Posted by WLS

I watched with interest the story on Curve Ball this past Sunday, and the information 60 Minutes compiled for the piece certainly added new and important facts to the historical analysis of the mistakes made by the CIA in the lead-up to the war.  But, CBS found a way to shoot itself in the foot anyway when there was simply no reason to have to editorialize in an otherwise solid factual story.

Here is a long quote from the transcript of the piece, which suggests that Curve Ball’s unreliability was communicated to the CIA by the German Intelligence Service that handled him.  The editorial conclusion for which CBS was angling is an exoneration of Colin Powell, provided nicely by his longtime mouthpiece Larry Wilkerson, with a CIA manager named Tyler Drumheller putting the bulls-eye for the errors on Georget Tenet. 

Former CIA senior official Tyler Drumheller was an insider and watched Curve Ball emerge from nowhere.

Asked how important Curve Ball was in taking us to war in Iraq, Drumheller tells Simon, “If they had not had Curve Ball they would have probably found something else. ‘Cause there was a great determination to do it. But going to war in Iraq, under the circumstances we did, Curve Ball was the absolutely essential case.”

……..

At a CIA meeting in December 2002, the agency’s former central group chief, Margaret Henoch, raised her own doubts.

“I said, ‘You know, I don’t know who this guy is. There’s no proof that he is who he is. There’s no proof that any of this ever happened. And, from my perspective, I just don’t think we should trust this,'” Henoch recalls. 

…..

Curve Ball was still seen as credible at the highest level of the CIA.

On Dec. 18, 2002, sources tell 60 Minutes that an urgent request from CIA Director George Tenet was relayed to the head of German intelligence. Tenet was going to meet President Bush in three days to discuss the case against Iraq. Tenet wanted the Germans to let Curve Ball appear on television or have an American expert debrief Curve Ball and then go on TV with the story.

Failing that, Tenet wanted to use Curve Ball’s information publicly. An answer was requested within 48 hours, before Tenet went to the White House.

…….

The answer came from Berlin 48 hours later from the German intelligence chief, Dr. August Hanning. In a letter, a copy of which 60 Minutes has obtained, Hanning began, “Dear George.” He said no to Curve Ball being interviewed on television or by an American officer. Hanning wrote that Curve Ball’s reporting was “plausible and believable,” but, he added, “attempts to verify the information have been unsuccessful.” Curve Ball’s reports “must be considered unconfirmed,” Hanning wrote. If Tenet still wanted to use the information despite these caveats, Hanning said he could if the source was protected.

Since the letter was addressed to him directly, 60 Minutes wanted Tenet’s response. Through a spokesman, he said he never saw the letter.

Former CIA European division chief Tyler Drumheller doesn’t believe that. “He needs to talk to his special assistants if he didn’t see it. And the fact is, he had very good special assistants. I’m sure they showed it to him. And I’m sure it was just, it wasn’t what they wanted to see,” Drumheller says.

The next day, Dec. 21, Tenet met with President Bush and told him making a public case that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was “a slam dunk.” Making that case would be Secretary of State Colin Powell before the United Nations. Powell sent his chief of staff, Col. Larry Wilkerson, to the CIA to prepare the presentation. Wilkerson says Tenet and his experts brought up Iraq’s mobile bio-weapons program.

“They presented it in a very dynamic, dramatic, we know this is accurate way,” Wilkerson tells Simon.

“Did it make any difference that the source on this was a firsthand witness?” Simon asks.

“Certainly it did. This was a man who had actually been in the belly of the beast. He had been in the lab. He had been there when an accident occurred. He’d seen people killed. And the implication was, strong implication, that they weren’t killed because of the accident in the explosion, they were killed because they were contaminated. Yes, the source was very credible. As it was presented by the CIA,” Wilkerson says.

So, you have the conclusion that Powell was suckered into the bio weapons portion of his speech by Tenet and the CIA, while they had info directly from the German Intelligence Service that Curve Ball’s info on that very topic was “unconfirmed,” and according to Drumheller, they ignored this caution from the Germans because “it wasn’t what they wanted to see.”   

The link that suggests duplicity on the part of Tenet is Tyler Drumheller. 

All 60 Minutes got from Tenet was a comment through a spokesman that he never saw the letter in question. 

Did the 60 Minutes producers think to read Tenet’s Memoirs,  “At The Center Of The Storm”, specifically pages 375-383, where he discusses in great detail Curve Ball, the German Intelligence Service, and Drumheller’s claims?  Probably not, or they might have included more than the “Through a spokesman” part. 

Or maybe 60 Minutes ignored Tenet’s description of events because “it wasn’t what they wanted to see.” 

I have trouble with some of what Tenet writes in his memiors, because much is unverifiable and self-serving.  But they are “memiors”, which don’t ordinarily put the author/subject in a poor light.  

But the things Tenet had to say on this subject are verifiable, and likely would have been hotly disputed by others to whom he refers if his recollection was not accurate.   Here are some of the things Tenet had to say on the subject:

“I’ve since learned there were debates between our analysts and our intelligence collectors about the case.  Some of the collectors … didn’t like the way the case “felt” — they had a gut instinct that there was something wrong with Curve Ball….  The analysts believed passionately that the science Curve Ball was describing was accurate —  too accurate to be dismissed….

Jim Pavitt, the then deputy director of operations and head of the clandestine service, instructed Tyler Drumheller, head of the European Division, to ask for a CIA officer to be allowed to have a face-to-face meeting with [Curve Ball].  In late September or early October, 2002,  Drumheller met with his German counterpart over lunch at a Washington restaurant to convey the request, but got nowhere.

Drumheller, whom I always considered to be a capable officer, now says the German told him, “You do not want to see him [Curve Ball] because he’s crazy.  Speaking to him would be ‘a waste of time.'”  The German reportedly went on to say that his service was not sure whether Curve Ball was telling the truth , that he had serious doubts about Curve Ball’s mental stability and reliability…. Further, the BND representative worried that Curve Ball was a “fabricator.” 

If that is true …. what the German had to say should have been immediately and formally disseminated as a matter of record in a report that would have alerted the intelligence and policy officials to the potential problem with Curve Ball.  A second, corresponding formal report also should have been instantly sent across the intellligence and policy communities to analysts and policy makers who had received previous Curve Ball reporting…. No such report was disseminated, nor was the issue ever brought to my attention.  In fact, I’ve been told that subsequent investigations have produced not a single piece of paper anywhere in the CIA documenting Drumheller’s meeting with the German.  The lead analyst on this case … insists she was never told about the meeting….

In his testimony before the Silberman-Robb Commission and in interviews subsequent to publication of the Commission’s findings in early April 2005, Drumheller insisted that the news of the German lunch hit Langley like a small bombshell. 

In an April 26, 2005, LATimes story, he was even more insistent … “Everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening … Literally inches and inches of documentation” including “dozens and dozens of emails and memos” would show that the warnings had been sent to John McLaughlin’s office and … that Curve Ball’s credibility had been questioned in numerous meetings.

Drumheller has told the media in various interviews that he personally went to see John McLaughlin about the time of Colin Powell’s speech to express concern about Curve Ball’s information…. John is convinced that this did not happen.  I have absolute confidence that had such a meeting taken place,  John would have pursued the matter in the meticulous style for which he is well known…. He understood the importance being placed on Curve Ball’s information, and he would have battled just as hard to keep Curve Ball’s information out of Powell’s speech had someone made the case to him that it posed problems.

…. Unfortuately, the first either of us learned of the Tyler Drumheller’s lunch with the German BND official and of the latter’s supposed warnings — and his refusal to publicly stand behind them — was when we were interviewed by the Silberman-Robb Commission as it prepared its March 2005 report….One senior officer in Germany at the time says Drumheller never apprised him of the luncheon conversation….  The German BND representative was asked by CIA officers in 2005 about his 2002 luncheon with Drumheller.  He deined ever having called Curve Ball a “fabricator” and said he only warned that he was a “single source” whose information the Germans could not independently verify.

A search of CIA records in 2005 revealed that a cable did come in to our headquarters from our rep in Germany on December 20, 2002.    That cable went to Drumheller’s office for action.  It contained a letter addressed to me from the chief of the BND saying that Curve Ball would not agree to go public himself and that the CIA would not be able to debrief him in person.  It said the Germans did not object to the public use of Curve Ball’s information, so long as we protected the source.  The letter went on to explain how the Germans had shared his information with at least two other foreign intelligence services and three US intelligence agencies.  It said the found his information “plausible” but that they could not independently verify what he was saying.

As far as I can tell, that cable never left Drumheller’s desk in the European Division of Langley.  Our senior officer in Berlin was expecting to get a response from me to my German counterpart, because he cabled and e-mailed our headquarters numerous times seeking one.  That, too, would be standard protocol.  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.

On January 27, 2003, right before the Powell speech, our man in Germany sent another cable, this one expressing his own reservations about the source.  He did so because he received no response to his December 20 cable…. This cable too went to Drumheller for action.  In the three days and nights we sat at headquarters working on the secretary’s speech, nobody ever told us of our senior man in Germany’s reservations or of the letter from the BND chief. 

Finally, frustrated at the lack of response to the December 20 cable, on the day of Colin Powell’s UN speech, February 5, 2003, our Berlin rep translated the original letter from the BND chief and sent it, along with the original in German, via diplomatic pouch to headquarters.  It arrived on February 26 and was dleivered to Drumheller’s European Division.  My successor, Porter Goss, asked his staff to run down the Curve Ball story.  They found in 2005 that the letter, located in the European Division, had not been formally logged in as received.  Despite extensive searching, no records have been found that the letter was sent to either John McLaughlin or me. 

….I did not believe that there could be any doubt among senior CIA officials at the time that the Agency was depending heavily on Curve Ball’s information.  Why so many opportunities to sound the alarm were missed is a mystery to me.  Powell’s UN speech was one such moment, but there were many others, such as when the National Intelligence Estimate was being written and approved.  It was precisely during this time or just shortly afterward when Drumheller presumably had his revelatory lunch with the German.  

In May 2003, CIA and DIA issued a report following the discovery of a trailer found in Iraq that closely matched the one described by Curve Ball.  We went back to the Germans, again through Drumheller’s division, and had them show Cureve Ball a photo spread of trailers…. Even then, niether Drumheller nor anyone else said to John or me, “Stop.  This is a fabricator, you cannot rely on him.”  

…..

In 2005 Drumheller told the Silberman-Robb Commission that he spoke with me on the telephone around midnight when I was in New York on the eve of Colin Powell’s UN presentation….  In a Frontline special in 2006, Drumheller claimed that he said “Boss …. there’s a lot of problems with the German reporting, you know that?”  And that I replied, “Yeah, don’t worry about it; we’ve got it.”  I remember no such midnight call or warning.  Drumheller and I did speak very briefly earlier in the evening, but our conversation had nothing to do with Curve Ball….  According to a CIA memorandum for record, in speaking to the Senate Intelligence Committee staffers in 2005, Drumheller said that “way too much emphasis” was being placed on the phone call, and when asked if he could confirm that I understood what he was trying to convey in teh purported call about Curve Ball, he responded, “No, not really.” 

….

On May 27, 2003, the head of the German BND, August Hanning, paid me a visit in Washington.  My office received a e-mail from Drumheller’s deputy, with a copy that went to Drumheller, recommending that I be sure to thank Hanning for agreeing to allow us to use the Curve Ball material in our public discussions.

In advance of Hanning’s visit, I received a memo laying out our goals for the session, a matter of course for every meeting with a foreign intelligence official.  The memo was signed by Tyler Drumheller.   The first page included a list of five suggested talking points to advance our goals.  Number three, all in bold, suggests that I:

“Thank Dr. Hanning for the Iraqi WMD information provided by BND asset “Curve Ball.”  Inform Dr. Hanning that we would like to work with the BND to craft an approach to Curve Ball to secure his cooperation in locating evidence of Iraq’s biological weapons (BW) programs, and about the direct involvement of Dr. Rihab Taha al-Azzawi in Iraq’s mobile BW program.” 

The meeting happened…. Drumheller sat there through that meeting, and a lunch in Hanning’s honor that followed, and never mentioned any concerns. 

Here are some interesting comments from the Silberman-Robb report about the episodes involving Curve Ball, Drumheller, and the Germans:

According to the division chief [Drumheller], he passed the information to three offices: up the line to the office of CIA’s Deputy Director for Operations; down the line to his staff, specifically the division’s group chief (“the group chief”) responsible for the liaison country’s region; and across the agency to WINPAC. At the time, the division chief thought that the information was “no big deal” because he did not realize how critical Curveball’s reporting was to the overall case for Iraqi possession of a biological weapons program.  He assumed there were other streams of reporting to buttress the Intelligence Community’s assessments. He could not imagine, he said, that Curveball was “it.” 

The Commission report then goes on to discuss two meetings among CIA staff from the European Division (Drumheller’s group), and the DDCI’s Office (McLaughlin).  The subject of these conversations was the degree to which Curve Ball’s information should be publicly relied upon given the limitations of access to him, the inability to verify some of his information, and doubts expressed by other agencies about his credibility. 

The second meeting, on Dec. 20 is the most interesting.  This meeting clearly encapsulates the internal disagreement between the “collectors” and the “analysts” that Tenet described.   Yet, 60 Minutes piece only included the comments of the dubious “collectors”.  That was Margaret Hennock, the Group Chief who was a subordinate of Drumheller, and was his liason to the BND. 

Here is how the Commission summarized the outcome of the second meeting:

At the meeting, the group chief [Hennock] stated that she told the attendees that the division’s concerns were based on the foreign service representative’s statements to the division chief , the CIA’s inability to get access to Curveball, the significant “improvement” in Curveball’s reporting over time, the decline of Curveball’s reporting after he received the equivalent of a green card, among other reasons. She also recalled telling the attendees the details of the foreign service representative ‘s statements to the division chief. In the group chief’s view, she made it clear to all the attendees that the division did not believe that Curveball’s information should be relied upon. 

With equal vigor, the WINPAC representative argued that Curveball’s reporting was fundamentally reliable.  According to the WINPAC analyst, Curveball’s information was reliable because it was detailed, technically accurate, and corroborated by another source’s reporting.

Both the group chief and the WINPAC analyst characterized the exchange as fairly heated.  Both of the two primary participants also recalled providing reasons why the other’s arguments should not carry the day. Specifically, the group chief says she argued, adamantly, that the supposedly corroborating information was of dubious significance because it merely established that Curveball had been to the location, not that he had any knowledge of BW activities being conducted there. In addition, the group chief questioned whether some of Curveball’s knowledge could have come from readily available, open source materials.  Conversely, the WINPAC BW analyst says that she questioned whether the group chief had sufficient knowledge of Curveball’s reporting to be able to make an accurate assessment of his reliability. 

It appears that WINPAC prevailed in this argument. Looking back, the executive assistant [to McLaughlin] who had called the meeting offered his view that the WINPAC BW analyst was the “master of [the Curveball] case,” and that he “look[ed] to her for answers.”  He also noted that the group chief clearly expressed her skepticism about Curveball during the meeting, and that she fundamentally took the position that Curveball’s reporting did not “hold up.” 

The Commission report continues on with a description of continuing disputes inside the CIA in the days ahead of Powell’s speech to the UN:

But the issue arose once again in January 2003. During December and January, it became clear that the Secretary of State would be making an address on Iraq to the United Nations Security Council and that presenting American intelligence on Iraq’s WMD programs would be a major part of the speech. In late January, the Secretary began “vetting” the intelligence in a series of long meetings at the CIA’s Langley headquarters. In connection with those preparations, a copy of the speech was circulated so that various offices within CIA could check it for accuracy and ensure that material could be used without inappropriately disclosing sources and methods.  As part of that process, the group chief [Hennock] received a copy.  According to the group chief , she said that she “couldn’t believe” the speech relied on Curveball’s reporting, and immediately told the division chief about the situation.  The group chief also said that she edited the language in a way that made the speech more appropriate. 

According to the division chief [Drumheller], he was given the draft speech by an assistant, and he immediately redacted material based on Curveball’s reporting. He then called the DDCI’s executive assistant and asked to speak to the DDCI about the speech.  When interviewed by Commission staff, the executive assistant did not recall having any such conversation with the division chief, nor did he remember seeing a redacted copy of the speech.  However, another Directorate of Operations officer, who was responsible for evaluating the possible damage to DO sources from the release of information in the speech, remembers being approached during this time by the division chief. According to this officer, the division chief said he was concerned about the proposed inclusion of Curveball’s information in the Powell speech and that the handling service itself thought Curveball was a “flake.”

The DO officer responsible for sources and methods protection summarized these concerns in an electronic mail which he sent to another of the DDCI’s aides for passage to the DDCI. The DO officer responsible for sources and methods did not recall that the division chief made any specific redactions of language from the draft.  The DDCI’s executive assistant has no recollection of such an electronic mail or of any concerns expressed about Curveball. 

Later that afternoon, according to the division chief [Drumheller], he met with the DDCI to discuss the speech. The division chief recounted that he told the DDCI that there was a problem with the speech because it relied on information from Curveball, and that –based on his meeting with the foreign intelligence service representative–the division chief thought that Curveball could be a fabricator.  Although the division chief told the Commission that he could not remember the DDCI’s exact response, he got the impression that this was the first time that the DDCI had heard of a problem with Curveball. Specifically, the division chief recalled that the DDCI, on hearing that Curveball might be a fabricator, responded to the effect of: “Oh my! I hope that’s not true.” It was also at this time, according to the division chief , that he (the division chief ) first learned that Curveball provided the primary support for the Intelligence Community’s judgments on BW.

The group chief [Hennock] provided indirect confirmation of the exchange; she remembered the division chief [Drumheller] telling her about this exchange shortly after it occurred.  Similarly, former DDO James Pavitt told the Commission that he remembered the division chief subsequently relating to him that the division chief had raised concerns about Curveball to the DDCI around the time of the Secretary of State’s speech. 

By contrast, former DDCI McLaughlin told the Commission that he did not remember any such meeting with the division chief.  Specifically, the former DDCI said that he was not aware of the division chief contacting his (Mr. McLaughlin’s) executive assistant to set up a meeting about Curveball; there was no such meeting on his official calendar; he could not recall ever talking to the division chief about Curveball; and he was not aware of any recommended redactions of sections of the draft speech based on Curveball’s reporting. Moreover, Mr. McLaughlin told the Commission that the division chief never told him that Curveball might be a fabricator. The former DDCI added that it is inconceivable that he would have permitted information to be used in Secretary Powell’s speech if reservations had been raised about it. 

 Ok, this post has gone on about 4x longer than I had anticipated when I started it. 

 But its quite a story, and its all available in black and white. 

Too bad 60 Minutes didn’t think facts were worth sharing if they conflicted with the editorial stance of their piece. 

You’d think Mary Mapes still worked for them.