Syriana's Mobile Bio Labs

Okay, just when you thought that the whole Curveball-Iraqi BW story couldn't get any weirder, it does. Milton Leitenberg of the Center for International Security Studies has provided me with the exclusive third (and last) part of the story behind the story of the alleged Iraqi mobile biological warfare labs. In Part 1, he revealed that in 2001 the U.S. government had fabricated a "mobile BW lab" for the purposes of training SOCOM operatives on how to identify and exploit an adversary's BW production facility. In Part 2, Leitenberg discusses how a U.S. contractor developed the now infamous graphics of an Iraqi mobile BW lab - not based on any existing mobile BW lab or any hard intel from Curveball, but rather based on "the processes he [Curveball] described," which were "assessed by an independent laboratory as workable engineering designs."

In Part 3, Leitenberg completes the full riddle inside the enigma within a mystery. It may be that we can trace back the idea of a mobile BW laboratory to Scott Ritter during his tour of duty in Iraq in 1998 with UNSCOM. Ritter was trying to obtain information from the Iraqi National Congress, specifically on Iraq's intelligence agencies and WMD program. In 1998, he talked to Ahmed Chalabi about his suspicion that Saddam may have had mobile chemical or biological weapons labs, which would explain the UNSCOM's lack of success in finding any evidence. In late 1999-2000, Curveball - the brother of a top lieutenant to Ahmed Chalabi - starts talking to the German intelligence about mobile Iraqi BW labs, who forwards this information to the CIA. At the same time, Chalabi is talking to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith about the danger of Iraq's "WMD program."

So here we have a rumor started by a former U.S. marine supporting a UN inspection team, where he passes the idea to Chalabi, who passes it to German intel and U.S. defense officials, both of whom pass the story to the CIA. The agency develops graphics drawn by a U.S. contractor based on Curveball's story and might have known of the mock-up BW lab built for SOCOM, both of which "confirms" the concept that Iraqi mobile BW labs exist, which leads to SecState Powell's speech at the UN in February 2003 and the media's echo chamber agreeing with the president that there's enough evidence to go to war against Iraq.

And as a bonus at the end of this short paper, Leitenberg reveals that Scott Ritter was pulled into a British intelligence op called "Operation Mass Appeal" run by MI6 in 1997. The purpose of "Operation Mass Appeal" was to leak weak and not "actionable" data about Iraq's WMD program to the media, who would fall upon it like hungry wolves and keep alive the public impression that Saddam had an active WMD program, despite the lack of official government endorsement. (Good thing our government doesn't do that, huh?) Leitenberg notes that the disinformation operation functioned similar to the DOD Office of Special Plans (run by Feith), but didn't involve disinformation regarding the Iraqi mobile BW production vehicles.

Call George Clooney. I've got his next movie plot all ready.

UPDATE: Milton Leitenberg contacted me to add that Ritter has confirmed his role in the Iraqi mobile BW lab conspiracy:

After writing this memo, I was informed of Scott Ritter’s 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:

In 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. … When, several years after leaving UNSCOM, I was to read through the intelligence provided by Chalabi’s “source” (“Curveball”), which formed the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s case for war, I was struck by just how similar the data was to some of the speculative “intelligence gaps” I had provided to Ahmed Chalabi back in 1998.”

Still a great piece of work.

Comments

[Tom James]

http://carolinejustice.blogspot.com/2006/08/saddam-never-had-chemical-weapons.html

[J.]

I don't understand your point. I never said Saddam didn't have chemical weapons or purposes for CB weapons. What is true is that between 1995 and 2003, Saddam did not have an effective capability to wage CB warfare because we beat him in 1991 (which was after Halabjah, your photos), the UN teams watched the Iraqis destroy nearly all of his munitions, and he didn't build any new ones. That is to say, Bush had no clear casus belli to invade Iraq, and the Bush administration exaggerated and distorted the intel findings to create one.