where he said that he understood that there had been an accident in 1998 — the source of the alleged ‘eye witness’ account referred to by Powell.
Why was he taken seriously? Curveball’s information tallied with what the CIA analysts had anticipated, and, worse, seemed to be backed up by other information. When those sources were discredited, Curveball wasn’t immediately disregarded. Warnings were sent by MI6 and the BND to Washington regarding Curveball’s credibility. ‘Elements of his behaviour strike us as typical of individuals we would normally assess as fabricators,’ MI6 noted in April 2002. But by September 2002, DCI George Tenet was reporting that they had ‘a credible defector who worked in the programme’ for biochemical weapons. Despite the reservations of some within the CIA (which Tenet later vehemently denied being aware of), Curveball’s information and drawings were included in Powell’s speech — although, as was pointed out at the time by one congressional staffer, ‘a drawing isn’t evidence — it’s hearsay’. The BND assumed that the CIA had other sources to corroborate Curveball’s story, but it became clear that his testimony was the lynchpin around which the case was built.
Despite massive searches by the UN Inspectors and the Iraqis themselves, no trace of the trucks that Curveball talked about could be found in the weeks between Powell’s speech and the invasion. Hans Blix, the chief inspector, told the Security Council on 7 March 2003 that they had found ‘no evidence’, but of course many simply thought that meant Saddam had hidden it, as he purportedly had with his other WMDs.
The aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent discovery that Saddam did not have WMDs, continues to affect intelligence agencies and governments, with further official inquiries on-going. One aspect that became crystal clear, though, was that Curveball had lied. His family said that he had no problem with Americans; he had come near the bottom of his engineering class, not top as he had claimed. He was a trainee engineer, not the project manager that the CIA had made him out to be. Worst of all, he had been fired in 1995 — three years before the supposed accident, and just at the time when he claimed he started work on the WMD transports. A year after the invasion, the CIA was finally allowed access to Curveball directly, and took his story apart piece by piece.
Despite this, al-Janabi tried to stick to his guns, until he finally admitted the truth to the
The perceived intelligence failures both prior to 9/11 and in the build-up to the war in Iraq led to one of the biggest shake-ups of the American intelligence community in half a century — or, at least, it should have done. The aim of the various reforms was to create an intelligence community fit for purpose in the twenty-first century. According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) website:
The United States Intelligence Community must constantly strive for and exhibit three characteristics essential to our effectiveness. The IC must be
DCI George Tenet resigned unexpectedly, stepping down from the CIA in July 2004, shortly before the release of the report by the 9/11 Commission. This recommended the establishment of a National Intelligence Director who would not only take responsibility for the safety of the United States, but also have effective powers to control the seventeen different intelligence agencies. This didn’t go down well with the government, or the various agencies that would be affected, and what many regarded as a typical Washington fudge and compromise ensued. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, in particular, didn’t want the Pentagon’s various intelligence agencies answerable to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI); the FBI wanted to keep their autonomy. At the time, historian and journalist Fred Kaplan described the final bill as ‘not reform in any meaningful sense. There will be a director of national intelligence. But the post will likely be a figurehead, at best someone like the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, at worst a thin new layer of bureaucracy, and in any case nothing like the locus of decision-making and responsibility that the 9/11 commission had in mind.’
Tenet’s successor at the CIA was Porter Goss, who would be the last CIA chief to act as head of the intelligence community; one of the many clauses of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act prevented a DNI from serving as head of the CIA or any other agency at the same time. The first DNI, appointed in 2005, was former US Ambassador to the UN and Iraq, John D. Negroponte; his successor in 2007 Admiral Michael McConnell also served for two years. Neither really was in a position to force through the changes that were needed within the intelligence community. By the end of November 2008, even the DNI’s own Inspector General noted that the office was not providing effective leadership, which was ‘undermining ODNI’s credibility and fuelling assertions that the ODNI is just another layer of bureaucracy’.
Goss probably didn’t expect to become DCI. A few months before Tenet’s surprise resignation, in his capacity as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Goss wrote to the Agency saying:
After years of trying to convince, suggest, urge, entice, cajole, and pressure [the] CIA to make wide- reaching changes to the way it conducts its HUMINT mission [the] CIA continues down a road leading over a proverbial cliff. The damage to the HUMINT mission through its misallocation and redirection of resources, poor prioritization of objectives, micromanagement of field operations, and a continued political aversion to operational risk is, in the Committee’s judgment, significant and could likely be long-lasting.
This damaged his relationship with senior staff at the Agency, many of whom would resign during his tenure.
Goss was succeeded by former NSA head, and Deputy DNI, Michael Hayden, who served from 2006 to 2009. During that time, the Agency was actively involved in (still-classified) missions in Pakistan, assisting with the removal of al-Qaeda’s leadership. ‘We gave President Bush a list of people we were most mad at, in the tribal region of Pakistan, in July 2008,’ he said in 2010. ‘By the time I left office, more than a dozen of those people were dead… What the Agency did to dismantle the al-Qai’da leadership… I’m most proud of that.’ The CIA also helped with the identification of a nuclear reactor that was being built in Syria with North Korean assistance. Hayden was an advocate of confirming the intelligence publicly after the event — not earlier, since the Syrians ‘might do something stupid if they were publicly embarrassed’ — in order to ensure that people were aware of the Korean involvement during the discussions over nuclear proliferation.
British intelligence agencies were also actively involved with counter-terrorism operations after 9/11. As the bombings in London on 7 July 2005 (known as 7/7) which killed fifty-two people proved, they weren’t always as successful as they might have liked, but as the public portions of the trials of terrorist suspects who have been arrested show, MI5 and MI6 have been responsible for preventing further atrocities. Errors have of course occurred — such as the shooting of innocent Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July 2005, in the aftermath of an attempted second wave of bombings the previous day.
The attempt by Richard Reid to blow up a transatlantic jet just before Christmas 2001 was an indication to the British agencies that this form of terrorism could be home-grown. Over the next decade, MI5’s budget and personnel were increased, and they were able to monitor a larger number of suspects. Operation Crevice led to the arrest of a terrorist cell in 2003 shortly before they began a campaign against nightclubs, shops and pubs using ammonium nitrate bombs — although unfortunately two men with whom they briefly had contact were not monitored. They went on to cause carnage in London on 7/7. Operation Rhyme, which took place in 2004, prevented Dhiren Barot from carrying out his planned attacks in London underground car parks. Operation Hat stopped the failed bombers of 21 July 2005 from trying again. Kazi Rahman was arrested trying to buy weapons in November 2005 after a police and MI5 sting operation — his name had been passed to MI5 by the FBI after they
