Bush Ignored "No WMD in Iraq" Tip from CIA: Report

Tyler Drumheller, in an interview with CBS's " 60minutes" due to be broadcast late Sunday, April23 , said Bush and top White House officials simply brushed off the warning, saying they were "no longer interested" in intelligence and that the policy toward Iraq had been already set, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) Saturday.

The information about the absence of the suspected weapons in Iraq, according to excerpts of Drumheller's remarks, was clandestinely provided to the United States by former Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri, who doubled as a covert intelligence agent for Western services.

Then-CIA director George Tenet immediately delivered this report to Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other high-ranking administration officials, but the information was dismissed, Drumheller said.

"The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested," the former CIA official recalled. "And we said 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"

Drumheller said the White House did not want any additional data from Sabri because, as he pointed out, "the policy was set."

"The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," he argued.

The administration claimed in the run-up to the war that Baghdad had extensive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was working clandestinely to build a nuclear arsenal, therefore, presenting a threat to the world.

An extensive CIA-led probe undertaken after the US military took control of Iraq failed to turn up any such weapons.

Bush acknowledged for the first time last December Iraq was invaded on wrong intelligence.

His then secretary of state Colin Powell regretted his UN statement making the case for the US-led Iraq invasion, saying it was a "blot" on his record.

"Policy Set"

Drumheller, who was a top CIA liaison officer in Europe before the war, further revealed that Sabri was just one source, but pointed out that the administration would not shy away from other single-source information if it suited its policy goals.

"They certainly took information that came from single sources on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroboration at all," he complained.

The White House had embraced a British report that Iraq had purchased500 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger, allegedly to restart its nuclear weapons program, in what was known as the "yellowcake case."

A special CIA envoy Joseph Wilson, who made a secret trip to Niger in late 2002 to verify the report, dismissed it as unfounded -- much to the displeasure of the White House.

Drumheller, who retired from the agency last year, is the second high-ranking ex-CIA official to criticize the administration's use of intelligence in months leading up to the war.

Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to2005 , wrote in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs magazine that the White House was "cherry-picking" information and that "intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made."

Americans were increasingly supporting the impeachment of the wartime president for misleading the American public and lying to them about his Iraq war.

A Zogby International poll showed last month that 51 percent of respondents agreed that Bush should be impeached if he lied about Iraq, a far greater percentage than believed former president Bill Clinton should be impeached over his sex scandal with White House trainee Monica Lewinsky.

CIA Officer Fired

In another development, the CIA said on Friday, April21 , that it fired an intelligence officer for leaking classified information that sources said contributed to a Washington Post report about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.

"During the course of these investigations, the CIA officer acknowledged having unauthorized discussions with members of the media in which the officer knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence, including operational information," Reuters quoted CIA spokesman Tom Crispell as saying.

CIA employees sign secrecy agreements when they join the agency that specifically prohibit them from discussing classified information with any person not properly cleared.

The CIA would not say what the leak involved, and declined to identify the officer or describe the officer's duties at the agency, saying that such disclosures would violate the Privacy Act of1974 , Reuters reported.

NBC News, however, identified the accused officer as Mary McCarthy, and said she worked in the CIA Inspector General's office before being "marched out" of the spy agency on Thursday.

Public records showed McCarthy, a veteran CIA officer, had served as a special assistant to former President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush from 1996 to2001 .

She was a senior director for intelligence programs on the White House National Security Council staff and testified to the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

The Washington Post's reporting about secret CIA prisons for terrorism suspects in November sparked an international outcry over US detainee policies and also won a Pulitzer Prize, America's leading journalism award.

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