Reply #77: Those who are easily compromised are easily recruited.

[leveymg]

Few know this about Ritter, but he was the guy who planted the idea of "mobile bio-weapons labs" in Ahmad Chalabi's brain during a meeting they had in Chalabi's London apartment in 1998 when Ritter was a UN weapons inspector. Sure enough, several months later, "Curve Ball" showed up seeking asylum in Germany, claiming he had details about anthrax labs being built by Iraq. We all know the rest. See, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/06/07/040607fa_fact1

Ritter never explained why he was meeting with Chalabi, or whose idea it was. Here's Jane Meyer's account in the New Yorker:

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The meeting took place in Chalabi’s apartment, on Conduit Street in Mayfair. Half a dozen Arab servants served tea, Ritter recalled. Chalabi sat on a couch, taking notes, “playing the overlord.” (Ahmed Alawi, an I.N.C. official, also attended the meeting.)

“I should have asked him what he could give me,” Ritter said. “Instead, I let him ask me, ‘What do you need?’ ” The result, he said, was that “we made the biggest mistake in the intelligence business: we identified all of our gaps.” Over the next several hours, Ritter said, he outlined most of the U.N. inspectors’ capabilities and theories, telling Chalabi how they had searched for underground bunkers with ground-penetrating radar. He also told Chalabi of his suspicion that Saddam may have had mobile chemical- or biological-weapons laboratories, which would explain why investigators hadn’t been able to find them. “We made that up!” Ritter said. “We told Chalabi, and, lo and behold, he’s fabricated a source for the mobile labs.” (The I.N.C. has been accused of sponsoring a source who claimed knowledge of mobile labs.) When Ritter left the U.N., in August, 1998, there was still no evidence of mobile weapons laboratories. Chalabi’s people, Ritter said, eventually supplied detailed intelligence on Saddam’s alleged W.M.D. programs, but “it was all crap.”

Ritter had one other memorable encounter with Chalabi. Six months after the London meeting, Ritter was feeling dispirited. U.N. investigators had discovered trace evidence of VX nerve gas on warheads in Iraq; he was concerned that Saddam was still hiding something. Chalabi invited him to the town house in Georgetown, and they discussed the VX discovery. Chalabi then talked to Ritter about doing intelligence work for the I.N.C.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/06/07/040607fa_fact1?currentPage=6#ixzz0ccCeejq9