WASHINGTON, March 5: The US claims that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories were based on second-hand information provided by an Iraqi defector who was never interviewed by US intelligence, The Washington Post said on Friday.
Citing current and former senior US intelligence officials and congressional experts who have studied classified documents, the Post said the Iraqi defector who provided the original tip never dealt with US intelligence, but passed his information along through a foreign intelligence service.
US intelligence analysts did not know the Iraqi chemical engineer's identity before the invasion and relied on foreign officials to vouch for his credibility, the sources said. -AFP
