The best reason I can come up with is that the people who knew that Curve Ball might be a fabricator figured that coming forward wouldn’t make any difference. The rush to Baghdad wasn’t going away. They would just be stepping in front of a roaring train. If that was their thinking, then their reticence is inexcusable.
But why would people be asserting things now about trying to alert me to the problems of Curve Ball—claims that have been proved untrue? Perhaps some people’s recollections of “if only someone had listened to me” have become sharper than reality. I don’t know. What I do know is that concerns about Curve Ball did not get disseminated far and wide through the Agency as they should have been. We allowed flawed information to be presented to Congress, the president, the United Nations, and the world. That never should have happened.
CHAPTER 21
Diplomacy by Other Means
The runaway freight train that was the war in Iraq arrived in March 2003. For CIA, this war was, in every respect, different from the one we had fought in Afghanistan. There, we had been, in military parlance, the “supported” command. In Iraq, we were “supporting.” The difference is far more than semantic—it speaks to our performance in both theaters.
In Afghanistan, CIA largely came up with the plan. Indeed, we had been nurturing and refining the strategy for months before the attacks of September 11, hoping to get permission to go after al-Qa’ida in their sanctuary. With the help of a small number of Special Forces troops and overwhelming U.S. airpower, we had been able to marshal the strength of various warlords and tribal factions to oust the Taliban.
We told the administration from the very beginning that an entirely different model would have to be used for Iraq. Shortly after the Bush administration came to office, we briefed senior officials, particularly the vice president, that CIA covert action would almost certainly be unable to topple Saddam.
CIA came to this conclusion through painful experience in the mid-nineties. Our attempts to identify a Sunni military leader with the capability and following to take on Saddam’s elite units proved difficult. Saddam regularly shuffled or even killed senior officers just for the sport of it, and this greatly increased the challenge of getting access to the right networks without being compromised. A combination of Saddam’s ruthlessness and our own mistakes had resulted in scores of Iraqis in our employ being killed.
Covert action against Saddam in the past had not been as large or as well funded as our activities in Afghanistan against the Russians during the cold war. Some of our potential partners in the region had judged that we were not serious because of the paucity of resources devoted and because we had never committed ourselves to supporting covert action with military force. There was always the possibility that U.S. airpower might come into play once we had validated the feasibility of a potential overthrow of Saddam. In practice, the execution of such a plan was extremely difficult and unlikely.
What we learned in Afghanistan was that covert action, effectively coupled with a larger military plan, could succeed. What we were telling the vice president that day was that CIA could not go it alone in toppling Saddam; all instruments of U.S. power had to be aligned to achieve the objective. Some may have believed that by saying so, we in essence were saying that we were more than willing to hold the military’s coat, thus making war inevitable. In truth, we were simply conveying the reality of our historical experience.
Thus in Iraq, unlike in Afghanistan, CIA’s role was to provide information to the military about the whereabouts and capabilities of enemy forces, assess the political environment, coordinate the efforts of indigenous networks of supporters who paved the way for U.S. military advances, and conduct sabotage operations and the like. That’s a more traditional role for intelligence to play, but none of it came easily.
The first action the Agency undertook in February 2002 was to resurrect the Northern Iraq Liaison Element (NILE) teams of CIA officers that had historically encamped with the Kurds in northern Iraq. Arriving in early July, they began the painstaking effort of recruiting agents, creating networks of people and tribes not only willing to gather data but also to take action. We wanted them to take aggressive actions to challenge the legitimacy of the regime wherever they could, sabotage railheads, disrupt communications nodes, attack local Ba’ath Party headquarters, and communicate their actions with the military to maximize their effectiveness.
We operated out of northern Iraq and over the borders of neighboring countries to the south and west. We gave the military full transparency to the contacts we were making, introducing U.S. Special Forces to individuals inside Iraq who held some promise in persuading military units to defect once a ground war started, either by switching sides or surrendering. In the end, while few if any units did defect, neither did many regular army units fight. And changing sides was not a very appealing option for them. Regular army forces often had Iraqi Republican Guard units behind them. They faced likely death if they advanced on U.S. military units in front of them, and almost certain death if Saddam’s Special Forces to the rear felt they were not supporting the regime.
That left us with encouraging surrender, and our case officers worked with clandestine sources to deliver that message to the Iraqi army. But not too long before the war got under way, this choice was taken off the table. The reason was quite simple. The U.S. had so few forces on the ground that a successful campaign to induce capitulation would have quickly resulted in the prisoners of war outnumbering the invading army.
The fallback position was to suggest to the Iraqi military units that they simply lay down their arms and go home. The U.S. military started air-dropping leaflets bearing that message, and Iraqi soldiers took it to heart, walking away in large numbers once the shooting got under way. (Later, when he was trying to justify his controversial May 23, 2003, edict disbanding the Iraqi army, Jerry Bremer would say that the army had already disbanded itself. True enough, but the Iraqi army did so largely at the behest of the U.S. government, and certainly not in the expectation that its soldiers would be cut adrift, taking their weapons with them, often with no means to support their families.)
I visited CIA officers at several secret bases in the desert west and south of Iraq just prior to the war. The bases had been created in the middle of nowhere in large part to train and equip Iraqi tribal networks so they could reenter their country to conduct surveillance and sabotage, and send back data to the U.S. military. The officers I met with had been living in tents for months preparing for the war, and they were eager to get started. Many of them were young—quite a few were on their first tours of duty—and I was the only DCI they had ever served under. My visit was intended to give them a morale boost and to let them know that I was very proud of them and confident in their ability to meet any challenge. Privately, though, I could not help but worry that many of these young men and women could soon die.
At one of these visits, I met with a contingent led by Gen. Mohammed Abdullah Shawani, who had been chief of Iraqi Special Forces during the Iran-Iraq war. General Shawani was introduced to the Agency in 1991, quickly becoming one of the U.S. government’s most critical partners in working against Saddam’s regime. A physically imposing figure with the size and strength of a football offensive lineman, Shawani was a born leader with a significant following within the traditional and Special Operations elements of the regular Iraqi army. A special operator and pilot by training, he gained fame and the highest Iraqi military honors when he led a heliborne attack against an Iranian-occupied hilltop during the Iran-Iraq war.
Shawani, or “the General,” as he was known to his Iraqi followers, quickly became key to developing a strong network inside Iraq for the Agency. Unfortunately, the network was compromised by Saddam’s security services in the mid-1990s, resulting in the torture and execution of Shawani’s three sons. Shawani continued to work tirelessly to develop agent networks within Iraq and assisted the Agency in contacting Iraqi tribal and religious leaders in the months lead
ing up to the invasion in the spring of 2003. During the prosecution of the war, Shawani helped develop and lead the Agency-sponsored Iraqi paramilitary group known as “the Scorpions.” Such was his following in the regular Iraqi military that when Shawani went to talk to a large group of Iraqi soldiers being held prisoner in Kuwait, he was immediately recognized by a number of the senior Iraqi officers, who stood at attention and saluted him.
Thanks to Shawani and many others, in the hours and days before the war got under way, CIA teams were able to slip into Iraq and meet up with established networks to try to prevent the Iraqi military from destroying the bridges crossing the Euphrates and leading into Baghdad. Others met up with agents working to prevent Saddam from torching the southern oil fields.
As war approached, our designated senior officer for Baghdad, “Charlie S.,” moved to Doha, where he sat at Gen. Tommy Franks’s side. Charlie became an important member of the military team. He was constantly providing information from our networks of sources about potential military targets. Sometimes he would even give advice not to bomb. An example: When Central Command (CENTCOM) learned where a senior Iraqi intelligence officer was hiding, the military’s first reaction was to target a Tomahawk cruise missile on his coordinates. However, as our liaison to Tommy Franks’s headquarters, Charlie convinced his military counterparts of the intelligence value of taking this Iraqi officer alive. Though difficult, the effort to get ground forces to this officer’s location proved to be very worthwhile based on the information subsequently obtained from him.
The Northern Iraq Liaison Element (NILE) teams operated continuously in northern Iraq after July 2002, working under extremely arduous conditions, far from any military support, and in constant danger from Saddam’s security forces. Nonetheless, they produced some extraordinary successes. They managed to recruit whole networks of Iraqi agents dedicated to helping us overthrow Saddam’s regime.
One group of Iraqis, united by religious affiliations, was particularly important. Once we were able to convince the group’s leaders that this time the United States was serious about getting rid of Saddam, and, not coincidentally, once we provided their leaders a couple million dollars to demonstrate our resolve, they began to produce highly actionable intelligence. The group secretly brought in four Iraqi military officers a week to be debriefed by the CIA NILE team. The head of the religious sect, someone our guys referred to as “the Pope,” sat in on the sessions. Often those being debriefed refused to answer some questions, saying that what we were asking for was “too sensitive.” Each time, “the Pope” would interrupt. “You will answer the question!” he would instruct, and they would obey. Every military officer we debriefed told us that Saddam did indeed possess WMD.
One early windfall came when a member of the group handed us a CD-ROM that was essentially a personnel roster of Saddam’s Special Security Organization. We cross-checked the list against some of the names we already knew. It proved legitimate and enabled us to identify and expose several double agents that the Iraqi intelligence apparatus was trying to infiltrate into our midst.
Other members of this network gave us the locations of Iraqi missile emplacements and would tell us precisely when the batteries would be tested. Using U.S. reconnaissance aircraft, we were able to validate that the information we were given was accurate. The missiles were precisely where our sources told us we would find them. As a result, the U.S. military was able to make short work of eliminating Saddam’s surface-to-air missiles when the shooting war started.
In the run-up to the war, the United States had promised to deliver a large amount of weapons to the two main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq (the PUK and the KDP) so that they could effectively join in the coming fight. Obtaining the weapons was not a problem for us, but getting them there was another matter. The Turks refused to allow the weapons to transit their country.
CIA then chartered several large transport aircraft but kept getting turned down when we requested overflight rights from all the neighboring countries. The Kurds were exasperated at the delay. “Where are the weapons you promised us?” they asked over and over again. We had no satisfactory answer. Finally, in February 2003, about a month before the start of the war, Tom S., the head of our NILE team in Suleimaniya, was told by the local PUK representative, “Never mind.” He was stunned to watch as trucks rolled up to a warehouse only fifty feet from his base and tons of weapons were delivered to the Kurds by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The NILE team stayed in close contact with Langley, passing back to headquarters hundreds of intelligence reports. In turn, they would be kept apprised of what was going on in Washington. In one conversation, operations officers in Washington told the field of a major development back home. The Starbucks at CIA headquarters had just switched over to a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation. Agency officers in the field speculated that this move signaled an imminent start to the war, and they were right.
Operation Iraqi Freedom began a little bit earlier than we anticipated because of a tip-off from one of the NILE’s best sources on the possible whereabouts of Public Enemy Number One: Saddam Hussein. Some of the group’s members were involved in providing communications for top Iraqi officials, including Saddam. A status board in the regime’s communications headquarters showed green lights when Iraqi networks were functioning correctly and red lights when they were not. Generally, the lights were green. Our source noticed that Saddam’s security forces always cut off communications in the areas where he was about to travel—presumably to prevent disloyal military personnel from revealing his whereabouts to enemies.
Temporarily cutting off communication, however, caused red lights to go on near Saddam’s intended destination. Over time our source was able to confirm his suspicions. The red lights would go on, and he would later learn that Saddam had been at that location. Saddam would leave and the green lights would return. Thanks to this glitch in the system, the status board was basically broadcasting Saddam’s whereabouts.
Two days before a U.S. deadline for Iraqi compliance was to expire, our source got wind of a possible meeting that evening at Dora Farms, an estate owned by Saddam’s wife. Although it was unclear who was going to be present, indications were that Saddam’s sons and perhaps the entire family might be planning a meeting there, presumably to discuss what might happen should the United States invade.
Our source relayed this news to the NILE team in northern Iraq. They immediately flashed the news back to headquarters and to the CIA liaison with Gen. Tommy Franks, in Doha, Qatar.
The next morning, March 19, the CIA officer briefed Franks on the previous evening’s intelligence. Later that evening, our source rang in again. The red lights on the status board were once more showcasing Dora Farms. Odds were that the Iraqi leader would be going there again that evening. Other human sources involved in providing security near Dora Farms had also heard that a major meeting of Saddam’s family might happen at the farm that night.
At that point, we ordered U.S. overhead reconnaissance to examine the site closely. What we saw was a large contingent of security vehicles, precisely the kinds that would typically precede and accompany Saddam’s movements, hidden under trees at the farm.
It just seemed too good a scenario to pass up, so I called Don Rumsfeld and asked if we could come brief him right away on something potentially significant. He said yes, by all means. I gathered John McLaughlin and the head of our Iraq Operations Group and we made our way to the garage. En route we ran into Steve Kappes, the number-two in our Directorate of Operations. “Come with us,” I shouted, and we dragged him into the elevator. We whisked Steve into our armored SUV and roared off the CIA compound before he could find out where we were going or why.
When we got to the Pentagon, we were immediately ushered into Rumsfeld’s spacious office. We quickly laid out the facts for him. He understood the importance in an instant and said, “We’ve got to take this downtown.” Seconds later he was on the phone and h
ad arranged for all of us to see the president right away. Back in the SUV, we sped off to the White House, but Rumsfeld’s limo and accompanying security vehicles handily beat us there.
We got right in to see the president. The vice president, Andy Card, and Condi Rice were already there, and before long the president asked that Colin Powell join us. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dick Myers, had come along with Secretary Rumsfeld.
In the private dining room just off of the Oval Office, we rolled out some maps and briefed the president on the intelligence we had. We were honest with him about the limits of our knowledge. We thought the information was pretty good—very good, as these things go—but we could not guarantee that the information was not wrong. Nor could we swear that this wasn’t a trick, or prove that Saddam hadn’t moved an orphanage onto the site to set us up for a PR disaster. Ultimately, deciding to strike would not be an easy call.
We told the president that we were unlikely to get any additional information to help him make the decision. Then, moments later, we got more. A source providing security on the scene had gotten another call out. He said that there were rumors among his colleagues that Saddam himself might show up between 3:00 and 3:30 A.M., Baghdad time.
Soon another report came in. Real-time intelligence reports arriving in the middle of a crisis happen all the time in Hollywood, but this is highly unusual in reality. The chief of our Iraq Operations Group was called away from the Oval Office to take a secure telephone call at the desk of the president’s scheduler. The latest information said that whoever was going to be there would be in a malja—an Arabic word that could mean “basement” or “place of refuge.” If it were a bunker, cruise missiles would not be able to penetrate it. That meant that manned bombers would be required as well.
At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA Page 41