
Sabri would not be able to leave Iraq without a good reason. As the foreign minister, he was working on negotiating the return of UN weapons inspectors and was due to travel to New York to address the UN General Assembly. The CIA couldn't contact him directly, so they made arrangements for Iraq's foreign minister to communicate through an intermediary... a Lebanese journalist trusted by both sides. The Lebanese journalist would pose questions on behalf of the CIA then follow up with Bill Murray. Murray debriefed the journalist after the meeting and Sabri (in a show of good faith) even wore a specific type of suit to the UN General Assembly at the request of Murray. Sabri told the journalist that Saddam didn't have WMD and was not trying hard to find any. If Saddam wanted nuclear weapons, he was as far as ever from that goal and making no progress. Any biological weapons program was all but non-existent, and if there were any chemical weapons within the borders of Iraq, they were not possessed by the Iraqi government. The information was a direct contradiction of Curveball. It would be CIA director George Tenet who delivered the information personally to President Bush, who would then lose interest in Naji Sabri and dismiss his assertions as disinformation.

The CIA wasn't so sure. French intelligence monitored Sabri's calls, which were then sent to Langley, Virginia and backed up what Sabri had earlier communicated. While the report on the Sabri intelligence was bring written up, Paris station chief Murray was in a rush to get back to France and didn't stay in the US to write the report himself... he left the job for the New York CIA station. Murray would later find out the emerging report was a distortion of his initial filing to New York. A new introductory paragraph was added claiming not only that Saddam possessed biological and chemical weapons, but that he was "aggressively and covertly developing" nuclear weapons... in direct contradiction to Sabri's disclosures and Murray's report. Perception was that the alterations originated from pressure from the White House. This information was given to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and he took the US National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's weapon's programs at face value. Britain had been given a report almost the opposite of what Bill Murray had first reported. Winter 2002, Murray kept trying to work with Sabri through the Lebanese intermediary, and submitted new reports reaffirming Sabri's intelligence but they were met with silence from the White House. Sabri's intelligence was buried and never communicated to Colin Powell at the State Department as he prepared for his UN presentation.

But there would be an even better source than Sabri. Not a foreign minister, but someone with direct firsthand knowledge of the weapons programs. Someone the intelligence community would speak to directly, not through a third party intermediary. As was revealed in the Downing Street Memo (click here) sent to Blair in July 2002, the impression of British intelligence coming back from the US that summer was that America had already made up its mind. The United States was going to go to war. We weren't interested in the truth, but rather in finding information that would confirm our existing opinions. London was more open minded about Iraq's weapons' programs and sought a way to prevent war whereas they viewed the US as merely preparing for an inevitable war. Michael Shipster was the man assigned to, perhaps, the most important mission in the run up to the Iraq War. Shipster is part of Britain's famous MI-6 (CIA)... the foreign part of British intelligence with the MI-5 being domestic, similar to the American FBI. This was an EXTREMELY secret mission... so much so, literally only a handful of people in both the United States and England were even aware of it.

In the 1980's, Rob Richer was a CIA agent who had been stationed in several different locations in the Middle East and now found himself in Amman, Jordan. Early on, he was asked by Jordan's King Hussein to spend time with his young adult son Abdullah. Over the years, he would go on to form a long deep bond with the prince helping him grow into a man and political leader. They are godfather to each others' children. They go on trips together and view each other as true friends. So close was Richer to the Jordanian family, that when terminally ill... King Hussein first summoned Rob Richer to his bedroom to tell him he had chosen Prince Abdullah to take the throne, before bringing in the prince, himself. He would quickly have a new role as an invaluable liaison to Jordan, briefing Clinton on the character of the new king.

In December 2002, Rob Richer had recently been appointed head of the CIA's Near East division. By this time... he had known Michael Shipster for years. By 2002, both men had worked in Middle East intelligence for their respective countries for many years. Shipster told Richer of a plan he had: a source inside Iraq that London had worked with for years. A man named Tahir Jalil Habbush... the head of Iraqi intelligence. He had been a governor of a Southern province of Iraq in the early 90's. By the mid 90's, Habbush moved into the Ministry of the Interior, where he was the undersecretary of security affairs before taking over Iraqi intelligence in 1999. Shipster told Richer that Habbush could be reasoned with and that he knew how to contact him. The heads of MI 6 (Sir Richard Dearlove) and the CIA (George Tenet) were made aware and Richer and Shipster went to work. Rob Richer knew the perfect place for such a meeting: Jordan, the next door neighbor to Iraq. Not only close friends with (now King) Abdullah, Richer was also close to the Jordanian intelligence director Saad Khayr who was godfather to one of Richer's kids. The US has close ties to the Jordanians who perhaps understand Iraq better than any other Mideast nation. From Amman, Jordan, all meetings with Habbush could be monitored by the US directly. Bush's 2003 State of the Union (with the infamous 16 words) was weeks away from being given and Colin Powell's assertion to the UN of mobile weapons facilities wasn't scheduled until February 2003. Both Pennsylvania Avenue and Downing Street were focused on Jordan.

The first meeting between Michael Shipster and Tahir Jalil Habbush was mostly about structure and rules. Habbush told Shipster that IF the US invaded, he wanted to be guaranteed safe passage out of Iraq. Shipster informed him that it wasn't a question of if, the US was serious and ready to invade. Habbush responded to the British intelligence officer... if they invaded, they'd find no WMD, that Iraq didn't have any weapons. That initial report was sent to Washington and London. The White House was shocked... then doubtful. Bush was frustrated and is quoted as telling an aide... "Why don't they ask him to give us something we can use to help us make our case?" In fact, Rob Richer and his Near East CIA division were working on plans for Habbush. Not just info on WMD, but as the Iraqi Intelligence Director, Richer had plans ranging on Habbush convincing Saddam to negotiate an exile or to have someone assassinate the Iraqi leader. But the people at the top (Washington & Langley) were mainly concerned with the fact that Iraqi Intelligence Director was undercutting the United State's primary rationale for war.