B. Biological Weapons
(U) Secretary Powell's speech referenced intelligence on Iraq's biological weapons program, some of which had been obtained after the IC published the 2002 NIE on Iraq's WMD programs.
( ) Secretary Powell said, ". . . we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations in western Iraq. Most of the launchers and warheads have been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were moved every one to four weeks to escape detection." While the speech text referenced "sources," the IC provided the Committee with only one CIA HUMINT report, dated January 11, 2003, to support this statement. the report, said that an Iraqi missile brigade commander supervised the dispersal of his brigade's al Samoud and Ababil-100 missiles in order to hide them from UN inspectors. The report said that some of the missiles had warheads containing an "unknown biological agent." The report said the missiles were hidden in large palm groves and were generally kept in the same location for one to four weeks. No other sources were provided to the Committee.
(U) Secretary Powell also described an example of an Iraqi effort to conceal prohibited activity from UN inspectors. Showing a satellite image of vehicle activity at Iraq's Amiriyah Serum and Vaccine Institute, he noted that at a "biological weapons related facility, on November 25, just two days before inspections resumed, this truck caravan appeared, something we almost never see at this facility, and we monitor it carefully and regularly."
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( ) The analyst told Committee staff that he informally raised his concerns about the imagery analysis to his supervisors, but said "when this first came up, it seemed to be one little difference of opinion or potential misinterpretation within a much larger context...." The analyst said, however, that he was surprised when he heard Secretary Powell's speech and that "a NIMA product had gone forward to the policymakers with incorrect information and had in fact escalated up to where it was being used in the speech." After the speech, the analyst raised the issue within NIMA and discussed his analysis with one of the other three analysts responsible for covering Amiriyah. After looking at the work, the NIMA analyst responsible for covering Amirivah performed his own historical review of the imagery and remained convinced that the November 2002 activity was unusual The analyst who performed the original imagery review told Committee staff that he and several other analysts in his branch of NIMA believed that the activity was routine, but said when analysts cannot resolve an issue at the analytical level ". . . we don't have a mechanism to have an independent review." NIMA's official assessment remains that the activity was unusual and no other position was presented outside of the agency.
(U) Secretary Powell's speech also discussed intelligence regarding the suspected Iraqi mobile biological weapons (BW) production program and provided detail on the four HUMINT sources which were said to have provided the information on the program. The Committee's findings regarding this intelligence are discussed in detail in the biological weapons section of this report. In short, Committee staff found that details of the reporting and the reliability of some of the sources were not accurately described in Intelligence Community (IC) products on Iraq's suspected BW mobile labs. Because information provided to the Committee shows that some of these problems were discovered by a Department of Defense (DOD) detailee to CIA. prior to Secretary Powell delivering his UN speech, the Committee provides the following additional discussion of this issue.
(U) Secretary Powell described the primary mobile BW source and three supporting sources in his speech. He said the first was "an eyewitness, an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He was actually present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents."
( ) This source is known to the IC by the code name CURVE BALL. CURVE BALL is an Iraqi defector who was debriefed . The IC provided the Committee with 95 intelligence reports from the debriefings which describe CURVE BALL as a project engineer involved of biological production facilities in Iraq.
( ) The second source, Secretary Powell said, was "an Iraqi civil engineer in a position to know the details of the program, [who] confirmed the existence of transportable facilities moving on trailers." This source was also an Iraqi asylum seeker . A June 2001 report from this source stated that there were transportable facilities for the production of biological weapons mounted on trailers were other and that there were other Iraqi sites where biological weapons were produced.
( )The third source in the speech was said to have been in a position to know that "Iraq had manufactured mobile production systems mounted on road-trailer units and on rail cars." The IC provided the Committee with eight HUMINT reports from this source , which described Iraqi mobile units mounted on road trailer-units and rail cars. SENTENCE DELETED
( ) The fourth source was an Iraqi Major who defected and "confirmed that Iraq has mobile biological research laboratories in addition to the production facilities." This source was an Iraqi
defected from Iraq in late 2001, and was brought to the attention of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in February 2002. The IC provided the Committee with one intelligence report from this source which described mobile biological research laboratories.
( ) Concerns about this source had been raised in a DIA "fabrication notice" issued in May 2002. (See the BW section of this report for an extensive discussion of this notice.) Although a Defense Humint Service (DHS) who was aware of the fabrication notice, attended two of the Powell speech coordination meetings on February 2 and 3, 2003, he told Committee staff that he was unaware that the source mentioned in the speech was the same source about whom the fabrication notice had been issued and, therefore, he did not raise any concerns about the source. He told Committee staff that he had not seen the speech until he arrived at the meeting, that the source was not specifically discussed, and that the speech did not indicate that the source was a DHS source. SENTENCE DELETED
( ) Before Secretary Powell delivered his speech to the UN, a DoD employee detailed to CIA raised concerns within the CIA about each of the BW trailers sources cited in the speech. The detailee, who provides technical advice to the CIA Directorate of Operations (DO) on BW matters, met CURVE BALL in May 2000 in order to conduct and is the only American intelligence official to have met CURVE BALL before Operation Iraqi Freedom.
( ) The chief of the DO's Counterproliferation Division (CPD) reports office had provided the detailee with a draft of the BW section of Secretary Powell's UN speech on February 2 or 3, 2003, according to the CIA. After reading the speech, the detailee wrote an electronic mail (e-mail) to the Deputy Chief of the Iraqi Task Force to express his concerns about the use of the four HUMINT sources cited in the speech. Regarding the source CURVE BALL the detailee said, "I believe I am still the only United States Government (USG) person to have had direct access to him. There are a few issues associated with that contact that warrant further explanation, in my opinion, before using him as the backbone for the Iraqi mobile program." The detailee explained,
I do have a concern with the validity of the information based on "CURVE BALL" having a terrible hangover the morning I agree, it was only a one time interaction, however, he knew he was to have on that particular morning but tied one on anyway. What underlying issues could this be a problem with and how in depth has he been vetted ?The detailee also expressed concern that,
were having major handling issues with him and were attempting to determine, if in fact, CURVE BALL was who he said he was. These issues, in my opinion, warrant further inquiry, before we use the information as the backbone of one of our major findings of the existence of a continuing Iraqi BW program!
( )The detailee also expressed concern about the second HUMINT source cited in the Powell speech, . He noted that the source was and said the reporting had inconsistencies that needed further checking. The detailee added, "we sure didn't give much credence to this report when it came out. Why now?"
( )He sure didn't corroborate "curve ball's" information. PARAGRAPH DELETED
( )On the fourth source, the Iraqi Major, the detailee noted that "This is the Vanity Fair source - who was deemed a fabricator. Need I say more?"
( ) The detailee's email was sent to the Deputy Chief of the CIA's Iraqi Task Force on February 4, 2003, one day before Secretary Powell delivered his speech. The detailee told Committee staff that prior to receiving a draft copy of Secretary Powell's speech he had "had many discussions with the analysts about my concerns with CURVE BALL as this whole thing was building up and taking on a life of its own. I was becoming frustrated, and when asked to go over Colin Powell's speech . . . and I went through the speech, and I thought, my gosh, we have got - I have got to go on record and make my concerns known . . . ."
( ) The Deputy Chief told Committee staff that he did not believe that the detailee's e mail contained any new information that had not already been raised previously by the detailee many times, but said he sent the detailee an e mail inviting him to discuss his concerns. The e-mail, which was provided to the Committee, said,
Greetings. Come on over (or I'll come over there) and we can hash this out. As I said last night, let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say, and that the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about. However, in the interest of Truth, we owe somebody a sentence of two of warning, if you honestly have reservations.
(U) In describing the intent of his e mail, the Deputy Chief told Committee staff that he had the sense that war was inevitable from reading the newspaper and that he had not had any interactions with government officials in the CIA or with any policymakers that led him to this conclusion. He said,
I was reading the same newspapers you were. It was inevitable, it seemed to me at the time, and to most of us, that war was corning. I was not privy to any particular information indicating war plans or anything. My level was too low for that .... My source of information was the Washington Post.( ) The Deputy Chief added,
Keep in mind [detailee's name redacted] is a personal friend of mine, and what I was probably trying to do was to calm him down a little bit, say, look [detailee's name redacted,] again we all know your objections to this. The war is not going to hinge on what [detailee's name redacted] thinks about CURVE BALL. That probably would have been my intent.
(U) When asked by Committee staff if he was aware of any pressure on IC personnel to change their assessments on Iraq, the Deputy Chief responded "No, absolutely not. Again, I can't speak for the analytical community. I can only speak for the collectors. We were never pressured, no. Quite the opposite, we were given as free a rein as we possibly wanted, as much money as we needed, as much resources as we could bring to bear to find out was there a WMD program and, if so, where are the facilities." The Deputy Chief told Committee staff that there was pressure to answer questions such as "Is there a WMD program or isn't there? Where are the facilities?" And that "underlying it all was what kinds of weapons might the Iraqis bring to bear against our troops, and there was a lot of pressure for that - a lot of it, frankly, self-imposed pressure."
( ) According to both the detailee and the Deputy Chief, the two met later that evening to discuss the detailee's e-mail. The detailee told Committee staff that the Deputy Chief of the Iraqi Task Force told him that he understood the detailee's concerns but said the speech was too far along to bring them up at that time. The Deputy Chief said that after meeting with the detailee and hearing his concerns, he believes he did not take any further action because he thought the CIA BW analysts and his superiors were already well aware of the detailee's concerns. He said he may have passed the detailee's concerns on to the Chief of the Iraqi Task Force, but he could not recall doing so and did not have any e mail or other records to indicate that he did. The Deputy Chief told Committee staff that the Chief of the Iraq WMD Task Force said he was broadly aware at the time of the detailee's concerns about the BW HUMINT sources, but he did not recall the Deputy Chief raising the detailee's specific concerns about the use of the BW sources in Secretary Powell's speech.
( ) The Deputy Chief said that he may have told the detailee that "it was too far along" to raise concerns about the use of the BW sources in Secretary Powell's speech, but could not remember whether he did. He stated, however, that if he did make this comment, it was with the intention of :not hurting the detailee's feelings by telling him there was nothing new to his concerns. He said that he believed that the detailee's warning in the e mail that the fourth source, the Iraqi Major, "was deemed a fabricator" was hyperbole and did not believe that this indicated that a fabrication notice had actually been issued. He said if a fabrication notice had been issued "WINPAC must: have been aware" of it. The Deputy Chief told Committee staff that he believed that the CIA's BW analysts would not have gone forward with the information concerning Iraq's mobile BW program in the Powell speech if they had not already resolved the detailee's concerns.
( ) Committee staff asked the Deputy Chief if he was aware of any evidence or had any reason to believe that IC management would not have been interested in listening to the detailee's concerns if the Deputy Chief had judged them to be valid. The Deputy Chief said, "they would listen to valid concerns. They had heard [the detailee's] concerns, was our contention, and they had heard it and heard it and heard it and were not interested in hearing it again."
( ) The Deputy Chief told Committee staff that despite not acting on his concerns, he regarded the detailee as a "useful skeptic" in that he was an independent thinker whose point of view was often different from the CIA's BW analysts. He also told Committee staff that, in retrospect, in light of the controversy over the BW HUMINT sources, he wishes that he had taken action on the detailee's concerns, for "reasons of bureaucratic self preservation. Even today, looking at [the detailee's] e-mail, there is simply nothing new in it that would have been worth bringing to WINPAC's attention."
( ) In an interview with the DCI, when asked by Committee staff whether Secretary Powell should have been made aware of the detailee's concerns, the DCI said, "If there were issues and concerns, they should have been raised through our process so that it could be presented to the Secretary, certainly. I don't know how they would have been adjudicated at the time, but it should have been up on the table. There could have been a healthy debate about it. But it did not come to the table."
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