By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 27 December 2019

The Iraqi National Congress (INC), the umbrella group for the Iraqi opposition to Saddam Husayn from the 1990s up to 2003, has been immensely controversial, mostly because of its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, against whom the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and State Department waged a bitter bureaucratic war, a lot of it in the press, getting into circulation stories of INC trickery—possibly on behalf of Iran—being behind the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq.

A year after Saddam’s fall, when it was becoming clear that the CIA’s pre-invasion intelligence assessments were not going to be vindicated, the Agency began trying to shift blame to Chalabi for one of its most notorious blunders: the overreliance on a single source, CURVEBALL, in assessing Saddam’s biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capacities. CURVEBALL, whose real name turned out to be Rafid Alwan al-Janabi (pictures above), was handled by German intelligence. CURVEBALL was central to the BWMD section in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and Colin Powell’s (in)famous February 2003 presentation to the United Nations. It was thus a bitter blow to the CIA when it was confirmed in the spring of 2004 that CURVEBALL was a fabricator. Stories were soon disseminated through the media by the CIA that CURVEBALL was an INC source, coached by Chalabi, whose bodyguard was a brother of CURVEBALL’s.

In fact, as a post-war Senate investigation concluded, “CURVE BALL’s close relative’s connection to the INC is coincidental, and is not an explanation for his fabrications”. The bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission found the same thing: “Curveball’s reporting was not influenced by, controlled by, or connected to, the INC.”

The Senate Select Committee of Investigation (SSCI) document referenced above, ‘Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress’, contains a detailed write-up of the intelligence that the INC did give to the U.S. before the Iraq invasion. Below is a summary of pages 35 to 104 in the SSCI report. All quotes are from the SSCI report.

About 300 documents from the INC were given to U.S. intelligence in March 2002 and provided some reliable information on Saddam’s army, especially its order of battle; some less reliable information on the Iraqi Special Security Organization (the SSO or Al-Amn al-Khas), the most powerful of Saddam’s secret police forces, charged with protecting high officials, invigilating the other intelligence agencies, and intimidation and assassination of dissidents; and some information on regime personnel that was difficult to assess because U.S. intelligence had so little view inside Iraq it had nothing to check the information against.

Five INC-related human sources were provided to U.S. intelligence. There was to have been a sixth, but his defection did not take place (see below).

Source One had access to decent information on Iraqi military infrastructure and conventional weapons, as well as information on Saddam’s training of Arab terrorists at Salman Pak, all of which was corroborated after the invasion. Source One gave some surmises about WMD-related facilities, which he told his debriefers he was uncertain about—his reporting generally was always carefully circumscribed to things he actually knew about—and this was then mishandled, particularly by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), so that analyst extrapolations started being passed around as if they came from the source. But overall, Source One’s information checked out and nothing was ever withdrawn.

Source Two, an Iraqi Major, was first debriefed by U.S. intelligence in February 2002: it was quickly established that his claimed knowledge of the CWMD program was shaky, but he seemed to have knowledge of the missile programs and potentially information on the BWMD program that would corroborate CURVEBALL’s claims about “production trailers and mobile R&D laboratories in [Saddam’s] BW program”. There were suspicions about Source Two reasonably quickly from the DIA, but he passed a polygraph, so contact continued. However, in March 2002, Source Two engaged in an INC-directed media event, against the express instructions of DIA, so DIA terminated contact

In May 2002, a “fabrication notice” was issued against Source Two, partly influenced by the report of a foreign intelligence agency that had interviewed Source Two in December 2001 and found him unreliable (if one had to guess, the agency was probably Jordan’s GIA.) The DIA believed Source Two had been coached by the INC. Source Two’s information was not recalled, though. The fabrication notice was only meant to “warn the intelligence community”, according to DIA, and in any case—despite the notice being on the file—the CIA and DIA forgot about it, then missed it when they started using Source Two’s material again for CIA products in the summer of 2002, in the October 2002 NIE, and “Source Two was also one of four HUMINT sources specifically referred to in the part of Secretary Powell’s February 2003 speech before the UN Security Council that discussed the mobile BW production units”.

Source Three appeared at the end of September 2001: he was based in an Arab country and initially interviewed by the FBI because his story included reference to an Iraqi agent within America. Once this was disregarded, Source Three was handed on to DIA, where he claimed to be a liaison officer between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and the Fedayeen Saddam from 1998 to 2000, where he had witnessed non-Iraqi Arabs—he thought Egyptians and/or Gulfies—being trained at terrorist camps in Salman Pak by a 520-member unit of the Fedayeen Saddam, “Al-Qarai’a Force” (also given as “the Qaria’a Force”), which specialised in booby trapping vehicles, preparing suitcase bombs, and even suicide-attacks, essentially unconventional or insurgent warfare, plus, most notably at that moment, how to hijack airplanes. The CIA and DIA came to mistrust Source Three after his story appeared in the press, though it was not clear that the exaggerations in the media version of Source Three’s story were due to Source Three himself.

Still, even with all the caveats, Source Three’s testimony appeared in the two major pre-invasion finished products of the CIA on Saddam’s relationship with Al-Qaeda: Iraq and Al-Qa’ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship (June 2002) and the two versions of Iraqi Support for Terrorism (September 2002 and January 2003), where it was noted that there had been a surge of defectors, two of whom had corroborated parts of what Source Three had said, and the CIA had reports on file from earlier in 2001 that substantiated aspects of what was said about foreign terrorists training at Salman Pak. Contact was lost with Source Three in early 2003, contact with one of the corroborating sources had been tenuous in the first place, and then there was Source Four.

Source Four, a former Fedayeen Saddam captain living in the United States, was referred to U.S. intelligence by Source Three, who gave Source Four’s address and telephone number to debriefers, telling them that Source Four would confirm what he (Source Three) had said. Before any U.S. intelligence official got to Source Four, however, the INC had put Source Four in front of a journalist, whose article described Source Four as “an Iraqi terror school instructor”, and methods at the training school he apparently ran were “similar to those used by September 11 hijackers”. Source Four was debriefed by the CIA and FBI in October 2001. Source Four denied any involvement in terrorism, saying he was an Iraqi Army captain, responsible for providing administrative needs—such as providing weapons—for two groups of Fedayeen trainees at Salman Pak. Source Four had seen Saddam’s men training non-Iraqi Arabs: he had personally seen about 75 of them, he said, in the eight months he was at the camp from October 1994 to May 1995. Source Four also said he had seen the Fedayeen practicing hijackings on a train, a bus, and a Boeing 707 that were at the camp, but he had no information tying this training to 9/11. Indeed, Source Three and Source Four—despite what some of the press reports claimed—were always careful to say they had no way of knowing if Al-Qaeda operatives had ever been trained at Salman Pak.

Information from Source Four appeared in Iraq and Al-Qa’ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship and both versions of Iraqi Support for Terrorism. In the latter, it was noted that Source Four’s story had been “embellished” in the media, and the reference saying Source Four “apparently did not have first-hand access” was explained by the CIA to the Senate as meaning only to “indicate that he did not personally provide the training”. Source Four moved to work with the INC in March 2002, falling out of contact with U.S. intelligence for several months, but moved back to his original home in December 2002 and resumed contact, after becoming disillusioned with the INC’s “hollow promises of meaningful employment”. Source Four received a threatening call from Saddam’s secret police in January 2003 and then received several calls in February 2003 trying to use Source Four as a conduit for a “peaceful” resolution as the invasion loomed and then to probe for information about American intentions.

Concrete proof of Source Four’s reports to U.S. intelligence was impossible to obtain: during the Ba’thi regime’s final sweep as it withdrew from power in April 2003, the camp at Salman Pak was destroyed utterly. A plane was found in the wreckage and DIA was able to learn that it was common knowledge among the Iraqi population that terrorists, including foreigners, trained at Salman Pak. DIA also cautioned that this rumour-mill made it easy for “fabricators and unestablished sources” to pass on “hearsay and thirdhand information”. The CIA, dedicated to its Saddam-Qaeda non-cooperation theory, took the most purblind, literal-minded approach to the whole question and reported to the Senate in June 2006 that it had “no information” on Al-Qaeda operatives training at Salman Pak—something never claimed.

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), by contrast, the body that scoured Iraq in the aftermath of Saddam’s fall, found that M14—the Iraqi intelligence directorate responsible for training and special operations—had “used the Salman Pak facility to train Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, Yemeni, Lebanese, Egyptian, and Sudanese operatives in counterterrorism, explosives, marksmanship, and foreign operations”. The SSCI concludes (p. 139) that the notion the INC-affiliated defectors provided “false” reports about non-Iraqi Arabs being given terrorist training by Saddam’s regime at Salman Pak is a “myth”.

Source Five was smuggled out of Iraq by the INC, according to DIA, the agency that debriefed him in September and October 2002. Source Five allegedly had access to the highest levels of Saddam’s leadership and gave information on “leadership atmospherics, routines, and various social activities”. Source Five had also claimed publicly that Usama bin Laden had come to Baghdad, where he met Saddam. Source Five claimed it was Uday Husayn who identified Bin Laden during the meeting. This was the only terrorism-related report from Source Five; he claimed nothing about WMD. Source Five’s story about where he lived and how he fled Iraq checked out, and the details, such as telephone numbers, that Source Five provided “were determined to be accurate and showed familiarity with members of Saddam’s family”, albeit the CIA did not have enough information of its own to assess Source Five’s claims about his proximity to the inner circle. Source Five also passed a polygraph, though there was some speculation he had “emotional and psychological issues” that might have contaminated his perception of past events. There was obvious scepticism given the context—as the U.S. debated what to do about Saddam—when it came to Source Five’s claim of a UBL-Saddam meeting, and Source Five’s undisguised INC links underlined the concern that he was trying to influence American policy.

At the end of it all, there are a number of things that can be stated with certainty. Source Five was never assessed as a fabricator and the parts of his story that could be checked seemed broadly true. Saddam had regular high-level contact with Al-Qaeda through the 1990s, including bringing several senior Al-Qaeda officials to Baghdad as late as 1998, among them Bin Laden’s then-deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. The 9/11 Commission Report documented (p. 134) Saddam’s offer of safe-haven to Bin Laden in February 1999. And there was not in 2002-03—and there is not now—any indication Bin Laden and Saddam ever met. To fit these facts together, one has to give, and the balance of probability suggests that Source Five as mistaken or lying, but, as so often in the intelligence business, an uncertainty will remain, perhaps in perpetuity.

The would-be defector was a senior Iraqi diplomat based in Europe. In July 2001, Chalabi told the Pentagon of the man’s desire to defect because he had refused to do “nasty things” for the IIS station chief, and was now being recalled to Baghdad, where it was expected an unpleasant fate awaited him. DIA officers met Chalabi about the possible defection, and the CIA then told DIA that it had no interest in taking the diplomat in because his “academic background and limited government experience” made it unlikely he had high-value intelligence to impart. Given the near-unbelievable paucity of human sources the CIA had in Iraq before 2003, it is quite incredible that the Agency was turning away defectors. But turn him away they did.

After the DIA took over handling the INC in October 2002, it ended up drawing fourteen further sources from in and around the INC. The SSCI report gives a brief run through of these additional sources, most of them unrelated to WMD issues and the information seemed (and seems) plausible, even if it was never wholly verified. A number of the sources were had only one or two contacts with U.S. intelligence on specific issues before disappearing.

As the invasion loomed, the INC provided information about: the biographies of regime leaders; Saddam’s palaces; tribal loyalties; Saddam’s efforts to move, conceal, and procure banned weaponry; the location of suspected WMD sites; the Fedayeen Saddam; the Ba’thi intelligence apparatus; and the Saddam regime’s military order of battle. The information “varied substantially by issue”. Some information was “vague, incorrect, or unverifiable”. Information on the regime leadership and prisoners of war, however, was much better, and the INC was directly helpful to the U.S. military effort during the invasion.

“INC sources in some cases provided verified and useful information that directly supported contingency planning and operations for Operation IRAQI FREEDOM”, the Senate found, adding from the DIA that INC-affiliated reporting was “highly useful” in identifying medical facilities inside Iraq, ensuring that Coalition munitions did not damage any hospitals, an important humanitarian (and, to be blunt about it, political) necessity. INC information on the locations and patterns of movement of regime officials played a role in leading the U.S. to Saddam’s two sons, Uday and Qusay. INC reporting on the Ba’thi internal security apparatus “was corroborated” after the invasion. “According to the DIA, [INC] information on internal security was largely accurate.”

One interesting note is from Source Eight, who focused on conventional weapons. Source Eight was able to give details about the Saddam regime’s cross-border smuggling into Syria, and from a sub-source learned that “Iraqi intelligence officers provided ‘bearded fundamentalist terrorists’ in Kuwait with small arms and explosives in the summer of 2002 to be used against U.S. forces in Kuwait”. U.S. forces in Kuwait were attacked by jihadists in late 2002 and Saddam made brazen public statements in support of this terrorism, pledging himself to a joint program with the jihadists against the Americans. Source Thirteen did business with Uday Husayn and was able to report on the abuse of the U.N. oil-for-food program.

The single awful INC source was Source Eighteen, a walk-in to the CIA who was passed on to DIA and debriefed in early February 2003. It was darkly comic: “Source Eighteen was supposed to have a nuclear engineering background, but was unable to discuss advanced mathematics or physics and described types of ‘nuclear’ reactors that do not exist. Source Eighteen used the bathroom frequently, particularly when he appeared to be flustered by a line of questioning, suddenly remembering a new piece of information upon his return. During one such incident, Source Eighteen appeared to be reviewing notes.” Source Eighteen was immediately recognised as a fabricator and contact terminated; no reports were generated from him.

Overall, then, the INC was a mixed bag when it came to the quality of the intelligence it provided to the U.S. about Saddam’s Iraq. An incident like Source Eighteen is the kind of thing that an activist organisation trying to get the lone superpower to remove the despotism that prevents them going home has to be expected to try. The DIA and CIA handled that exactly correctly, unlike the murkier case of Source Two: the fault there is entirely on the U.S. “intelligence community” for the incompetence of its processes—able to identify a fabricator, and unable to comb his material out of the system. Source Five remains in that zone of the unknown that is so common with espionage.

On the positive side, the INC brought to light the Fedayeen Saddam and its role in training terrorists for Saddam from across the region. Had the CIA and other agencies drilled down on this matter, they might have discovered the extent of the Islamization of Saddam’s regime, and thus revised their catastrophic pre-invasion assessment that a Ba’thi-jihadist alliance of the kind that formed the insurgency was impossible. Even if that proved too great an ideological commitment to let go of—the CIA was very committed to its “secular Ba’thists are hostile to Al-Qaeda” thesis—getting a handle on the Fedayeen Saddam might have prepared the U.S. for what it would actually face during the invasion. As that did not happen, it was fortunate the INC was on-hand to provide some crucial pieces of the puzzle for the U.S. military as it made its way into Iraq, from assisting with the targeting (helping avoid medical facilities and find senior officials) to giving a layout of the society (how the secret police worked and the allegiances of the tribes).

In a later section of SSCI report (pp. 141-43), it is noted that while there were mistakes in the INC-related intelligence, “much proved to be correct and some was valuable during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM” [emphasis added]. The INC also continued to help the U.S. after the Saddam regime was demolished. Vital information was provided from the INC “numerous” times that prevented Coalition soldiers being killed by insurgents, and INC information led not contributed to the demise of Saddam’s sons, but led directly to the arrest of two Iraqi officials on the “top-55 blacklist” (52 of whom appeared on the deck of cards). Added to that, “The INC provided access to a large volume of material, including Ba’ath Party military records, Baghdad police records, and thirty-one footlockers of Iraqi Intelligence Service records. The INC provided information used by CENTCOM for target lists and battle damage assessments”.

When it comes to the narrative of the INC being responsible for deceiving the CIA about Saddam having WMDs and thus being responsible for the Iraq invasion, the post-war investigations were quite clear that this idea is absurd. Whatever the errors of some INC-affiliated defectors, the Senate investigation found “no indication … that the INC-affiliated sources intentionally provided false information” (p. 143). One claim from one INC defector was used to support a single key claim in the 2002 NIE, but “the Intelligence Community likely would not have altered its judgment even without his information” (p. 136). The Silberman-Robb Commission ratifies this: “INC-related sources had a minimal impact on pre-war [U.S. intelligence] assessments” (p. 108).