the credibility of a defector labeled (appropriately) "Curveball."
Curveball was the source of bogus stories about "biological weapons
trailers" to which then-Secretary of State Colin Powell gave such
prominence in his (in)famous speech on February 5, 2003 at the
UN: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories
on wheels and rails."
According to an aide to then-Deputy Director for Operations, James
Pavitt; Deputy Director of CIA John E. McLaughlin's executive
assistant held two meetings in December 2002 to discuss the issue
and was told that the Operations Directorate "did not believe that
Curveball's information should be relied upon." The two meetings
took place during the week before Christmas 2002. Ironically, George
Tenet's famous "slam-dunk" came that same week (on Dec. 21),
according to Bob Woodward.
Drumheller said he called the office of John E. McLaughlin, then
the CIA deputy director, and was told to come there immediately.
Drumheller said he sat across from McLaughlin and an aide in a small
conference room and spelled out his concerns.[2]
The 25 Jun 06 Washington Post article by Joby Warrick has Tyler
Drumheller (the former chief of the European Division of CIA's
directorate of operations) elaborating on the credibility of a
defector labeled (appropriately) "Curveball."
On the night before Powell's UN speech, Drumheller's home telephone
rang; Tenet was calling to get a telephone number. A Los Angeles
Times story of April 2, 2005 quotes Drumheller:
"I gave him the phone number for the guy he wanted, then it struck
me, 'I better say something.' I said, `You know, boss, there's
problems with that [Curveball] case.' He says, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm exhausted. Don't worry about it.'"
Drumheller told the Washington Post's Joby Warrick that he referred
directly to the draft of Powell's speech: "Hey, boss, you're not
going to use that stuff in the speech...? There are real problems
with that."
The tone of Drumheller's remarks left the distinct impression
that he regrets remaining silent and wishes he had summoned the
courage to blow the whistle. It was also clear that he does not look
forward to having to answer that ugly question for the rest of his
life.
Drumheller's immediate boss at CIA was Deputy Director for
Operations, James Pavitt (noted above),
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, senior aide to Powell, who was at
Powell's side as he prepared his address, has told the press of his
own and Powell's misgivings because there were no photos of
the "mobile labs" - just artist renderings. According to Wilkerson,
Tenet and McLaughlin that same day (February 4, 2003) "described the
evidence on the mobile labs as exceptionally strong, based on
multiple sources, whose stories were independently corroborated.
Drumheller was also asked why he did not go public before the war,
when his candor might have contributed to stopping unnecessary
killing. In an apologetic tone, he adduced the familiar reasons: the
hope that by staying in place he might prevent still worse; a sense
of responsibility to his colleagues, especially those he had
mentored; a mortgage; the fact that he had not yet reached
retirement age.
One ringing lesson here is the need for whistleblower protection
for those working in the national security arena. There is none now,
and Congress has just rejected all recent attempts to craft
legislation with teeth in it.
Comment: So all the talk about the CIA needing to be re-organized
appears to be not so true.
Source: Ray McGovern former head of the CIA's Soviet analysis
division and writer of National Intelligence Estimates.
http://www.truthout
25 June 2006: In January 2003, Drumheller received a new request
from CIA headquarters to contact the German intelligence service
about Curveball. This time, Drumheller recalled, the U.S. spy agency
had three questions:
Could a U.S. official refer to Curveball's mobile lab accounts
in an upcoming political speech?
Could the Germans guarantee that Curveball would stand by his
account?
Could German intelligence verify Curveball's claims?
The reply from Berlin, as Drumheller recalls it, was less than
encouraging: There are no guarantees.
"They said, 'We have never been able to verify his claims,' "
Drumheller recalled. "And that was all sent up to Tenet's office."
"No one mentioned Drumheller, or Curveball," Lawrence B. Wilkerson,
Powell's chief of staff at the time, said in an interview. "I didn't
know the name Curveball until months afterward."
In responding to questions about Drumheller, McLaughlin provided
The Post with a copy of the statement he gave in response to the
commission's report. The statement said he had no memories of the
meeting with Drumheller and had no written documentation that the
meeting took place. Source: Joby Warrick
The Washington Post.
2. http://www.truthout
Why were anti-Castro Cuban Terrorists not prosecuted in Miami?
...stands in marked contrast to the US government's see-no-evil
approach to notorious anti-Castro Cuban terrorists who have lived
openly in Miami for decades.
For three decades, both Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles
have been under the Bush family's protective wing, starting with
former President George H.W. Bush (who was CIA director when the
airline bombing occurred in 1976) and extending to Florida Gov. Jeb
Bush and President George W. Bush. Orlando Bosch, who offered a
detailed justification for the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cubana
Airlines flight that killed 73 people, including the young members
of the Cuban national fencing team.
Bosch said ( when questioned about his part in the bombing) , "In a
war such as us Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant
[Fidel Castro], you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you
have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your
reach." "Who was on board that plane?" "Four members of the
Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese." [Officials
tallies actually put the Guyanese dead at 11.]
Secret History
As for the Cubana Airlines bombing, declassified US documents
show that after the plane was blown out of the sky on Oct. 6, 1976,
the CIA, then under the direction of George H.W. Bush, quickly
identified Posada and Bosch as the masterminds of the Cubana
Airlines bombing.
But in fall 1976, Bush's boss, President Gerald Ford, was in a
tight election battle with Democrat Jimmy Carter and the Ford
administration wanted to keep intelligence scandals out of the
newspapers. So Bush and other officials kept the lid on the
investigations. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy &
Privilege.]
Still, inside the US government, the facts were known. According
to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in
Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines bombing that
tied in anti-communist Cuban extremists Bosch, who had been visiting
Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in
Venezuela's intelligence agency, DISIP.
The Oct. 14 cable said Bosch arrived in Venezuela in late
September 1976 under the protection of Venezuelan President Carlos
Andres Perez, a close Washington ally who assigned his intelligence
adviser Orlando Garcia "to protect and assist Bosch during his stay
in Venezuela."
On his arrival, Bosch was met by Garcia and Posada, according to
the report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch's honor
during which Bosch requested cash from the Venezuelan government in
exchange for assurances that Cuban exiles wouldn't demonstrate
during Andres Perez's planned trip to the United Nations.
"A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was
overheard to say that, 'we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,' and
that 'Orlando has the details,'" the CIA report said.
"Following the 6 October Cubana Airline crash off the coast of
Barbados, Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for
Bosch to leave Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia
escorted Bosch to the Colombian border, where he crossed into
Colombian territory."
The CIA report was sent to CIA headquarters in Langley,
Virginia, as well as to the FBI and other US intelligence agencies,
according to markings on the cable.
--------
In South America, investigators began rounding up suspects in the
bombing.
Two Cuban exiles, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, who had left
the Cubana plane in Barbados, confessed that they had planted the
bomb (on the airplane). They named Bosch and Posada as the
architects of the attack.
A search of Posada's apartment in Venezuela turned up Cubana
Airlines timetables and other incriminating documents.
Posada and Bosch were arrested and charged in Venezuela for the
Cubana Airlines bombing. By the late 1980s, Orlando Bosch also was
out of Venezuela's jails and back in Miami. But Bosch, who had been
implicated in about 30 violent attacks, was facing possible
deportation by US officials who warned that Washington couldn't
credibly lecture other countries about terrorism while protecting a
terrorist like Bosch.
But Bosch got lucky. Jeb Bush, then an aspiring Florida
politician, led a lobbying drive to prevent the US Immigration and
Naturalization Service from expelling Bosch. In 1990, the lobbying
paid dividends when Jeb's dad, President George H.W. Bush, blocked
proceedings against Bosch, letting the unapologetic terrorist stay
in the United States.
------
Panamanian authorities arrested Posada and other alleged co-
conspirators in November 2000. In April 2004, they were sentenced to
eight or nine years in prison for endangering public safety.
Four months after the sentencing, however, lame-duck Panamanian
President Mireya Moscoso - who lives in Key Biscayne, Florida, and
has close ties to the Cuban-American community and to George W.
Bush's administration - pardoned the convicts.
After the pardons and just two months before Election 2004, three
of Posada's co-conspirators - Guillermo Novo Sampol, Pedro Remon and
Gaspar Jimenez - arrived in Miami to a hero's welcome, flashing
victory signs at their supporters.
US authorities watched the men - also implicated in bombings in New
York, New Jersey and Florida - alight on US soil. As Washington Post
writer Marcela Sanchez noted in a September 2004 article about the
Panamanian pardons, "there is something terribly wrong when the
United States, after Sept. 11 (2001), fails to condemn the pardoning
of terrorists and instead allows them to walk free on US streets."
[Washington Post, Sept. 3, 2004.]
Summing up George W. Bush's dilemma in 2005, the New York Times
wrote, "A grant of asylum could invite charges that the Bush
administration is compromising its principle that no nation should
harbor suspected terrorists. But to turn Mr. Posada away could
provoke political wrath in the conservative Cuban-American
communities of South Florida, deep sources of support and campaign
money for President Bush and his brother, Jeb." [NYT, May 9, 2005]
----
Also Posada points the finger at VP Bush Sr, as being the man at
the White House in charge of the Contra operation.
In 1992, also during George H.W. Bush's presidency, the FBI
interviewed Posada about the Iran-Contra scandal for 6 ½ hours at
the US Embassy in Honduras.
Posada filled in some blanks about the role of Bush's vice
presidential office in the secret contra operation. According to a
31-page summary of the FBI interview, Posada said Bush's national
security adviser, Donald Gregg, was in frequent contact with Felix
Rodriguez.
http://www.truthout
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY
NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this
article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the
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