September 12, 2007

Tyler Drumheller

Tyler Drumheller, former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, "got it right" about Saddam not having WMDs, as Sidney Blumenthal recently reported with new corroboration from two former CIA officers. What's more, Drumheller tried over and over to get that message out. His source was Saddam's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, a high-level Iraqi government insider, and French intelligence wiretaps backed up his claims.

George Tenet gave Bush this information, but they both promptly dismissed it. Bush and Tenet chose instead to trumpet the claims of Curveball, a discredited source.

"For two months, Drumheller fought against the use of Curveball," Sidney Blumenthal wrote in a September 6 Salon.com article. "Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction." Yet Bush chose to tout Curveball's assertions in the 2003 State of the Union address, and he characterized it as the opinion of "three Iraqi defectors." Drumheller next fought against including the Curveball assertion in Powell's UN speech, but he was overruled. Drumheller's opinion and the original report on Sabri weren't shared with Powell or his top aide, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.

Drumheller eventually took his story to 60 Minutes in 2006, and still Republican Senators Hatch, Chambliss, and Roberts of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence wrote a letter disputing his claims. Tyler Drumheller called George Tenet a liar when his book came out earlier this year.

George Bush, on the other hand, gave Tenet the Medal of Freedom. So who's the real hero?

We'll side with Drumheller, who merits this week's BuzzFlash Wings of Justice Award for fighting against the forces of darkness from the inside.

* * *

HONOREES  |  NOMINATE  |  ABOUT  |  HOME

Wings of Justice is a project of BuzzFlash.com.
Support our work by donating or buying a book, DVD or CD.