Former CIA Chief Says Bush was Informed Prior to War that Iraq had No WMD
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Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA's Europe division, revealed on CBS's 60 Minutes last night that former Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri made a deal with the CIA prior to the war to reveal Iraq's military secrets. Drumheller, who was in charge of the operation, said CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level White House meeting in the fall of 2002 that included Bush, Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice. Tenet informed the White House that the high-level informant said Iraq "had no active weapons of mass destruction program." After hearing the news, the White House group that was preparing for war with Iraq said it was no longer interested in information from Sabri. "We said, 'Well, what about the intel?'" Drumheller reports. "And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'" Drumheller said the decision to invade Iraq would be remembered as a grave mistake. "It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it's an intelligence failure. ... This was a policy failure. ... I think, over time, people will look back on this and see this is going to be one of the great, I think, policy mistakes of all time." [MORE]