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CIA: Learned too late informant was liar
Published: Feb. 18, 2011 at 1:12 AM

Isn't it time we learned the truth? The full detailed story, hopefully unredacted by the CIA and DIA during its mandatory review, will be presented in my forthcoming book, Absence of Evidence; The Incredible Story of the Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure from Inside the American, British, and German intelligence services.

 

CIA: Learned too late informant was liar Published: Feb. 18, 2011 at 1:12 AM

BERLIN, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- Former CIA Director George Tenet made incredible claims regarding an Iraqi who played a key role in the decision to invade Iraq, a former German official said.

Tenet, the CIA head between 1997 and 2004, said Wednesday he learned "too damn late" that the Iraqi defector known as "Curveball," who was a key information source for the CIA and the German secret service, may have lied, London's The Guardian reported. Tenet said he only discovered in 2005, two years after the invasion, that the Germans had doubts about Curveball's statements that he was an eyewitness to Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program.

Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister at the time, said the Germans knew before the war that Curveball was not a reliable source. He said he passed on warnings to the CIA, and that his country was placed in a "very difficult position" when the CIA asked whether they could use Curveball's statements to justify a war in Iraq.

"On the one hand we didn't want to withhold from the (United States) any bit of relevant information we had about possible weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. On the other hand, we did not want to take part in any (propaganda-type) exploitation of material, which was far from proven, to justify a war," Fischer wrote in his autobiography, "I Am Not Convinced."

"We decided, therefore, that we would do our duty by sending the Americans all the information we had, together with our assessment that that information came from a deserter and that we had not verified or substantiated it ourselves, and that it could be completely wrong," Fischer said.

© 2011 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SpyTalk is promoting John. Nixon's "The Hunt for Saddam" that will air on TNT on September 13, 2026.

"On the Screen: High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam, debuts Sept. 13 onTNT. The multipart docudrama is the story of John Nixon, “the first CIA officer to interrogate Saddam Hussein,” reports Deadline. (See the trailer here.) Back in May, Nixon’s CIA colleague William (Jerry) Watson described the agency’s criminally bad intelligence-gathering on, and fruitless hunt for, Iraqi WMD on the SpyTalk podcast."

This is the third in a series of brief articles on the Iraq weapons of mass destruction (WMD) intelligence and political failure to help, not just the intelligence officers involved but also the general public, identify exactly what went wrong. This information will hopefully assist them to avoid or at least mitigate future failures; if, of course, they are willing to learn from their mistakes. To fully understand the root causes of this intelligence failure, we only need to examine the CURVE BALL case as an excellent example of what can go seriously and disastrously wrong in the collection, analysis, management and leadership of intelligence, especially when it is allowed to be influenced by politics. The full detailed story, hopefully left unreacted by the CIA and DIA during its mandatory review, will be presented in my forthcoming book, Absence of Evidence; The Incredible Story of the Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure from Inside the American, British, and German intelligence services.

The Absence of Evidence

In the CURVE BALL case, the absence of evidence was, in reality, the evidence of absence. There simply was no credible evidence of a TOP SECRET Iraqi project to design, build, and operate mobile biological warfare (BW) agent production plants; not in the years before the 2003 Iraq War when this sensational claim could not be verified, or afterward when it was finally completely discredited by early October 2003. This story was just a fabrication concocted by a pathological liar; a junior Iraqi engineer who barely graduated from a technical university, worked for only two years at a engineering center as a low-level project manager before walking away from his job, and finally fled Iraq for Germany to avoid legal problems for his theft of video equipment from an Iraqi media company. Compounding this intelligence failure, analysts also misinterpreted other circumstantial intelligence “evidence” and selectively used it so that it appeared to corroborate CURVE BALL’s claims of alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The humiliating result for the U.S. and its foreign allies—and more specifically for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which aggressively promoted this inaccurate WMD assessment—was thoroughly described in the introduction of the WMD Commission final report released on March 31, 2005. The Commission wrote that this event was “one of the most public—and damaging—intelligence failures in recent American history.” After the war, the intelligence services of the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) were left to figure out what went wrong and then defend themselves as their governments initiated one investigation and inquiry after another; all while the U.S. and international press had a field day exposing the incompetence, dishonesty, and politicization of intelligence within these organizations. One question that continually came up—after it finally became blatantly apparent to most U.S. and allied foreign intelligence officers that CURVE BALL had fabricated all of his sensational intelligence reporting on the alleged WMD—was how could such an individual have successfully fooled the world’s “premier” intelligence services for over four years and why did they believe him?

A comprehensive review of this intelligence case, based on the factual results of an intensive and aggressive investigation of CURVE BALL that myself and my CIA team conducted on the ground in Iraq during the summer and fall of 2003 as well as our subsequent efforts to expose the truth about this intelligence failure in the years afterward, revealed some obvious explanations for why this one individual was so successful in deceiving the world’s premier intelligence services. Specifically, this review also explained why a majority of professional intelligence analysts, managers, and leadership in these organizations—who should have known better (including myself)—failed to recognize early on that the German BND intelligence source was a fabricator. This failure occurred despite numerous blatant warnings from their own operations officers that had resulted in his abrupt termination by the German BND as a discredited source in early September 2001. Incredulously, these valid warnings also would not prevent CURVE BALL’s rebirth as the most significant and important intelligence source on Iraq WMD during late 2002 in the George W. Bush administration’s rush to war.

Although CURVE BALL was a German intelligence source, the BND itself began to doubt him in late 2000 but continued to waffle on their judgment of his credibility and the veracity of his reporting over the years while withholding or limiting direct access to him by any other intelligence services. Despite this lack of German cooperation, problems with CURVE BALL’s intelligence reporting and his lack of credibility were quickly revealed by British SIS operations officers investigating his claims, as well as by a senior CIA case officer who met the source in person. In response to this contradictory and derogatory intelligence, the BND operations officers terminated their clandestine relationship with CURVE BALL in early September 2001 due to their own serious concerns about his credibility; a fact that was known by the CIA, DIA, and SIS.

During the following year in 2002, even the BND’s intelligence analysts came to doubt CURVE BALL. In an attempt to get a second opinion, the Germans pressured the CIA, DIA, and SIS intelligence officers to provide their own assessments of the credibility of this critical source as debates over problems and concerns occurred within these intelligence services as well; primarily between the intelligence analysts who had become enamored with CURVE BALL and the operations officers who suspected that he was a fabricator. Deliberately, none of these serious doubts including his previous termination by the BND were made known to the policymakers in the U.S., UK, and Germany before the war; that fact alone was shocking and a condemnation of the intelligence leadership’s lack of integrity.

Within their organizations, the CIA, SIS and the BND operations officers continued to express serious doubts and concerns internally about CURVE BALL all the way up to the March 2003 war but the majority of biased intelligence analysts and their politically- motivated managers, and leadership in those services rejected these warnings and continued to stand by his reporting, concerned with losing relevance and access to the politicians if they undermined policy. One clarification; unlike the other intelligence services, the British SIS did not employ intelligence analysts within its ranks, only operations officers. Therefore, the SIS decided to rely on two subject matter experts (SMEs) borrowed from other organizations within the British government who worked with them to try to determine the veracity of CURVE BALL’s claims. British intelligence analysts worked for the Ministry of Defense and normally did not engage directly with SIS operations officers or were privy to operational information about their sources. Unfortunately, like the CIA, DIA, and BND intelligence analysts, these British SMEs strongly believed in CURVE BALL’s claims and rejected the contradictory and derogatory intelligence for similar reasons.

To make matters worse, policymakers did not fully realize how it much of this intelligence judgment of the alleged Iraqi WMD was based only on weak circumstantial evidence. The extent of this weakness and the contradictory and derogatory intelligence had been withheld from them during the run-up to the war, especially by the CIA leadership who knew that the White House would not want to hear that the Agency’s WMD “Case Against Iraq” had serious credibility problems in late 2002. This revelation was finally privately shared by National Intelligence Officer Robert Walpole with National Security Advisor Condolezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley in late December 2002. According to former CIA Director George Tenet’s recollections in his 2007 book, when informed Rice immediately turned to Tenet’s deputy John McLaughlin at that point and complained, “You have gotten the president way out on a limb on this.” None of this, however, would stop the rush to war using the alleged WMD justification.

For those of us who worked as Iraq WMD intelligence analysts in the CIA and DIA—but which also applied to the BND analysts, as well as the SMEs employed by the SIS—the most obvious answer for why we were fooled was easy to see when CURVE BALL’s claims were finally investigated on the ground in Iraq. This intelligence failure occurred because subconscious biases—pre-cognitive bias, mind-set, and groupthink— negatively affected the ability of the intelligence analysts to provide an objective evaluation of CURVE BALL’s reporting and other alleged evidence of Iraq WMD by preventing them from considering alternative explanations, distorted their perceptions of cause and effect, disrupted their estimates of probabilities, and delayed the retrospective evaluation of intelligence reports.

In other words, the root causes were psychological; the establishment of a pre-cognitive bias, supported and reinforced by confirmational bias, on the part of the intelligence analysts which led to the establishment of a flawed mind-set, and finally an unverified groupthink that Saddam Hussein would almost certainly reconstitute his WMD programs when given the opportunity. The possibility that the Iraqi dictator wouldn’t do this was not considered plausible. These psychological flaws resulted in faulty and inaccurate WMD intelligence assessments, especially regarding the sensational claims made by CURVE BALL. Everything else—every analytic and operational tradecraft error, alleged shortcoming in collection, and bureaucratic mistake that happened after that—was the result of this bias. It was biased analysis that led to analytical errors and poor intelligence collection, not the other way around.

This human failure of critical thinking was prevalent among the majority of analysts in the U.S. and foreign intelligence community which easily explains why most of them came to the same mistaken WMD intelligence assessments regardless of differences in language, culture and organizational structure. Unfortunately, all intelligence reporting after 1999 was viewed through this flawed lens. By extension, this subconscious bias also affected the accurate perception of their management and leadership but the primary motivation of these senior officials to continue to strongly support this line of analysis was influenced more by internal and external political factors separate from the intelligence.

As intelligence analysts, CURVE BALL’s timing in arriving on the scene in late 1999 was extremely fortuitous. He told us not only what we wanted to hear at the time, but more important, what we expected to hear. His sensational claims, combined with our unshakable belief that Iraq had employed an effective denial and deception (D&D) campaign to counter our intelligence collection efforts, helped us to rationalize why we had not been able to conclusively determine if Saddam had reconstituted his BW program or not after the forced departure of weapons inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) in December 1998. As a result of these biases, the analysts allowed themselves to be easily misled by CURVE BALL’s story (as well as other sources’ circumstantial claims that we wrongly assessed to be corroboration). Because of cognitive dissonance, intelligence that supported these biases was quickly assimilated into Iraq WMD assessments while valid contradictory and derogatory intelligence that did not was quickly rejected and ignored. In turn, these analysts then misled others into a groupthink by inaccurately assessing that a larger “mobile BW program” actually existed in Iraq when, in fact, it did not.

Analytic bias was only part of the story in examining what went wrong. The deliberate politicization of the intelligence in the six months before the war and in the years after by the CIA leadership was an additional, and in my opinion, much more serious and egregious act in this intelligence failure because it was deliberate. Beginning in September 2002, the CIA leadership began to accept and act upon political tasking from the Bush White House to support, not formulate, the president’s Iraq policy. By submitting to this tasking, the CIA was now taking on the role of advocating policy for the Bush Administration; certainly not in keeping with its stated position of being apolitical. According to noted Columbia and Cornell psychologist Dr. Robert Jervis, it was at this point that the desire to avoid the painful value trade-off between pleasing policy-makers and following professional standards created a “motivated bias” in favor of producing estimates that would support, or at the very least, not undermine policy. To make matters worse, White House officials were not concerned with the credibility of the sources or the veracity of the intelligence being provided, as long as it continued to support policy; obviously neither was CIA senior management and leadership. By early fall 2002, Tenet and McLaughlin had steered the CIA far too close to the president and his advisors. They were now intimately and directly involved in policy meetings in the Oval Office and the National Security Council (NSC) and it was obvious that their direct and daily interaction with the senior officials of the White House was highly intoxicating for them.

This “motivated bias” by CIA leadership to support, or at least not undermine policy, ran headlong into a problem in the fall of 2002. The integrity and commitment to providing objective and unbiased analysis by the Agency’s leadership and management would be severely tested in early October 2002 when senior operations officers in the CIA’s European Division and its German stations/bases voiced serious doubts and concerns about the credibility of CURVE BALL. These doubts and concerns had already surfaced earlier in mid-2000 by CIA operations officers in the Counterproliferation Division and played a role in CURVE BALL’s termination as an intelligence source by the BND. Incredulously, CURVE BALL’s claims were revived in 2002, primarily because biased CIA, DIA and SIS analysts continuing confidence in his claims. This push to reinstate CURVE BALL as a credible intelligence source would continue into early 2003.

With this opposition, the CIA leadership suddenly found themselves stuck between Iraq and a hard place at a politically critical time. These operations officers, already raising serious concerns about contradictions in CURVE BALL’s reporting on the operations side of CIA, were now threatening the overall validity of the CIA’s pre-war WMD analytic assessments that had been sold to the Bush White House. Worse, the German BND was also issuing warnings to CIA about CURVE BALL’s “unverified”claims and UN inspections of CURVE BALL’s claims in Iraq were finding nothing but contradictions.

In the most blatant example of the politicization of intelligence, CIA leadership would not allow any of these contradictions to impact its pre-war WMD intelligence assessments. This credible contradictory intelligence was not released to the policymakers where it could negatively impact on their confidence in the Agency’s WMD intelligence assessments. Despite the fact that these doubts and concerns were pushed up through the management chain in the directorates all the way up to the senior leadership of the CIA, they were rejected by the DCI and DDCI who, concerned that they would be negatively received by the White House, did not allow them to be communicated outside of CIA Headquarters to the policymakers downtown. By December 2002 and into January and early 2003, the CIA’s leadership willingly accepted political arm twisting by the Bush administration when tasked to present a stronger case that “IRAQ HAS WMD” (a “slam dunk” according to Tenet). This politicization on intelligence continued into 2003 when the CIA’s leadership and management deliberately withheld these warnings and personally misled Secretary of State Colin Powell regarding the serious problems with the intelligence provided by the CIA for his pending UN speech.

Even more shocking, during the eighteen months following the end of combat operations in Iraq in early May 2003, the CIA leadership and management continued to deliberately politicize intelligence for the same reasons as before the war; to maintain relevance and access to the White House while not embarrassing and angering President Bush by undermining the Iraq invasion justification when the Agency’s pre- war intelligence assessments failed to be accurate. This strategy would be very difficult to maintain, especially when CIA intelligence officers including myself, traveled to Iraq to investigate the validity of the CIA’s pre-war Iraq WMD judgments on the ground. The CIA’s White Paper on the alleged BW trailers was the first casualty of our investigation.

After inspecting the trailers in early June 2003 and concluding they were not for BW agent production and certainly not connected in any way to CURVE BALL’s claims, our second priority was to investigate our own obviously flawed CIA assessment of the Iraqi UAV program. By interviewing the senior Iraqi military and regime officials in detention, the senior UAV analyst and I had the opportunity to locate and question the Iraqi engineers who had been directly involved in the overt and covert UAV programs. We then confirmed the veracity of their statements by personally inspecting the various Iraqi UAV development facilities in the Baghdad area. By this time in summer 2003, the insurgency was making it increasingly dangerous to move around Iraq and even our U.S. military convoy was not able to avoid being targeted, resulting in my being injured and medevaced back to the Army’s field hospital at the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP).

Regardless of this constant threat, myself and my team were able to determine that there had been no Iraqi intent to arm the UAVs with WMD. The correct intelligence assessment was that Iraq was developing UAVs for various conventional military missions to include reconnaissance and electronic warfare, but also for conventional attack. The first secret project was an attempt to use Czech-built L-29 jet trainers converted into UAVs as a type of “poor man’s cruise missile” armed with high explosives, as well as a lure to Coalition aircraft into the southern No-Fly Zone so they could be shot down. The second project was an Iraqi Republican Guard plan to use small UAVs also armed with high explosives to attack Coalition military forces advancing on Baghdad from the south. Fortunately, both of these attempts failed because of technological limitations. We reported these findings back to the analysts, management and leadership in the CIA’s headquarters, stating conclusively that there was no evidence of an intent to use them to deliver WMD. As with our previous reassessment that the trailers were not connected to WMD, our reassessment that the intent of the Iraqi UAV programs for conventional military objectives, not WMD, was also rejected.

The realization of the UAV intelligence failure would now force us to be much more skeptical regarding CURVE BALL’s claims of mobile BW agent production plants and to find out if there was anything to his story. As an “eye-witness” to the production of BW agent, his story had been the strongest evidence the CIA, DIA, SIS, and BND had for the existence of Iraqi WMD. It was the cornerstone of our pre-war BW assessment and the centerpiece of Powell’s February 2003 UN Security Council speech. By mid-2003, however, most of the CIA’s flawed pre-war WMD assessments—uranium from Africa, aluminum tubes for centrifuges, UAVs for CBW delivery, CW weapons stockpiles, etc., which more accurately should be described as unverified assumptions—had been proved wrong or were in the process of collapsing. This was primarily because of the absence of evidence on the ground in Iraq to substantiate these intelligence assessments, regardless of the overly optimistic statements from the CIA leadership and the Bush administration who continued to ignore the reality of the situation.

Our first target for the mobile BW plant investigation was to locate and detain the lead engineers from the Iraqi State Establishment for Design and Consultation (SEDC) who CURVE BALL claimed had designed the mobile BW plants. If anyone knew about this alleged classified project and the details, it would be these engineers, and we figured they would certainly be a wealth of information. We found this to be true but not in the way we had imagined. Using CURVE BALL’s reporting and employing the same strategy as we did to uncover the truth about the UAVs by going after the personnel involved in a project, we knew that finding the engineers in the dangerous postwar environment of Iraq would be difficult but not impossible. Regardless, we quickly located the lead engineer’s residence but the British SIS operations officers got to him first and had him detained by the military. We found this engineer and his immediate SEDC supervisor among the general prison population in the U.S.-run Camp Cropper at BIAP. Our interviews, conducted in their cells, revealed information that corroborated some of CURVE BALL’s claims of legitimate engineering projects, locations, and personnel but contradicted his statements of a project to develop mobile BW plants.

Interviewing these Iraqi detainees was not as effective as I had hoped, primarily because I had very little idea when they were being deceptive and when they were telling the truth. Not having been previously read into this restricted case, I now needed to know every single detail about CURVE BALL and his reporting. To do this, I required full access to the CIA analysts’ files back in the CIA to be able to read the finished intelligence products, operations cables, emails, and notes from the CIA and DIA analysts’ meetings with the BND and SIS. Most importantly, I needed know exactly what my two CIA Iraq BW analyst colleagues knew, not just what they had elected to tell me. By this point, the continued compartmentation of CURVE BALL’s reporting and operational details were an obstacle to getting to the truth and no longer served any valid purpose of protecting the source except to shield him from investigation.

Although the senior CIA Iraq BW analyst was angry at me for contradicting the continuing official CIA judgment that the trailers captured in Iraq were for BW agent production, she and the junior analyst were more than willing to accept my efforts to investigate the alleged mobile BW agent production plants. They believed this investigation would ultimately confirm the validity of CURVE BALL’s reporting and vindicate their pre-war judgments. I found this belief surprising but used it to my advantage in soliciting their help in collecting every single piece of information on CURVE BALL that existed in their CIA files. Regardless of their overall objective, mine would be to uncover the facts, even if that led to disproving CURVE BALL as a reliable source. They were so certain that CURVE BALL’s claims were credible that they ignored the fact that this was a distinct possibility. In any case, I still needed them on my side, at least for now, to help convince the politically-motivated CIA management of allowing me to continue an aggressive investigation when I returned to Iraq.

Working closely with the senior CIA Iraq BW analyst, we assembled a formal exploitation plan that was approved by the senior management for investigating the mobile BW plant issue. The CIA operations officers also supported the plan but only. on the condition that we also investigate CURVE BALL, a demand that angered the senior Iraq BW analyst and our management. In support of this investigation, I began collecting every single piece of information I could find on this case, placing hardcopies of the documents in notebooks in chronological order. I wanted to read through the intelligence as it was received so I could understand how the analytical judgments were reached. Regardless of my attempts to collect everything on this case from my colleagues, additional derogatory intelligence on CURVE BALL would still be withheld.

As I collected more and more information, I began to uncover a shocking and disturbing trend; significant doubts expressed over the years by more individuals in the CIA, SIS, and BND regarding CURVE BALL’s credibility than I had originally been led to believe and in most cases, didn’t even know existed. Intelligence reporting that I thought was received with high confidence, was now exposed in the files to be unverified and full of inconsistencies and even outright contradictions. I was previously aware of some pre- war credibility concerns expressed by at least one CIA operations officer but I had no idea that other operations officers inside and outside of the CIA had also expressed serious misgivings about the the BND source, including stating CURVE BALL was exhibiting characteristics, “typical of individuals we would normally assess to be fabricators.”

I now discovered operational cables and meeting notes in the files where CIA, SIS and BND operations officers clearly stated that they had serious reservations—even outright doubt—about CURVE BALL’s credibility and the veracity of his reporting, shockingly made a year or more before the war. I had not been informed about any of these doubts or concerns by my two analyst colleagues who worked at desks next to me for the last two years. Obviously, they had been well aware of of these serious credibility problems with CURVE BALL. This documentation clearly showed that these analysts had become completely biased in favor of the source and were incapable of objectively analyzing his sensation claims on the alleged mobile BW plants. Worse, the CIA management and leadership had also been warned by operations officers of these serious doubts with CURVE BALL’s credibility but allowed his reporting to be used in finished intelligence to the Bush administration regardless.

Armed with this CIA-approved investigation plan, I couldn’t just jump on a plane and head back to Baghdad. I still had to undergo additional requirements for returning to Iraq. During the summer of 2003, CIA management finally, but reluctantly agreed (after we aggressively pressured them) to provide analysts with weapons training due to the increasing threat of the insurgency (operations officers sent to Iraq were already trained and armed). In my previous position as an operations officer, I was formerly armed but needed to re-qualify which delayed my departure to Iraq. As the search for WMD became more desperate, increasing numbers of analysts would be sent to Iraq— especially analysts new to the CIA and the Iraq issue with little or no war zone experience. The CIA management was finally forced to accept the reality that post-war Iraq was still a very dangerous environment for us to operate.

Returning to Iraq at the beginning of September 2003, I established a new team to aggressively investigate the mobile BW plants claims of CURVE BALL. We located and debriefed CURVE BALL’s immediate supervisor at the engineering center who confirmed the BND intelligence source’s true name and other significant biographical information. Shockingly, he also informed us that CURVE BALL had walked away from his engineering job during the last few days of December 1994, causing his SEDC employment to be terminated a few days later. This revelation conclusively proved that CURVE BALL was a fabricator and had made up the entire sensational story in an attempt to get German citizenship and financial support from the BND. By this time, myself and my team members had already concluded CURVE BALL’s claims of the mobile BW plants were fabrications but we knew this fact alone would not be enough. We would have to prove it to others in CIA and DIA, as well as those in the SIS and BND, and they would be far less willing to consider these contradictions with an open mind. We also knew we would have to be very careful in how we informed them of bad news because it could invite political retaliation. Given the politicization of CURVE BALL’s intelligence, we would have to tread very carefully in moving forward.

That said, investigating and obtaining factual intelligence on CURVE BALL’s real life in Iraq was not difficult. We collected his university transcripts, obtained statements from his immediately family, friends, and co-workers, and personnel files from the places where he really worked after quitting his job at the engineering center. We even obtained legal files regarding CURVE BALL’s theft of video equipment from one of the companies, as well as his arrest warrant, and receipts for restitution paid by his family to avoid him being sent to jail. Nobody in Iraq was trying to defend CURVE BALL because they had no idea he had been working as an intelligence source and misleading the German BND with a fabricated story. Given how politically-significant and embarrassing this case had become in Washington, D.C., London, and Berlin, I instructed my team to leave the original Iraqi documents in place and make copies so that if we were removed from our analytical accounts as political retribution for undermining the CURVE BALL case, anyone investigating this issue after us would have access to the same information. Unfortunately, all of our dire predictions would later come true.

Finally, we inspected an agricultural site, Djerf al-Naddaf, the alleged primary “hide site” of the mobile BW plants, which only led to more outright contradictions to CURVE BALL’s claims. This site had been inspected by the UN just prior to the 2003 Iraq war with the same negative results. By early October 2003, we had overwhelming conclusive proof of CURVE BALL’s fabrications and traveled to London and Munich to brief the biased SIS, BND, CIA, and DIA analysts and managers. Once again, all of our conclusive proof was rejected because it contradicted what they wanted to believe (also realizing the negative political consequences for them if our conclusions were correct). Disgusted by the continuing politicization of intelligence and cognitive dissonance, we returned to Baghdad, completed our field investigation report, briefed the results to the head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, and flew back to Washington, D.C.

Returning to CIA Headquarters, I was immediately removed from my Iraq BW account, demoted to be a targeting analyst on the insurgency, and attacked in my performance evaluation. Refusing to back down and at risk to our careers, I and others inside and outside the CIA continued to fight to get the truth out. Another analyst working with us was also removed from his Iraq CW account for speaking out and pushing for Iraq WMD reassessments. Some members of my team even transferred to the operations or technical side of the the CIA to avoid further political retribution. Eventually, we were able to pressure the BND to give the deputy chief of the CIA’s Counterintelligence Center (SIS) direct access to CURVE BALL. The source’s implausible and ridiculous responses to probing questions clearly showed that he had fabricated. Armed with this intelligence, we were at least able to force the CIA and DIA to admit to the White House in late May 2004 finished intelligence that CURVE BALL was “unreliable”; an obvious and deliberate understatement but one we had to live with for the time being.

Shockingly, even in the months after the 2003 war, this bias, mind-set, groupthink, and cognitive dissonance on Iraqi WMD in analysis and the deliberate politicization of intelligence had remained a serious and frustrating obstacle to the truth despite our finally having full and unimpeded access to collect factual intelligence on the ground in Iraq. Even after we had presented our overwhelming conclusive factual documentation of CURVE BALL’s fabrication collected on the ground in Iraq to the U.S. and allied foreign intelligence analysts and managers in early October 2003, it was rejected because it contradicted what they wanted to hear. I vividly remember siting in the conference room at the BND headquarters in the Pullach suburb of Munich, Germany, trying to convince my CIA group chief and others that CURVE BALL was a fabricator. Obviously not recognizing the prevalent cognitive dissonance, the group chief confidently pointed out that the other CIA, DIA, SIS, and BND intelligence analysts and managers sitting in the conference room still believed that CURVE BALL was credible and therefore “the majority could not be wrong.” Ironically, I informed him that they were, only to be subjected to political retaliation for my comments and conclusions when I arrived back in Washington, D.C.. So much for “speaking truth to power.”

The CURVE BALL case was doomed as an intelligence failure when the leadership in these U.S. and foreign intelligence services continued to side with the flawed judgment of their biased analysts—which for various reasons had more to do with the fearful environment after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the political situations in these organizations than any professed belief in the veracity of the alleged WMD intelligence from CURVE BALL and other sources. Regardless, despite the serious credibility problems with CURVE BALL revealed over the years, the BND continued to protect and financially support him, refusing numerous requests—and finally demands—from the U.S. and UK intelligence services for direct access to their source so they could conduct their own debriefings as the prospect of war grew closer. This disingenuous situation continued even in the months after the war, frustrating attempts by some CIA operations officers and ‘rogue’ analysts such as myself to uncover the truth of CURVE BALL’s deceit and resulting in the further politicization of the intelligence.

In the end, however, CURVE BALL’s claims of the design, development, construction, and operation of secret Iraqi mobile BW agent production plants—which were strongly suspected to be a fabrication in the years before the war—were proved to be so in the six months after the war. Unfortunately, this conclusive proof would not be enough to fully resolve this case, as shocking at that may sound. It would take even more efforts on our part over the next six years to finally resolve the CURVE BALL case. We did this by finally forcing the source to publicly admit his fabrication when the CIA and DIA—preferring instead to leave the resolution of the case in the “uncertain” gray area to avoid having to accept full responsibility and accountability—refused to do so.

After the March 31, 2005 release of the WMD Commission’s final report, the ongoing arguments between CIA operations officers and the senior leadership after their retirements or resignations soon spilled out into public view. This fight over CURVE BALL’s credibility would not be resolved until in November 2007, CURVE BALL’s true identity, Rafid Ahmed ‘Alwan, and photograph/video were exposed on an Emmy-winning CBS 60 Minutes broadcast. This immediately set off a search by the U.S. and international press to locate him in Germany where he was still being hidden by the BND. Subjected to constant pressure, CURVE BALL finally publicly admitted during another 60 Minutes broadcast in March 2011 that he had fabricated the entire story and then only when he thought it would financially benefit him with a potential book and movie deal. Unfortunately, this anticipated revelation occurred far too long after the intense emotions and calls for intelligence reform to correct the problems had died out.

Adding insult to injury, CURVE BALL finally succeeded in obtaining German citizenship for himself and his family. The CIA, DIA, SIS, and BND intelligence analysts, management, and leadership had been completely fooled for over four years and in return rewarded him with substantial financial and material support. CURVE BALL’s admission in 2011 finally brought the final chapter in the tragic Iraq WMD intelligence failure to a close and in the process destroyed the last remaining shred of credibility and integrity that these intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, had worked so hard over the years to establish, defend, and protect. Shockingly, CURVE BALL’s final admission of fabrication was met with silence from the CIA, DIA, SIS, and BND intelligence officers who had aggressively promoted his false and unverified reporting.

My book, Absence of Evidence, currently under review for publication by the CIA since January 2025, will finally expose the details of this amazing, but distressing story of what actually occurred in the CURVE BALL case. But only if it is allowed to be published. Anticipating the political obstacles that I knew that I would face in the submission of my book to the CIA for review, I first filed official FOIA requests to CIA and DIA in late 2024, as well as a lawsuit against the CIA in late 2025, for the declassification and release of specific documents related to CURVE BALL in an attempt to speed up the extensive bureaucratic review process. Given the fact that all this intelligence information was conclusively proven to be a fabrication decades ago, this should have resulted in the immediate declassification and public release of these documents. Incredulously, the CIA and DIA continue to claim that the source’s reporting remains classified, despite having publicly admitted more than twenty years ago that it was completely false. This is all being done by the CIA and DIA to avoid revealing more intelligence mistakes and suffer further political embarrassment regarding this case in violation of a 2009 presidential executive order. As I have stated before, this legal struggle is not about valid classification to protect intelligence “sources and methods”; it’s about maintaining control of the public narrative of the original WMD justification for the 2003 Iraq war through the use of censorship and the abuse of classification authority.

This miniseries is based on the book by former senior CIA analyst John Nixon who I worked with for years on Iraq. He was the first to debrief Saddam Hussein who confirmed there was no WMD stockpiles or programs in Iraq. As with what occurred after my investigation of CURVE BALL and conclusion that he was a fabricator, CIA leadership did not request John to brief them on what Saddam had to say when he returned to CIA Headquarters in January 2004. Given that the justification to remove Saddam from power under the Bush administration's policy of "regime change" was his alleged possession of WMD, why wouldn't the CIA leadership want to hear the details of his debriefing? Because it was not what they wanted to hear.

Eventually, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) leadership falsely claimed Saddam admitted to them in June 2004 that he intended to reconstitute his WMD programs at some undefined point in the future, despite the lack of any credible intelligence to support this claim. In fact, Saddam never said this to John or anyone else. He only said he would "do what was necessary" to defend Iraq but was not questioned by ISG on what exactly he meant. Instead, Saddam's statement was interpreted to fit the "WMD strategic intent" political narrative being pushed by the ISG as an alternative justification for the war after the fact. The so-called and fruitless "search for WMD would continue for another year regardless, with lives lost in the process, only to avoid or at least delay having to accept responsibility and political accountability for a major intelligence failure.

John and I have been working closely together to get the real story of the Iraq WMD intelligence failure out to the public, rather than the revisionist history pushed by the CIA and DIA. With the 25th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq War approaching, the time had come to tell the truth. We and others working with us are looking for interested parties to producing a documentary that finally reveals what actually occurred, not only on the ground in Iraq, but in Washington, D.C., London, and Berlin as well. This miniseries is just a start.

This is the second in a series of brief articles on the Iraq weapons of mass destruction (WMD) intelligence and political failure to help, not just the intelligence officers involved but also the general public, identify exactly what went wrong. This information will hopefully assist them to avoid or at least mitigate future failures; if, of course, they are willing to learn from their mistakes. To fully understand the root causes of this intelligence failure, we only need to examine the CURVE BALL case as an excellent example of what can go seriously and disastrously wrong in the collection, analysis, management and leadership of intelligence, especially when it is allowed to be influenced by politics. The full detailed story, hopefully left unreacted by the CIA and DIA during its mandatory review, will be presented in my forthcoming book, Absence of Evidence; The Incredible Story of the Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure from Inside the American, British, and German intelligence services.

On April 3, 2003, United States (U.S.) military forces reached Saddam International Airport, just to the west of Baghdad, and took control of most of it within hours. Three days later, U.S. troops encircled Baghdad, closing down the major highways into and out of the city and making raids into the city to test for defenses. By April 9th, U.S. military troops had reached the center of Baghdad resulting in the fall of the Saddam Hussein Regime. The Bush Administration’s policy objective of “regime change” had been achieved and Saddam had fled to avoid capture. One thing was still missing, however, the alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

U.S. intelligence officers were confused. Before the war, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analysts had assessed that WMD—at least chemical warfare (CW) agents—would almost certainly be used by the Saddam regime as a desperate last resort during the final assault on Baghdad; a worst-case scenario that was used often in briefings to the policymakers. By the end of the second week of April 2003, after U.S. troops entered Baghdad, most were still anxiously waiting for news of the discovery of WMD in Iraq even as some in the U.S. and international press and public were becoming increasingly more skeptical. Despite the fact that no WMD had been used by Saddam or found during combat operations, the Intelligence Community’s (IC) judgment that WMD programs existed in Iraq was still considered mostly valid. It was widely believed that it was only a matter of time before proof, or at least credible evidence, would be uncovered.

This continuing expectation of WMD, however, led to less than objective premature announcements based on incomplete and/or erroneous intelligence that after further examination turned out to be false. Rather than searching for the truth, there were growing concerns that the objective of some CIA and DIA intelligence analysts, as well as their managers and leadership, was to search only for confirmation of WMD. They did not appear to be interested in any intelligence uncovered that contradicted this preferred narrative. Some of us began to question whether we were searching for WMD or searching for the truth.

On April 10, 2003, Kurdish Peshmerga military forces stopped a truck hauling a canvas-covered flat-bed semi-trailer at a checkpoint in Irbil, Kurdistan, in Northern Iraq. Under the canvas, they discovered processing equipment mounted on the trailer. After some delay, the Kurds notified U.S. military forces in the area and turned the truck over to them. These U.S. forces in turn informed Central Command (CENTCOM) of the discovery and provided photographs of the trailer with its equipment exposed under the tarp. The CENTCOM intelligence analysts immediately believed they recognized the configuration of the equipment on the trailer as the possible mobile biological warfare (BW) agent production plant described by the German BND intelligence source who later would be publicly known by the infamous and ironic codename, “CURVE BALL.”

The news of the capture and photographs of the trailer was passed back to DIA and CIA where the Iraq BW analysts, including myself, quickly came to the same preliminary conclusion as the CENTCOM analysts. It was immediately apparent to all of us involved that the trailer had “striking similarities” to CURVE BALL’s description of mobile BW agent production plants; that we finally had the ‘smoking gun’ proof of Iraqi WMD that we were searching for but couldn’t obtain until now. To say that we were absolutely elated with this news would be a serious understatement.

A military team from the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) Joint Task Force-20 (JTF-20), aided by the Pentagon’s Chemical/Biological Intelligence Support Teams (CBIST) in Iraq, quickly conducted a “non-intrusive technical evaluation” of the production system. Together they drafted a 75-page report, complete with annotated color photographs, elaborate flow charts, and detailed diagrams entitled, “Field Exploitation of the Irbil Transportable BW Production Trailer.” The title alone announced the rushed conclusions of the report. The exploitation team assessed that the system mounted on the trailer was designed for the fermentation of BW agents and linked it to CURVE BALL’s claims, stating that they assess that “the trailer is probably the latest generation of the reported Iraqi transportable BW production trailers.”

There were numerous direct references to CURVE BALL’s claims throughout the report. Team members were obviously heavily influenced in their assessment by the source’s reporting, as well as by the positive reactions of the DIA and CIA analysts to the news of the trailer. They appeared intent from the beginning to interpret the capabilities of the system to fit the claims in his intelligence reports, even going as far as rationalizing inefficiencies in the system’s process by alleging a sophisticated denial & deception (D&D) campaign by the Iraqis. The conclusion stated, “As a result of a non-intrusive exploitation conducted on the trailer found in Irbil, JTF-20 assesses this is probably trailer number one of a third generation of the DIA-reported two trailer system,” referring directly to the DIA’s Defense HUMINT Service reporting from CURVE BALL.

The JTF-20 report of the technical evaluation on the trailer was disseminated not only to those analysts in the U.S. IC with access to CURVE BALL’s reporting, but also to the those in the United Kingdom (as well as Australia and Canada), giving everyone the clear impression that this was the mobile BW plant described by CURVE BALL and removing any doubts. The trailer was later loaded on a military aircraft and flown to Camp Slayer at Baghdad International Airport for further exploitation. On May 9, 2003, U.S. military forces discovered a second flat-bed semi-trailer at the Iraqi Al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development and Engineering Facility in Mosul, which although unfinished, was similarly equipped as the first trailer discovered the previous month.

At approximately the same time that the U.S. military teams were evaluating the purpose of the trailers, CIA and DIA officers were working—unfortunately separately and sometimes at cross purposes—to provide the photographs of the trailers to the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) intelligence service. On April 30, 2003, the CIA leadership requested that photographs of the trailer be shown to CURVE BALL as soon as possible to get his reaction. Unknown to them, two DIA analysts had already provided the photographs to the BND, asking that they be given to CURVE BALL to get his reaction. When the German’s showed him the photographs and asked if this was the mobile BW agent production plant that he worked on, CURVE BALL just stared at the photos, pausing for a moment completely dumbfounded. He knew that he had fabricated the entire story of the mobile BW plants but here in front of him were images of a trailer that appeared to be an extremely close match to the ones that he had described. He didn’t know the purpose of this trailer but true to his nature, CURVE BALL used the discovery to bolster his fabricated intelligence on the mobile BW plants.

Obviously, this trailer was not related to anything in CURVE BALL’s fabricated story but he recognized certain Iraqi-made components on the trailer; a control panel, a reactor vessel connected to a large chiller, piping, valves and gauges, as well as pumps and water tanks, etc., all similar to other components for the legitimate projects he had helped procure while working at his Iraqi engineering center before he walked away from his job during the last few days of 1994. At first CURVE BALL thought he should just say that this was his trailer but as a practiced liar he quickly realized that could create more problems for him. After all, he didn’t have any role in the construction of this trailer and would have a very difficult time explaining exactly how it worked (fortunately the JTF-20 was conveniently already in the process of doing that for him). He decided to play it safe and make another false claim. “It’s not the mobile plant that I worked on but I definitely recognize specific pieces of equipment mounted on this trailer as the same ones that were mounted on mine,” CURVE BALL blatantly lied to the Germans.

Continuing his fabrication, CURVE BALL added, “They are probably newer versions of my original plans,” he said fabricating with a completely straight face. Clarifying, he said he had recognized some operating problems in the design of the original plants. To remedy this situation, he submitted new designs to an Iraqi regime committee in August 1998, adding that he received a patent, and new trailers were built but he had departed Iraq in March 1999 before they were completed. He suggested that this trailer in the photographs was probably second or third generations based on his improved designs.

Assessing that the Germans had shared his mobile BW plant reporting with the Americans (obviously U.S. soldiers were in the photos with the trailer) and knowing that the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) already had access to others from his former Iraqi engineering center, CURVE BALL changed his original story; a huge red flag warning of fabrication. He now claimed that his previous identification of his immediate supervisor was just a cover story and that he really was working for another senior engineer at a different site northeast of Baghdad. Unfortunately, the BND, SIS, CIA and DIA analysts bought this new fabrication, never once questioning why CURVE BALL’s new claims only emerged now after more than three years of debriefings.

The Agency’s Iraq BW analysts assigned to the CURVE BALL case claimed in a May 13, 2003 memorandum to Director George Tenet and passed on to the White House, that the new reporting supported their assessment that the trailer is related to the one described by CURVE BALL. They stated that the engineering assessment produced by the JTF-20 experts “confirmed” this unit was designed for the production of biological materials, most likely BW agents, adding that they have not been able to identify an alternative use. Finally, they claimed the caustic material found in the “bioreactor” vessel indicated the system had been decontaminated and that this was just further Iraqi attempts to conceal BW agent production. Clearly showing how vested the CIA analysts were in this judgment, the memorandum also noted that the caustic material was being analyzed but stated that even negative sample analysis results will not change their assessment.

This memorandum, of course, was exactly what the senior Bush administration officials wanted to hear. In response, the CIA management tasked the senior CIA Iraq BW analyst to draft a longer finished intelligence product for the White House that would provide more detail on the trailers and their significance. Because the senior analyst’s colleague on the CURVE BALL case was out of the office on travel, I volunteered to co- author the proposed Intelligence Assessment (IA) with her, despite not being fully read into the case. It was a decision that I would soon regret.

To maintain relevance and access to the president, the CIA management and leadership continued to go out of their way to politically support the White House with positive intelligence and the trailers presented a golden opportunity to counter the bad news coming out of Iraq that no WMD—that the CIA claimed existed—had been found so far. The senior Iraq BW analyst and I finished drafting the classified IA on the trailers and sent it through upper management for review before it was to be released to the senior Bush Administration officials at the end of the week. I was surprised when it flew through the analytical review process extremely quickly with no dissent or concerns and was immediately carried by the CIA briefer to the White House for President Bush to read on the morning of May 16th.

Although I had been to Iraq twice before as a United Nations (UN) weapons inspector and volunteered to be be sent back now to join the “search for WMD”, the senior analyst on CURVE BALL was instead assigned by CIA management to go first. While she was off completing the bureaucratic processing for her pending trip to Iraq, I was informed by our CIA Iraq CBW team chief that the IA we wrote on the trailers had been extremely “well-received” by President Bush. In fact, it was so good, they told me, that President Bush ordered it be converted into an unclassified “White Paper” for public release within three days. My first reaction to this announcement was outright disbelief. In fact, my first reaction was to laugh sarcastically.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked the team chief who I noticed was not also laughing. I explained that timeline would not be possible as we had to first clear the unclassified use of CURVE BALL’s reporting with the German BND, as well as coordinate within the U.S. IC which would require even more time. The team chief then informed me that President Bush had already unilaterally declassified the intelligence. Obviously, the president wanted to quickly get the message out that an Iraqi WMD production system had been found, but I asked if the CIA should be the organization to draft a public document that would be used for a policy announcement? It appeared that there was a great deal of political pressure on the CIA leadership from the president to get this done quickly and they in turn put a great deal pressure on the analysts to publish an unclassified White Paper in record time. This was exactly the same rush to judgment that had been used for the Iraq WMD NIE and that, so far, had not turned out well.

The senior Iraq BW analyst was scheduled to fly to Iraq early the following week which. meant the preparation and coordination of the White Paper fell almost completely on my shoulders. As if drafting a White Paper for the president that would be used to declare a policy success wasn’t enough, the CIA leadership pushed ahead with other disturbing activities to politically support the administration. That same Friday afternoon, the senior BW analyst and I were told by CIA management to come into headquarters the next day on Saturday, May 17, 2003, to provide a teleconference intelligence briefing. When I asked for the identity of the government official or officials we would be briefing, I was informed instead that the briefing would be for Judith Miller. “Isn’t she a reporter for The New York Times????” I asked my CIA management. At first, I could not fathom why CIA intelligence analysts would be asked to brief a newspaper reporter. This was highly unusual, at least for me in my career, and I could not remember ever hearing about this type of thing happening before. As CIA intelligence officers, we were trained to treat the press as a counterintelligence threat, not a political ally.

Regardless, as we prepared for the teleconference briefing, it was becoming obvious at least to me that the CIA through its Office of Public Affairs (OPA) had been instructed to provide a public briefing of our new intelligence assessment on the trailers to support the soon to be released White Paper. The question remained, however, for what possible reason did the CIA agree to provide this briefing to Miller and at who’s request? This was obviously part of a public relations campaign to support the White House but I wasn’t sure if CIA leadership was doing this on their own to please the Bush administration or if the White House had ordered it. My immediate suspicions fell on the Office of the Vice President but, in any case, the CIA management and leadership seemed to have no problem with it. I only later shocking learned about VP Dick Cheney and his Chief of Staff Scooter Libby’s use of Miller in manipulating the press to obtain public support for the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq. Obviously, this briefing had been related to that public relations campaign.

After arriving at CIA headquarters on Saturday morning, the senior analyst and I were directed to OPA where we were introduced to Bill Harlow, the Agency’s senior Public Affairs Officer. Harlow explained that we would conduct the briefing through a telephone conference call with Miller and her associate, William J. Broad. We sat down at the small conference table in the center of the office while Harlow got Miller and Broad on the speaker phone. We didn’t identify ourselves except to say that we were senior CIA intelligence analysts assigned to the Iraq BW account. We gave a briefing on our current assessment of the trailers and then proceeded to answer questions posed by Miller. To our surprise, she had already been told that we would publish an unclassified White Paper on our assessment that the trailers were mobile plants designed to produce BW agents. I listened while the senior analyst explained to Miller all the reasons why she believed this to be the case. I was there to support the conclusions of the senior analyst because I also believed at the time that the trailers were related to CURVE BALL’s claims. My belief, however, would soon drastically change when I was faced with the deliberate politicization of intelligence and learned of serious credibility problems with the source that were already known by the CIA and DIA, as well as the SIS and BND.

Four days later on May 21, 2003, the New York Times published an article entitled, “U.S. Analysts Link Iraq Labs to Germ Arms,” written by Judith Miller and William J. Broad and based on our OPA briefing. The statements in the article were probably what the CIA’s OPA had intended; stating the case that the trailers were for mobile BW agent production.

With the CIA’s unclassified White Paper finally scheduled for publication and release on May 28, 2003 after some bureaucratic delays and receiving White House approval, certain senior DIA analysts were growing increasingly concerned at what they perceived to be a rushed job by the CIA to put out a premature evaluation of the trailers to the public (the two DIA analysts who were strong supporters of CURVE BALL were not part of this group). These DIA analysts had previously been heavily pressured by the CIA— specifically by the senior CIA Iraq BW analyst and her management—to quickly accept the agency’s judgments but now decided that they were no longer going to sit back and allow themselves to be railroaded into concurring with the Agency's unverified conclusions. By late May 2003, the senior DIA analysts had developed strong doubts about the CIA-stated BW purpose of the trailers and wanted to investigate the physical evidence more thoroughly.

To resolve this dispute with CIA, the DIA analysts utilized the “Jefferson Group,” a DIA- led initiative made up of government and civilian technical experts who specialize in analyzing and countering biological threats, according to an article, “Trailers Carried Case for War,” published later in 2006 by Joby Warrick of The Washington Post. The article noted that project leaders put together a group that consisted of eight Americans and one British expert, each with at least a decade of experience in biological and chemical processes. The CIA, however, was not about to let this group examine the trailers on their own given the significance of the results if they went against the Agency’s official analytical position. At the insistence of the Agency, the group was forced to also accept a CIA microbiologist as part of the team.

DIA arranged for this group to quickly fly to Iraq and conduct a fact-finding examination of the trailers in Iraq at the same that that the CIA’s White Paper was being readied for final publication. The expert technical team was assembled in Kuwait and flew on to Saddam International Airport in Baghdad to begin their work early on May 25, 2003. Having been previously exposed to the intelligence reporting on the trailers, these DIA- sponsored experts quickly discovered numerous serious contradictions and problems with the original JTF-20/CBIST technical assessment during their inspection on May 25-26, 2003. “Within the first four hours,” said one team member, it “was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs.” Only the CIA microbiologist on the team argued against this conclusion. Incredulously, he stated that the trailer could have been used for BW agent production “with modifications”.

To be fair and objective, the experts agreed with the premise of his theory but concluded that although the reactor vessel on the trailers could be modified to support an aerobic or anaerobic process, many features led to the conclusion that it was not practical or suitable for this objective. Schooling the CIA microbiologist, they added that “[t]he ability to achieve fermentation in a given vessel does not qualify the vessel as a biological production system,” because “[f]ermentation could take place in virtually any empty vessel.” Australian Rod Barton, a former United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) microbiologist later working in the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group in 2004 read the report and sarcastically added that, “It would be easier to start all over with just a bucket.” I suspect that this CIA microbiologist, who I previously worked with and respected, was pressured by the CIA management to propose the “modifications” theory in an effort to defend the CIA’s flawed intelligence assessment regarding their alleged BW judgment for the trailer.

According to Warrick’s article, news of the team’s early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the final technical report. “Over the next two days, a stream of anxious emails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications,” Warwick wrote. “The reason was obvious. The conclusions of this unbiased and objective technical team would completely undermine and contradict the CIA’s pending White Paper,” he added With their Iraq mission completed, the team members returned to their regular jobs and watched as their preliminary and final reports, originally marked “UNCLASSIFIED” were now modified and deliberately classified as “SECRET” by U.S. IC mangers who locked them away in safes to prevent the public from learning the truth. “I went home and fully expected that our findings would be publicly stated,” one member recalled to Warrick. “It never happened. And I just had to live with it.” For nearly a year afterward, the Bush administration and senior intelligence officials—specifically Vice President Cheney and CIA Director GeorgeTenet—continued to publicly assert that the trailers were for BW agent production, contrary to these technical experts’ conclusions.

These reports were originally unclassified because the team’s conclusion was only a technical evaluation of mobile trailers that were designed to produce hydrogen gas used for weather balloons used by Iraqi artillery units as the Iraqi engineers had claimed.
This was not even a secret project in Iraq and the Iraqi documents related to the trailers design and their construction had not been classified by the Saddam regime. Neither of the team’s reports contained any classified intelligence—such as CURVE BALL’s reporting that it may have been a newer version of his alleged mobile BW agent production plants—or any other information sensitive to U.S. national security at the time. However, classified information was disingenuously added to a Preface of the reports. This Preface was marked classified while the rest of the unclassified report was formatted differently, showing that it had been added separately. None of the paragraphs in the remainder of the report—including the Executive Summary, Table of Contents, Introduction, Overview, or text in the body of the report—were marked classified, clearly showing text in the Preface had been inserted simply to make the entire report classified.

It would not be until the publication of Warrick’s press article in The Washington Post on April 12, 2006 that the public would find out about the technical expert’s conclusions on the trailers—and only then because members of this team courageously came forward to the newspaper to describe their experience. According to Warrick, none of the team members would consent to being identified by name however because of a valid fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. As a result of this information being made public, the U.S. IC only later would relent and mostly declassify—with redactions of course— the team’s final report. According to Warrick’s 2006 article, “Intelligence officials and the White House have repeatedly denied allegations that intelligence was hyped or manipulated in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But officials familiar with the technical team’s reports are questioning anew whether intelligence agencies played down or dismissed postwar evidence that contradicted the administration’s public views about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.” The press article added, “[s]pokesmen for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency declined to comment on the specific findings of the technical report because it remains classified.”

Regardless, on the morning of May 28, 2003 (WDC local time), analysts in the CIA, including myself, began to learn the results of the May 25-26 on-site investigation by the DIA sponsored technical experts and engineers. These experts—except for the CIA microbiologist—concluded that the trailers were designed for a chemical reaction to produce a gas, most likely hydrogen, especially given the sealed trailer lighting to prevent explosions. As I quickly read through the conclusions of the preliminary report, I was immediately concerned and began to seriously doubt the accuracy of our conclusions in the White Paper that the trailers were for BW agent production as CURVE BALL had claimed. I realized that we in the CIA were just about to inform the world of our judgment and it was now beginning to look like we were completely wrong. If so, we would end up looking like complete idiots. Given this same situation occurred when myself and the CIA’s UAV analysts were obstructed by the CIA leadership from revising the flawed UAV judgment regarding the attempted Iraqi purchase of the Garmin topographic U.S. flight planning software in the October 1, 2002 NIE just before its publication, I was deeply concerned that the same thing would happen here.

The DIA-sponsored technical experts report had left little doubt that the purpose of the trailer was for an exothermic chemical reaction to produce a gas—most likely hydrogen as the Iraqi’s said—rather than the BW agent production as described by CURVE BALL. Reviewing the technical evaluation previously produced by the TF-20 military officers in early May 2003 and comparing those results with the conclusions of the late May 2003 DIA-sponsored technical experts group, it was easy to conclude that the TF-20 report was completely biased from beginning to end and lacked any objective evaluation. Obviously, the TF-20 report had been significantly influenced by the intelligence reports from CURVE BALL and the early judgments of intelligence analysts that he was credible. The TF-20 officers were not ignorant but they were unqualified. They still failed to notice blatant technical contradictions to their judgments that were clearly. apparent to the technical experts. Obviously, the only response was for the CIA to do the right thing and not publish the White Paper.

By this time, however, the senior CIA Iraq BW analyst had returned from Iraq. She and the CIA management and leadership quickly disregarded the conclusions of the DIA- sponsored technical report. I was shocked at this because it seemed obvious that the expert’s technical report was correct. How could the CIA just reject it outright? Regardless of my serious doubts and concerns over the validity of our judgment in the White Paper, I did not have the political clout needed to aggressively challenge the official CIA analytical judgments—even if I helped draft them—and push for a more objective reassessment. In my opinion, the integrity and credibility of the CIA were now on the line but no one in the headquarters building seemed to care. I was completely disillusioned. This was not the organization that I thought I had joined almost twenty years earlier. My faith in the CIA was quickly fading as I watched others more senior in the agency deliberately politicize the intelligence by manipulating the trailer information in order to please, or at least not undermine, the president in the White House.

The CIA pressed forward with the publication and release of the White Paper as instructed by the White House. It was almost an exact copy of the IA we originally sent to President Bush and included the graphic that I helped design. For this graphic, I had previously suggested a facing page with the photographs of the trailer laid out next to the graphics of the trailers from Powell’s UN speech. I had believed this clearly showed the striking similarities between the two and was very proud of the result at that time. The graphic was very effective when shown by Powell on the video screen in the UN Security Council and certainly served to enhance the CIA’s judgment. Now, I was ashamed to have been involved in this work and wanted to correct this deliberate deception. Because I was scheduled as the next CIA WMD analyst to go to Iraq, I decided one of my first tasks after arriving in Baghdad would be to personally inspect the alleged mobile BW agent production trailer to see it for myself.

According to Michael Isikoff and David Corn in their excellent 2006 book, Hubris, The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, the CIA’s unclassified White Paper was a godsend for the White House. The next day after the White Paper was published, President Bush appeared on a Polish TV show to talk about the trailer during a trip to Europe. He used the interview to highlight the fact that the ‘smoking gun’ showing the Iraqis had produced WMD had been discovered. “We have found the weapons of mass destruction,” Bush claimed. In response to a question from the reporter on the show, the president gloated, “You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons...and we’ve so far discovered two. And we’ll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.” Even as Bush made this Iraqi WMD claim, the DIA-sponsored technical experts, CIA and DIA intelligence analysts, managers, and leadership already knew that the president’s claim was false.

I flew to Iraq in early June 2003 knowing that I was about to aggressively challenge the CIA’s flawed judgments in the White Paper I helped draft. After arriving on the ground in Baghdad, I immediately drove over to the south east side of the secured airport compound near the Water Palace in an area later named “Camp Slayer,” and personally inspected the alleged “mobile BW agent production trailer.” I was in a hurry because there was a rumor that the military planned to transport the trailers back to the U.S. to prevent them from ‘falling into the wrong hands’ so time was short. Getting out of my vehicle, I walked up to the trailers where I found a small number of U.S. military personnel working on them. I immediately recognized one of them as Capt. Jim Burans, a microbiologist from the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC). I knew Burans from our previous UNSCOM work together on Iraq when we were involved supporting the UN BW sampling collection and analysis. Fortunately, he was already aware of my true name and CIA affiliation.

At this time, DIA and CIA were still locked in the political battle back in WDC over the purpose of the trailer—BW agent production versus hydrogen gas production—and Burans had reluctantly been dragged into the fight. Burans recognized me immediately and complained that “some idiots over in the CIA wrote an assessment that was totally wrong,” After explaining to his amusement that I was one of those idiots, Burans gave me a quick tour of the trailer, pointing out the conclusive technical reasons it was designed for the production of hydrogen gas as the Iraqi engineers had said; matching the conclusions of the Jefferson Group. It was blatantly apparent by the end of our discussion that the trailers were not for BW agent production and instead, had been designed to collect gas produced from an exothermic chemical reaction. One close look at the reactor vessel (not a fermentor) on the trailer, built to withstand extreme pressure and temperature, made that conclusion obvious.

Burans confirmed that the DIA-sponsored experts team, as well British microbiologist, Dr. David Kelly—who had also worked with both of us previously in UNSCOM—had visited the airport compound the week before. After inspecting the trailers and taking photographs, Kelly, along with an American Ph.D. chemist from the U.S. Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center (ECBC) in Maryland, had reached the same conclusion; the trailer was for a chemical process, not biological. Obviously, these trailers had nothing to do with CURVE BALL’s claims of mobile BW agent production plants. As far as all of us were concerned, the issue of the trailers was now closed ...or was it?

I reported our conclusion back to those in the CIA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. but it was rejected. It was initially confusing to me when these Iraq BW analysts, their management, and finally, the Agency leadership, refused to accept the expert team’s obvious conclusions. But as I would soon learn—despite overwhelming conclusive physical proof obtained by highly respected technical experts that contradicted the original CIA judgment—the Agency would continue to defend its flawed intelligence assessment that the trailers were for BW agent production, as claimed by CURVE BALL, well into mid-2004. This was the first solid indication that something was very seriously wrong inside the CIA; not just with the unacknowledged bias and cognitive dissonance impacting on the analytical process, but also with the political motivations of the senior CIA management and leadership desperate to please the president.

Fortunately, the U.S. and foreign press were investigating these trailers as well and they would be much harder for the governments involved to control. The next day, June 14, 2003, the British newspaper The Guardian published an article, “Iraq Mobile Labs Nothing to do with Germ Warfare, Report Finds,” by Peter Beaumont, Anthony Barnett, and Gaby Hinsliff. The article stated that “a British scientist and biological weapons expert”—an obvious reference to Kelly—examined the trailers and stated, “They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were—facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.” The article went on to say that the expert’s conclusions were an embarrassment for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who like President Bush had claimed that the discovery of the trailers justified the WMD case for the war against Saddam Hussein.

Regardless of all the overwhelming proof against it, the CIA would officially continue to falsely claim for another year that the trailers “with modifications” were proof that Saddam had produced BW agent. A President’s Daily Brief (PDB) memorandum on CURVE BALL was finally published and delivered to the policymakers on May 25, 2004, informing them—and especially Powell—that the source’s discredited reporting was being recalled (DIA’s version of this memorandum was declassified in November 2017). Regardless, the CIA’s PDB would only admit that CURVE BALL had been determined to be “unreliable”; a deliberate understatement to give the impression of uncertainty. Refusing to officially resolve this case, the memorandum falsely claimed that there still may be an Iraqi “mobile BW program”. Incredulously, this was almost two and a half months to the day after CURVE BALL blatantly lied when finally debriefed by the CIA’s Counterintelligence Center (CIC) deputy chief in Germany and eight months after myself and my team investigating his claims on the ground in Iraq conclusively proved that he was a fabricator. Shockingly, this source managed to fool the world’s premier intelligence services for over four years while obtaining substantial financial support and eventually German citizenship in the process.

The only benefit of the CIA’s disingenuous PDB memorandum was that the Agency’s biased analysts and politically-motivated managers and leadership were finally forced to admit that, “the recall of CURVE BALL’s reporting also undermines the intelligence case that the two trailers found by Coalition forces in mid-2003 may have been intended for BW agent production.” Not completely “throwing in the towel” on this case (as I had been accused of), the PDB still claimed that the CIA’s WMD analysts remained “uncertain” of the the intended purpose of the trailers, framing this as simply an analytical disagreement. Ironically, neither the CIA or DIA would admit that CURVE BALL’s demise as an intelligence source completely discredited their Iraq WMD case, only that the recall of his fabricated reporting had “weakened” it. Shockingly, this flawed PDB would be the last finished intelligence ever produced on this case. The CIA and DIA never officially resolved their flawed analytical judgment with the policymakers on the trailers, or on CURVE BALL for that matter.

The politicization of intelligence continues, as I warned. Certain presidents have used intelligence to support established political policy rather than to help formulate that policy. We saw this occur before with the Iraq WMD intelligence failure. History is repeating itself because we are not willing to learn from our mistakes.

This is the first in a series of brief articles on the Iraq weapons of mass destruction (WMD) intelligence and political failure to help, not just the intelligence officers involved but also the general public, identify exactly what went wrong. This information will hopefully assist them to avoid or at least mitigate future failures; if, of course, they are willing to learn from their mistakes. To fully understand the root causes of this intelligence failure, we only need to examine the CURVE BALL case as an excellent example of what can go seriously and disastrously wrong in the collection, analysis, management, and leadership of intelligence, especially when it is allowed to be influenced by politics. The full detailed story, hopefully left unreacted by the CIA and DIA during its mandatory review, will be presented in my forthcoming book, Absence of Evidence; The Incredible Story of the Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure from Inside the American, British, and German intelligence services.

The CURVE BALL Case

In 2003, the United States Government, supported by a coalition of allied military forces, engaged in a preemptive invasion of Iraq to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein based on the alleged threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The most important and significant intelligence source for this WMD justification was an Iraqi engineer ironically codenamed “CURVE BALL” who claimed that Iraq had a secret project to produce biological warfare (BW) agents in mobile plants mounted on semi- truck trailers and railcars. Unilaterally handled by the German Federal Intelligence Service, officially known as the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), CURVE BALL’s “unverified” reporting was shared with both the American Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as with the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) beginning in early 2000.

Eventually over one hundred intelligence reports would be disseminated by the DIA’s intelligence collection arm, the Defense HUMINT Service, based on the BND’s debriefings of CURVE BALL from January 2000 to January 2003. This was done, unfortunately, with little or no vetting as to the veracity of the claims or the credibility of the source. This compartmented material was supplemented by additional intelligence from the SIS and some clarifying reporting disseminated by the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. Misinterpreted intelligence reporting from other allegedly “corroborating” sources only increased these intelligence services confidence in CURVE BALL’s sensational claims. This intelligence reporting together formed the cornerstone of the U.S. and foreign Intelligence Community’s flawed judgment on the existence and status of an alleged Iraqi offensive BW program. Making the situation worse, this alarming reporting also influenced intelligence assessments on other alleged Iraq WMD programs—chemical weapons (CW) development efforts specifically but those on potential delivery systems as well—by encouraging the other CIA analysts to assume that clandestine Iraqi efforts on these technologies must exist as well. Coupled with the CIA’s ongoing promotion of its senior nuclear analysts’ concocted theory of the intent behind the Iraqi purchase of “aluminum tubes for centrifuges” and the alleged “uranium from Africa” based on obviously forged documents, CURVE BALL’s claims of mobile BW agent production plants that were used in CIA’s finished intelligence products were “well-received” by a George W. Bush White House desperate for intelligence that painted Saddam Hussein as an “imminent threat.” By late 2002, the stage was now set for one of the worst major intelligence and political failures in the history of the United States.

Besides being used in numerous intelligence assessments and Presidential Daily Briefs (PDBs) articles—the most important and sensitive finished intelligence produced by the CIA—CURVE BALL’s suspect claims were also included in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. However, the most significant use of CURVE BALL’s flawed intelligence was as the centerpiece of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s policy speech to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on February 5, 2003 that was broadcast not only in the U.S. but also to the rest of the world.

At the time it was presented, Powell’s speech regarding this alleged WMD threat from Saddam Hussein was considered a tremendous achievement by the CIA leadership and senior analytical management, despite the fact that it clearly crossed the line into promoting policy. CURVE BALL’s reporting, along with the associated “slick” CIA graphics of the alleged mobile BW plants, appeared to have won over almost everyone who had previously questioned the need for a U.S.-led military invasion of Iraq. In fact, it was the only intelligence in the entire speech that was reportedly based on a credible HUMINT (HUMan INTelligence) source with direct knowledge of WMD in Iraq. In other words, an “eyewitness” to the fact that WMD was again being produced by Saddam Hussein’s regime. After suffering from years of irrelevance and lack of access to the policymaking process during the preceding Clinton administration, the CIA’s leadership believed the Agency was once again playing a direct and invaluable role to its “First Customer,” President Bush, by providing the intelligence justification for his pre- established policy of “regime change” in Iraq.

The UN speech was considered a tremendous success by the Bush White House and had the political impact that the Bush Administration desperately wanted to achieve. Of course, this was primarily due to the unrivaled respect that most people had for Secretary Powell, known for his “doctrine” that the U.S. needed to exhaust all “political, economic, and diplomatic means”, and only if all were futile, would necessitate the nation resorting to military force. Dismissing this doctrine and proceeding recklessly, the White House even suggested that by installing a new Iraq government, the seeds of democracy might be planted in the Middle East that could spread to other countries in the region.

With Powell’s speech, the White House and CIA were also able to convince most of the U.S. Congress, public, and press, as well as the intelligence services, politicians, and press of our foreign allies, that Saddam Hussein “has” WMD (CIA leadership was instructed by senior White House officials to pressure analysts to move beyond what the current intelligence would support). Based on that manipulated finished intelligence and ignoring the Powell doctrine, those same White House officials could now state publicly that the Iraqi dictator was a “grave and gathering threat” who had to be immediately dealt with using military force. CURVE BALL’s claim of an alleged TOP SECRET Iraqi program to design, build, and operate mobile BW production plants was, without any doubt, the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Iraq WMD “smoking gun” and the prelude to yet another Gulf war, but there was only one problem with this intelligence...

...it was completely false.

Worse, the CIA leadership, senior management, and analysts had been warned that it was unreliable but they used the unverified intelligence anyway. Despite this outward appearance of confidence by the CIA, DIA, SIS, and BND with CURVE BALL, there were serious internal problems with this source that had surfaced years before start of the March 2003 war that would not become widely known outside of these intelligence services, even by congressional oversight committees, a presidentially appointed commission, and foreign government investigations until months and even years after the war had ended. Some of the source’s more blatant and egregious credibility problems remain hidden to this day, shielded from public disclosure through the abuse of the CIA and DIA’s classification authority.

Before this UNSC meeting, CIA operations officers had redacted CURVE BALL’s suspect intelligence reporting from copies of Powell’s speech that were sent to them, but it was always put back in by the Agency’s seventh floor leadership. Powell himself, along with other senior State Department officials including deputy Richard Armitage, and Chief of Staff Larry Wilkerson, came to the CIA Headquarters to personally vet the intelligence claims, not realizing that they were being deliberated misled. Powell personally questioned the analysts and managers regarding the credibility of the intelligence without realizing that the naysayers in CIA—operations officers who would not have hesitated in identifying serious credibility problems with the intelligence—were not present in the meetings. Their absence and the lack of acknowledgement of this fact was not an oversight by the CIA leadership and senior management, it was deliberate action to avoid angering the White House by undermining the WMD judgments at a crucial time in the rush to war.

At one point in the discussions, Powell directly questioned the CIA director, George Tenet and his deputy director, John McLauglin, about the credibility of CURVE BALL’s intelligence reporting and was told, “It’s solid.” Given that Powell was about to put his political credibility and reputation on the line to present the CIA's intelligence case in a public speech, he had every right to attempt to vet the claims on which it was based. Not having direct access to the contradictory and derogatory intelligence or even access to those CIA operations officers who had aggressively challenged CIA’s assessments, Powell and his staff were at a complete disadvantage. In other words, they were being played by the CIA leadership and management who were deliberately controlling and manipulating the intelligence. This untenable situation would later come back to haunt all of them, especially Powell, when the CIA leadership later let him take the majority of the blame for the flawed intelligence that the Agency had provided.

Interestingly, as the February 5, 2003 date of the UN speech approached and contrary to the strong confidence they displayed to Powell and others in the Bush administration, the CIA leadership privately remained extremely concerned that CURVE BALL could undermine his own intelligence claims if he were allowed the freedom to speak to the press. To prevent this, DDCI McLaughlin instructed CIA stations and bases in Europe to make certain that the BND maintained tight control of their source. On February 3, 2003, the day after Powell’s last visit to CIA in a futile attempt to vet the speech, the DDCI’s executive assistant sent a memorandum entitled, “German BW Source,” to Tyler Drumheller, the EUR Division Chief who had been one of those operations officers aggressively trying to warn the CIA leadership not to rely on CURVE BALL’s intelligence.

Shockingly, the memorandum, quoted in the WMD Commission’s March 2005 final report, stated: “[pseudonym of EUR Division chief], this will confirm the DDCI’s informal request to touch base w/the German stations once more on the current status/ whereabouts of the emigre [CURVE BALL] who reported on the mobile BW plants. A great deal of effort is being expended to vet the intelligence that underlies SecState’s upcoming UN presentation. Similarly, we want to make every precaution against unwelcome surprise that might emerge concerning the intel case; clearly, public statements by this émigré, press accounts of his reporting or credibility, or even direct press access to him would cause a number of potential concerns. The DDCI would be grateful for the [Berlin chief of station’s] view on the immediate ‘days-after’ reaction in Germany surrounding the source of this key BW reporting.”

This document, probably more than any others, conclusively proved that the CIA leadership was well aware of serious credibility problems with CURVE BALL and the veracity of his reporting. After manipulating the intelligence for the White House, they now wanted to control the source of those claims to avoid the political embarrassment should he suddenly admit that he was fabricating. They were very concerned that immediately after Powell presented his UN speech, CURVE BALL could come out and publicly recant everything he said about the alleged mobile BW plants; possibly even accepting financial incentives for telling the truth and admitting that it was all just a lie to get German citizenship for himself and his family. This would be an enormous political disaster for the CIA leadership and for the Bush administration if that were to occur and McLaughlin knew very well what the consequences would be for both. Therefore, the DDCI wanted to make absolutely certain that the BND had CURVE BALL fully under control to prevent this suspect intelligence source from talking to anyone, especially the press.

Although most officials in the U.S. and foreign intelligence services came to the same flawed judgment regarding CURVE BALL for reasons that will be explained in my book, Absence of Evidence, the CIA’s biased analysts, and politically-motivated managers, and leadership—more than any other intelligence agency’s personnel—put far more faith in the sensational claims of this unvetted source than others, refused to seriously question the credibility of the source or the veracity of this reporting even when warned. Most significant, they did not allow any others inside or outside of the CIA to challenge his story, including their own operations officers who provided contradictory and derogatory intelligence against CURVE BALL. Worse, despite knowing that serious doubts and concerns existed in the U.S. and allied foreign intelligence services regarding CURVE BALL’s sensational claims, the CIA promoted and defended this intelligence against any and all challengers. This allowed the Bush White House to use it politically to justify its pre-established policy of regime change in Iraq (rather than to help formulate policy as intended) and aggressively drive the alleged Iraq WMD issue to its disastrous and inevitable tragic conclusion.

Had the CIA and DIA not failed catastrophically to assess the actual status of WMD programs in Iraq; namely that these programs simply did not exist after 1991, that the regime was contained by UN inspections and sanctions, and that Saddam was not the “grave and gathering threat” he was assessed to be, the result would not have been a major historical disaster for the U.S. and its allies.

...So what went wrong?

Last October 2024, I began submitting official Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for the declassification and public release of 120 specific documents related to the discredited Iraqi intelligence source known publicly under the infamous and ironic codename, “CURVE BALL.” Processing this flawed intelligence reporting should have been straightforward and quick. After all, myself and others conclusively proved it was a complete fabrication twenty-three years ago and the source himself publicly admitted fifteen years ago he made up the entire story of his alleged Iraq mobile Biological Warfare (BW) agent production plants. Regardless, after almost two years, I’m still waiting for any of my multiple FOIA requests for the fabricated CURVE BALL intelligence documents to move beyond the first stage of “initial processing.” In response to my many queries regarding the status of my request, the CIA and DIA FOIA offices have informed me that they estimate it will be approximately two and half years or more before they would even begin to process my requests with no guarantee that any of the patently false documents would ever be released.

So why should this FOIA process take so long to complete, often with the unsatisfying result of heavily redacted documents that contradict the claim of the “freedom of information”? The answer will certainly not surprise anyone who has attempted to pry the truth out of the hands of the United States Government (USG) and especially from its intelligence organizations; the FOIA process has been deliberately corrupted. Loopholes in the way the Act was written, such as the lack of any enforced deadlines, are easily abused by these agencies and used to shield themselves from being forced to accept responsibility and accountability for their mistakes, and worse, intelligence reform. According to a report published in 2020 by the Project on Government Oversight, “Congress created FOIA to give the public access to the inner workings of the federal government. But the government can misuse the law to avoid transparency and hide documents that shed light on internal problems. Even the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) admitted in a March 14, 2024 blog that “FOIA Backlogs Hinder Government Transparency and Accountability.”

The reasons for the excessive amount of time required by the CIA and DIA to process FOIA requests are obvious; bureaucracy and politics. As an example of the excessive bureaucracy, the FOIA review process consists of nine stages; 1) Initial Processing, 2) Records Search/ Review, 3) FOIA SME [Subject Matter Expert] Review, 4) Record Processing, 5) Referred for Consultation Review, 6) Quality Control Review, 7) Additional Action Required, 8) Processing Actions Complete, and finally 9) Delivery to the Requester. Given all these steps, and the length of time required for each one, it’s a wonder any documents are ever released in a reasonable amount of time.

The FOIA process was originally designed by Congress to be fairly straightforward; anyone can request government records from an agency, unless the information is exempt from disclosure. These exemptions, however, are the key to the overall problem. The FOIA contains nine exemptions allowing agencies to withhold sensitive information, such as classified national security, personal privacy, or active law enforcement records. To be fair, these exemptions are reasonable and, if applied properly, would protect sensitive information while leaving large amounts of additional information available to the public. Unfortunately, this is a big “if” and the record has shown that agencies often abuse these exemptions for their own benefit, primarily because they alone will decide what information is exempt and what is not. Honestly, transparency, and integrity in this decision-making exercise are expected but this is Washington, D.C. and politics always play a crucial role in everything. There are always some senior government officials who do not want certain information released to the public and are more than willing to use their authority to prevent it. According to a February 6, 2020 analysis by Nick Schwellenback and Sean Moulton from the Project on Government Oversight, “Government documents recently made public show that the federal government continues to abuse a provision of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to unjustifiably keep the public in the dark about important government matters that they have a right to know about.” Attempts have been made in Congress to reform the FOIA, the most recent in 2016, but regardless the abuse continues. The only redress available to FOIA requesters is to file a lawsuit against the offending agency to legally force compliance and public disclosure but, as in my case, the CIA and DIA can also disingenuously claim, despite the passage of twenty-one months, that they have not had sufficient time to process even my first FOIA request. If the CIA and DIA were to follow through by declassifying and releasing the documents listed in my FOIA request, I may be persuaded to drop my lawsuit if there was also sufficient follow through by the CIA’s PCRB. Without this continuing legal pressure, however, the CIA cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

My FOIA experience so far has been in line with previous frequent criticism of this process; chronic backlogs and crippling delays, abuse in the liberal use of exemptions, outdated technology, over-redactions (blacking-out unclassified non-exempt material which renders the released records virtually unusable to the public), and the most frustrating, the deliberate understaffing, lack of sufficient resources, and low-priority mission of the FOIA offices in these intelligence agencies that results in years-long delays of requests. Consequently, the bureaucrats and politically-appointed staff within these offices have an incentive to drag their feet or err on the side of secrecy to avoid political accountability. Because of these systemic flaws in the FOIA process, many journalists, legal scholars, and public interest groups must resort to filing lawsuits just to compel agencies to respond to their requests. I was put in a similar situation and had to resort to filing a lawsuit because the CIA’s Publication Classification Board (PCRB) was using the excessive delays claimed by the CIA and DIA FOIA offices as a ‘catch-22’ excuse to refuse to complete the review of the manuscript of my proposed book on CURVE BALL, entitled “Absence of Evidence,” which despite being submitted in January 2025, is still “in process.”

To allow readers to fully understand enormity of the problem, the following description of my submission of official FOIA requests to the CIA and DIA will serve as an example of just how difficult, frustrating, and time-consuming this process actually is, even for a former senior CIA intelligence officer, regardless of my numerous attempts and offers to make the review as easy and efficient as possible.

Submitting My FOIA Requests

In my submissions, I followed the legal requirements of the Act to the letter; 1) checked CIA and DIA electronic Reading Rooms to confirm the fabricated CURVE BALL intelligence reports have not already been declassified and released (they weren’t), 2) filled out the required FOIA form or letter which is different for each agency, and 3) identified the specific requested documents (Intelligence Information Reports-IIRs from DIA and Telegraphic Dissemination (TDs) reports from CIA). I also provided a general summary of the content of each document, rather than just requesting “any and all” intelligence reports from CURVE BALL (in other words, this was not a fishing expedition for information). I also requested the specific flawed finished intelligence, emails, and memorandum that had been produced based on CURVE BALL’s fabricated intelligence reporting. Interestingly, DIA instructed these FOIA requests to be sent to them by unclassified email over the internet while CIA had them sent to their office via unclassified FAX (yes, they still use FAX).

In an attempt to speed up this overly bureaucratic process, my FOIA requests were specific, listing documents by type, title, report number, date, originating office (CIA’s Directorate of Operations-DO or DIA’s Defense HUMINT Service-DH), and agency to allow for quick retrieval in computer searches and to avoid claims that those documents “cannot be located” (given all of this information, I strongly doubt the CIA and DIA FOIA offices have every received such specific requests). I explained in each FOIA submission the background of the reporting from CURVE BALL; the number of reports produced by each agency on his debriefings, and from which foreign liaison service the reporting had been originally obtained (German Bundesnachrichtendienst-BND or British Secret Intelligence Service-SIS; both of which have also already publicly revealed CURVE BALL’s reporting to be a fabrication). I also requested IIRs and TDs produced from three other sources mistakenly assessed to be corroboration of CURVE BALL’s claims that were also disseminated by DH and the DO. I noted up front in every submission that CURVE BALL’s intelligence had been conclusively proven false in 2003 and the source himself had admitted in 2011 that he made up the entire story of mobile BW agent production plants. In addition, all of the alleged “corroborating sources” have been conclusively proven to be fabricators or have publicly identified themselves and denied the credibility of CURVE BALL’s claims as well. This information was to clearly demonstrate that the review of this fabricated and false intelligence reporting, acknowledged by the CIA, DIA, British SIS, and German BND, is not a complex issue that requires extensive review.

For additional background (because I doubted that any intelligence officers knowledgable about CURVE BALL were still working at the CIA and DIA), I noted that “As a former CIA case officer and intelligence analyst, I personally led a team on the ground in Iraq during the summer and fall of 2003 to investigate this reporting and we conclusively determined that all of it was a fabrication, forcing the official recall of all ninety-five DIA IIRs and the six CIA TDX reports in May 2004. This investigation also forced the publication of a “burn notice” and a Congressional Notification to the SSCI and HPSCI. Before my retirement at the end of 2017, I left copies of all of these documents with the CIA History Staff along with our field investigative report. These documents are not currently available in the CIA’s Electronic Reading Room”

Continuing, I wrote that “The CURVE BALL case had been publicly acknowledged officially by the CIA and DIA, written about in the press, in books (including those written by former senior CIA officers cleared by the Publication Review Board, PRB-now renamed the PCRB; the word Classification was added in response to accusations of censorship), televised public hearings, government reports on investigations, and documentaries in the U.S., UK, and Germany.” I stated categorically that “All of this reporting was conclusively proven to be fabrications and officially recalled in 2004; a fact that was acknowledged by the CIA and DIA, the German BND, and the British SIS in government-sponsored investigations.” I even listed the specific U.S. and foreign government-sponsored investigations by name, the dates of their final reports citing the CIA and DIA CURVE BALL intelligence reporting. Incredulously, the CIA responded that the public release of the final reports of USG-sponsored investigations, as well as foreign government-sponsored final reports on the CIA and DIA’s use CURVE BALL’s reporting, do not impact on CIA’s classification of this material. In other words, even with the Congressional oversight committee’s access to CIA intelligence reporting, as they are authorized to do and their citing and quoting from these documents in their final reports released to the public (with CIA review and approval, the Agency still claims that this information remains classified until it decides to declassify it.

In each of my official FOIA requests, I noted the fact that “CURVE BALL himself publicly admitted his claims were a complete fabrication on February 15, 2011, in a series of detailed news articles The Guardian British newspaper written by their reporters, Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd. I pointed out that CURVE BALL also admitted fabrication in an on-camera interview with Bob Simon during the March 13, 2011 broadcast of the CBS New’s 60 Minutesprogram” that he made up the entire story of the mobile BW plants. Finally, and for CIA FOIA office specifically, I noted that on my retirement, I had left a file box containing hard copies of all this reporting with the Agency’s History Staff in the hope that it could be easily located and retrieved.” I noted in all of my CIA and DIA FOIA requests that, “The reports, finished intelligence, emails and memorandum listed in these FOIA requests should be easy to locate using the identifying information provided. If you required assistance in reviewing these documents for declassification and public release, please contact me. Really, I could not have made this process any easier for the CIA and DIA FOIA offices to quickly process these official requests.

At the end of my FOIA requests, I explained that “The disclosure of these requested documents will contribute significantly to the full public understanding of the operations and activities of the U.S. Government in this case and further explain the conclusions from Government-sponsored investigations and final reports by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), the Presidential WMD Commission, and the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) on the circumstances that led to the Iraq WMD intelligence failure. Release of these documents will help the public understand exactly how and why the CIA and DIA reached their flawed pre-war intelligence assessments.” Finally I noted that “If you deny all or any part of this request, please cite each specific exemption you think justifies your refusal to release the information and notify me of appeal procedures available under the law” and provided my full contact information. Of course in each FOIA submission, I had to agree to pay CIA and DIA FOIA assessed “fees” that are charged to the average U.S. taxpayer for the searching, reviewing, and copying of the requested records (only journalists are exempted from these fees). With every FOIA request, the submitter must specify an acceptable maximum cost or request a fee waiver if disclosure is primarily in the public interest. I realized that failure to do so would result in just more bureaucratic delays. I have learned from others who have submitted official FOIA requests that when some of their USG documents were finally released, they were heavily redacted and included multiple copies of the same documents or unrelated documents and were charged a fee per page, substantially adding to the overall cost without providing any added value.

After submitting each official FOIA request, I requested confirmation of receipt as well as an estimated date of completion of the process. To the DIA FOIA office’s credit, I received initial acknowledgement of receipt and issuance of a FOIA reference number “within the statutory 20 day’s response period.” The CIA’s FOIA office, however, was often weeks or months late in acknowledging my requests and issuing reference numbers; well over the 20 day requirement. In at least one case, I had to constantly prod CIA to provide this information and later received a letter in the mail. Needless to say, I kept a detailed account of all correspondence regarding these FOIA requests in order to maintain accurate record keeping, especially if a lawsuit was later required.

How can the CIA and DIA speed-up the FOIA processing on this CURVE BALL case?

The CIA and DIA FOIA offices could quickly resolve this issue if they work effectively together as I have recommended since they are dealing with the same CURVE BALL intelligence reporting and related documents. As a first step in their review, both agencies should acknowledge again that the CURVE BALL intelligence reporting is false (as they did previously in May/June 2004 to the Bush White House) and therefore no longer requires classification. As I informed them with each of my FOIA submissions, substantiated by overwhelming conclusive proof, there is no valid national security exemption for fabricated intelligence to remain classified. If they require additional evidence of his fabrication, I would suggest that by simply try typing "Curveball and Iraq" as a Google search term as a significant amount of open source information about this case can be found on the internet. This Includes photographs and video of CURVE BALL publicly admitting he made up his entire story of alleged Iraqi mobile BW agent production plants. There are also a significant amount of information on this discredited intelligence source in press articles, books, and documentaries available to help them fully understand the case and the amount of information already in the public domain.

I doubt that the CIA and DIA would agree but these offices should also acknowledge that this false intelligence reporting should have been declassified and released decades ago. I informed them that the continued classification of these documents is in direct violation of President Obama’s 2009 Executive Order 13526 that prohibits the CIA and DIA from abusing their classification authority by hiding politically embarrassing information. The abuse of classification authority involves the improper, excessive, or unjustified designation of information as classified, often used to conceal inefficiency, administrative errors, or wrongdoing rather than to protect national security. It hampers democratic oversight, wastes resources, and weakens security by obscuring truly sensitive information. Because the CIA and DIA never officially closed the CURVE BALL case with the policymakers after 2004, I would be shocked and appalled, but probably not surprised, if they still attempted to claim any of this intelligence remains credible.

As all of these documents are now more than 25 years old and there is probably no one left in CIA or DIA who really knows or understands the CURVE BALL case. As the expert on this case, having thoroughly investigated CURVE BALL’s false claims on the ground in Iraq, the UK, Germany and the U.S. during 2003, I have stated my personal assistance to the review process with each FOIA submission but neither the CIA’s or DIA’s FOIA office has bothered to responded to my offer nor to engage in a dialogue about the continuing improper classification of CURVE BALL’s intelligence reporting.

These official acknowledgments would significantly shorten the FOIA process and allow for quicker declassification and public release of the documents. It would also allow for the completion of the PCRB’s review of my manuscript on CURVE BALL. Up to the present time, the CIA has refused to provide an estimated completion date and multiple calls to its FOIA “hotline” to leave voice messages have never been returned. Despite instructions to check CIA’s Electronic Reading Room for the status of requests, there is no listing of my FOIA requests. On the other hand, DIA did advise that “due to the current backlog of 1,300 requests and available resources, the average processing time...for FOIA requests is 879 days” (as of February 4, 2026, DIA’s backlog has grown to over 1,500 documents and is closing in on 2000).

Given the Age of these CURVE BALL Documents, Can I also file a Mandatory Declassification Request (MDR)?

The bureaucratic answer is no. Given the amount of time that has already passed since my first FOIA submission in October 2024, many of these documents, especially the original classified intelligence reports disseminated by the CIA and DIA from CURVE BALL in spring 2000 cited in my manuscript are now more than twenty-five years old. Unfortunately, according to the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) rules for the MDR, “The same person may not file a Freedom of information Act (FOIA) request for the same information, concurrently with an MDR request.” Recognizing the historical significance of these documents, the CIA and DIA should have already initiated an MDR years ago under the same E.O. 13526, which states:

“Section 3.3. Automatic Declassification., a) Subject to paragraphs (b)-(d) and (g)-(j) of this section, all classified records that (1) are more than 25 years old and (2) have been determined to have permanent historical value under Title 44, United States Code, shall be automatically declassified on December 31 of they year that is 25 years from the date of origin, except as provided in paragraphs (b)-(d) and (g)-(j) of this section. If the date of origin of an individual record cannot be readily determined, the date of the original classification shall be used instead.”

Is any information in the CURVE BALL case still classified?

The answer is no but with a few exceptions. I should know because I collected every single bit of information and investigated this case extensively on the ground in Iraq, Germany, the UK, and in the U.S, with CIA approval I might add, and forced a recall of all the fabricated intelligence reporting. As the expert on this issue, I welcome a public debate with anyone at the CIA or DIA who believes they can provide a valid National Security determination of exactly what information is still considered classified. So far, they have not bothered to provided me with one, only claiming that the CURVE BALL documents remain “current and properly classified.” This claim is false.

Ironically, the fact that CURVE BALL’s intelligence no longer requires national security classification protection was acknowledged by the the CIA and DIA on November 21, 2017 in the case of a formerly classified June 2, 2004 DIA document that was publicly released after an appeal to the National Archives Interagency Security Classification Appeal Panel (ISCAP). This document is DIA’s version of the final President’s Daily Brief (PDB) article on the CURVE BALL case that was drafted by the CIA in late May 2004 admitting to President George W. Bush and other senior White House officials of CURVE BALL’s fabrication (I know this because I was involved in the drafting of the CIA’s PDB on CURVE BALL). The subject line of the DIA document, “Results of Direct CIA Contact with BND Source “Curveball,” refers to the CIA and British SIS debriefings of the German BND source in late February/mid-March 2004 (I was indirectly responsible for these results as well).

Interestingly, a FOIA request for the declassification and release of this June 2, 2004 document had been previously denied by the DIA, and most likely, by the CIA as well. The fact that the ISCAP then overruled DIA and CIA objections of its declassification and release clearly demonstrates the National Archives assessed that there is no longer any valid national security requirement for this document to remain classified. Because of its public release, this assessment can be applied in general to CURVE BALL’s reporting and related information as well. This declassified document was added to the DIA’s Electronic Reading Room on its website for public release at that time and is available on the National Archives website (see link: https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2013-039-doc01.pdf?).

Are the CIA and DIA’s Obstructions and Delays to Declassifying and Releasing this fabricated intelligence still relevant to today?

I would strongly argue that it is because if intelligence agencies that refuse to learn from their historical failures and refuse to acknowledge them, are inevitably doomed to repeat them. To fully understand the root causes of the Iraq weapons of mass destruction (WMD) intelligence failure, we only need to examine the CURVE BALL case as an excellent example of what can go seriously and disastrously wrong in the collection, analysis, management and leadership of intelligence, especially when it is allowed to be influenced by politics. CURVE BALL was a pathological and practiced liar and we can use the lessons of this case to avoid, or at least mitigate, future intelligence failures from fabricators like him, but only if we are willing.

Although myself and other intelligence officers succeeded in concluding the CURVE BALL case when the CIA and DIA refused to do so, the attempts to continue to hide politically embarrassing information are still very relevant. According to a June 30, 2020 warning in an article from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) written by Anne Weismann, “At a time when the foundations of our democracy are under attack and a raging pandemic has created a national crisis, the public’s need for information could not be greater. Yet the mechanism Congress created for public access to information about what our government is doing and why—the Freedom of Information Act—is broken. Agencies have abandoned the FOIA’s guiding principle of transparency and made compliance with the law their lowest priority.”

In early December 2025, I was forced to file a lawsuit with Washington, D.C. whistleblower lawyer Mark Zaid against my former employer of thirty-two years, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to demand the release for publication of my book, Absence of Evidence, about the real story of one of the most significant intelligence sources behind the Iraq weapons of mass destruction (WMD) intelligence failure, “CURVE BALL”.  Incredulously, the CIA, and its military counterpart the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), continue to claim that the source’s reporting remains “current and properly classified”, despite having publicly admitted more than twenty-three years ago that it was all completely false.  I should know because I’m the CIA intelligence officer who personally investigated this case on the ground in Iraq during 2003 and conclusively proved it was a fabrication, a conclusion that was not well-received by CIA and DIA Headquarters.  Despite the initial rejection and political retaliation, I was able to get all of CURVE BALL’s intelligence reporting recalled, as well as legally-mandated Congressional Notification of the intelligence failure to the oversight committees, and a President’s Daily Brief (PDB) article to the George W. Bush White House on the case.

Further making this classification claim absurd, by simply typing "Curveball Iraq" as a Google search term, a significant amount of detailed open source information about this intelligence case can be found on the internet.  This Includes photographs and video of the source publicly admitting on CBS’ 60 Minutes March 2011 broadcast that he made up his entire story of the alleged Iraqi mobile BW agent production plants.  Given these facts, we have to ask exactly what is the CIA and DIA still trying to hide from the public?  Obviously, this is just another attempt to further conceal their mistakes and avoid additional political embarrassment for being completely fooled for over four years by a poorly-trained Iraqi chemical engineer.  Promoting this flawed intelligence, the CIA and DIA led the United States and its allies into an unnecessary and unjustified war, which the real objective for “regime change” in Iraq continues to negatively impact on the region to today.  That said, there is simply no valid national security rationale for this false intelligence reporting to remain classified, especially if we are to learn from our failures.

Regardless of our legal challenges, CURVE BALL’s intelligence continues to be improperly classified by the CIA and DIA in violation of their classification authority per Presidential Executive Order 13526, dated December 29, 2009, which states under Classification Prohibitions and Limitations that in no case shall information be classified, continued to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to: (1) Conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; (2) Prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency; (3) Retrain competition; or (4) Prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.” All of these reasons directly apply to this case.

The abuse of classification authority involves the improper, excessive, or unjustified designation of information as classified, often used to conceal inefficiency, administrative errors, or wrongdoing rather than protect national security.  It hampers democratic oversight, wastes resources, and weakens security by obscuring politically embarrassing information.  Despite rules, no classifier has ever been held accountable for over-classification, creating a system with "complete absence of accountability”.  Finally, over-classification prevents government agencies from sharing critical intelligence with the American public and press, which can hinder efforts to learn from past mistakes and stop real threats.  Finally, this abuse leads to a loss of respect for the classification system itself.

Simply declassifying and releasing all of CURVE BALL’s fabricated reporting per my numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that I filed in late 2024 would allow the CIA’s Publication Classification Review Board (PCRB) to conduct a final review of my manuscript by acknowledging that it does not contain classified intelligence.  Instead, the PCRB—now represented by a Department of Justice (DoJ) lawyer—filed a “Motion to Dismiss” with the court in response to our lawsuit in an further attempt to obstruct and delay the declassification and release the fabricated intelligence from this discredited source.  In fact, their Motion claimed that, even after eighteen months of dragging their feet, our legal complaint was not “ripe” because the PCRB has not completed the review and given us a final verdict (yes, he really did say “ripe”).

Incredulously, while the DoJ lawyer admits in his brief that “the PCRB did not determine whether the manuscript was classified in whole or in part, nor identify any specific passages for redaction” and that it had only performed an “initial review” of the manuscript after a year and a half, he insists that “judicial review” by the court is not warranted at this time.  To be clear, the PCRB chose to delay the review, claiming it is a complicated story.  How complicated is it to review knowingly fabricated intelligence?  Worse, he failed to inform the court that in a September 2025 email the PCRB refused to conduct further review my manuscript until the FOIA requests have been processed and the “classified information”—again which they did not identify—was removed from my manuscript; a deliberate ‘catch-22’ situation where the FOIA offices are claiming a backlog of two and half years.  In a further obstruction, the DoJ lawyer claimed that allowing my lawyer, Mark Zaid, to review my unreacted manuscript should not be permitted “because it cannot stand in the absence of a viable classification challenge”, conveniently ignoring the multiple FOIA requests for this flawed intelligence that I already filed stating that CURVE BALL’s claims had been proven false, no longer require classification protection, and warning that continued classification is in direct violation of a Presidential Executive Order.

Further demonstrating an unwillingness to help resolve the issue, the PCRB also refused to work with the CIA and DIA’s FOIA office to review the same flawed intelligence.  This appears to be another deliberate ‘catch-22’ situation where one office won’t complete its work until the other first completes theirs and vice versa; all while refusing any coordination.  As the CIA’s expert on this 25 year-old intelligence case, the PCRB and FOIA offices also refused my multiple offers to assist in their review of this false intelligence, instead having new officers with no experience attempt to evaluate whether or not to continue to hide details of CURVE BALL’s claims.   

To be clear, we are not asking the court to second guess the CIA’s and DIA’s original classification of CURVE BALL’s intelligence reporting as it was valid at the time in 2000-2003.  However, after mid-2004, this classification is no longer appropriate nor required given the results of our 2003 investigation and the fact that the CIA and DIA had already officially and publicly acknowledged that CURVE BALL was a fabricator and all of his reporting was false.  The public knows this from government investigations, press articles, news broadcasts, and book publications (even those cleared by the PCRB), and numerous documentaries on the Iraq WMD intelligence failure so the CIA and DIA’s claim of harm to U.S. national security if CURVE BALL’s false reporting is released are unfounded.

Instead, we are simply asking the court to remind these intelligence organizations of their obligations under their National Security Classification authority as required per Presidential Executive Order 13526 to declassify and release intelligence documents that no longer require National Security Classification.  Presently in response to the DoJ lawyer’s Motion to Dismiss, we are now requesting that the court to not only reject the Motion but to compel the PCRB to expedite the review process.  At the very least, acknowledging that the intelligence is false and therefore no longer requires classification should also significantly shorten the FOIA processing and allow for quicker declassification and public release.

Finally, we are only requesting that the PCRB fulfill its obligation by completing the manuscript review (yes, we have to sue to get them to do their job).  Regardless if the CIA redacts some of the manuscript or denies it in full makes no difference as we plan to immediately appeal to the National Archives Interagency Security Classification Appeal Panel (ISCAP).  Unfortunately, we cannot appeal to the ISCAP until receiving a final decision by the PCRB; another “catch-22” situation which may explain their deliberate foot-dragging for more than a year, so far to complete the process.

Fortunately, there is precedent for success in our appeal.  The ISCAP already overruled DIA (and almost certainly by the CIA) on their denial of declassification of a formerly “classified” June 2, 2004 DIA document on CURVE BALL that was publicly released on November 21, 2017 (see link below) after an appeal (the original FOIA request for the declassification and release of this document had been previously denied by the DIA, and probably the CIA).  This document was the DIA’s version of the final March 25, 2004 PDB article that was drafted by the CIA on CURVE BALL admitting that he was an “unreliable” source to President George W. Bush and other policymakers, including Secretary of State Colin Powell who’s political reputation had been completely destroyed by the CIA and DIA’s previous withholding of contradictory and derogatory intelligence from him on CURVE BALL that existed before the 2003 war.  Given this 2017 ISCAP decision, if this extremely “sensitive” document can be declassified and released by the USG without negatively impacting national security, we have to ask why can’t the rest?

We believe that the disclosure of this case in these FOIA documents and this manuscript will contribute significantly to the full public understanding of the operations and activities of the U.S. Government in this case and further explain the conclusions from government-sponsored investigations and final reports by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), the Presidential WMD Commission, and the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) on the circumstances that led to the Iraq WMD intelligence failure.  Release of the documents and his manuscript on this case will also help the public understand exactly how and why the CIA, DIA, British SIS, and German BND mistakenly reached their pre-war Iraq WMD intelligence assessments.  The hope is that this invaluable knowledge will avoid, or at least mitigate, future intelligence failures.

https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2013-039-doc01.pdf

CIA Disclaimer: “All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author's views."

(Author’s Note: This article had been reviewed by the CIA’s Publication Classification Review Board (PCRB) and approved for public release. PCRB edits are in black text while fully redacted text has been X-out.)

The CIA and DIA: Hiding Intelligence Mistakes Behind the “Cloak of Secrecy"

In early December 2025, I was forced to file a lawsuit with lawyer Mark Zaid against my former employer of thirty-two years, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to demand the release for publication of my book, Absence of Evidence, about the real story of one of the most significant intelligence sources behind the Iraq weapons of mass destruction (WMD) intelligence failure. Incredulously, the CIA, and its military counterpart the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), continue to claim that the source’s reporting remains classified, despite having publicly admitted more than twenty years ago that it was completely false. This is all being done by the CIA and DIA to avoid revealing more intelligence mistakes and suffer further political embarrassment regarding this case. It is important to note that this legal struggle is not about valid classification to protect intelligence “sources and methods”; it’s about maintaining control of the public narrative of the original WMD justification for the 2003 Iraq war as well as invalidating my constitutional right to freedom of speech.

After I submitted my book to the CIA in January 2005, the Trump administration unlawfully revoked Zaid’s national security clearance without due process in April 2025, violating my constitutional right to choose him as my primary legal counsel in this lawsuit and forcing Zaid to assign the case to another lawyer within his firm who maintains a current security clearance. Without a valid security clearance, Mr. Zaid is not allowed to even read the draft of my book because the CIA and DIA still claim the source’s reporting is classified. In response, Mr. Zaid has separately filed his own Civil Action against the office of the president and included the complaint to reinstate legal counsel’s access to classified information (specifically my unredacted manuscript) as the “Second Cause of Action” in his brief to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in my current lawsuit.

Last October 2024, I began submitting official Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to both the CIA and the DIA for the declassification and public release of 120 specific documents related to the details of this Iraqi intelligence source, XXXXXXXXXX , known publicly under the infamous codename, “CURVE BALL.” This source had been described in U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as an “eyewitness” of alleged Iraqi mobile biological warfare (BW) agent production plants mounted on semi-truck trailers and railcars and as “an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities.”

The intelligence reporting from CURVE BALL—collected by the German Federal Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and disseminated in the U.S. by the DIA and CIA beginning in January 2000, as well as by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6) in the UK—formed the cornerstone of the U.S. and allied foreign Intelligence Community’s mistaken judgment on the existence and status of an alleged Iraqi offensive biological warfare (BW) program. The false confidence provided by CURVE BALL’s prolific reporting also influenced CIA’s intelligence assessments on other alleged Iraq WMD programs by encouraging analysts to assume efforts on these technologies must exist as well.

 After the 2003 U.S.-led military invasion of Iraq, as a senior CIA case officer and intelligence analyst I personally was on the ground in Iraq during the summer and fall of 2003 to XXXXXXXX support the investigation into CURVE BALL’s sensational reporting. XX Investigators conclusively determined by September 2003 that all of his intelligence was a complete fabrication and briefed senior CIA, DIA, and foreign partner intelligence officers, as well as David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), on the results a few weeks later in early October. Shockingly, XX those conclusions were categorically rejected by CURVE BALL’s defenders in these intelligence agencies who angrily refused to believe they could have been so wrong about the veracity of the source’s claims and his credibility as a source. In response, the CIA’s senior management, supported by the leadership, retaliated against myself and another analyst who dared challenge the CIA’s pre-war Iraq WMD assessment by removing us from our analytical accounts, using “directed assignments” to exile us from the WMD issue and finally altogether from the Agency headquarters’ building. A month later, after informing CIA leadership that there was no WMD in Iraq, Kay was also punished for speaking out and banished to an office in the headquarter’s basement. In response, he immediately resigned from the CIA and testified to Congress regarding his conclusions.

Regardless of these blatant political attacks, after an additional eight months of fighting internal political battles to get senior intelligence officers to finally accept this inconvenient truth about CURVE BALL and at significant risk to our careers by “speaking truth to power,” the CIA and DIA XX eventually recalled all of the source’s  fabricated intelligence reports in June 2004, informed the Bush White House of this deception and issued a legally-mandated Congressional Notification of CURVE BALL’s fabrication to the intelligence oversight committees. XXXXXXXXXX the British SIS and German BND recalled all of XXXXXXXX their intelligence reporting produced from this discredited source as well.

The CURVE BALL case and resulting Iraq WMD intelligence failure had been publicly acknowledged officially by the CIA, DIA, SIS, and BND, written about in numerous press articles, published books (including those written by former senior CIA officers and cleared by the Agency’s Publication Review Board- PRB), televised public hearings, government-sponsored investigations, documentaries, and even depicted in full-length movies in the U.S., UK, and Germany. This case had been extensively discussed in the the final reports of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) on July 7, 2003, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) on October 31, 2004, and the Silberman- Robb WMD Commission on March 31, 2005. Overseas in the UK,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX the final reports of the Butler Inquiry on July 14, 2004 and the Chilcot Inquiry on July 6, 2016 also raised concerns about fabricated reporting. The German government also launched investigations into the role of the BND in the Iraq WMD intelligence failure ,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. In 2006, the Bundestag established a special committee to investigate accusations that the BND secretly aided the U.S. invasion of Iraq despite public German opposition to the war. The German investigations, along with those in other nations, exposed the multiple levels of intelligence failures that enabled CURVE BALL's fabrications to fuel an unjustified and unnecessary war.

After my retirement from the CIA fourteen years later after the war on December 31, 2017 and in the process of writing a book on this amazing, and at times distressing case, I was appalled to learn that the CIA and DIA had never declassified and publicly released CURVE BALL’s fabricated intelligence reporting as required under President Obama’s 2009 Executive Order 13526, even after intrusive and scathing investigations of this intelligence failure by the various governments which reported extensively on the details of this case. Even the source himself, admitted XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX that he had made up the entire story. Obviously, there had been little interest on the part of the CIA and

DIA over the years to further reveal politically-embarrassing intelligence mistakes, especially information detailing exactly how the world’s premier intelligence agencies had been fooled for over four years by a lone fabricator. Anticipating the political obstacles that I knew that I would face in the submission of my book to the CIA for review, I first filed official FOIA requests to CIA and DIA in late 2024 for the declassification and release of the specific documents related to CURVE BALL in an attempt to speed up the extensive bureaucratic review process. Given the fact that all this intelligence information was conclusively proven to be a fabrication long ago, this should have resulted in the immediate declassification and public release of these documents.

On January 29, 2025, I submitted my book on the CURVE BALL case to the CIA’s Publication Classification Review Board (PCRB-formerly known as the PRB; the word Classification was added in response to accusations of censorship). This submission was in accordance with the requirements of the secrecy agreement I signed with the CIA at the beginning of my career. My objective in publishing this book is not for financial gain but to document the inside details of the story to help the public understand exactly what occurred and to counter the manipulated official narrative promoted by the CIA, DIA, SIS, and BND. Hopefully, this book will also allow the intelligence services involved to avoid, or at least mitigate, future intelligence failures.

Given the current politicization of intelligence that is already occurring in the U.S. Intelligence Community under the current Trump administration, this story remains relevant to today in this post-truth world, showing that eventually facts do matter. However, “speaking truth to power” still remains unwelcome and XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX unacceptable if it interferes with preferred policy and political narrative of the president and results in extensive redactions to hide mistakes (as the public has recently witnessed with the Epstein Files). The danger of the CIA and DIA leadership and senior management continuing their “motivated bias” to maintain relevance and access to the White House substantially increases with the election of U.S. presidents who are blatant in their desire to use ‘selected’ (i.e., cherry-picked) intelligence reporting and analysis to support their already established political policy, rather than to help formulate that foreign policy as it was originally intended. When this occurs, these U.S. intelligence agencies no longer are an asset to this country, but a liability.

Unfortunately, the CIA specifically has put me in a ‘catch-22’ situation where the PCRB will not approve my book for publication until if and when CIA and DIA’s FOIA offices have processed my requests for declassification and released the documents upon which my book is based. At the same time, it appears that the CIA and DIA’s FOIA offices are slow-rolling my requests to prevent the PCRB from having to allow the publication of my book. The PCRB rejected my recommendation that they coordinate their review with the FOIA offices, given that both are dealing with the same fabricated intelligence information. Regardless of the fact that XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX this intelligence was proved false more than twenty years ago in 2003, I am now having to fight this same battle to get the truth out all over again here in 2025.

This pattern of erecting bureaucratic obstacles by both the CIA and DIA is not a new occurrence and, in fact, is standard operating procedure. Back in 2016, my former CIA colleagues, John Nixon and Nada Bakos, complained about the same delaying tactics with their books in a December 22nd Washington Post Op-Ed entitled, “The CIA is Delaying Our Books’ Publication, and That Hurts Our Democracy.” Despite the legal requirement that a response is required within 30 days of submission, both books were delayed in the PRB process for more than a year or longer while the authors struggled under deadlines set by their publishers. Nixon was able to eventually get his book released with significant redactions but Bakos was forced to file a lawsuit in 2018 to even get the CIA and DIA to meet with her to discuss the redactions of her proposed book. Many of the PRB’s redactions defied common sense and were instead used to hide intelligence mistakes. In the end, Bakos and Nixon lost approximately thirty percent of the content of their books to CIA and DIA redactions.

Nixon and Bakos accurately stated in the 2016 article that “the review system is broken” and recommended that these agencies commit more resources to the process because the handling of this material is given such a low priority and insufficiently staffed but were ignored. Despite the fact that these recommendations also apply to the “broken” FOIA process as well where the same deliberate years-long bureaucratic delays can be used to easily defeat the law, nothing was done. Obviously, both processes are in desperate need of effective reform that favors public transparency rather than the catering to the political whims of these government intelligence agencies. The fact that it still continues a decade later is a testimony to the fact that the CIA, DIA, and other agencies involved in the review process do not feel they are accountable to the American public for violating their own legal requirements.

The purpose of the PCRB is to review submissions for publication by former CIA employees to insure that nothing appropriately classified is inadvertently publicly revealed in order to “protect intelligence sources and methods.” Myself and my colleagues fully support this valid objective if it is legally used to protect valuable intelligence from disclosure and not for censorship. However, the key words here are “appropriately classified.” According to Presidential Executive Order 13526, dated December 29, 2009, which states under Classification Prohibitions and Limitations that in no case shall information be classified, continued to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to: (1) Conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; (2) Prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency; (3) Retrain competition; or (4) Prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.” All of these apply to this case.

Given the fact that both the sources (CURVE BALL and his alleged corroborating sources) and the methods (German- XXXXXXXXX shared intelligence) have been publicly revealed during government-sponsored investigations of the CURVE BALL case over twenty years ago, the continued classification of this fabricated intelligence is in violation of the stated classification authority and presidential orders. Using excuses such as the self- created “backlogged” FOIA process and deliberate short- staffing to further delay the overly bureaucratic PCRB process only invites more public criticism and undermines any belief by the public in the fairness of the system. This also makes former CIA employees, who are following the strict rules imposed on them, question their adherence to these legal requirements while the PCRB and FOIA offices openly disregard their legal responsibilities. As Acting DCI John McLaughlin stated during a July 2004 interview with Chris Wallace on FOX News while quoting former CIA Director George Tenet on the Iraq WMD intelligence failure, “The cloak of secrecy should never stand in the way of an open and honest dialogue with the American public.” Obviously, this promise was just more political rhetoric from the CIA.

Finally, at the end of their 2016 Op-Ed, Nixon and Bakos accurately pointed out, “By needlessly delaying books such as ours, the CIA loses an opportunity to educate the public and the policymakers alike about what intelligence can and cannot achieve. And U.S. taxpayers who fund the intelligence community, lose the opportunity to know what their government is doing (and not doing) to protect them from threats abroad.” One would only hope that that the current CIA and DIA leadership would also agree that these are worthwhile goals for a democracy. Then again, perhaps the goals, as well as our form of current government, have changed and not for the better.

William Gerald “Jerry” Watson is a former CIA senior operations officer, intelligence analyst, and manager with a 32 year career spanning from April 1986 to until his retirement on December 31, 2017.

John Nixon is a former senior CIA analyst and the author of “Debriefing the President” about his interviews with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein which was published in 2016 after eleven months of bureaucratic delay by the CIA’s PRB.

Nada Bakos is a former senior CIA analyst and author of “The Targeter: My Life in the CIA on the Hunt for the Godfather of ISIS” which was finally published in 2019 after filing a lawsuit against the CIA’s PRB.

Mark Zaid, Attorney at Law, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for revoking his security clearance without due process. In December 2025, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s revocation, finding it unlawful and potentially unconstitutional, preventing the administration from stripping his clearance while Zaid's case proceeds, as his clearance is vital for representing clients in classified matters.