February 4-5, 2003: CIA Officer Reminds Tenet that Source for Mobile Labs is Not Reliable

Around midnight, CIA Director George Tenet calls CIA official Tyler Drumheller at home and asks for the phone number of Richard Dearlove, the British intelligence chief. Tenet wants to get Dearlove’s approval to use British intelligence in Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the UN (see February 5, 2003). Drumheller takes the opportunity to remind Tenet that the source for the alleged mobile labs, Curveball, is not reliable. “Hey, boss, you’re not going to use that stuff in the speech… ? There are real problems with that,” Drumheller asks. Tenet, distracted and tired, tells him not to worry. [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 184; Washington Post, 6/25/2006] Tenet will later deny having such a conversation with Drumheller, writing: “I remember no such midnight call or warning.… Drumheller had dozens of opportunities before and after the Powell speech to raise the alarm with me [about Curveball], yet he failed to do so.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 283]