From Michiko Kakutani’s NYT review of former DCI George Tenet’s book:
Mr. Tenet also disputes the allegation made by Tyler Drumheller, the C.I.A.’s former head of the European division, that he — Mr. Drumheller — had raised serious questions about the credibility of a key source known as Curveball with top agency officials before the invasion. He does not, however, come to terms with Mr. Drumheller’s other allegation, made on “60 Minutes,” that a C.I.A. source in Mr. Hussein’s inner circle said in the fall of 2002 that the dictator had no active weapons-of-mass-destruction program and that this information was ignored.
Yesterday, I suggested that this is one of the key questions that CBS should ask Tenet tomorrow night. On the assumption that the reviewer’s summary is correct and that Drumheller’s allegation is false, we are left to wonder why top officials did not learn that Curveball was a suspect source. It will be interesting to see if, as this blog has suggested, Tenet was on of the “Powers that Be” who did had already decided that the war would be fought and did not want to entertain contrary evidence.
Senator Chuck Robb, when speaking at the Miller Center in Charlottesville on June 2, 2005, supported the allegation that the CIA'S top three were, in fact, informed about the unreliability of Curveball reports.
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