--> U.S. misled by bogus pre-war intelligence?
Allied agencies investigating possibly fake defectors, data
BOB DROGIN
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - Frustrated at the failure to find Saddam Hussein's
suspected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, allied
intelligence agencies have launched a major effort to determine if they
were victims of bogus Iraqi defectors who planted disinformation to
mislead the West before the war.

The goal, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official,"is to see if false
information was put out there and got into legitimate channels and we
were totally duped on it." He added, "We're reinterviewing all our sources
of information on this. This is the entire intelligence community, not just
the U.S."

The review was started after a political firestorm erupted earlier this
summer about revelations that President Bush's claim in his State of the
Union speech that Iraq had sought to import uranium from Niger was
based on forged documents.

Although senior CIA officials insist defectors were only partly responsible
for the intelligence that triggered the decision to invade Iraq in March,
other intelligence officials now fear key portions of the pre-war
intelligence may have been flawed.

As evidence, officials say former Iraqi intelligence operatives have
confirmed since the war that Saddam's regime sent agents disguised as
defectors to the West to plant fabricated intelligence. In other cases,
Baghdad apparently tricked legitimate defectors into funneling phony tips
about weapons production and storage sites.

"Then, because they believe it, they pass polygraph tests... and the
planted information becomes true to the West even if it was all made up
to deceive us," the senior intelligence official said.

[Das V-Geschäft in vollster Blüte - wer hat sich eigentlich noch nicht gegen wen verschworen? Nur ich Blödmann tappse rum im Dunkeln. Vielleicht sitzen die eigentlichen eigentlichen Hinterhintermänner in der Central Bank of Tanzania?].

Gruß!