U.S. Officials Conclude Iraqi Defectors Provided Little Useful Information

U.S. intelligence officials have determined that almost all of the information provided by Iraqi defectors on Iraq’s prewar WMD efforts and links to terrorism was wrong, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Saturday (see GSN, Feb. 14).

Many of the defectors were made available to the United States by the Iraqi National Congress opposition group, according to the Inquirer. Among the defectors’ claims that have not been supported by available evidence were that prewar Iraq had developed mobile biological facilities and that it had helped train Islamic militants at a camp south of Baghdad.

A defense official has said the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Intelligence Agency, which handled the defectors, has since concluded that they provided little useful information.

INC leader Ahmed Chalabi, now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, has said his group only introduced the defectors to U.S. specialists and that it was the role of the United States to determine the worth of their information (Strobel/Landay, Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 14).

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