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Kay quit three days later and went public with his concerns.
In Germany, the BND finally agreed to let the CIA interview Curveball. The CIA sent one of its best officers, fluent in German and gifted at working reluctant sources.
They met at BND headquarters in Pullach, a suburb of Munich, in mid-March 2004 -- one year after the Iraq invasion.
Alone with Curveball at last, the CIA officer steadily reviewed details and picked at contradictions like a prosecutor working a hostile witness. He showed spy satellite images and other evidence from the sites Curveball had identified.
Each night, he would file an encrypted report to CIA headquarters on his computer, and then call Drumheller.
"After the first couple of days, he said, 'This doesn't sound good,' " Drumheller recalled. "After the first week, he said, 'This guy is lying. He's lying about a bunch of stuff.' "
But Curveball refused to admit deceit. When challenged, he would mumble, say he didn't know and suggest the questioner was wrong or the photo was doctored. As the evidence piled up, he simply stopped talking.
"He never said, 'You got me,' " Drumheller said. "He just shrugged, and didn't say anything. It was all over. We told our guy, 'You might as well wrap it up and come home.' "
It took more than a month to track and recall every U.S. intelligence report -- at least 100 in all -- based on Curveball's misinformation. In a blandly worded notice to its stations around the world, the CIA said in May 2004:
"Discrepancies surfaced regarding the information provided by ... Curveball in this stream of reporting, which indicate that he lost his claimed access in 1995. Our assessment, therefore, is that Curveball appears to be fabricating in this stream of reporting."
The CIA had advised Bush in the fall of 2003 of "problems with the sourcing" on biological weapons, an official familiar with the briefing said. But the president has never withdrawn the statement in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq produced "germ warfare agents" or his postwar assertions that "we found the weapons of mass destruction."
U.S., British and German intelligence officials still debate what Curveball really saw, and what he really did. One possible answer was buried in records the Iraq Survey Group recovered at the engineering and design center in Baghdad.
They show that Iraqi officials considered installing seed handling gear on trucks in 1995, but instead put the machinery in warehouses, like those at Djerf al Nadaf. Perhaps Curveball heard about the modified trucks and spun them into a bio-weapons system for gullible intelligence agencies.
"You're left at the end with uncertainty," said the former CIA official who helped supervise the Curveball case and the postwar investigation. "We know what he said. We know we don't believe him. But was he making it all up? Was he coached? Did he hear something and then embellish it? These things are still unresolved."
Not for Curveball. "He is convinced his story is true," said the BND analyst. "He has no doubts to this day."
*
Drogin is a Times staff writer. Goetz is a special correspondent. Also contributing to this report from Baghdad was staff writer Jeffrey Fleishman.
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Key developments
In Germany, the BND finally agreed to let the CIA interview Curveball. The CIA sent one of its best officers, fluent in German and gifted at working reluctant sources.
They met at BND headquarters in Pullach, a suburb of Munich, in mid-March 2004 -- one year after the Iraq invasion.
Alone with Curveball at last, the CIA officer steadily reviewed details and picked at contradictions like a prosecutor working a hostile witness. He showed spy satellite images and other evidence from the sites Curveball had identified.
Each night, he would file an encrypted report to CIA headquarters on his computer, and then call Drumheller.
"After the first couple of days, he said, 'This doesn't sound good,' " Drumheller recalled. "After the first week, he said, 'This guy is lying. He's lying about a bunch of stuff.' "
But Curveball refused to admit deceit. When challenged, he would mumble, say he didn't know and suggest the questioner was wrong or the photo was doctored. As the evidence piled up, he simply stopped talking.
"He never said, 'You got me,' " Drumheller said. "He just shrugged, and didn't say anything. It was all over. We told our guy, 'You might as well wrap it up and come home.' "
It took more than a month to track and recall every U.S. intelligence report -- at least 100 in all -- based on Curveball's misinformation. In a blandly worded notice to its stations around the world, the CIA said in May 2004:
"Discrepancies surfaced regarding the information provided by ... Curveball in this stream of reporting, which indicate that he lost his claimed access in 1995. Our assessment, therefore, is that Curveball appears to be fabricating in this stream of reporting."
The CIA had advised Bush in the fall of 2003 of "problems with the sourcing" on biological weapons, an official familiar with the briefing said. But the president has never withdrawn the statement in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq produced "germ warfare agents" or his postwar assertions that "we found the weapons of mass destruction."
U.S., British and German intelligence officials still debate what Curveball really saw, and what he really did. One possible answer was buried in records the Iraq Survey Group recovered at the engineering and design center in Baghdad.
They show that Iraqi officials considered installing seed handling gear on trucks in 1995, but instead put the machinery in warehouses, like those at Djerf al Nadaf. Perhaps Curveball heard about the modified trucks and spun them into a bio-weapons system for gullible intelligence agencies.
"You're left at the end with uncertainty," said the former CIA official who helped supervise the Curveball case and the postwar investigation. "We know what he said. We know we don't believe him. But was he making it all up? Was he coached? Did he hear something and then embellish it? These things are still unresolved."
Not for Curveball. "He is convinced his story is true," said the BND analyst. "He has no doubts to this day."
*
Drogin is a Times staff writer. Goetz is a special correspondent. Also contributing to this report from Baghdad was staff writer Jeffrey Fleishman.
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Key developments
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