Cabbie took U.S. for a ride

By GEORGE WILL, Washington Post Writers Group
Published November 11, 2007

WASHINGTON

In late 2002, two strong-willed CIA officers, identified only as Beth and Margaret, were at daggers drawn. They had diametrically opposing views about the veracity of an Iraqi defector's reports concerning Saddam Hussein's biological weapons programs, and especially the notorious but never seen mobile weapons labs.

"Look," said Beth defiantly, "we can validate a lot of what this guy says."

Margaret, angry and incredulous: "Where did you validate it?"

Beth: "On the Internet."

Margaret: "Exactly, it's on the Internet. That's where he got it too!"

Margaret was right in that episode, recounted in the new book Curveball by Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times. Curveball was the code name of the Iraqi defector in Germany on whose reports the Bush administration relied heavily in its argument that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction justified a preventive war.

In 1999, Curveball defected to Germany, which has a significant portion of the Iraqi diaspora. Seeking the good life - a prestigious job, a Mercedes - he jumped to the head of the line of asylum-seekers and got the attention of Germany's intelligence agency with the word biowaffen, germ weapons. He claimed to have been deeply involved in Saddam's sophisticated and deadly science, particularly those notorious mobile labs. Notorious and, we now know, nonexistent.

German intelligence officials - partly because they thought Germany had been unfairly blamed for not detecting the Hamburg cell from which three of the four 9/11 pilots came - refused to allow U.S. officials to interview Curveball. Yet by March 2001, the Germans were expressing doubts about him; by April 2002, the British were too.

So were some U.S. officials. But others became invested in Curveball's credibility and soon they could not back down without risking personal mortification and institutional disgrace - both of which came, of course, after the invasion. Then some of Curveball's Iraqi acquaintances were located and identified him as a "congenital liar" who was not a scientist but a taxi driver. But before the invasion, he supplied an important rationale for launching it: He was the most important source for Colin Powell's 80-minute address to the U.N. Security Council detailing Iraq's WMD programs, the address that solidified American support for war.

Drogin's account of the search for WMDs after Baghdad fell would be hilarious were the implications not tragic. That missile spotted by analysts of satellite imagery? It was a rotating steel drum for drying corn. The missile photographed from the air? Chickens in Iraq are raised in long, low half-cylinder coops.

Drogin probably overstates his indictment of U.S. officials when he says that the CIA, having failed to "connect the dots" prior to 9/11, "made up the dots" on Iraq's WMDs. In the next paragraph his assessment is less sinister but more alarming because itsuggests the problem was human nature. Calling Curveball a fabricator, Drogin writes, "implied that U.S. intelligence had fallen for a clever hoax. The truth was more disturbing. The defector didn't con the spies so much as they conned themselves."

Drogin's book arrivesas some Washington voices are reprising a familiar theme: Iran's nuclear program is near a fruition that justifies preventive military action. Whether or not these voices should be heeded, Drogin's book explains one reason why they will not be.

George Will's e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com

[Last modified November 10, 2007, 21:14:56]