Iraq: The Big Manipulation
By Vincent Jauvert
Le Nouvel Observateur Hebdomadaire
Week of 24 June 2004
Now it's obvious to everyone: Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction,
the famous arsenal brandished by George Bush and Tony Blair to justify the
Iraq invasion, were a fiction. What is less well known is why the CIA went
so far astray and what the White House' exact role was in this tremendous
mystification. Vincent Jauvert has taken apart the mechanism of a
manipulation whose consequences prove to be more deadly every day.
He appeared in Bangkok one day in December 2001. The man said he was an
Iraqi construction engineer. He had just fled Saddam Hussein's regime and
had things to reveal. In Iraq, he had built twenty factories for the
production of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons - all underground.
He could show the exact locations on a map. He has proof of this
frightening arsenal: copies of contracts, plans... The CIA interrogates him
several times in Thailand. Then it installs him in a little Virginia town
with his whole family. For the intelligence agency, the engineer has become
a precious defector - "the most important of all", the "New York Times"
will write just before the war. In his famous speech at the UN in September
2002, George Bush cites the engineer's name: Adnan Saeed al-Haideri.
According to the President of the United States, this man is the most
convincing witness to the Iraqi threat. Six months later, after the fall of
Baghdad, CIA officers will go to the sites the engineer has designated. The
American spies will search, will dig up the earth, will excavate all over.
They won't, however, find anything: no weapons of mass destruction, no
laboratory, no evidence of a program start-up. Nothing. Adnan Saeed lied.
He wasn't the only one. According to an official American report revealed
recently by the "Los Angeles Times", almost all the Iraqi defectors were
fabulists; and on May 16, Colin Powell made this disturbing confession:
some of the proofs he presented to the UN were "false" because the
"sources" had lied.
Oh those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! All of America, or almost,
believed in them. They "justified" the war. They didn't exist. What
happened? Why did the CIA go so far astray? How and by whom were Americans
- whether simple citizens or senators - brainwashed? What was the White
House role in this affair?
In recent months, congressmen have launched inquiries. Spies have begun to
talk. Former Bush administration officials have revealed pre-war behind the
scenes activity. "Le Nouvel Observateur" has questioned several of these
witnesses. Thanks to them, a year and a half after the invasion of Iraq, we
may attempt to reconstitute the causes of this unbelievable collective
hallucination and to shed some light on the mechanisms of an unprecedented
State manipulation.
Kenneth Pollack is the first witness. In his elegant forties, he was in the
forefront during the months preceding the invasion. In 2002, this former
CIA man wrote a book subtitled "Why We Must Invade Iraq". Kenneth Pollack,
however, is neither an extremist nor a Republican, but a staunch Democrat.
He advised Bill Clinton on the Gulf dossier at the White House. Then, in
the fall of 2002, he puts himself at the Bush administration's service and
criss-crosses the world to "sell" the war. In the United States, he
convinces a good many Democrats of the Iraqi threat. In his office at
Washington's Brookings Institute, this reserved man explains why he was
fooled. "You must understand that I was obsessed by the past. When I worked
in the CIA, Saddam Hussein had tricked us several times. In 1990, we didn't
see that Iraq was inches away from having the atomic bomb. In 1995, we
thought he hadn't succeeded in developing biological weapons, and we were
wrong: when his son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, defected, we discovered the
scope of his bacteriological program. So how was one to imagine that Saddam
had stopped all that after the inspectors' departure in 1998? For me, it
was inconceivable."
It was even more inconceivable for David Kay. This short and mustached
former UN inspector has been a virulent pro-war proponent. Before the
conflict, he stumped against those in favor of inspections. Two months
after the fall of Baghdad, he continued to stomp around. He shouted it from
every rooftop: the American army hadn't found anything because they hadn't
looked well enough. The Bush administration took him at his word. He was
thrust into the position of boss to the 130 American inspectors (Iraq
Survey Group) sent into Iraq by the CIA in June 2003. Seven months later,
however, the Napoleon of preventative war came back stammering, and he
courageously confessed his defeat to Congress last January: "We have to
admit it, we were all fooled - and myself first of all." Today he explains:
"We were imprisoned in a certainty: Saddam had always lied and hidden his
weapons, therefore he is still doing that; and we based all our evaluations
on this hypothesis."
An example? The famous stocks of chemical and biological weapons. It was
known that they existed before the 1991 Gulf War. The UN inspectors had
destroyed several tons of them in the 1990s. The Iraqis swore that they had
finished the job, the proof of those destructions, however, was inadequate.
The American secret services - and Western secret services in general -
concluded from this that the Iraqis were still lying as usual and that
these weapons were hidden away somewhere. And they estimated these stocks
to be the size of what they believed to be hidden.
However, this time the Iraqis were telling the truth. But they couldn't
give all the details - and for good reason. "Here's what an Iraqi officer
reported to me after the fall of Baghdad," David Kay relates. "During the
Gulf War, a military truck that was carrying a large quantity of VX gas was
at the front lines on the Kuwaiti border. At the moment of retreat, there
was an ordinary traffic accident and the truck and all its cargo burned. Do
you believe the company commander dared admit that to Saddam Hussein? Of
course not. He was too scared. So we were still counting those particular
tons in the presumed VX stocks."
David Kay gives another dramatic example. He says that Iraqi military got
rid of very toxic agents several times near Baghdad without taking any
precautions. That also could not be confessed to UN inspectors. In fact,
fear, corruption, and chaos made a precise accounting impossible.
However, David Kay is now certain that Saddam Hussein made the strategic
decision to destroy all stocks of biological and chemical agents. Why?
"Because they weren't good for anything any more: he had no more missiles
in condition to project them," explains David Kay. "And then, he wanted to
get sanctions lifted and he knew that for that to happen, he'd have to
accept a final round of inspections. It was highly probable that the UN
inspectors would find all or part of those stocks. Consequently, he had to
get rid of them. With the idea, of course, that he'd start all over again
after the end of the embargo."
No Western intelligence service wanted to see this new strategy of Saddam
Hussein. The CIA even believed that the dictator was not content just to
hide his old stocks of anthrax and VX: he was producing new agents. There
again, their judgments were based on fallacious reasoning. A present UN
weapons inspector, who does not wish to be identified, explains: "Iraq
would buy something that could be used to make either shampoo or sarin gas,
for example. Well, then, the American secret services automatically
accounted for the quantities of sarin that could be produced with this
precursor in their estimates of new sarin stock. While, in fact, that
product was used only to make shampoo...There are dozens of examples like
that." Certain vaccines or antibiotics that could also be used as elements
for the production of biological weapons were treated the same way. Or
fuses that could be used in an atomic bomb or a dialysis machine... It must
be said that the Iraqis acted suspiciously. "These purchases of problematic
material were often made through front companies, or smuggled," the
inspector continues. "So the secret services thought that they were
probably intended for illicit activities. In fact, all of Iraq bought and
sold the same way, on the black market. Because many people in Baghdad and
the neighboring capitals profited from the commissions associated with this
trafficking." The American spies, however, did not take that into account,
since, as David Kay said, they rejected "all the evidence that didn't match
their pre-established model."
One affair perfectly illustrates this blindness. In June 2001, a suspicious
freighter arrived at the port of Aqaba in Jordan. The freighter came from
Hong Kong and carried 3,000 aluminum tubes. A Jordanian firm - a front
company had ordered it: the true destination was Iraq-, the CIA knew it.
American agents seize the cargo. At CIA headquarters in Langley, Joe T.
exults. This analyst has been following the affair for several weeks. He is
sure that the tubes must be used for the manufacture of centrifuges,
machines to enrich uranium. They are proof that Saddam Hussein will soon
have a nuclear weapon. Outside of the CIA, however, nobody shares Joe T.'s
opinion.
Particularly not Professor Houston Wood. He is the top American expert in
centrifuges. He examines these tubes at Oak Ridge Atomic Center and gives
his assessment. He remembers: "They were too thick. There was no way I
could see how they could be used for centrifuges." His colleagues in the
energy department advanced another explanation. These tubes were for rocket
manufacture. The Iraqis were trying to copy one of the Italian Medusa
company's models. They have proof: photos taken from spy satellites over
Iraq. The satellite photos show tubes identical to the ones seized in
Jordan, inscribed "Medusa, 81 mm rockets". However Joe T. doesn't want to
let it go, and he succeeds in convincing CIA boss, George Tenet. His
version becomes the agency's position and that of the Bush administration.
In fact, the White House provokes the American secret services' blindness.
It exerts permanent pressure on them. It wants intelligence that justifies
the invasion it has already planned. It is within this framework that Vice
President Cheney, the head of the war party, makes several visits to
Langley during spring 2002. He demands to meet the Iraq experts. He pushes
them around. Look harder, find more proof, he says to them in effect. In
the past, you've always underestimated Saddam, don't start doing that
again. In short, he behaved as no other Vice President ever dared to do in
the past, but he's been anointed by George Bush, who asks him to take the
CIA in hand. The agency executes, gritting its teeth. "During this whole
time," Kenneth Pollack explains, "I got a lot of indignant phone calls from
friends inside the agency who couldn't stand the constant intimidation any
more."
Out of obstinacy and under pressure, the CIA consequently constructs a
virtual Iraq: a fictitious country conceived in Langley by a handful of
analysts. To complete the picture, the agency will not refer to its agents
on the ground: it has none or very few in Iraq, but to defectors who will
brainwash with disconcerting ease.
At the heart of this disinformation machinery is a 56 year old Shi'ite
banker, Ahmed Chalabi. He presides over the Iraqi National Congress (INC),
the principal diaspora organization. He knows America and its secret
services intimately. He grew up in Chicago where his family came as
refugees in 1958 after the overthrow of the monarchy in Baghdad. In the
United States, the Chalabis continued to live the high life. They are used
to money and honors: Ahmed's father was President of the Senate. The son is
brilliant: he takes a doctorate in mathematics at MIT. He's not made for
research, however; he's an ambitious man in search of a career. First he
tries finance. He starts a bank in Jordan that goes bankrupt in 1989 - a
fraudulent bankruptcy. Having taken refuge in London, Ahmed Chalabi turns
to politics. He has big ideas: he'll be Saddam Hussein's successor or bust.
After the Gulf War, the CIA becomes infatuated with this young Iraqi
Anglophone with the mind-boggling manner. The CIA makes him its protégé. It
bets millions of dollars on him. In 1992, it completely sets up the Iraqi
National Congress and puts Ahmed Chalabi at its head. The family scion is
now a creature of the American agency. He has a secret mission: to mount an
espionage network in Iraq and organize defector flight. As often happens,
however, the creature turns against its master. The manipulated becomes the
manipulator. He's going to brainwash Langley.
How? The idea probably came to him the night of January 27, 1998. That day
he welcomed a UN inspector to his home in London. It was Scott Ritter.
Ritter was looking for the INC head's assistance. In Iraq, he said, the UN
experts were at an impasse: they weren't finding anything any more, even
though they were sure that Saddam was still hiding things from them. Could
Chalabi gear up his clandestine organization to help them find the
forbidden arsenal? Of course, the jovial Chalabi answered, all ears.
With big glasses and a square face, Scott Ritter tells what happened next:
"So he'd understand, I gave him many details. I explained precisely what we
were looking for. In particular, I told him that we suspected the Iraqis of
having perfected mobile laboratories for the manufacture of biological
weapons." And the naive Ritter doesn't stop there: he describes to the
attentive Chalabi what such laboratories look like. The "creature" now
knows how to appease and then manipulate the CIA. It only remains to make a
suitably "briefed" defector appear.
Appear where? Why not in Germany? A few months later, a thirty-something
year old Iraqi presents himself to the Berlin authorities. He's an engineer
who has just fled Saddam Hussein's regime. He says he wants to spill the
beans. He has learned his lesson well. The story he tells the
Bundesnachrichtendienst (Bnd), the German secret service, goes something
like this: "In Baghdad, I was a particularly brilliant student.
Consequently, when I left the university, I was contacted by the regime
bigwigs, Saddam's familiars. They asked me to lead a top secret program.
What for? You'll never believe it: the implementation of mobile
laboratories. To make what? Biological weapons."
The Iraqi is an excellent actor. He's also very well documented. His story
has been polished up, down to the slightest details. He begins to minutely
describe his workplace and the layout of the offices. He tells who does
what. He gives the names of a dozen colleagues -"including the assistant in
charge of renting cars...", the "Los Angeles Times" will later report. Then
the conjuror defector goes into the heart of his subject. He explains that
the labs are mounted on trucks and that he had them built three years
before his departure. Then he draws out of his hat a sort of magic proof: a
few very detailed drawings of the laboratories with the lay-out of
compressors, pumps, incubators. As if by chance, they looks strangely like
Inspector Ritter's explanations in London.
The trick worked. After a few months of questioning, the Bnd considers the
young Iraqi's story "credible" and transmits the information to the CIA.
The Germans, however, do not reveal the source's identity. The Americans
give the mysterious defector a code name: "Curveball". They've gone for the
bait. Now the only thing left is to reel in the line: convince the CIA that
Curveball is telling the truth. Consequently, in 2001 and 2002, Ahmed
Chalabi introduces two other "dissidents" to the American spies and both
assert that they have seen mobile laboratories in Iraq. One even details
that he'd been able to count seven or eight. The CIA's final doubts
disappear. The agency is caught in the net. It will drag Colin Powell in
with it.
On February 5, 2003, the Secretary of State works hard in front of the
world's cameras at the UN. He puts all his authority and prestige into
demonstrating the Iraqi threat. The mobile laboratories affair is the
keystone to his presentation. These labs, he asserts, can "produce enough
anthrax in a single month to kill thousands and thousands of people." He
presents a "very detailed drawing of the way the trucks are configured" -
the drawing Curveball entirely invented - as proof.
The CIA won't understand the manipulation until six months later, after the
war. In the summer of 2003, Berlin finally releases its defector's identity
to Washington. David Kay is going to lead the search in Iraq. He questions
the "brilliant student's" family in Baghdad; he questions his brothers; he
searches his university records, noses around at his workplace.... and,
alarmed, he discovers the real Curveball. The little genius was not the
first in his class, but the last. The dynamic young engineer had been fired
from his office. The honest defector had not fled Iraq for political
reasons: he was wanted for theft. Finally, the bitter cherry on the cake:
Curveball is the brother of someone close to Ahmed Chalabi, the big
manipulator. Hats off to the artist!
The Iraqi National Congress president had pulled off his most brilliant
brainwashing operation with that one. There were others. In fact, CIA
analyses of Iraq were riddled with the wild imaginings of suppositious
defectors. To the point where one has to wonder how Chalabi could have been
so effective. How did he know the missing pieces of the puzzle every time?
In plain words, was the manipulator himself being used? If yes, by whom?
The eternal question in espionage matters.
All one can do is highlight troubling connections. Chalabi has several
friends strategically placed at the Pentagon and the White House, men who
have militated with him for years in favor of a US overthrow of Saddam. Men
who found him financing: Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, Douglas
Feith, the Pentagon's number three, Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's
Chief-of-Staff… powerful men who had access to all State secrets.
Did the war clan "fabricate" Chalabi, his network, and his proofs in order
to win the decision and suffocate any hesitations the planned Iraq invasion
aroused, particularly at the State Department? In short, did Ahmed Chalabi
bamboozle the American administration or was he a simple cog in the Bush
propaganda machine? Ongoing Congressional inquiries are trying to clarify
this question. If the answer is yes, the scandal, Chalabi-gate, will be huge.
Whatever the case, for the Bush clan, anything went to "justify", then to
"sell" the war. After the summer of 2002, the White House put a formidable
machine into operation to supply disinformation to the general public and
Congress. It drew from the CIA's cooker to feed its sales pitch. It chose
the intelligence that fit its propaganda. It amplified and distorted it.
And whenever the needed intelligence was lacking, it invented another.
Greg Thielmann saw this manipulation of the State at work from the inside.
In 2002, this dashing and athletic man was the principal Iraqi threat State
Department analyst. In this capacity, he had access to top secret documents
on the subject. He therefore knows all about it - to the point that the
television channel CBS entitled a portrait of him it recently broadcast
""The Man Who Knew." In an Arlington restaurant close to Washington, he
tells the story: "From August 2002 on, Bush, Cheney and the others began to
lie to America. First they scared them with the tons of anthrax and toxic
gas Iraq was supposed to release, without ever saying that they were
talking about theoretical estimates that were not based on any fact."
"Then they waved another red flag, the ultimate peril: the atomic bomb,"
Greg Thielmann adds. "They asserted that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted
his nuclear teams. They lied. Thanks to our bugs, we knew that the atomic
engineers didn't work together any more, that they had been transferred to
other duties. We told the highest American authorities that, but that
didn't fit in with their propaganda, so they acted as though that
intelligence didn't exist."
"The same thing was true in the matter of the aluminum tubes. Outside of
the CIA, no one believed it - no specialist, no allied intelligence
service, not even the British MI6. I wrote a memo to Colin Powell on this
subject. However, the White House never stopped repeating that the majority
of experts shared the CIA's opinion! And then, right before the war, the
tubes returned in all the speeches. It's alarming."
Then there was the phantasmagoric affair of the Niger uranium. "They used
this re-treaded charade to make people believe in the nuclear threat," says
Greg Thielmann. "At the end of 2001, the Italian secret services sent us a
memo according to which Iraq would perhaps have tried to buy uranium from
Niger. The information was vague and undocumented." In February 2002, Greg
Thielmann lets Colin Powell know this affair seems hare-brained to him, but
the White House doesn't want to know anything about it. On Vice President
Cheney's order, the CIA sends a former diplomat and Africa specialist,
Joseph Wilson, to Niger. He inquires and finds nothing. He reports that to
Langley in March 2002.
The White House, however, would not drop the matter. The marketing men
needed it. So then, miraculously, documents attesting to a negotiation
between Iraq and Niger appear in Italy in October 2002. An anonymous source
hands them over to Elisabetta Burba, a journalist from the weekly
"Panorama". The reporter is wary and conducts her own inquiry in Niger. She
doesn't find anything there and therefore decides not to publish anything.
Her boss, however, is a friend of Berlusconi. Something tells him these
strange documents will please Washington. He asks the journalist to hand
them over to the American embassy in Rome. Bingo! The matter is re-launched
in Washington. Once again, who is manipulating whom? A mystery.
However that may be, George Bush accuses Iraq of trying to import uranium
from Africa, obviously to make an atomic bomb, on the basis of these 40
pages. The documents are fraudulent, but what does the White House care
about that? Everything is good to convince public opinion and Congress.
Henry Waxman, Democratic Representative from California, voted for the war
in Iraq. He hasn't calmed down ever since. In his office at the House of
Representatives, this little man, a double for Gandhi, explains: "I
believed their patter about a nuclear threat. And it was all a lie! They
brainwashed Congress; that's unacceptable." To denounce the outrage, Henry
Waxman published a devastating report last March: a list of 237 mendacious
declarations made publicly by George Bush, Dick Cheney and the others on
Saddam Hussein's suppositious arsenal. Yes, 237, 55 of which were uttered
by the President of the United States himself.
Other voices, daily more numerous, denounce the manipulation of the State.
Ray McGovern is a former CIA high official. Even he is furious: "There's no
word to describe what George Bush has done to America and the world," he
says. "To attack a country on the basis of false, truncated, or made up
intelligence! Will he pay some day?"
Heads have begun to fall. George Tenet, the CIA head, resigned June 3.
Ahmed Chalabi has been dismissed from power in Iraq. The Americans are even
accusing him of having betrayed them for Iran. So far, however, no American
political official has been punished. Next November?
Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
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