Iraq WMD red flags ignored, ex-CIA aide tells paper

June 25, 2006
Reuters

Note: In the previous week, the Republicans loudly claimed that WMDs were indeed found in Iraq and that Bush was entirely justified in his attack in March, 2003. The Department of Defense later specifically denied these reports and it is obvious that Republicans like Rick Santorum, afraid of losing their seats, are resorting to bald faced lies. BH

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former CIA officer says he made repeated efforts to alert top agency officials to problems with an Iraqi defector's claims about the country's mobile biological weapons labs but he was ignored, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

CIA officer Tyler Drumheller said he personally crossed out a reference to the labs from a classified draft of a U.N. speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell because he recognized the source as a defector, code-named Curveball, who was suspected to be mentally unstable and a liar.

Drumheller told the Post he was surprised when a few days later, on February 5, 2003, Powell told the U.N. Security Council that "we have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and rails."

"We thought we had taken care of the problem, but I turn on the television and there it was again," said Drumheller, the CIA's European operations chief before retiring last year.

He described repeated attempts to alert top CIA officials to concerns about the defector before Powell's speech.

He said he also issued warnings before President George W. Bush's January 28, 2003, State of the Union speech that included Bush statements about Iraq's mobile labs "designed to produce germ warfare agents."

The warnings had no visible impact on then-CIA Director George Tenet, the paper said, who vouched for the accuracy of the mobile lab claim in briefing Powell before his speech. Tenet now says he learned of the problems with Curveball much later and received no warnings from Drumheller or anyone else.

The influence of Curveball in U.S. claims about Iraqi bioweapons programs has been described in reports by the Los Angeles Times and a commission on U.S. intelligence failures, the Post said, but Drumheller's first-hand account added new details of the CIA's embrace of a source whose credibility was unraveling.

The paper said the source was living in Germany, where the country's foreign intelligence service had granted him asylum and immigration permits for his family in return for details on one of President Saddam Hussein's long-rumored weapons of mass destruction programs.

The German intelligence agency BND passed the defector's stories to the Americans, but when pressed by the CIA it said nothing had been verified. Drumheller said a German official told him at one point, "I think the guy is a fabricator."

"He said, 'We also think he has psychological problems. We could never validate his reports,'" Drumheller told the Post.

When Drumheller relayed the warnings, it sparked a series of contentious meetings with other CIA analysts who believed reports from the source, whose name has never been revealed.

The 911 Warnings: We Knew…and Did Nothing!

by Brian Haring

From: ‘Descending Into Darkness: The Making of a ‘Wartime President’ by Brian Harring, available from TBR Ebooks

This study covers the background of the attack, including secret documents, Russian intelligence reports, day by day analysis of the events leading up to, and during, the attack.

June 2001: German intelligence, the BND, warns the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 14, 2001]

June 13, 2001: Egyptian President Mubarak, through his intelligence services, warns the U.S. that bin Laden's Islamic terrorist network is threatening to kill Bush and other G8 leaders at their July economic summit meeting in Italy. The terrorists plan to use a plane stuffed with explosives. [New York Times, 9/26/01]

Summer 2001: Pakistani ISI Chief General Ahmad orders an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, who was, according to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and confirmed by the FBI. [The Times of India, October 11, 2001]

Summer 2001: An Iranian man phones U.S. law enforcement to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of September 9. German police confirm the calls but state the U.S. Secret Service would not reveal any further information. [German news agency online.de, September 14, 2001]

June 2001: German intelligence warns the CIA, Britain's MI6, and Israel's Mossad that Middle Eastern terrorists are training for hijackings and targeting U.S. and Israeli symbols. [“Fox News,” 5/17/02]

June 26, 2001: The CIA informs the White House that they had intercepted foreign intelligence traffic concerning possible Al Qaeda strikes in America on July 4.

Summer 2001: Russian intelligence notifies the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots have been specifically training for suicide missions.

June 22, 2001: The military's Central and European Commands impose "Force Protection Condition Delta," the highest anti-terrorist alert.

June 28, 2001: National security advisor Condoleezza Rice states: "It is highly likely that a significant Al Qaeda, attack is in the near future, within several weeks."

July 1, 2001: Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee states that her staff had advised her of a “major probability of a terrorist incident within the next three months.” [Emphasis added]

July 2, 2001: The FBI reports to the White House that Al Qaeda terrorist attacks outside the United States are very possible and that domestic attacks could not be discounted.

July 5, 2001: The CIA informs President Bush that Al Qaeda attacks against American targets are entirely possible during the summer of that year.

July 5, 2001: The government's top counter-terrorism official, Richard Clarke states to a group gathered at the White House: "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." The group included the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the INS. Clarke directs every counter-terrorist office to cancel vacations, defer non-vital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid response teams on much shorter alert.

July 10, 2001: A Phoenix FBI agent sends a memorandum warning about Middle Eastern men taking flight lessons. He suspects bin Laden's followers and recommends a national program to check visas of suspicious flight-school students. The memo is sent to two FBI counter-terrorism offices, but no action is taken. [New York Times, 5/21/02] Vice President Cheney says in May 2002 that he opposes releasing the memo to congressional leaders or to the media and public. [CNN, 5/20/02]

July 26, 2001: Attorney General Ashcroft stops flying commercial airlines due to a threat assessment. [CBS, 7/26/01] He later walks out of his office rather than answer questions about this. [Associated Press, 5/16/02]

July 28, 2001: Authorities in Dubai arrest one Djamel Beghal who revealed information about a planned Al Qaeda explosive attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

July 3l, 2001: The FAA urges U.S. airlines to maintain a "high degree of alertness."

Late July 2001: The U.S. and UN ignore warnings from the Taliban foreign minister that bin Laden is planning an imminent huge attack on US soil. The FBI and CIA also fail to take seriously, warnings that Islamic fundamentalists have enrolled in flight schools across the U.S. [Independent, 9/7/02]

August 2001: Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks by suicide pilots on airports and government buildings. [MS-NBC interview with Putin, September 15, 2001, Fox, September 17, 2001]

August 2001: The FBI arrests an Islamic militant linked to bin Laden in Boston. French intelligence sources confirm that the man is a key member of bin Laden's network and the FBI learns he has been taking flying lessons. At the time of his arrest the man is in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. [Reuters, September 13 2001]

Late summer 2001: Jordanian intelligence agents go to Washington to warn that a major attack is planned inside the U.S. and that aircraft will be used. Christian Science Monitor calls the story "confidently authenticated" even though Jordan later backs away from it. [Christian Science Monitor, 5/23/02]

August 6, 2001: The CIA also presents a warning to the President, explicitly concerned with terrorism inside the United States, indicating that bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. Actual content of this message has been the subject of considerable debate, with White House officials understandably downplaying its significance. [Time magazine, May 16, 2002; New York Times, May 16, 2002]

August 6, 2001: A document surfaced in 2002, dated in April of that year, that purports to be a lengthy intelligence survey by the Federal German BND. A portion of it states that German Ambassador Manfred Issinger personally warned President Bush at his Texas ranch about the attack by Arab terrorists “about September 10-11.” The Federal German government will neither confirm nor deny the authenticity of this document.

August 15, 2001: An alert civilian instructor at a Minnesota flight school calls the FBI: "Do you realize that a 747 loaded with fuel can be a bomb?" The next day, Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested. After investigating Zacarias Moussaoui's past, the FBI (with the help of French Intelligence) learns that he had Islamic extremist connections. They also knew he was interested in flight patterns around New York City, and that he had a strong desire to fly big jets, even though at the time he didn't have a license for flying even a Cessna.

August 20, 2001: The French government make a similar report.

August 8-23, 2001: Two high ranking Israeli Mossad agents come to Washington to warn the FBI and CIA that up to 200 terrorists have slipped into the U.S. and are planning an imminent major assault in the U.S. Indications point to a highly visible target. [Telegraph, 9/16/01; Los Angeles Times, 9/16/01; “Fox News,” 5/17/02] The Mossad gives the CIA a list of terrorists. A major Israeli spy ring was hard on the heels of at least four members of the 9/11 hijackers, including lead hijacker Mohammed Atta. [BBC, 10/2/01]

August 24, 2001: The head of the Mossad reports the imminence of an Arab attack against American targets; a similar report was made by the Mossad on September 7, 2001.

Note: Much talk has circulated in conspiracy circles that Israel was responsible for the 9/11 attacks; that their government had prior knowledge and did not report this, hoping to gain the United States as an active ally in their ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. However, there is no question that the Mossad passed important information to competent American authorities in a timely manner and on several documented occasions prior to the attacks.

August 24, 2001: Frustrated with lack of response from FBI headquarters about detained suspect Moussaoui, the Minnesota FBI begins working with the CIA. The CIA sends alerts calling him a "suspect 747 airline suicide hijacker." Three days later an FBI Minnesota supervisor says he is trying keep Moussaoui from “taking control of a plane and fly it into the WTC." [Senate Intelligence (Hill #2), 10/17/02] FBI headquarters chastises Minnesota FBI for notifying the CIA. [Time magazine, 5/21/02]

August 2001: Britain gives the U.S. another warning about an Al Qaeda attack. The previous warning was vague. This one specifies imminent multiple airplane hijackings by Al Qaeda. [Sunday Herald, May 19, 2002]

Late August, 2001: The CIA asks the INS to put (these two of the hijackers) Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi on a watch list because of their ties to the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. On August 23, 2001, the INS informed the CIA that both Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi had already slipped into the country. Immediately thereafter, the CIA asked the FBI to find al-Midhar and Alhazmi. This should not have been difficult, since one of them was listed in the San Diego phone book, and the other took out a bank account in his own name; also, an FBI informant happened to be their roommate.

August/September, 2001: The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops nearly 900 points in the three weeks prior to the attack. A major stock market crash is imminent.

Sept. 3-10, 2001: MS-NBC reports on September 16 that a caller to a Cayman Islands radio talk show gave several warnings of an imminent attack on the U.S. by bin Laden in the week prior to 9/11.

September 6-7, 2001: 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [New York Times; Wall Street Journal]

September 10, 2001: 4,516 put options are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [New York Times; Wall Street Journal.]

September 6-11, 2001: No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September 10) issues a business report stating "airline stocks may be poised to take off."

September 6-10, 2001: Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re (insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the September 11 attacks.

It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just such types of attacks. Promis was reported, as recently as June, 2001, to be in Osama bin Laden's possession and as a result of recent stories by FOX, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least this summer. This would confirm that the CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Washington Times, June 15, 2001“Fox News, October 16, 2001]

September 10, 2001: NSA intercepts two messages in Arabic. One message read: “Tomorrow is

Zero hour, and the second” The match begins tomorrow.” [New York Times, August 10, 2002; Reuters, June 19, 2002] On June 19, 2002, CNN reported the contents of these two National Security Agency intercepts. Other news outlets, including the Washington Post, also reported on the intercepts. [New York Times, August 10, 2002]

September 10, 2001: A particularly urgent warning was received the night before the attacks, causing some top Pentagon brass to suddenly cancel travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of “sudden security concerns.” [Newsweek, 9/12/2001] “Why that same information was not available to the 266 people who died aboard the four hijacked commercial aircraft may become a hot topic on the Hill." [Newsweek, 9/13/2001]

September 11, 2001: Employees of Odigo, Inc. of Israel, one of the world's largest instant messaging companies, with offices in New York, receives threat warnings of an imminent attack on the WTC less than two hours before the first plane hits the WTC. Law enforcement authorities have gone silent about any investigation of this. Odigo Research and Development offices in Israel are located in the city of Herzliyya, a suburb of Tel Aviv, which is the same location as the Institute for Counter Terrorism which breaks early details of insider trading on 9-11. [Ha'aretz, 9/26/2001; Reuters, June 19, 2002]

September 11, 2001: For 35 minutes, from 8:15 AM until 9:05 AM, although widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes have been simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, no one notifies the President of the United States. It is not until 9:30 AM that any Air Force planes are scrambled to intercept, but by then it is too late. This means the National Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft, even though it was known that four simultaneous hijackings had occurred -- an event that has never happened in history. [CNN; ABC; MS-NBC; Los Angeles Times; New York Times]

The President’s Actions on September 11

One of the most important aspects of the 9/11 attack is the behavior of the President and top members of his Administration before, during and after the attacks.

Although the attack has received intense media scrutiny in nearly all of its aspects, very little has ever been mentioned about the President’s strange actions on that day, that have been viewed by many as suspicious in the extreme. Yet the silence of the American media on the subject has given rise to even more negative speculations.

Just prior to the attack, on July 26, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft suddenly stopped flying on civilian airlines, citing unspecified “terrorist threats.” Ashcroft later absolutely refused to answer any media questions about his sources for this specific concern on his part.

On September 10, 2001, a group of senior Pentagon officials suddenly cancelled a trip by commercial aircraft, citing “security reasons.”

On September 11, 2001, President George Bush flew with a significant number of his senior staff to Sarasota, Florida where he visited Emma E. Booker Elementary School. In a well-covered media event, Bush attended a meeting of school children and read portions of a child’s book to them.

A laudatory and paid professional Hollywood-created pre-election television movie about Bush shows him receiving the news of the 9/11 attack but like all reportage on this specific subject, it deals with error and not fact. With strong controversy about exact events of the day swirling about the President, no one can be exactly certain when he actually learned of the attacks. CIA Director George Tenet, lunching with a former U.S. Senator, David Boren, remarked as soon as he learned of the first attack that, “. . . this has bin Laden’s fingerprints all over it.”

Although Tenet was informed immediately of the attack, Bush’s entourage still insists the President did not hear about it until at least fifteen minutes after the first attack occurred, considerably after television viewers saw the smoke-engulfed building on CNN. Reporters covering the school event noted the President had received an urgent telephone call from his security advisor, Condoleezza Rice immediately after he got out of the Presidential limousine and shortly after the first incident.

None of the accounts concerning this matter, delivered at various times by members of the President’s White House staff, are in agreement. Bush himself has offered several versions of the time he first learned of the attack. The President stated on December 4, 2001 that “I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower . . . the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly myself, and I said, ‘Well, there’s one terrible pilot.’ I said, ‘it must have been a horrible accident.’ But I was whisked off there. I didn’t have much time to think about it.”

On January 5, 2002, Bush said: “First of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was a pilot error, and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake . . .”

Neither of these statements is correct. There was no current television footage of the hijacked civil airliner seen anywhere in the United States until an amateur video tape appeared one day later. The President’s post-event recollections stand in direct contradiction to all of the national media reportage of the morning of September 11 and it also contradicts his nationally televised speech of that evening. The President stated, “Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government’s emergency response plans.” What these “emergency plans” might have been have never been mentioned since, by anyone, and this statement is thoroughly disproved by Bush’s statements that he believed the crash to be the result of pilot error.

Bush also claimed he first learned of the attack from his Chief of Staff, Andrew Card. Bush said Card told him, “Here’s what you’re going to be doing. You are going to meet so-and-so, such-and such. Then Andy Card said, ‘By the way, an aircraft flew into the World Trade Center.’”

Presidential Press Secretary Ari Fleischer commented on this publicly and alleged that Card had informed Bush of the attack “as the President finished shaking hands in a hallway of school officials.” However, other reporters claimed that Karl Rove personally gave the news to the President.

What has been clearly established is that the President continued to interact with the school children, for the benefit of the media, for a considerable time after the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon, the remaining personnel in the White House, the Secret Service and even Canada’s Strategic Command, had all been made aware that three commercial American aircraft had been hijacked.

In spite of this general knowledge, Bush and his aides and advisors remained at the school for nearly an hour after initial news of the attack had been broadcast on CNN. Thirty minutes after the first attack, Bush was recorded on film as telling the young students, “These are great readers! Very impressive! Thank you all so much for showing me your reading skills. I bet they practice too, don’t you? Reading more than they watch TV? Anybody do that? Read more than you watch TV?” (Hands are raised) “Oh, that’s great! Very good! Very important to practice! Thanks for having me. I’m very impressed!”

Although the President and his staff were fully aware that major terrorist attacks had been launched against important targets on the East Coast, Bush remained with the school children for some time. It was later put out by his staff that he did not wish to unduly alarm or upset the children. This story is specious in the extreme because if the terrorist attacks were as serious as they appeared, placating children should have been the least worry of the Commander-in-Chief. Bush did not contact any of the military units charged with defending prominent targets -- and the fighters that had been scrambled would have been unable to shoot down any hijacked aircraft without a specific Presidential order.

Nor were any Presidential orders issued to ground all commercial aircraft slated to take off. This order came not from Bush or any member of his staff but from FAA Administrator Ben Sliney.

When Air Force One took off with the President and his entourage safely on board, it headed west to carry the President away from the apparent target areas. While the President and his staff, like Vice President Cheney were safely ensconced in concrete bunkers, the Mayor of New York and his staff were at the center of the attack area taking charge of the confused situation.

The excuse offered by the Bush staff for the bunkering of the President is that an unnamed intelligence agency had advised the President that “Arab terrorists” had the transponder codes for Air Force One, and to fly in the aircraft would be dangerous in the extreme. This story, like the rest of the self-serving myths put forth by loyalists that day, was completely false and later admitted as such.

There is, of course, no specific evidence that the President’s trip to Sarasota, Florida was designed to remove him from the potential and strongly suspected dangers in Washington DC; nor do his subsequent inconsistent and shifting accounts of his actions prove that he and his immediate entourage were anticipating the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. However, a great mass of circumstantial evidence would certainly point very clearly, and strongly, in that direction.

In the intervening time, it has become evident that the Bush Administration has done everything within its power to block any official investigation into the circumstances surrounding the 9/11 attack. In previous matters, such as Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination, the administrations concerned made every public effort to support official investigations, and the American media made every public effort to support findings of the various investigative bodies (but only insofar as these findings supported the administration’s views).

Frantic attempts on the part of the Bush people, and especially on the part of the President himself, to either totally avoid any investigation into the background of the September 11, 2001 attacks or, second best, to completely derail it, does not speak well of its motives, but it certainly highlights their foreknowledge.

Evidence that the President and his senior staff were fully aware of the impending attacks and made no effort to stop them, issued no timely warnings to American military units to prepare for such attacks and simply awaited them with the full knowledge that they would then be able to attack and occupy Iraq, secure its enormous oil reserves and support Israeli policies in the Mid East, is not only circumstantial evidence but direct evidence as well.

The sudden decision of the President to take his top staff with him to Florida where he read “My Pet Goat” to a class of minority children and then showed absolutely no emotion when informed that there were massive terrorist attacks against American soil is quite simply not believable but his panicked flight, not to Washington but to a secure bunker in the Midwest is indeed typical of him. Bush is a physical and moral coward and his actions are never those of a bold or competent leader.

Franklin Roosevelt has long been suspected of knowing, through intelligence intercepts, that the Japanese were about to launch an attack against the United States and, wishing to get the United States into a European war, did and said nothing to let the approaching Japanese know he was aware of them and worse, neither Roosevelt or any of his military staff warned the U.S. military commanders at Pearl Harbor or Manila that an attack was in train.

It is never seriously been put forward that either Roosevelt or Bush actively plotted against the country for personal or political reasons but by being fully aware and informed of a pending attack and permitting it, by default, to happen, were indeed guilty of the thousands of deaths that followed.

How could an obviously sophisticated terrorist plan involving perhaps as many as 50 identified persons and in training for at least two years, possibly escape the notice of our intelligence services, especially the CIA or the NSA? When one considers the number of people involved in this plot, the wide-spread geographical locations of the plotters, the fact that most of them used a telephone system long known to be thoroughly and completely compromised by the US NSA, for international calls, and that large amounts of cash were transferred from foreign banks to American accounts, the idea that none of the American intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies, and by implication, the White House itself, had the slightest warning of impending disaster, is completely impossible to believe