Reply #3: (Here's Reuters) Former CIA Chief Disputes Warning Over Iraq Data [View All]

[Up2Late]

Former CIA Chief Disputes Warning Over Iraq Data

Fri Apr 1, 2005 07:25 PM ET

By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former CIA Director George Tenet on Friday disputed that he was warned about problems with an Iraqi source just hours before Secretary of State Colin Powell argued the U.S. case against Iraq at the United Nations, using the source's information. A presidential commission issued a scathing report on Thursday about U.S. intelligence on weapons of mass destruction that said the Bush administration relied on unsubstantiated intelligence from an Iraqi chemical engineer code-named "Curveball" that Iraq had mobile biological weapons labs.

Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin issued lengthy statements on Friday saying they were not alerted before the war to concerns about the veracity of the Iraqi source, who was being handled by German authorities. Powell pointed to the mobile labs as key evidence in his case against Iraq to the United Nations in February 2003, about a month before the U.S.-led invasion.

Despite declarations by the Bush administration about President Saddam Hussein's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq in what has been called a major intelligence failure. At the center of the dispute is a phone call on the eve of the Powell speech.

A now-retired division chief from the CIA's clandestine unit told the presidential commission that Tenet called him at about midnight on the day before Powell's speech and during the conversation he told the CIA chief that there were problems with some of the foreign intelligence.

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