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'Curveball' Debacle Reignites CIA Feud
The former agency chief and his top deputy deny reports that they were told a key source for Iraqi intelligence was deemed unreliable.

WASHINGTON — A bitter feud erupted Friday over claims by a presidential commission that top CIA officials apparently ignored warnings in late 2002 and early 2003 that an informant code-named "Curveball" — the chief source of prewar U.S. intelligence about Iraqi germ weapons — was unreliable.

Former CIA Director George J. Tenet and his chief deputy, John E. McLaughlin, furiously denied that they had been told not to trust Curveball, an Iraqi refugee in Germany who ultimately was proved a fraud.

But the CIA's former operations chief and one of his top lieutenants insisted in interviews that debates had raged inside the CIA about Curveball's credibility, even as then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell vouched for the defector's claims in a crucial address to the United Nations Security Council on the eve of war.

"The fact is there was yelling and screaming about this guy," said James L. Pavitt, deputy director of operations and head of the clandestine service until he retired last summer.

"My people were saying: 'We think he's a stinker,' " Pavitt said. But CIA bioweapons analysts, he said, "were saying: 'We still think he's worthwhile.' " Pavitt said he didn't convey his own doubts to Tenet because he didn't know until after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq that Curveball was "of such import" in prewar CIA assessments provided to the president, Congress and the public.

"Later, I remember the guffaws by myself and others when we said, 'How could they have put this much emphasis on this guy? … He wasn't worth [anything] in our minds," Pavitt said....

..."Believe me, there are literally inches and inches of documentation" including "dozens and dozens of e-mails and memos and things like that detailing meetings" where officials sharply questioned Curveball's credibility, Drumheller said....

...After the meeting in May 2000, the DIA medical technician questioned the validity of Curveball's information. Another warning came in April 2002, when a foreign spy service told the CIA it had "doubts about Curveball's reliability," the commission reported.

With skepticism rising about Curveball, Drumheller said he arranged a lunch meeting with a German counterpart at Pavitt's behest in late September or early October 2002 to ask for an American meeting with Curveball.

By then, Drumheller said, German intelligence officials were increasingly wary of Curveball. But he said they didn't want to acknowledge their doubts in public and risk embarrassment.

Drumheller said the German intelligence officer used the lunch to convey a stark warning: "Don't even ask to see him because he's a fabricator and he's crazy."

Drumheller said he passed that warning up to Pavitt's office. He said he also informed another senior official in the European division and sent a notice to WINPAC, where the chief bioweapons analyst was considered the Curveball expert....