Tyler Drumheller
Tyler Drumheller is the former chief of the CIA covert operations in Europe, who has said that the CIA had credible sources discounting some 'weapons of mass destruction' claims before the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. He received and discounted documents central to the Niger yellowcake forgery prior to the invasion. He has also stated that senior White House officials dismissed intelligence information from his agency which reported Saddam Hussein had no WMD program.
According to Drumheller, the CIA, with the help of a friendly intelligence service, recruited Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri in Europe during the late summer of 2002. [1] Sabri told the CIA in September that Saddam had no major active weapons of mass destruction programs; they had no fissile material and biological weapons were almost non-existent, although he claimed that there were chemical weapons. This information was then transmitted to the White House, but it was ignored in favor of the information coming from a source known as Curveball.
On September 6, 2007, Sidney Blumenthal, reporting at salon.com, supported Drumheller's account: "Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller's account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it."
He says he saw firsthand how the White House promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn’t:
"The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen one way or the other,"
He says he doesn't think it mattered very much to the administration what the intelligence community had to say:
"I think it mattered it if verified this basic belief that had taken hold in the U.S. government that now is the time. We had the means, all we needed was the will". [2]
Drumheller retired from the CIA in 2005 after a 26-year career.
See also
Bibliography
- On the Brink : An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence (Carroll & Graf, November, 2006) ISBN 0-7867-1915-X
- Wie das Weiße Haus die Welt belügt: Der Insider-Bericht des ehemaligen CIA-Chefs von Europa (Hugendubel Verlag, August, 2007) ISBN 3720530132
External links
- Interview with 60 Minutes
- Video of CBS interview
- Interview with MSNBC Hardball
- Select Committee on Intelligence Report
- Mystery flights (TV program includes interview with Drumheller)
- A Dispatches report on Extraordinary Rendition, broadcast on Channel 4, June 11, 2007 (Also includes an interview with Tyler Drumheller)
External Resources
- Tyler Drumheller - Cooperative Research Profile
