An Iraqi defector named Rafid Ahmed and codenamed ‘Curveball’ claimed, while seeking asylum in Germany, that Iraq was using mobile labs to create WMD. “The United States never got access to Curveball. The testimony he gave to the Germans was filtered secondhand through DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] and became the core of [Secretary of State […]
Category: quotes
2/5/2003
“In a February 5, 2003, interview with Wolf Blitzer, he [Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)] cited the October 2002 death of a U.S. foreign service officer at the hands of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a known al-Qaeda associate who had fled to Iraq from Afghanistan after the Taliban was overthrown. Zarqawi had been linked to a biological […]
2/5/2003
“In November 2002, military lawyers were already expressing reservations about the interrogation techniques proposed for use at Guantánamo. … Major General Jack Rives, the Deputy Judge Advocate General of the United States Air Force, was more pointed in his analysis, and observed that several of the exceptional interrogation techniques ‘on their face, amount[ed] to violations of […]
2/5/2003
Discussing Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003, speech to the UN, which supported going to war with Iraq, then-CIA Director George Tenet wrote: “Our [CIA] goal…was to come up with rhetoric that was both supported by underlying intelligence and worthy of what we all hoped would be a defining moment. Despite our efforts, […]
2/5/2003
In his speech to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell said: ” ‘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 used to make biological agents. …Let me take you inside […]
2/4/2003
“On February 4 [2003], [Les, the Defense Department doctor who had examined Curveball] sent an email to the deputy chief of the CIA’s Joint Task Force on Iraq: ‘I do have a concern with the validity of the information based on ‘CURVE BALL.’ He noted there had been…questions about whether ‘in fact, CURVE BALL was […]
2/4/2003
According to information from the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, delivered on July 7, 2004: “On the day before Secretary of State Colin Powell’s address before the UN Security Council [February 4, 2003]…a [anonymous] military intelligence officer became alarmed that Powell was relying […]
2/3/2003
On February 3, 2003, “When Les, the Defense Department medical doctor and biological weapons specialist detailed to the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division, read a draft of [Secretary of State Colin] Powell’s [upcoming] speech [to the UN Security Council], he was upset. He had gone to Germany in 2000 to draw blood from [Iraqi informant] Curveball [whose […]
2/3/2003
“On February 3, 2003, the White House press spokesman, Ari Fleischer, responded to a question about the president’s [Bush’s] views on the exile of Saddam: ‘Well, as the president said, if Saddam Hussein were to leave Iraq and to take, as the President put it, his henchmen with him, that would be a very desirable […]
2/3/2003
“On February 3 [2003], two days before [Secretary of State Colin] Powell was to go to New York, he sketched out his briefing to the president [Bush] at an NSC [National Security Council] meeting. ‘We have sources for everything,’ Powell confidently told the President. If Powell felt duped or misled about any aspect of his […]