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WMD reports 'embellished'
09/07/2004 13:47 - (SA)
Washington - Reports by Iraqi defectors on weapons of mass destruction were embellished to make Saddam Hussein a more attractive target for the United States, an Iraqi exile told The New York Times.
Speaking ahead of the release on Friday of a US Senate report castigating the CIA for faulty intelligence on Iraq, Muhammad al-Zubaidi said the defectors' accounts were beefed up by members of the Iraqi National congress led by Ahmad Chalabi.
"They intentionally exaggerated all the information so they would drag the United States into war," Zubaidi, an ex-INC member who split with the group in April 2003 and is now exiled in Lebanon, told the daily in an interview.
Zubaidi said that after the United States declared its war on terrorism in the wake of the September 11, 2001 suicide plane attacks in Washington and New York, he was asked by the INC to find evidence of outlawed weapons in Iraq.
He said that over three months, he and a team of 75 to 100 people gathered statements from defectors claiming to have knowledge of Iraq's secret weapons programmes.
Prepped up by INC
Zubaidi said the statements made by the defectors to his team differed from those they later made to US intelligence officials after having met with INC members.
He contends that the defectors were prepped by the INC to make some of the most provocative claims on weapons of mass destruction and contacts between Iraqi officials and members of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.
The daily said Zubaidi provided handwritten diaries he wrote from 2001 and 2002 and his reports on statements made by the defectors.
Together, it said, they appeared to support his claim that the defectors changed their disclosures.
"We all know the defectors had a little information on which they built big stories," he told the paper.
A Chalabi deputy who met with the defectors refuted Zubaidi's allegations, calling them "childish." He said Zubaidi's team did not do full briefings on the defector.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report is expected to slam the Central Intelligence Agency for providing faulty pre-war intelligence on Iraq, which apparently influenced the White House's resolve to oust Iraqi leader Saddam from office.
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