Further Information Regarding US Government Attribution of a Mobile Biological Production Capacity by Iraq

by Milton Leitenberg

Secrecy News has previously carried two brief analyses regarding the origin of conceptions and descriptions of an ostensible possession by Iraq of mobile BW production vehicles.  The first (Part I) appeared on June 29, 2006 titled "Unresolved Questions Regarding US Government Attribution of a Mobile Biological Production Capacity by Iraq" (pdf).  The second (Part II), BFurther Information Regarding US Government Attribution of a Mobile Biological Production Capacity by IraqB, appeared on August 13, 2006.

The first of these items contained information about the Iraqi defector codenamed BCurveball.B  It noted CurveballBs relations with Ahmad Chalabi and his CIA- and DIA-funded organization, the Iraqi National Congress (INC).  In addition, Chalabi and the INC provided  two of three additional defectors who offered extremely tenuous BcorroborationB of CurveballBs testimony.  This raises the possibility that Curveball may have made contact with INC representatives in Europe, or with Chalabi directly, and that Chalabi may even have been instrumental in suggesting that Curveball should approach the German BND as well as the nature of the information that he should provide.   If this postulated train of events is correct, it would make Chalabi instrumental in CurveballBs initial role, not only for the INC provision of subsequent BcorroboratingB informants.

As indicated in Part I (June 29), CurveballBs information was provided to the German intelligence services from late-1999 through 2001, and much of it had reached US intelligence agencies during 2000.  (The Silberman-Robb report states that BCurveball began reporting in January 2000;B this, however is apparently when the first reports reached US intelligence services.)

However, the most likely route by which suggestive information about putative Iraqi mobile BW production platforms could have reached Ahmad Chalabi, which he could then have utilized in feeding informants back to US intelligence agencies, has been overlooked.  By his own account, Scott Ritter, the UNSCOM inspector who later became a disputed public figure, met with Chalabi in London in January and July 1998 and discussed such putative vehicles.  In his 2004 book, Ritter wrote BI have met repeatedly with Achmed Chalabi.B^[1]  Ritter was seeking information from informants inside Iraq working with the INC that might help UNSCOM to resolve its intractable problems.  RitterBs prime responsibility almost from the inception of his work with UNSCOM was attempting to track, intercept and overcome IraqBs mobile concealment and inspection evasion organization based in the Iraqi intelligence agencies.  In speaking with Chalabi, Ritter mentioned that he suspected that Iraq might have mobile BW and CW production facilities.  Interviewed for a long New Yorker profile of Chalabi, Ritter said that

He outlined most of the U.N. inspectorBs capabilities and theories, telling Chalabi how they had searched for underground bunkers with ground-penetrating radar.  He also told Chalabi of his suspicion that Saddam may have had mobile chemical- or biological-weapon laboratories, which would explain why investigators hadnBt been able to find them.  BWe made that up!B Ritter said.  BWe told Chalabi, and, lo and behold, heBs fabricated a source for the mobile labs.B^[2] 

[After writing this memo, I was informed of Scott RitterBs new book titled Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (2006, IB Tauris, UK).  It contains the following paragraph corroborating what this memo suggests:

BIn the intelligence world, one never gives away the complete picture of what you know and what you don't know; this too easily allows you to be manipulated by sources which miraculously "confirm" data you already have while filling in the gaps in the intelligence picture. However, I was under pressure from Charles Duelfer to make this new relationship work, and I proceeded to brief Chalabi on UNSCOM's understanding about what Iraq might be hiding. This included speculation about the possible existence of mobile biological laboratories and agent production facilities. B When, several years after leaving UNSCOM, I was to read through the intelligence provided by ChalabiBs BsourceB (BCurveballB), which formed the centerpiece of the Bush administrationBs case for war, I was struck by just how similar the data was to some of the speculative Bintelligence gapsB I had provided to Ahmed Chalabi back in 1998.B]

Ritter was voicing his own concerns, and not those of UNSCOMBs BW team.  UNSCOMBs senior BW inspectors had been the recipients of General al-SaBadiBs original information in 1996 in which he stated that prior to 1990 he had offered the suggestion of mobile BW production.  Nevertheless they did not consider the possible existence of such vehicles to be likely, nor did they see the subject as one of their major priorities in 1998 and 1999. 

The above described chain of personal contacts produces a possible chain of information transfers from Scott Ritter to Chalabi, from Chalabi to Curveball, and from Curveball to the US CIA.  It is also well known that Chalabi was perhaps the prime source of BintelligenceB used by the Office of Special Plans (OSP), established by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in the office of Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith in the Department of Defense.  The same INC-provided information was also a favorite source relied on by Vice President Cheney.  Both CheneyBs office and DODBs OSP were prime champions of the claim that Iraq had mobile BW production vehicles.  Scott RitterBs book also provides extensive detail regarding his interactions with the CIA during the period that he served with UNSCOM.  It is conceivable that the CIA may even have asked Ritter in the years prior to his visits with Chalabi to seek information about possible Iraqi mobile BW production vehicles.  IF this occurred, one would have a complete circle of BinformationB fabricated as a consequence of CIA indications of interest coming back to the CIA as defector-provided Bintelligence.B

At first glance, there appeared to be one further circle of possible involvement of Scott Ritter since he had admitted to participating in disinformation activities in yet another context while serving with UNSCOM.  The BButler CommissionB report prepared for the British House of Commons in July 2004 contains the following page:

6.3 OPERATION MASS APPEAL

485. In November 2003, the former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter was reported to have told journalists that, in the late-1990s, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) ran BOperation Mass AppealB B an alleged disinformation campaign to disseminate Bsingle source data of dubious qualityB about Iraq, in order to Bshake up public opinionB.

486. Mr Ritter was quoted as follows:

I was brought into the operation in 1997 because at the UN . . . I sat on a body of data which was not actionable, but was sufficiently sexy that if it could appear in the press could make Iraq look like in a bad way.

I was approached by MI6 to provide that data, I met with the Mass Appeal operatives both in New York and London on several occasions. This data was provided and this data did find its way into the international media.

It was intelligence data that dealt with IraqBs efforts to procure WMDs, with IraqBs efforts to conceal WMDs. It was all single source data of dubious quality, which lacked veracity.

They took this information and peddled it off to the media, internationally and domestically, allowing inaccurate intelligence data to appear on the front pages.

The government, both here in the UK and the US, would feed off these media reports, continuing the perception that Iraq was a nation ruled by a leader with an addiction to WMDs. [BBC News, 12 November 2003]

487. Mr Ritter was reported as saying that he was prepared to reveal details before a public inquiry. 

488. We took evidence from Mr Ritter, including on Operation Mass Appeal. Mr Ritter said that Operation Mass Appeal was already up and running when SIS approached him in December 1997. He was asked if there was material on IraqBs weapons programmes on which the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) could not act, but which might be made public through media outlets in a range of countries. Mr Ritter said that Mr Richard Butler, the then Executive Chairman of UNSCOM, agreed that UNSCOM should co-operate with the UK in this way and that two reports relating to prohibited trade between Iraq and two other countries were passed to the UK the same month. UNSCOMBs involvement then fell into abeyance until May 1998 when contact resumed. Mr Ritter said that he met SIS officers again in June 1998 to discuss Operation Mass Appeal for the last time. He resigned from UNSCOM soon after that.

489. We have examined relevant SIS papers. These confirm that there were two meetings between British Government officials and UNSCOM representatives, including Mr Ritter, in May and June 1998 at which there were discussions about how to make public the discovery of traces of the nerve agent VX on missile warheads after this fact had been reported to the United Nations Security Council. (Iraq had previously denied weaponising VX.) Operation Mass Appeal was set up for this specific purpose and did not exist before May 1998. In the event, before Operation Mass Appeal could proceed, the UNSCOM report was leaked to the press in Washington. Because of this, Operation Mass Appeal was abandoned.^[3]

As best as can be judged from the above information, the issue of Iraqi mobile biological weapon production vehicles was not one of the subjects that was involved in this covert UK disinformation effort.  British press reports about Operation Mass Appeal, and a parent Operation Rockingham with in the British SIS and Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) describe its functioning as somewhat similar to that of the US DODBs Office of Special Plans.  Their description was aided by additional (British) press interviews with Scott Ritter.^[4]  The Butler CommissionBs description of Project Rockingham is less tendentious than the press accounts,^[5] but none of these claim any involvement of disinformation regarding Iraqi mobile BW production vehicles.