What is a Lie?
November 2nd, 2007
The title of this post would make it seem as though I’m an idiot who doesn’t know right from wrong, so please allow me to explain.
First of all, I have no idea what conclusions will be drawn by 60 Minutes on this report scheduled for Sunday evening.
If someone you trust comes to you and vouches for the truth of a report by a spy and you use that information as the basis of a claim of WMD held by Iraq, if you believe what was told and you repeat it only to find out later it was not reliable information, are you guilty of telling a lie? Or are you guilty of trusting your security people to tell you the straight facts?
He eventually wound up in the care of German intelligence officials to whom he continued to spin his tale of biological weapons. His plan succeeded partially because he had worked briefly at the plant outside Baghdad and his descriptions of it were mostly accurate. He embellished his account by saying 12 workers had been killed by biological agents in an accident at the plant.
More than a hundred summaries of his debriefings were sent to the CIA, which then became a pillar – along with the now-disproved Iraqi quest for uranium for nuclear weapons – for the U.S. decision to bomb and then invade Iraq. The CIA-director George Tenet gave Alwan’s information to Secretary of State Colin Powell to use at the U.N. in his speech justifying military action against Iraq.
Tenet gave the information to Powell despite a letter – a copy of which 60 Minutes obtained – addressed to him by the head of German intelligence stating that Alwan appeared to be believable, but there was no evidence to verify his story.
Through a spokesman, Tenet denies ever seeing the letter. “[Tenet] needs to talk to his special assistants if he didn’t see it,” says Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA senior official. “I am sure they showed it to him and I am sure … it wasn’t what they wanted to see,” he tells Simon.
Other CIA officials doubted Curve Ball’s authenticity, including former Central Group Chief Margaret Henoch, who speaks publicly for the first time, telling Simon she openly refuted Alwan’s story. “And it was like ‘Whack a Mole.’ He just popped right back up. It was unbelievable.”
Alwan was caught when CIA interrogators were finally allowed to question him and confronted him with evidence that his story could not be as he described it. Weapons inspectors had examined the plant at Djerf al Nadaf before the fall of Baghdad and found no evidence of biological agents.
Obviously someone lied, but was it the President of the United States or the CIA Director at the time, Bill Clinton’s appointee George Tenet, who said the information was a “slam dunk”?
Whatever the case, I hope 60 Minutes can be fair and objective in this story and point the finger of blame where it belongs. Wherever it may point.
I do not normally watch 60 Minutes but I will set my TiVo to record it this week to see this report.
Written by Jeanette
Posted in One Response to “What is a Lie?”
Maybe we really are “winning” in Iraq. When 60 Minutes finds it necessary to recycle old news again, (especially if it makes the administration look bad), we know something is up.
Tenet was no help to the President or this administration but I do not believe that any one person or incident can be faulted for us not finding WMD in Iraq. We know Saddam had it, he used it, and we do not know if it was moved prior to our deposing him.
Don’t forget, Jay Rockefeller supposedly tipped off Syria prior to us arriving in Iraq so any number of things might have happened with materials inside of Iraq.