Division chief Drumheller raised the CURVEBALL credibility issue again in January after seeing a draft of the Bush State of the Union address with its claim of Iraqi mobile weapons plants. According to his account, he spoke to colleagues at the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division, wondering what data other than the exile’s reporting WINPAC might have to back such a claim, only to be assured there was none. Drumheller had Henoch prepare an e-mail for McLaughlin’s executive assistant summarizing the problems with the CURVEBALL information, and notes that McLaughlin later queried WINPAC’s senior analyst on this subject about the questions raised. Drumheller indicates that the CIA deputy director received “robust assurances.” (Note 10) Drumheller also told the Silberman-Robb Commission that he had attempted to delete the passage about the mobile weapons plants from the State of the Union speech.

According to Drumheller, he asked to see McLaughlin directly. “To my astonishment,” Drumheller recounts, “he appeared to have no idea that there were any problems with Curveball. ‘Oh my! I hope that’s not true,’ he said, after I outlined the issues and said the source was probably a fabricator.” (Note 11) McLaughlin, in his statement in response (see below), repeatedly declares that “no one stepped forward” to object, and that “I am equally at a loss to understand why they passed up so many opportunities in the weeks prior to and after the Powell speech” to warn about CURVEBALL. McLaughlin did not say anything in his statement about a specific meeting with Drumheller, and he told the Silberman-Robb Commission that he was not aware of the CIA meeting that discussed CURVEBALL’S bona fides even though it was called by his own executive assistant, chaired by that officer, and though the executive assistant afterwards wrote a memorandum summarizing the meeting that was circulated to participants. McLaughlin says he never saw a meeting record. He also did not recall seeing Drumheller, and apparently no meeting with Drumheller was noted on McLaughlin’s daily calendar. Other CIA officials, however, recall hearing the result of the meeting at the time, and apparently exchanges of emails involved more than one of McLaughlin’s assistants. And McLaughlin told the Silberman-Robb Commission that he did meet the WINPAC analyst to hear her assurances. (Note 12)

The sessions at CIA headquarters where the Powell speech itself was vetted involved both John McLaughlin and George Tenet, as well as McLaughlin’s executive assistant, who is recorded at one point asking for more assurances from CIA’s Berlin station chief on the CURVEBALL material. Throughout the period, Berlin’s responses were instead cautionary.

Finally it all came down to the night before Powell’s speech. Powell and Tenet were already in New York engaging in final rehearsals. That night there was a phone call between Tenet and Drumheller. Both individuals at least agree that a conversation took place, though Tenet remembers an evening call where he merely asked for a phone number, while Drumheller says he specifically warned Tenet against using the CURVEBALL material and the director replied something like, “yeah, yeah.” (Note 13) The next day Powell went ahead with the allegations. Tenet had not taken any of CURVEBALL’s claims out of the speech.

At the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division, where officers sat rapt before the television watching Powell speak, with Tenet seated behind him, there was dismay on several counts. One of them was CURVEBALL. Valerie Plame Wilson recounts, “Although an official ‘burn notice’ . . . did not go out until June 2004, it was widely known that CURVEBALL was not a credible source and that there were serious problems with his reporting.” (Note 14)

/... http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB234/index.htm

The CIA's own public document, published May 2003 (excerpts below), attempting to justify and confirm the mobile labs case, refers to only one source (unidentified and undated, but presumably CURVEBALL), prior to the summer of 2000 (although a second source is referred to as reporting on "the existence of at least one truck-transportable facility in December 2000 at the Karbala ammunition depot"):

Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants
May 28, 2003
https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraqi_mobile_plants/index.html#01

Overview

Coalition forces have uncovered the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.

* Kurdish forces in late April 2003 took into custody a specialized tractor-trailer near Mosul and subsequently turned it over to US military control.
* The US military discovered a second mobile facility equipped to produce BW agent in early May at the al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development, and Engineering facility in Mosul. Although this second trailer appears to have been looted, the remaining equipment, including the fermentor, is in a configuration similar to the first plant.
* US forces in late April also discovered a mobile laboratory truck in Baghdad. The truck is a toxicology laboratory from the 1980s that could be used to support BW or legitimate research.

The design, equipment, and layout of the trailer found in late April is strikingly similar to descriptions provided by a source who was a chemical engineer that managed one of the mobile plants. Secretary of State Powell's description of the mobile plants in his speech in February 2003 to the United Nations (see inset below) was based primarily on reporting from this source.

Secretary Powell's Speech to the UN

Secretary Powell's speech to the UN in February 2003 detailed Iraq's mobile BW program, and was primarily based on information from a source who was a chemical engineer that managed one of the mobile plants.

* Iraq's mobile BW program began in the mid-1990s—this is reportedly when the units were being designed.
* Iraq manufactured mobile trailers and railcars to produce biological agents, which were designed to evade UN weapons inspectors. Agent production reportedly occurred Thursday night through Friday when the UN did not conduct inspections in observance of the Muslim holy day.
* An accident occurred in 1998 during a production run, which killed 12 technicians—an indication that Iraq was producing a BW agent at that time.

Analysis of the trailers reveals that they probably are second- or possibly third-generation designs of the plants described by the source. The newer version includes system improvements, such as cooling units, apparently engineered to solve production problems described by the source that were encountered with the older design.

* The manufacturer's plates on the fermentors list production dates of 2002 and 2003—suggesting Iraq continued to produce these units as late as this year.

Prewar Assessment

The source reported to us that Iraq in 1995 planned to construct seven sets of mobile production plants—six on semitrailers and one on railroad cars—to conceal BW agent production while appearing to cooperate with UN inspectors. Some of this information was corroborated by another source.

* One of the semitrailer plants reportedly produced BW agents as early as July 1997.
* The design for a more concealable and efficient two-trailer system was reportedly completed in May 1998 to compensate for difficulties in operating the original, three-trailer plant.
* Iraq employed extensive denial and deception in this program, including disguising from its own workers the production process, equipment, and BW agents produced in the trailers.

Plants Consistent With Intelligence Reporting

Examination of the trailers reveals that all of the equipment is permanently installed and interconnected, creating an ingeniously simple, self-contained bioprocessing system. Although the equipment on the trailer found in April 2003 was partially damaged by looters, it includes a fermentor capable of producing biological agents and support equipment such as water supply tanks, an air compressor, a water chiller, and a system for collecting exhaust gases.

The trailers probably are part of a two- or possibly three-trailer unit. Both trailers we have found probably are designed to produce BW agent in unconcentrated liquid slurry. The missing trailer or trailers from one complete unit would be equipped for growth media preparation and postharvest processing and, we would expect, have equipment such as mixing tanks, centrifuges, and spray dryers.

* These other units that we have not yet found would be needed to prepare and sterilize the media and to concentrate and possibly dry the agent, before the agent is ready for introduction into a delivery system, such as bulk-filled munitions. Before the Gulf war, Iraq bulk filled missile and rocket warheads, aerial bombs, artillery shells, and spray tanks.

Prewar Iraqi Mobile Program Sources

The majority of our information on Iraq's mobile program was obtained from a chemical engineer that managed one of the plants. Three other sources, however, corroborated information related to the mobile BW project.

* The second source was a civil engineer who reported on the existence of at least one truck-transportable facility in December 2000 at the Karbala ammunition depot.
* The third source reported in 2002 that Iraq had manufactured mobile systems for the production of single-cell protein on trailers and railcars but admitted that they could be used for BW agent production.
* The fourth source, a defector from the Iraq Intelligence Service, reported that Baghdad manufactured mobile facilities that we assess could be used for the research of BW agents, vice production.

/... https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraqi_mobile_plants/index.html#01

So, we seem to have the one single source on mobile biological warfare trailers, CURVEBALL, apparently called into doubt by his German intelligence handlers, appearing at around the same time (information shared with DIA & CIA in Spring 2000) - early 2000 with Bush/Cheney recently installed in office - as a US and UK 'secret project' to research possible terrorist "bomb-making capacities" and a covert project employing Dr. Stephen Hatfield to design and construct a mobile germ plant is/are initiated (according to Judy Miller & others, see NYT article quoted by leveymg).

Ok. So as not to labor the point I won't go on. Suffice it to say that there does indeed appear to be plenty of room here to ask the question: between the year 2000's (dodgy source) CURVEBALL and the COVERT US/UK PROJECTS, which is the cart here and which is the horse; and which came first?