Curveball (informant)
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Curveball was the designation for a claimed "Iraqi chemical engineer" who the United States claimed had served as an informant. Curveball would be the attributed source of pivotal information concerning weapons of mass destruction leading up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The name Curveball is a reference to a curveball baseball pitch, which is US English slang for something that behaves indirectly, erratically, or surprisingly. It is most likely, and probable, that the code-name was generated at random, as are all code-names, and that it related to "erratic behavior" is purely coincidence.
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[edit] Claims and background
The CIA claimed that it did not have "direct access" to Curveball, and that the mysterious informant instead communicated to Germany's intelligence service, which relayed the information to the United States Defense Intelligence Agency. He was described by German intelligence as an individual not living in Iraq and as an "out of control" and mentally unstable alcoholic.
Although there were wide doubts and questions about the claimed informant's reliability and background, assertions attributed to Curveball claiming that Iraq was creating biological agents in mobile weapons laboratories to elude inspectors appeared in more than 100 United States government reports between January 2000 and September 2001. His assertions also shaped United States Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 2003 address to the United Nations detailing Iraq's weapons programs.
The LA Times reported that Curveball was actually the brother of one of Ahmed Chalabi's top aides. This raised additional questions about his reliability, as Chalabi was asked if he knew anything about mobile weapons labs a short time before Curveball emerged.
In November 2002, UN weapons inspectors investigated Curveball's claims, and found that details and information given by Curveball could not be verified.
On June 26 2006, the Washington Post reported that "the CIA acknowledged that Curveball was a con artist who drove a taxi in Iraq and spun his engineering knowledge into a fantastic but plausible tale about secret bioweapons factories on wheels."
[edit] Criticism, investigation, and damage control
In 2003, inspectors led by David Kay conducted additional investigation of Curveball's credibility. They found among other things that he placed last in his university class when he had claimed to place first, and that he had been jailed for embezzlement before fleeing to Germany. The former point is relevant because Curveball claimed to have been hired out of university to head Iraq's bioweapons program. That he had placed last in his class would cast considerable doubt on this claim.
In response to public criticism, U.S. president Bush initiated an investigative commission, on March 31, 2005. The Bush administration laid blame on the CIA, criticizing its officials for "failing to investigate" doubts about Curveball, which emerged after an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. In May 2004, over a year after the invasion of Iraq, the CIA concluded formally that Curveball's information was fabricated.
On April 8, 2005, CIA Director Porter Goss ordered an internal review of the CIA in order to determine why doubts about Curveball's reliability were not forwarded to policy makers. Former CIA Director George Tenet and his former deputy, John McLaughlin, announced that they were not aware of doubts about Curveball's veracity before the war. However, Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA's European division, told the Los Angeles Times that "everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening" with Curveball.
In the article, entitled 'Curveball' Debacle Reignites CIA Feud (April 2, 2005) [1] by Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, it reported Drumhellers quotes:
- "Everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening," said Drumheller, who retired in November after 25 years at the CIA. He said he never met personally with Tenet, but "did talk to McLaughlin and everybody else."
- Drumheller scoffed at claims by Tenet and McLauglin that they were unaware of concerns about Curveball's credibility. He said he was disappointed that the two former CIA leaders would resort to a "bureaucratic defense" that they never got a formal memo expressing doubts about the defector.
- "They can say whatever they want," Drumheller said. "They know what the truth is …. I did not lie." Drumheller said the CIA had "lots of documentation" to show suspicions about Curveball were disseminated widely within the agency. He said they included warnings to McLaughlin's office and to the Weapons Intelligence Non Proliferation and Arms Control Center, known as WINPAC, the group responsible for many of the flawed prewar assessments on Iraq.
- "Believe me, there are literally inches and inches of documentation" including "dozens and dozens of e-mails and memos and things like that detailing meetings" where officials sharply questioned Curveball's credibility, Drumheller said.
[edit] Internal inconsistency
While Curveball is reported to have claimed to be a chemical engineer trained on the trailers, the nature of the intelligence he supplied, as reflected in the CIA/DIA white paper on the alleged mobile laboratories, indicates he was a poseur. A chemical engineer would be concerned with the function of components, material flow, energy flow, control of parameters, conditions. Nothing in what is claimed to be intelligence from Curveball appears to be anything other than an external description of trailer components, as would be made by a non-engineer. None of what is purported to be intelligence supplied by Curveball shows any glimmer of engineering awareness.
