Further Information Regarding US Government
Attribution of a Mobile Biological Production Capacity by Iraq
by Milton Leitenberg
Secrecy
News has previously carried two brief
analyses regarding the origin of conceptions and descriptions of an ostensible
possession by Iraq of mobile BW production
vehicles. The first (Part I) appeared on June 29, 2006 titled "Unresolved Questions
Regarding US Government Attribution of a Mobile Biological Production Capacity
by Iraq" (pdf). The second (Part II), BFurther Information Regarding
US Government Attribution of a Mobile Biological Production Capacity by
IraqB, appeared on August 13,
2006.
The first
of these items contained information about the Iraqi defector codenamed
BCurveball.B It noted CurveballBs relations with Ahmad Chalabi and his
CIA- and DIA-funded organization, the Iraqi National Congress (INC). In
addition, Chalabi and the INC provided two of three additional defectors
who offered extremely tenuous BcorroborationB of CurveballBs testimony.
This raises the possibility that Curveball may have made contact with INC
representatives in Europe, or with Chalabi
directly, and that Chalabi may even have been instrumental in suggesting that
Curveball should approach the German BND as well as the nature of the
information that he should provide. If this postulated train of
events is correct, it would make Chalabi instrumental in CurveballBs initial
role, not only for the INC provision of subsequent BcorroboratingB
informants.
As
indicated in Part I (June 29), CurveballBs information was provided to the
German intelligence services from late-1999 through 2001, and much of it had
reached US intelligence agencies during 2000. (The Silberman-Robb report
states that BCurveball began reporting in January 2000;B this, however is
apparently when the first reports reached US intelligence
services.)
However,
the most likely route by which suggestive information about putative Iraqi
mobile BW production platforms could have reached Ahmad Chalabi, which he could
then have utilized in feeding informants back to US intelligence
agencies, has been overlooked. By his own account, Scott Ritter, the
UNSCOM inspector who later became a disputed public figure, met with Chalabi in
London in
January and July 1998 and discussed such putative vehicles. In his 2004
book, Ritter wrote BI have met repeatedly with Achmed Chalabi.B[1]
Ritter was seeking information from informants inside Iraq working
with the INC that might help UNSCOM to resolve its intractable problems.
RitterBs prime responsibility almost from the inception of his work with UNSCOM
was attempting to track, intercept and overcome IraqBs mobile
concealment and inspection
evasion organization based in the Iraqi intelligence agencies. In speaking
with Chalabi, Ritter mentioned that he suspected that Iraq might have
mobile BW and CW production facilities. Interviewed for a long New Yorker profile of Chalabi, Ritter said
that
He outlined most of the
U.N. inspectorBs capabilities and theories, telling Chalabi how they had
searched for underground bunkers with ground-penetrating radar. He also
told Chalabi of his suspicion that Saddam may have had mobile chemical- or
biological-weapon laboratories, which would explain why investigators hadnBt
been able to find them. BWe made that up!B Ritter said. BWe told
Chalabi, and, lo and behold, heBs fabricated a source for the mobile labs.B[2]
[After
writing this memo, I was informed of Scott RitterBs new book titled Iraq
Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the
UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (2006, IB Tauris, UK). It contains the
following paragraph corroborating what this memo
suggests:
BIn the intelligence world, one never gives away the
complete picture of what you know and what you don't know; this too easily
allows you to be manipulated by sources which miraculously "confirm" data you
already have while filling in the gaps in the intelligence picture. However, I
was under pressure from Charles Duelfer to make this new relationship work, and
I proceeded to brief Chalabi on UNSCOM's understanding about what Iraq
might be hiding. This included speculation about the possible existence of
mobile biological laboratories and agent production facilities. B When, several
years after leaving UNSCOM, I was to read through the intelligence provided by
ChalabiBs BsourceB (BCurveballB), which formed the centerpiece of the Bush
administrationBs case for war, I was struck by just how similar the data was to
some of the speculative Bintelligence gapsB I had provided to Ahmed Chalabi back
in 1998.B]
Ritter was
voicing his own concerns, and not those of UNSCOMBs BW team. UNSCOMBs
senior BW inspectors had been the recipients of General al-SaBadiBs original
information in 1996 in which he stated that prior to 1990 he had offered the
suggestion of mobile BW production. Nevertheless they did not consider the possible existence of
such vehicles to be likely, nor did they see the subject as one of their major
priorities in 1998 and 1999.
The above
described chain of personal contacts produces a possible chain of information
transfers from Scott Ritter to Chalabi, from Chalabi to Curveball, and from
Curveball to the US CIA. It is also well known that Chalabi was perhaps
the prime source of BintelligenceB used by the Office of Special Plans (OSP),
established by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz in the office of Under Secretary of Defense
Douglas Feith in the Department of
Defense. The same INC-provided information was also a favorite source
relied on by Vice President Cheney. Both CheneyBs office and DODBs OSP
were prime champions of the claim that Iraq had mobile BW production
vehicles. Scott RitterBs book also provides extensive detail regarding his
interactions with the CIA during the period that he served with UNSCOM. It
is conceivable that the CIA may even have asked Ritter in the years prior to his
visits with Chalabi to seek information about possible Iraqi mobile BW
production vehicles. IF this occurred, one would have a complete circle of
BinformationB fabricated as a consequence of CIA indications of interest coming
back to the CIA as defector-provided
Bintelligence.B
At first
glance, there appeared to be one further circle of possible involvement of Scott
Ritter since he had admitted to participating in disinformation activities in
yet another context while serving with UNSCOM. The BButler CommissionB
report prepared for the British House of Commons in July 2004 contains the
following page:
6.3
OPERATION MASS APPEAL
485. In November 2003,
the former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter was reported to have
told journalists that, in the late-1990s, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)
ran BOperation Mass AppealB B an alleged disinformation campaign to disseminate
Bsingle source data of dubious
qualityB about Iraq, in order to Bshake up public
opinionB.
486. Mr Ritter was
quoted as follows:
I
was brought into the operation in 1997 because at the UN . . . I sat on a body
of data which was not actionable, but was sufficiently sexy that if it could
appear in the press could make Iraq look like in a bad
way.
I
was approached by MI6 to provide that data, I met with the Mass Appeal
operatives both in New York and London on several
occasions. This data was provided and this data did find its way into the
international media.
It
was intelligence data that dealt with IraqBs efforts to procure WMDs, with
IraqBs efforts to conceal WMDs. It
was all single source data of dubious quality, which lacked
veracity.
They
took this information and peddled it off to the media, internationally and
domestically, allowing inaccurate intelligence data to appear on the front
pages.
The
government, both here in the UK and the US, would feed off these media reports,
continuing the perception that Iraq was a nation ruled by a leader with an
addiction to WMDs. [BBC News, 12 November
2003]
487. Mr Ritter was
reported as saying that he was prepared to reveal details before a public
inquiry.
488. We took evidence
from Mr Ritter, including on Operation Mass Appeal. Mr Ritter said that
Operation Mass Appeal was already up and running when SIS approached him in
December 1997. He was asked if there was material on IraqBs weapons
programmes on which the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) could not
act, but which might be made public through media outlets in a range of
countries. Mr Ritter said that Mr Richard Butler, the then Executive Chairman of
UNSCOM, agreed that UNSCOM should co-operate with the UK in this way and that
two reports relating to prohibited trade between Iraq and two other countries
were passed to the UK the same month. UNSCOMBs involvement then fell into
abeyance until May 1998 when contact resumed. Mr Ritter said that he met SIS
officers again in June 1998 to discuss Operation Mass Appeal for the last time.
He resigned from UNSCOM soon after that.
489. We have examined
relevant SIS papers. These confirm that there
were two meetings between British Government officials and UNSCOM
representatives, including Mr Ritter, in May and June 1998 at which there were
discussions about how to make public the discovery of traces of the nerve agent
VX on missile warheads after this fact had been reported to the United Nations
Security Council. (Iraq had previously denied
weaponising VX.) Operation Mass Appeal was set up for this specific purpose and
did not exist before May 1998. In the event, before Operation Mass Appeal could
proceed, the UNSCOM report was leaked to the press in Washington. Because of
this, Operation Mass Appeal was abandoned.[3]
As best as
can be judged from the above information, the issue of Iraqi mobile biological
weapon production vehicles was not one of the subjects that was involved in this
covert UK disinformation effort. British press reports about Operation
Mass Appeal, and a parent Operation Rockingham with in the British SIS and Joint
Intelligence Committee (JIC) describe its functioning as somewhat similar to
that of the US DODBs Office of Special Plans. Their description was aided
by additional (British) press interviews with Scott Ritter.[4]
The Butler CommissionBs description of Project Rockingham is less tendentious
than the press accounts,[5]
but none of these claim any involvement of disinformation regarding Iraqi mobile
BW production vehicles.