Tyler Drumheller, CIA Officer Who Exposed U.S. Reliance On Discredited Iraq Source "Curveball" Dies At 63 ~ THE 5TH ESTATE ASIA

Sunday, August 09, 2015

Tyler Drumheller, CIA Officer Who Exposed U.S. Reliance On Discredited Iraq Source "Curveball" Dies At 63

Sunday, August 09, 2015

How convenient, and predictable; apparently Drumheller wasn't quite "discredited" enough to keep him from getting offed by the CIA

WASHINGTON POST
By Greg Miller
08/06/2015

Tyler S. Drumheller, a high-level CIA officer who publicly battled agency leaders over one of the most outlandish claims in the U.S. case for war with Iraq, died Aug. 2 at a hospital in Fairfax County. He was 63.

The cause was complications from pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Linda Drumheller. Mr. Drumheller held posts in Africa and Europe over a 26-year career during which the CIA’s focus shifted from the Cold War to terrorist threats. He rose to prominent positions at CIA headquarters, serving as chief of the European division at a time when the agency was abducting al-Qaeda suspects on the continent and U.S. allies there faced a wave of terrorist plots.

But he was best known publicly for his role in exposing the extent to which a key part of the administration’s case for war with Iraq had been built on the claims of an Iraqi defector and serial fabricator with the fitting code name “Curveball.”

In contrast to Hollywood’s depiction of spies as impossibly elegant and acrobatic, Mr. Drumheller was a bulky, rumpled figure who often seemed oblivious to the tufts of dog hair on his clothes.

Drumheller knew just a little too much

“I always thought of him as an overfed George Smiley,” said Bill Murray, a former CIA colleague, referring to the character in John le Carré spy novels known for his espionage acumen but unassuming appearance.

Mr. Drumheller spent the bulk of his career as an undercover officer seeking to avoid public attention. But after retiring in 2005, he emerged as a vocal critic of the George W. Bush administration’s use of deeply flawed intelligence to build support for its decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Curveball, who had defected to Germany in the late 1990s, was the primary source behind the administration’s assertions that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq had developed biological weapons laboratories — lethal germ factories supposedly built on wheels or rails to evade detection.

The claim was included in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech as well as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations designed to marshal international support for intervention in Iraq.

Traitor Colin Powell's infamous bogus WMD

speech to UN justifying the invasion of Iraq

Mr. Drumheller later came forward to say that he had learned early on that German authorities had grave doubts about Curveball’s credibility. In his book “On the Brink” (2006), written with Elaine Monaghan, he recounted the Curveball debacle in detail, noting that his German counterpart had cautioned that Curveball “could be a fabricator. He’s a very erratic character.”

Mr. Drumheller said he relayed that warning to top CIA officials, and even attempted to strike the language on mobile labs from an early draft of Powell’s speech, only to be stunned to learn that the text was subsequently restored.

In “On the Brink,” Mr. Drum-heller described feeling his “heart sinking” as he watched Powell’s speech.

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