6-27-06, 9:42 am

In an effort to defend itself from criticism that it misled the country into war with Iraq, the Bush administration has consistently blamed what it calls 'intelligence failures' on the CIA. New revelations this past weekend show, however, that CIA analysts repeatedly warned against using much of the faulty 'evidence' with which the administration made its case for war. CIA agent Tyler Drumheller, former European operations chief for the CIA, told the Washington Post recently that he personally had on a number of occasions warned top CIA officials directly that many of the administration's claims were inaccurate.

One of the most famous speeches that helped prepare for war was the presentation made by former Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN in January 2003. Drumheller told the Post that prior to giving the speech, he had crossed out a paragraph referring to claims about mobile biological labs, but that information was re-inserted and used in one of the most horrific public displays of an administration bent on war.

Drumheller tried to eliminate this information because he knew the source for that claim was the infamous defector code-named 'Curveball.' At the time of Powell's speech, Drumheller says he had come to believe that Curveball was a con artist and had misrepresented himself to German authorities. In real life, Curveball was a taxi driver who had claimed to be a chemical engineer with important knowledge about Iraq's WMD in order to gain special treatment from the German government.

By October 2002, the same time Bush administration officials, including the President himself, were spreading hysterical, but false rumors about Iraq's capability of making and its desire for using biological weapons in order to convince Congress to pass a blank check for war, Drumheller's counterparts in German intelligence told him they no longer trusted Curveball. Drumheller passed along this seemingly vital information to his superiors.

Drumheller could not have known that months prior to his October conclusions, the administration had already decided that it was intent on war and that it would use and 'fix' any bit of information, no matter how faulty, misleading, or erroneous, in a public relations barrage to drag the country into war. (See stories on the Downing Street memos: here and here.)

Despite Drumheller’s constant nagging about getting intelligence right, he was asked to sign off on some parts of Bush's infamous 2003 State of the Union Address claiming that Iraq possessed mobile labs for making chemical and biological weapons. As this information could have only come from Curveball’s fabrications, he refused.

Drumheller wasn’t in a position to reject other erroneous claims Bush made in this speech, such as the allegation that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger, information that had already been discredited several times by other CIA analysts, US diplomats, and State Department analysts, and which Colin Powell would refuse to use in his upcoming UN presentation.

Drumheller told the Post, that when he was asked about Curveball's claims, he told his superiors that he would not use information about the mobile labs because of the complete lack of faith German intelligence had expressed in Curveball's accounts. Nevertheless, several days later, the false information – both about mobile labs and the uranium claims – was in Bush's speech.

Soon after this, Drumheller was asked to approve information about mobile labs in Powell's speech to the UN. Drumheller again raised his doubts about Curveball’s credibility, telling his superiors that any information they had from Curveball was fabricated. Drumheller was then approached by CIA boss George Tenet personally to sign off on the mobile weapons lab claims for the Powell speech. Drumheller told the Post that he warned Tenet not to include the information. Both Drumheller’s direct superiors and Tenet himself ignored his advice.

Conveniently, the Bush administration used these divisions in the CIA between actual intelligence analysts and political appointees to claim they had failed to provide good intelligence.

But as we reported before, on numerous occasions, the administration's insiders in the Pentagon at the so-called Office of Special Plans, had pressured both CIA political appointees and Pentagon intelligence operatives to continue to use information known to have been discredited, such as Curveball's fabrications, the Niger uranium forgeries, as well as discredited information about the Iraqi government's links to Al Qaeda.

The systematic effort to bully the intelligence community and mislead the public and Congress about the need for war was a White House operation. That people like George Tenet, Colin Powell and most of Congress caved into that pressure doesn't relieve the administration of its responsibility for taking the country into an illegal, aggressive war.

Unfortunately, as information about these White House operations came to light just weeks after the launch of the Iraq war, the Republican-controlled Congress abdicated its Constitutional obligation to investigate on a serious level. While Congress rubber-stamped a report that essentially endorsed the Bush administration’s view of blaming the CIA, it failed to thoroughly examine the political pressure and maneuvering White House insiders used to get the 'intelligence' they wanted no matter how many times it had been discredited.

Congressional Republicans cannot be trusted to uphold their oath to defend the Constitution. They do not deserve our trust and should be replaced in the November 7th elections.



--Joel Wendland can be reached at