February 16, 2011,

Recent press accounts have reported that an Iraqi man now
living in Germany -- and who has been identified as the
German intelligence source code named "Curve Ball" now
admits to having fabricated much of the information he
provided the Germans and the United States in the run up
to the Iraq war.

The handling of this matter is certainly a textbook case of
how not to deal with defector provided material. But the
latest reporting of the subject repeats and amplifies a great
deal of misinformation about the case.  In order to provide
some perspective, the following excerpt if from my 2007
memoir "At the Center of the Storm" and offers additional
detail that the media continue to ignore.

GJT

From "At the Center of the Storm"  P376:

One particularly damning part of the speech is now so
notorious that it deserves special attention. The story
begins in 1998, when an Iraqi chemical engineer wandered
into a German refugee camp. Within a year or so, he had
earned his German immigration card by agreeing to
cooperate and provide information to the German Federal
Intelligence Ser vice, or BND. The Germans  gave the
engineer his perversely prescient codename: Curve Ball.

As intelligence services generally do with their spies, the
BND kept its engineer under tight wraps, but eventually
shared with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency some of
the information he was providing them. Curve Ball alleged
that Iraqi scientists had a biological weapons program
located in mobile laboratories that could be moved to evade
UN weapons inspectors.

Because BND controlled the asset tightly and because DIA
had responsibility for intelligence from Iraqi refugees in
Germany, CIA was twice removed from the source. It was a
situation far from ideal. The Germans would not permit
either DIA or CIA to have direct access to Curve Ball. They
told us that he did not speak English and that he disliked
Americans. (It later turned out that his English was pretty
good.) We did have one opportunity to observe him when a
German-speaking U.S. doctor evaluated him during a
physical. The doctor noted that the man appeared hungover
and he expressed doubts about his reliability. Those doubts
seem prophetic now, but I must say that if we dismissed
everything we heard from sources with drinking problems,
some accurate intelligence would be thrown out the
window.

I’ve since learned that there were debates between our
analysts and our intelligence collectors about the case.
Some of the collectors from our Directorate of Operations
didn’t like the way the case “felt”—they had a gut instinct
that there was something wrong with Curve Ball, but little
more to go on. The analysts believed passionately that the
science Curve Ball was describing was accurate—too
accurate to be dismissed. There was the fine detail of Curve
Ball’s reporting—he clearly knew what a mobile lethal-
germ lab looked like—and the ever-increasing value of his
information as the search for Saddam’s WMD mounted.

On balance, and in the absence of any other red flags from
The Germans or DIA, Curve Ball appeared to be an
invaluable asset. He wasn’t. As the Silberman-Robb
Commission, a presidential panel looking into Iraq
intelligence shortcomings, would report in March 2005,
sirens should have been going off all over the place.
Whether they were or not is a matter of fierce debate.

Jim Pavitt, the then deputy director of operations and head
of the clandestine service, instructed Tyler Drumheller,
head of the European Division, to ask for a CIA officer to be
allowed to have a face-to-face meeting with the engineer.
In late September or early October 2002, Drumheller met
with his German counter part over lunch at a Washington
restaurant to convey the request, but got nowhere.

Drumheller, whom I always considered to be a capable
officer, now says the German told him, “You do not want to
see him [Curve Ball] because he’s crazy. Speaking to him
would be ‘a waste of time.’” The German reportedly went on
to say that his service was not sure whether Curve Ball
was telling the truth, that he had serious doubts about
Curve Ball’s mental stability and reliability. Curve Ball,
he said, may have had a nervous breakdown. Further, the
BND representative worried that Curve Ball was “a
fabricator.”

According to Drumheller’s account, the German cautioned,
however, that the BND would publicly and officially deny
these views if pressed, because they did not wish to be
embarrassed.

If that is true, this is how it should have played out: What
the German had to say at that lunch in late September or
early October 2002 should have been immediately and
formally disseminated as a matter of record in a report that
would have alerted intelligence and policy officials to the
potential problem with Curve Ball. A second, corresponding
formal report also should have been instantly sent across
the intelligence and policy communities to analysts and
policy makers who had received previous Curve Ball
reporting. The transmittal of these two reports would
have immediately alerted experts doing the work on Iraq
WMD issues across the intelligence community to a
problem requiring  resolution. No such report was
disseminated, nor was the issue ever brought to my
attention. In fact, I’ve been told that subsequent
investigations have produced not a single piece of paper
anywhere at CIA documenting Drumheller’s meeting with
the German. The lead analyst on this case in our Weapons
Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center
(WINPAC) insists she was never told about the meeting.

Issuing “burn notices,” as they are called, on questionable
sources is how the system is supposed to work. Because this
didn’t happen in this instance, we’re forced to rely now on
the recollection of individuals as to what may or may not
have been said or what did or did not occur.

In his testimony before the Silberman-Robb Commission
and in interviews subsequent to publication of the
commission’s findings in early April 2005, Drumheller
insisted that the news of the German lunch hit Langley
like a small bombshell.

In an April 26, 2005, L.A. Times story, he was even more
insistent that word of his meeting with the German had
spread broadly through the Agency. He admitted not
telling me personally, but he said, “Everyone in the chain
of command knew exactly what was happening. . . .
Literally inches and inches of documentation,” including
“dozens and dozens of e-mails and memos,” would show
that warnings had been sent to John McLaughlin’s office
and to WINPAC, and that Curve Ball’s credibility had been
seriously questioned in numerous meetings.

Drumheller has told the media in various interviews that
he personally went to see John McLaughlin about the time
of Colin Powell’s UN speech to express concern about
Curve Ball’s information. He has said he doesn’t remember
John’s exact response but that it was something to the
effect of “Oh my, I hope that’s not true.” John is convinced
that this did not happen. I have absolute confidence that
had such a meeting taken place, John would have pursued
the matter in the meticulous style for which he is well
known. He fought steadfastly against White House
attempts to stretch the evidence on Iraq–al-Qa’ida ties. He
understood the importance being placed on Curve Ball’s
information, and he would have battled just as hard to keep
Curve Ball’s information out of the Powell speech had
someone made the case to him that it posed problems.

If Drumheller or anyone had brought to John McLaughlin
or me these doubts about Curve Ball’s credibility, let alone
his sanity, we would have gone to great lengths
immediately to resolve the matter. Unfortunately, the first
either of us learned of Tyler Drumheller’s lunch with the
German BND official and of the latter’s supposed
warnings—and his refusal to stand publicly behind them—
was when we were interviewed by the Silberman- Robb
Commission as it prepared its March 2005 report, two
years too late to do a damn thing about it.  

Our senior officer in Germany at the time says Drumheller
never apprised him of the luncheon conversation, nor did
the Silberman-Robb Commission ever interview him. The
German BND representative was asked by CIA officers in
2005 about his 2002 lunch with Drumheller. He denied
ever having called Curve Ball a “fabricator” and said he
only warned that he was a “single source” whose
information the Germans could not independently verify.

A search of CIA records in 2005 revealed that a cable did
come in to our headquarters from our rep in Germany on
December 20, 2002. The cable went to Drumheller’s office
for action. It contained a letter addressed to me from the
chief of the BND saying that Curve Ball would not agree to
go public himself and that CIA would not be able to debrief
him in person. It said that the Germans did not object to
the public use of Curve Ball’s information, as long as we
protected the source. The letter went on to explain how the
Germans had shared his information with at least two
other foreign intelligence services and three U.S.
intelligence agencies. It said they found his information
“plausible” but that they could not independently verify
what he was saying.

As far as I can tell, that cable never left Drumheller’s desk
in the European Division at Langley. Our senior officer in
Berlin was expecting to get a response from me to my
German counterpart, because he cabled and e-mailed our
headquarters numerous times seeking one. That, too,
would be standard protocol. But none was forthcoming. I
had never seen the German letter but had simply been told
that the German BND had cleared our use of the Curve
Ball material.

On January 27, 2003, right before the Powell UN speech,
our man in Germany sent another cable, this one
expressing his own reservations about the source. He did so
because he had received no response to his December 20
cable. Curve Ball’s reporting was problematic, he said, and
should be relied on only after “most serious consideration.”
This cable, too, went to Drumheller for action. In the three
days and nights we sat at headquarters working on the
secretary’s speech, nobody ever told us of our senior man in
Germany’s reservations or of the letter from the BND chief.

Finally, frustrated at the lack of response to the December
20 cable, on the day of Colin Powell’s UN speech, February
5, 2003, our Berlin rep translated the original letter from
the BND chief and sent it, along with the original in
German, via diplomatic pouch to headquarters. It arrived
on February 26 and was delivered to Drumheller’s
European Division. My successor, Porter Goss, asked his
staff to run down the Curve Ball story. They found in 2005
that the letter, located in the European Division, had not
been formally logged in as received. Despite extensive
searching, no records have been found that the letter was
sent to either John McLaughlin or me.

Above and beyond the formalities, cables, and letters,
though, were a number of critical break points—before, at
the outset of, and during the Iraq war—when this
information clearly was of vital importance. I did not
believe that there could be any doubt among senior CIA
officials at the time that the Agency was depending heavily
on Curve Ball’s information. Why so many opportunities to
sound the alarm were missed is a mystery to me. Powell’s
UN speech was one such moment, but there were many
others, such as when the National Intelligence Estimate
was being written and approved. It was precisely during
this time or just shortly afterward when Drumheller
presumably had his revelatory lunch with the German. The
issue could also have been mentioned when my staff was
helping prepare my multiple testimonies before the Senate
Intelligence, Foreign Relations, and Armed Ser vices
Committees. But it was not.

In May 2003, CIA and DIA issued a report following the
discovery of a trailer found in Iraq that closely matched the
one described by Curve Ball. We went back to the
Germans, again through Drumheller’s division, and had
them show Curve Ball a spread of photos of trailers—much
as you would display in a criminal lineup. Curve Ball
picked out the picture of the trailer we found in Iraq and
said, “That’s it.” Even then, neither Drumheller nor anyone
else said to John or me, “Stop. This is a fabricator, you
cannot rely on him.”

In February of 2004 and in subsequent appearances before
the Senate Intelligence Committee in closed session on
March 4, 2004, I raised the subject of our concerns about
Iraq’s capability to produce biological weapons in the
trailers cited by Curve Ball. Every presentation of the
“evidence” for such a capability was vetted far and wide
through the upper echelons of the Agency. Yet at no time
did anyone in the analytic or operational chain of command
come forward to tell me of the specific information
supposedly imparted by the German BND to the CIA
European Division chief in the fall of 2002.

In 2005 Drumheller told the Silberman-Robb Commission
that he spoke with me on the telephone around midnight
when I was in New York on the eve of Colin Powell’s UN
presentation in February 2003. In a Frontline special in
2006, Drumheller claimed that he said, “Boss . . . there’s a
lot of problems with that German reporting, you know
that?” And that I replied, “Yeah, don’t worry about it; we’ve
got it.” I remember no such midnight call or warning.

Drumheller and I did speak very briefly earlier in the
evening, but our conversation had nothing to do with
Curve Ball; rather it involved getting clearance from the
British to use some of their intelligence in the speech.
According to a CIA memorandum for the record, in
speaking to Senate Intelligence Committee staffers in
2005, Drumheller said that “way too much emphasis” was
being placed on the phone call, and when asked if he could
confirm that I understood what he was trying to convey in
the purported phone call about Curve Ball, he responded,
“No, not really.”

Drumheller had dozens of opportunities before and after the
Powell speech to raise the alarm with me, yet he failed to
do so. A search of my calendar between February 5, 2003,
the date of the Powell speech, and July 11, 2004, the date of
my stepping down as DCI, shows that Drumheller was in
my office twenty-two times. And yet he seems never to
have thought that it might be worth telling the boss that
he had reason to believe a central pillar in the case against
Saddam might have been a mirage.

In fact, it seemed that just the opposite was communicated.
In May 27, 2003, the head of the German BND, August
Hanning, paid me a visit in Washington. My office received
an e-mail from Drumheller’s deputy, with a copy that went
to Tyler, recommending that I be sure to thank Hanning
for agreeing to allow us to use the Curve Ball material in
our public discussions. In advance of Hanning’s visit, I
received a memo laying out our goals for the session, a
matter of course before every meeting with a foreign
intelligence official.  

The memo was signed by Tyler Drumheller. The first page
included a list of five suggested talking points to advance
our goals. Number three, all in bold, suggests that I:

Thank Dr. Hanning for the Iraqi WMD information
provided by the BND asset “Curve Ball.” Inform Dr.
Hanning that we would like to work with the BND to craft
an approach to Curve Ball to secure his cooperation in
locating evidence of Iraq’s biological weapons (BW)
programs, and about the direct involvement of Dr. Rihab
Taha al-Azzawi in Iraq’s mobile BW program.

If the chief of the European Division believed that it was a
mistake for us to use the Curve Ball material and knew
that the Germans had warned us off it, why was he asking
me to thank the Germans?

The meeting happened, and I presume I used the talking
point that was suggested. In any case, Drumheller sat
there through that meeting, and a lunch in Hanning’s
honor that followed, and never mentioned any concerns.

How can you explain these huge disconnects? Why would
good men and women argue behind closed doors about
Curve Ball’s reliability, yet not come forward to express
their concerns at an appropriate level? I’ve asked myself
that question dozens of times. We were under enormous
pressure to meet our own standards of excellence and from
an administration that was moving toward war. But were
we, as an institution, in some sort of meltdown?
I don’t believe that for a second.

The best reason I can come up with is that the people who
knew that Curve Ball might be a fabricator figured that
coming forward wouldn’t make any difference. The rush to
Baghdad wasn’t going away. They would just be stepping
in front of a roaring train. If that was their thinking, then
their reticence is inexcusable.

But why would people be asserting things now about trying
to alert me to the problems of Curve Ball—claims that
have been proved untrue? Perhaps some people’s
recollections of “if only someone had listened to me” have
become sharper than reality. I don’t know. What I do know
is that concerns about Curve Ball did not get disseminated
far and wide through the Agency as they should have been.
We allowed flawed information to be presented to
Congress, the president, the United Nations, and the
world. That never should have happened.
GEORGE J. TENET
Facts From and About the Former
Director of Central Intelligence
INFORMATION ON "CURVE BALL"