The Iraqi Major and Mobile Labs

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the declassified club The rest is classified. com Why were MI six and the CIA so quick to believe an unreliable source? And could anyone back in two thousand three have stopped the march toward war? Well wecome to the rest of Classified. I'm Did McLlghk And I'm Gordon Carra. and Gordon, we or on the fifth episode of this journey into the story around a rock WMD last time We spoke a lot about governments in Washington and London set about making the public case for war and in particular how the UK government put out this dossier to as sort of a compendium of its best possible information on Iraq's WMD programs how internally, there was a tremendous amount of cononsternation at the working levels of British intelligence around the quality of that information, but how when that dossier came out Prime Minister Bair' judgments about WMD were very clear. It was beyond doubt that Saddam had WMD. and we left off last time. the U. S starting a very similar process to make the public case for war on the basis of intelligence and Last time we talked a lot about the source that was alleging that there could be a launch of WMD for RAC within forty five minutes And we're going to go deeper into some other dodgy sources in this episode This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence work, it's rarely the obvious problem that causes failure. It's the overlook detail or the flaw nobody quite solved, the kind of vulnerability intelligence services look for. And running a business is the same, especially when you're building or growing a team, it's the risks you can't see or don't understand HP designs technology so devices, collaboration tools and security work together as a single system, helping teams keep everything running smoothly at home, in the office and out in the field. The protection is built in. hardware level security working quietly in the background helping reduce risk creating more work With a team of business advisors, HP helps businesses of all sizes findind technology that fits their needs and budget. To see how HP helps businesses work securely and productively, visit HP dot com forward slash classified The rest of classified listeners also benefit from ten percent off HP business technology with code TRIC ten V There's a killer on the loose. Boke Shields leads an all star cast in the hit original mystery series. You're killing me. I solved mysteries for a living. I think I'm good to go. H been one of your books, None in real life every killer episode. You're someone who can Douch f your whereareabouts at the time of he gets it. What are you the alibi police? That's literally Exactly who I am. You're killing me All episodes now streaming on accorn TV Hey parents, how do you make smarter choices for your kids college today? That's where Sally can help With Sally, you can find scholarships, funding options, tools, and guidance all in one place And if you need a loan, Sally has options for different families and different situations College is only worth it if you do it right So don't just help your kid go Help them go smarter Sally d. com slash go parents One of the interesting bits about this story is how much shock horror, the US was actually reliant on British sources. St not right? Well it didn't turn out to be right. That's the issue. I mean one U.S intelligence officer at the time said he could count the number of sources they had on one hand and still pick his nose on Iraq It basically means four sauces, I think, unless you. It's a two figured nosepicker. Exactly, it could be They said they've not got many sources when they start, you know this kind of post nine eleven drive to war. And these aren't within the WMD program, although of course, that's partly because there isn't really a WMD program. The CIA Iraq operations group is focused on building up those sources to prepare for war. So they're going to end up relying on O people's source it' on liaison and it's interesting. because I don't know, maybe you can you can sympathize with this, but the Brits love giving sources to the US because it's the smaller service. you want to make yourself look useful, you want to kind of keep the flow of the big U. S intelligence machine come in So there's always been, I think, in British intelligence, a desire to kind of show off to the Americans and give stuff to them that they use. I mean, I've heard you that Brits would be specifically told if their stuff, for instance, made it into the president's daily brief. And this would be considered like, you know, well done, we got something into the PDB today. So there is this desire to do it and it's going to make a difference in this case. One of my favorite quotes from George Tennet, CIA director is he says to someone, how come all the good reporting I get is from SIS, meaning MI six? I mean, it's like you can imagine him saying this to his team and they're like, damn brits. They've got all the good stuff And in this case, very tragic piece of the story is that bothoth services essentially pass. b information back and forth to one another. in this in this period. British reporting is going to be important in the run up to one of the big speeches that is going to make the case for the war is the annual state of the Union address which is delivered in the States in January on two thousand three, it's january twenty eighth Bush famously is going to stand up and he's going to make the case for why he is planning to go to war with Iraq specifically. and to make that case, as we discussed, he's going to need the best possible intelligence in order to convince the American people that this is a logical next step Yeah, the nuclear program was always the way they wanted to sell it and as the best step. And so they're going back and forth over the draft of this speech and looking for evidence to support it. Now the day before the speech, you know George Tennet CiO director gets handed a copy of it. He gives the draft to one of his assistants and doesn't give it any more thought. It's interesting It goes through to this group called WINPAC, the Weapons Intelligence Nonproliferation Arms Control Center, which is, I think one bit of the CIA, which was looking at. proliferation and to do these judgments. and that is going to be part of our story because that's where some of the tensions come over the accuracy of this information because They are the ones who are supposedly the kind of experts on this, aren't they? Yeah, the bureaucratic Bifurcation inside the CIA over the different types of Iraq judgments is a It's not an excuse for what happened, but it's probably of one of the reasons is that A lot of the I would say political cultural assessments stuff on post Sadam Iraq on Saddam's relationship with terrorist groups or lack thereof done by either terrorism analysts inside counter tterrorism Center. they have something called the Office of Terrorism Analysis or done inside the kind of the regional shop WMD analysis It was led by the National Intelligence Council, but in the bureaucracy of the agency, the people that are going to write the stuff that feed those assessments are in this group called called WindPack. And so you have this between the technical and the political cultural I think does contribute to the It's not the only reason, certainly, it's probably not even the most important, but it is a contributor to why you have information that comes out of the agency that's sort of I think on the WMD side maybe lacking context and is being looked at purely by the technical people Yeah. and T Tim Weiners but the mission We had him on a bonus recently, but in his book, he talks about how senior analysts in the run up to the state of Union are told by you their boss, If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so. When they're vetting things like the state of the Union They're vetting it to make sure it doesn't give away anything sensitive rather than necessarily to absolutely check whether it's correct. We should ask Michael Morerell about this, we talkal to him for the bonus because I think he's going to disagree with that and and say and say that the speeches were vetted not just not just for sources and methods, but also to make sure that there were not factual inaccuracies about the intelligence. Because in this state of the Union speech, When it comes to the nuclear program, there's only really two bits of evidence they can cite for this idea that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear programm. One is that it's been importing high strength Aluminum or aluminum, as I think some people in America call them. Well, it doesn't have an Iye at the end. That's why we don't mispronounce it. Tomato tomato. Because you say aluminum Doesn't make any sense. That's okay But the idea is that these could be used for centrifuges to enrich uranium. That will be one of the claims that they're suitable for nuclear weapons production the truth is actually, as we will later discover that it's wrong because they're actually for rockets. But there is another bit of intelligence there, which is also very important just heard land a point on the aluminum tubes. So I think this is a this is a fascinating little insight into the complexities of intelligence analysis and how biases can lead to dramatically wrong conclusions of the analysis because The CIA when they looked at those tubes. said yeah, they they could work for a rocket launcher, Saddam had you know, MRLs, multiple rocket launchers And yet the tubes were so machined and expensive that there was an assumption that the Iraqis wouldn't buy those kind of tubes for their rocket launchers, becausecause why would you You don't need you don't need something so so expensive and so machined Yeah, that's exactly what the Iraqis had done But the judgment that they were almost certainly for the nuclear program It wasn't relying on a piece of intelligence to say that these tubes were actually for a nuclear program It was relying on an assumption that the Iraqis wouldn't procure military equipment in the same way that we procure military equipment That's not right Yeah That was one of the two bits of evidence, and it's the other one that I think it's really worth focusing on because the other bit of evidence for a nuclear program is the claim that Iraq had sought to buy uranium. Now it's phrased in the state of the Union in a very interesting way. The way it's phrased is the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa That's what the president says. And this is going to become, I think, to some extent the equivalent of the British forty five minutes claim, the kind of lightning rod for all the arguments about How did this piece of intelligence get into a speech by the president becausecause here's the thing. the CIA actually has doubts about this British reporting. Analysts thought it was weak And yet it is going to be in the president's speech It's amazing, isn't it It is amazing. and in Michael Morell's memoir, he says that the analysts didn't believe it. And laying out the chronology is important here because this NIE came out. the National intntelligence Asessment came out of the fall It is now January and the state of the Union has being prepared And in the interim, what has happened is that report on Saddam seeking Geranium from Africa was in the NIE The CIA analyst didn't believe it And it will also end up in a state of the Union speech. Yeah. So Those three things are kind of like This should have been done. How does that happen? Yeah? How does that happen? And I think it's such an interesting case because I think it's worth just drilling down on it for a few minutes becausecause the claim is based on intelligence that an Iraqi diplomat had visited Africa in nineteen ninety nine on a diplomatic tour and had tried to negotiate the purchase of raw uranium from Nisia during that trip This is yellow cake. Should we do a shouldould we do a trip nuclear lesson on yellow cake Well, let me try. So basically what you do is you take you take a bunch of yellow cake and you pack it into a missile And then you close you close the top of the missile and then you have a nuclear bomb How did I do? Is that right? David, have I taught you nothing? Have I taught you nothing about how to build a nuclear bomb? So many podcasts. So many podcasts. As we have discussed, you are the rest is classified science explainer. Capital S Capital E. So you take it away Okay, all it is is raw uranium that you mine from the ground But the whole point is it is not much used for a bt and that what you then have to do is enrich it Normally in a centrifuge, although there are other ways like electromagnetic isotope separation which you can use to enrich it. That is where you separate isotopes. electromagnetically Yes. Correct. You have learned something. I'm auditioning to become I'm auditioning for VSu's chair asve as've discussed or Han of Fries, one of the two. So this is the raw stuff you get from the ground, which you need to do a lot of work on to make it usable The point is that once you have a whole bunch of yellow cake, you are a very long ways from having a nuclear weapon. You were a long way from a bomb And that is important So the first idea that the Iraqis might have been looking for some in Nigjer seems to come into the CIA in an eight page report that arrives from Italian liaisons Someone gives it to the CIA Rome station and it comes in october two thousand one, more than comes in february two thousand two And it is true Niger is a big, you know, miner of raw uranium. It's got a it's got a French consortium there, which mines large amounts. the documents that are passed talk about a sale of five hundred tes. Now this immediately should have set up alarm bells because that's a lot That is one sixth of the annual production of Niger, which is not very covert. No wonder it was so frightening It must be for a bomb. So they look into it Already it starts to fall apart very quickly these documents because it came from a shadowy Italian intelligence consultant who claims to have contacts at the Niger embassy in Rome But it's clear that these documents are a forgery. So they're based on stationery stolen from the emmbassy in Rome And it's pretty shoddy. I mean, like one letter supposedly from the year two thousand, has the signature of a foreign minister who'd left office in Niger in nineteen eighty nine I mean, that's amateur run out. I mean, I could do better than that if I was forging intelligence documents, I think Well, I think I think you should try, you know. It could be a new a new career for you Have you ever come across fakes like that? Have you ever seen? I have as a journalist, you have. I mean by the time it got to the anouralysts, you would hope that they had been weeded out This intelligence consultant is pedaling information made up information for cash, essentially. Which happens, doesn't it? I mean, it happens all the time. You know that the CIA is after stuff Burned Iraq WMD, so you create some stuff and you give it to them. I mean, I was once given a load of documents claiming Iran was trying to get some uranium from Africa. And it was like it's the same thing. It It wasn't quite But it was like a bundle of documents. L it was like, and I met this guy in a hotel bar in London He said I've got this from a kind of contact in Africa And it was the Congo and it was like a Right? And it was like loads of stuff like sales, invoices and it was like, this all shows there's a secret deal to sell stuff to Ir. This is like years after the Iraq warar. Luckily, I had a contact who I knew really well at the IAEA and I sent it to him. I said, like, does this stuff check out? And he was like, Nope, forgery. And what it was was this person not trying to get cash from me because believe or not, I don't have lots of cash to give for fake documents. But they were trying to implicate like one bit of the Congolese government, I think, in selling this stuff in order to discredit them onn behalf of another politician. It was like twenty pages and it was like had, you know passport pictures of people. So this stuff does go around But at this point It gets dismissed the idea that this material is true. But there is a defefense intelligence agency, a DIA report, which comes out about it. This is the problem because then Dick Cheney, the vice president and his team are aware of this report and are suddenly like, going to the CI, can you Can you check this out? You know, what else can you find? We talked about this last time these sessions that the agency analysts would have with members of the office of the Vice President and Cheney's office where they would come over with these binders of information and they would have intelligence reports in it like this And in some cases, it would be information that the CIA analyst hadn't even seen, they'd have to go back and forth about what it was And In this case, I held my tongue, Gordon This is a DIA report. This is a Yeah, your friends at the DIA. The kind of intelligence report that I would look I would look a Sanceet. Yeah And I wouldn't be the only one that State Departments's intelligence agency, INR, which got a lot of things right It also pains me to say throughout this whole whole period is dismissive of this. but the CIA, this is a huge policy issue, of course. and so the CIA is proroliferation Division decides to carry out an investigation to get to the bottom of this This is a bizarre story with it the story here ist Jordan because they use a retired American ambassador Joe Wilson, who popped up earlier episode in this series. He did. So he was the guy, the number two in Baghdad in nineteen ninety one who met Saddam and He's now left government service. I knew Joe, sadly also now longer with us. but Okay kind of gets asked and the reason he gets asked to to look into this is for two reasons One is by the early two thousands, he's now married a CIA officer N not just any CIA officer and this will be important, but but what's called a knock. Maybe you should explain what that is, a woman called Valerie Ple. NOC. That's what Kock stands for an officer under non official cover So you think about mostost case officers traditionally have been under diplomatic cover. They work out of an embassy, they could be a consular officer could be a political officer, Eon officer. an officer under non official cover would be under, for example, commercial cover, working as a businesswoman businessmand in a particular part of the world for a company, but in actuality working as a CIA officer. Yeahes. so Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie is working under deep cover and I think on weapons proliferation. And so she hears about this and she saidays, Well, you know my husband could go and check out this claim about uranium from Niger because he'd actually been a diplomat early in his career in Niger, which is a kind of you know just a bizarre coincence. so he knows people there So he goes out to DJer he goes out for eight days, late February eararly march two thousand two, kind of a good year before the State of the Union nearly You know, he sees the caramel caravans moving across the bridge as this plane lands at this small airport. He goes to see senior people in government And he talks to people who run the mine where the uranium is alleged to come from, and there's nothing. There's no documentation, there's no evidence of a deal It's not even possible, he thinks. So he comes back Within hours of coming back, a CIA reports officer comes aroundound his house an over Chinese takeout Joe Wilson tells this officer he found nothing to support any idea of the deal, and he thinks, well, that's it. it's over And it's interesting because feels a little odd is. So the CIA now know, they've checked it out. there's no evidence of it. Cheney's team doesn't seem to be directly told about this trip though, And u feels a little bit odd And I don't know whether they, you know, people don't want to tell him the bad news or maybe they just didn't think it was worth it because it didn't it didn't back up the claim So at this point, you know, Joe Wilson thinks, well, it it's done. No one's going to take this seriously I wonder how briefing with Wilson was disseminated Yeah, because that's another piece of this. Did that get written up as a a report from for example, the agency will often interview in American business person who's gone overseas and who might have some interesting information to come back might be in the oil business, for example. They come back and the agency might debrief them that can get written up and disseminated as an actual raw intntelligence report, which then could be used in analysis and could be briefed downtown. I wonder how this was was put into the system. That could that could explain some of it, butre you're right. It may also be a case where no one wanted to risk the ire of Cheney's staff by going back and saying We looked into it, we found nothing. We think that this report doesn't hold water. step out the chronology too much. But there is this, I think outrageous story about what happens to Joe Wilson after the war because after the war, when the whole case for WMD falls apart, he's going to write an opinion piece for the New York Times saying he went to Africa, checked out this claim about uranium, and that it's not true. And then in revenge, someone from inside the Bush administration will leak the fact that his wife was an undercover CIA knock to the press to try and discredit and hurt it I mean, a really outrageous, I think thing to do. and Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby will eventually be convicted of obstruction of justice, making false statements, to counts of perjury relating to an investigation into that leaking of her name because that's actually a criminal offence. I mean, that's all further down the line. But at this point What's clear is that the CIA and George Tennet have doubts about this idea. and they get it taken out of a speech by President Bush in October But then The thing is the Brits I put it in the dossier It's the you know, it's the Brits. Brits The dossier, the British dossier. what good did a dossier ever do anybody? Anytime you say dossier, it's bad news. I think in this case, it's very bad news. Now it is interesting because I've spoken to people who deep in this intelligence And they still claim in Britain, right or they were claiming for many years afterwards,m not sure if they still do now, but for many years, they claimed that Separate from the forged documents from Italy, they had other material, including intercepted communications, maybe human source, suggesting that a deal was discussed though not necessarily concluded I mean, no one has ever seen that evidence And it's kind of not really talked about anymore But what it does mean is the Brits are claiming it And the Brits are still saying it And I think this is what's so interesting and this goes to the kind of transatlantic point. evenven though the CIA is skeptical claim turns up in the state of the Union And what do they do? They attribute it to the British. George Bush isn't saying We believe Saddam sought, you know uranium from Africa. He says The British say It's interesting as now. It's also absurd because A rock has six hundred tons of yellow cake two hundred tons of pure uranium dioxide in Iraq And there's this great quote from Jafar is one of the Iraqi uclear scientist, we talked about an earlier episode where he says, we had tons of yellow cake in Baghdad at the time. So why should we go and buy another tons from these air It made no sense It's just, it's wild It doesn't make sense. Jafard says, you know There there was no need to do it. there was no point in doing it. And of course, as we said at the start with our science lesson Even if it was true, it's not the same as having a bomb. I mean, you still then need enrichment facilities in order to turn into something useful and weaponization and all these things And so what you've got? is this statement in the state of the Union The British say Saddam is looking for uranium from Africa which is technically true because the British are saying it. But it ignores the fact his own intelligence community, the CIA really buy it And It's not nearly as scary in reality. as it sounds when you say it in that way Well, it is sad to say this whole case of uraniumin Africa is not going to be even the worst case dodgy liaison material making it into a big speech. And afterfter the break, we'll get to the case. of the now infamous source known as Kurball. And we'll also talk about one of Gordon Carrera's face to face encounters with an intelligence source making the case for war We'll see after the break Hi, this is Garalinica from Gold Hangers, The restest is foootball. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate and easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple WS is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than one hundred and sixty countries and with over forty currencies. Most transfers arrive instantly. WS uses the mid market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate Know the fee and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the wise app today. Be smart, get wise, Ts and Ts apply Welcome back It is February of two thousand three and President George W. Bush has given his state of the Union address making the case for war And up next it is going to be Secretary of State Colin Powell's turn because he has the pererhaps an unenviable job of appearing before the UN the same case that Iraq has WMD. And I always love the fact he makes the CIA director George Tennett sit behind him. as he gives the speech to the Security Council. And it's very deliberate, isn't it? Because he's relying on CIA intelligence. And I think He wants Tenet there to be associated with it for better or for worse, you know, tying him to what happens. Now, I mean, the speech we're not going to go through the whole speech. It does things like using interceptive Iraqi security officers to try and make the case they were hiding things. But let's focus, I think on one area. We talked about nuclear before biological weapons Powell says one of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities So this is the idea that Iraq had mobile labs could effectively hide their workd from inspectors as they drive around the country, as they develop. Th these nasty toxins which you are going to kill us all But where is the? intelligence for that coming from. I'm gonna guess just using context clues from this series that as we scrape beneath the surface of this thick intelligence file, We might be disappointed with what we are going to find Yes, I'm afraid so. Por out Pell cites four sources. You know, which sounds good. You've got four sources on biological weapons Now here is the wild thing which we slightly tease before the break, is that literally a couple of weeks before he gives the speech I'd sat in a room in the Middle East with one of those four sources who was an Iraqi major who defected from Saddam's regime. So just a bit of context, january two thousand three, I'd been in Amand Jordan making a documentary about Saddam. and I've been talking to the INC, which is this exile group run by Ahmed Chhalabi. And I'd been asking them, have they got anyone who could talk about Saddam's regime for the documentary? but also did they have anyone who could talk about the WMD Everyone knew they had these sources, they were feeding into the US government. Some of their stories were kind of coming out anonymously I had to push them quite hard to put someone up to talk to me And they were a bit reluctant, which is interesting. and I think that was partly because they'd been told by the US government not to put their sources in front of journalists. But eventually they agree I could meet one. So I end up sat in a room at the intercontinental Hotel in Namar Jordan with an INC contact and this guy very memorable meeting. He wass quite gaunt, olive skin, maybe late thirties. Main thing I remember is he just chain smoked continually. You know, we spoke for hours and the asstray was just overflowing. thoseose are the days when you could sit in a smoky hotel room. He says he's a defector from the Mukabarat which is, you know, Saddam's intelligence service. They' been a major in it I have to say a lot of the things he said seem quite credible Like he talked about how his work in the Mahabreat how the regime used fear to keep its grip. Things that he had experience on because he had been Yeah in the Bukabarat, he had been an officer of the security services. So he was probably critical on the security services. Yeah. And this is the thing is that I think he had been a major in the Mukabarat. And this is what's interesting. He wasn't like a complete fabricator who was just some guy off the street He had been and on that stuff, he was pretty credible But then when the subject came to WMD, And it's just this interesting thing when you sit in a room with a sauce. You can just feel the body language change. Because suddenly, you know his annters became this fluent. The eye contact wasn't there. And he starts telling me about the existence of biological weapons facilities on mobile trailers. and he even claims he'd come up with the idea of using these mobile trailers kind of hide biological weapons. I'm the guy. There was just something about it which just didn't feel right. So in the moment you sensed that he was ic that information or exaggerating his role. somethingomet was off. Yeah, something was off And it's interesting because I return to London and we use some of the interview with him in the documentary about Saddam And I was tryrying to think, can I do a news story with his claims about mobile labs? know, But you don't have anything else other than one guy you've sat in a room with who has been supplied to you by an Iraqi exile group. and who body language made me unsure about it I was I'm going to be honest, I was kind of trying to work out what to do with it. You know, I was sitting on it as you do with stories sometimes. and then February fifth comes and Colin Powell turns up And he starts talking about biological weapons, and he describes one of his four sources as an Iraqi major who defected and confirmed that Iraq has mobile biological research laborities After to be honest, David, I felt like a bit of an idiot at that moment because I was like, if Colin Powell is signiding this guy, I can't believe I'dt do a story. Yeah, you're sticking up your doose at this information and here we are. the CIA has veted it and Colin Powell's talking about it in front of the UN Security Council So what's What stopped to you, Gordon? Yeah, I'd missed my scoop But here's what's wild about him specifically is And I think this again gets to understanding the problems with the intelligence. Both CIA and DIA debriefed him and eventually issued what's called a fabricator notice basically saying he'd been coached by the INC this exile group. I mean that's a Big deal, isn't it? I mean, that should mean his stuff shouldn't be used It is a big deal and Michael Morrell who was one of the top analysts at the time at the agency wrote in his meboir that he considered this whole kind of sequence to be an example of analytic malpractice because what had happened was that even after this major had been labeled a fabricator. The intelligence is never recalled by the Defense intntelligence agency from their own system, which would prevent it from getting to policymakers and prevent it from being used in the speech So You had this report that everybody knew was false or at least so full of holes that it should be recalled. And it wasn't. And relelated to that, you also have this issue of Eiles like Ait Shalabi, like the Iraqi National Congress, an ex group. They know there's a demand signal for information on WMD. And they want Saddam gone. They want military action against Saddam And they kind of don't care how exactly it comes about. And so they were trying to feed this kind of material governments to journalists like you push that agenda. So you have, I guess, a marketplace where there's a lot of demand for this material and a lot of people who are willing to fabricate it or exaggerate their access or exaggerate what they've heard or seen to satisfy that demand I do still find it extraordinary that even though he's deemed a fabricator, the reports aren't withdrawn from the system The old reports from the DIA still sit in the system. So I mean, that's one of the sources, but actually the most famous and I think the most interesting is the one known as cururveball and he is Really interesting because both the US and UK will rely on him for their assessment of Iraq's biological weapons program So I would imagine most listeners have at some point heard the name curveball. but Wh actually was Curveball So he's an Iraqi called Rafid Ahmed Alwan Al Janabi who arrives in Germany As a refugee, november nineteen ninety nine requests asylum. ends up in a hold it cam. And the word goes around the holding cam But one of the ways of getting out of the holding camp and getting asylum. was convincing German intelligence you had something they wanted And he says he tells German officials in a very calm voice that he has The details about Saddam Hussein manufacturing biological weapons on these gray mobile metetal trailers and that it's been done with German equipment which obviously spices it up for them and that he'd been recruited because he was an engineer to work on this program This is nineteen ninety nine and two thousand. so pre nine eleven, pre the kind of big push But the Germans seem to quite clumsily debrief him. they ask him some leading questions But they give him asylum And Then they pass it to their allies So they get in touch with MI six. Interestingly enough, they get in touch with DIA deffense intelligence again, rather than CIA, which I find I find interesting and surprising, I don't know if that makes sense to you why the Germans would have a better relationship with them. Maybe it's a kind of individual thing. Probably. also my spitey sensors are coming off Gordon just how many DIA reports are at the heart of this intelligence failure Suddenly the CIA didn't do so badly over Iraq. Its all it's all those guys at the DIA. I'll be I'll be very I'll be very clear the CIA did quite poorly on the WMD judgments, But but but DIA's fingerprints are all over this is my only point And they fil DIA about a hundred reports, one hundred reports from him in two years. Now he gets this code name I mean, what I mean maybe you should explain what the curball is because I had to look it up A a curve ball is a baseball pitch that is given top spin break by the pitcher And that will there's different types of curveballs you can throw Gordon. It's not as simple as this, but basically spins it can spin away depending on whether the batter is right handed or left handed It can spin away from them, break away from them. or toward them. And that movement is what makes the pitch difficult to hit. So being thrown a curveball would be an American expression for being thrown off or having your expectations changed by circumstances Interesting choice of code nameame somethingomething which deceives Is there a cricket version of a curve ball Dare I ask? So supposedly a Brit said if we had named him, We We'd have called him googly. Is that real? Is that a fig A googly is a cricket delivery bowled by a leg spinner that looks like a normal leg brake but turns in the opposite direction towards the leg stump rather than the off stump upon pitching. Did you get that? What an impenetrable game? I can't I cricket it's too much for me. I can't handle it. I actually think that you might be punking me and this might just be Gibberish that you've spun out. That is for real. We're going go to a cricket game. When you're here next time, we're going to go to a cricket game. We're going to look for a Googly. We can show that. But anyway, Googly or curveball, he gets curball rather than Googly, which I think tells you that the Americans name it What's interesting is this guy, he's an engineer So The stuff is kind of vaguely technically Inredible which isn't the same as saying it's true and that's the kind of distinction. I think Some people from the DIA seem to suggest that all you do is you file a report and you let analysts Someone else the manyi Mcosks of this world who are working as analysts, you know, it's their job to decide whether it's True or not you're just finding the rep say that it's false. I would I will I will take the opposite side for my DA brethren there because One of the major questions you would have about a source like Curvefall, which is Where did you get the information from? What is the chain of custody of the information? How do you know this? And if you're just reporting what the person is is saying you're not doing that due diligence and that due diligence is not Really in the U.S. system, the role of the analysts, it's the role of the collectors, the collection management officers, the reports officers The case officer is on the operations side. So this is This is sometimes why we would look akancid DII human reports because they hadn't gone through the same level of vetting. Not always, but sometimes. But it's interesting from two thousand, it becomes very influential the Curball reporting The Germans don't give direct access to the Brits or the Americans. They claim he doesn't speak English U Maybe they're a bit unsure about how good he is. we'll come back to that. MI six try and find out more. And by two thousand two, supposedly, there's a good book by Bob Drogen about cururveball. Some MI six officers are having doubts about it, saying they were not convinced he was a wholly reliable source and that elements of his behaviour strike us as typical of individuals we would normally assess. as fabricators. I mean, these are warning signs. you know, there's rumors about drinking There's talk about inconsistencies in his report But still on the British side as well, they never reject him and they continue to use the reports and they're going to be important for the dossier in Britain, I think it's interesting because on the American side there's a clash, isn't there between different parts of CIA about how much credibility to give to Curvebo Yeah, there's a a spat between wind pack the Weapons intntelligence nonproliferation and Arms Control Center at the CIA and others in the agency who thought WNPC might have been too willing to accept pieces of intelligence and material from DIA, Kbal or elsewhere to support their judgments on WMD and I think Tib Weiner in his book, The Mission has talked about this that some of these WindPack analysts, it seems, might have been over invvested in cururveball because his intelligence is so to the overall judgments on biological weapons in particular. That's right. I mean, without him Suddenly the case of biological weapons looks pretty thin. One CIAicer, I think challenges a WIMPAC analyst who said Kurvebull's explanation of how the mobile labs worked was correct as if they'd been able to corroborate it on the internet. And the other CIA officer says, well, maybe that's where he got it from. You know you can see how the problem steps up. This is one of the contentious issues which is Were there warnings to senior CIA officers that Kirball was mad Autumn fall two thousand two CIA Division Chief for Europe, Tyler Drumheller meets his German liaison officer at a restaurant in Washington Drum Heller the CIA officer asks if he could meet curve ball face to face or if the CIA could And the German says, don't ask. he hates Americans You know, you don't want to see him because he's crazy, the Germans says. And then he goes on to say, this is according to Drumheller's account, I personally think the guy may be a fabricator Now You get into a big he said she said, because Drum Heller will say he passed on these concerns to senior officials at the CIA George Tennet, CIA director and others are adamant that they were never told about these concerns and that there's no written record of them. So you get into a kind of real He said, she said, But once you get to early February, Colin Powell is in CIA headquarters in Langley, preparing, you know the details of his speech to the UN and you know, sweating over what to put in and Kirpool is still in there. in the mix. Howell coming out to the agency to actually write the speech is really unprecedented, at least it was at the time because he and his staff spent multiple days basically locked in a conference room with a revolving door of CI analysts coming through to make sure that the speech was vetted And that was done for Langley, which is it's a wild story. I mean, Michael Morerell and his memoir said he'd never never seen anything like that there were actually some concerns in the building Thats. the agency, which typically will fact check you know, speeches or determine if there's anything classified at them. was maybe veering too close to actually helping a policymaker craft what what is in effect policy speech. But in any case, the first copy of the speech apparently came with a cover that had a picture of a mushroom cloud on it, which is quuite on quite on the nose And, you know, one of the guys involvedin drafing the speech, where did this piece of garbage come from And the answer was Dick Cheney's team And everyvery wild assertion that you could imagine many of which that come from these reports from Krbball and others but also frombot Chaliby and his exile group. had been had been worked into the speech. And And again, Marrell in his in his book says that the CIA had fed before as the speech is being getting ready to be prepared The CI had fed papers on WMD Iraq's connections are likeack there of al Qaeda Iraq's human rights record, they'd fed these papers in to the, you know, speech writing process. and essentially all of that had had been set by the wayside And a lot of the initial inputs to these early drafts were coming from Cheney's office. Yeah and And it's interesting, isn't it? Because then Pell's team are going through it and going like no, no, no, what about this? And they kind of strike out, I think. twenty eight items from the speech, pieces of intelligence because they're not happy about it And ye know, Mike Morrell, who we're speaking to in a bonus episode, I think recs this process has being really kind of quite tough. becausecause some of the claims are falling apart as Powell does to some extent, what, you know, what you should do, which is rigorously push them And I think I think Moreall suggests, it'd be interesting to talk to him about this, that he privately is starting to have doubts as he's kind of going through the case, but certainly publicly The view is still the case is good similar to the way the British Assessments fell apart as the dossier public dossier was being compiled. the assessments from the National intntelligence estimate seem to fall apart as the speech to the UN is being compiled. whichich is kind of worrying, isn't it? Which is very worrisome because the NIE is supposed to be your gold standard product with all of your key judgments in it and as that is being tested over the course of the speech writing process. Yeah, it's falling apart. And of course, I mean Powell wants to use someome of this new material that's been Brits and so tenant has to get the Brits on the horn to figure out what can be used and how. And it's so interesting the night before the speech. Tennet is calling Tyler Drumhller, the CIA European division chief to get Richard Derlov's home number because they want to discuss, can we use some of this British intelligence? Now Drumheller would say again at that point, he raises curveball and says it's a problem. Tennet says he does not remember this and that no one, you know raised these concerns. And Tennet even says that before they leave for New York to give the speech from Langley, they check with the Germans about using Cveball And the Germans say it's fine Oh ends up in the speech and being a kind of key part in the speech as Colin Powell stands up and gives this amazing presentation in the Security Council Chamber And I just love this pack The German intelligence official who'd been worried about it goes, Mine go As he hears, Colin Powell give the speech and he's watching it on TV And he calls up Tyler Drumheller according to Drumm Eller and saidays, I thought you said it wasn't going to be used. I told you this guy is is dodgy, but it's in there. Do we know how it wound up in there Was it the Vice president's office who slid it back in? No, It, it was never taken out. I just think it was never taken out. And so the fact that there were doubts about it do not seem to have got to the right people. Whether that's a process problem or whether it's people are not telling people at the top because they don't want to hear, this is also where you get Kaberback syndrome afterwards. because of course that's why you have disputes about, well, were we told or was it ad minitted? And people saying, yeah I told them and other people saying, no, I never heard it. You get a lot of that And it's interesting, I mean, on Kural His motivation, he will later say is he will admit he made it all up He admits it after the war. He just says, I hated Saddam I wanted to get rid of him. This was my chance to fabricate something, get rid of a regime I hated Proud of that. He's a classic Eile fabricator. I mean, he wasn't he actually wasn't through the INC. He was doing it himself You know, that'sactly what you're supposed to weed out, aren't you if you're intntelligence agency. there's a report called the Rob Silverman report that came out after the after the war and their judgment on Kurtvall, I think is is spot on. they write At bottom, it's a story of defense deepartment collectors who abdicated their responsibility to ve a critical source of CIA analysts who placed undue emphasis on the source' reporting because the tales he told were consistent with what they already believed. Again, it's that sense of confirmation bias. It's confirmation bias. Yeah. And ultimately of intelligence community leaders who failed to tell policymakers Baall's flaws in the weeks before war. So It's a multi layered Disaster with cururveball. And Cool and Powell of course has deep regrets about that speech and here' pererhaps although this is debatable He's perhaps the only person who could have actually stop the march to war. if he had resigned, if Colin Powell had said the case for this war. really thin and it's based on fabricators and circumstantial information. and I won't be part of it. It's an interesting counterfactual what would have happened if he had stood up and said that instead. I interviewed his deputy Richard Armitage a couple of years ago And Armitrage told me about a conversation he had with Colin Powell And Amager says, I went to P one day and I said to him, We're being used. We are like enablers of an alcoholic and we should consider resigning And he said it really shook Conan Powell. And the next day he talked to Powell about it and he said, It's just not my way I think this is, you know, the interesting thing about Colin Pow of course, you know, he He was a good soldier. He'd been a military man. He saw himself as doing his duty for the president And it just wasn't in his nature not to do that for him, not to go, I disagree. I'm going to resign. I think that's why it's a kind of tragedy. I mean, Powell himself always said, he knew it would be the first line in his obituary when he died was the guy who gave the speech to the UN claiming there were WMD when there weren't any. And I think you have to feel some sympathy for him as well because I think he was let down He was let down by the system Well, I think they're with iconic speech to the UN based off of Re some pretty thin and faulty intelligence. let's end this episode, when we come back, we will have insspectors on the ground in Iraq Gordon. who of course, if the intelligence agencies have at this point not been able to really get a handle on Saddab's WMD Maybe they'll find it mayaybe inspectors on and bound to find it in the run up to the war will'll find that WMD and Saddab will be cornered. So let's end there and will we come back. We'll see, of course how that pans out. but You don't need to wait, you don't need to wait. you can early access to that episode and to all of our series by going and joining our declassified club at the rest isclassified. comot We also This series on WMD have some really fantastic bonus episodes for club members with real live participants in this story. with Alistair Campbell Richard Dearlove, Michael Ball all be available to members And David, of course, we've got a live show coming up septtember the fourth and fifth the South Bank in London. So do get your tickets for that And remember you can get our weekly newsletter if you sign up at there isclassify. com as well as details for the club there But we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time