U.S. intelligence thrown a Curveball

Belmont Club also has two posts (here and here) about a source (appropriately, in hindsight, codenamed "Curveball") trusted re Iraq WMDs. Was thought "diamond", and relied on publicly by U.S. officials. As a result, junior intel officers who began to suspect Curveball was "paste" and to doubt his credibility were reluctant to tell higher-ups. Therefore, politics were at play in intelligence-gathering re Iraq's WMD, but not in the way critics suspected. Troubling bit is that Curveball's handlers were a foreign intelligence service, and that direct American contact with Curveball ultimately told the tale. The motives of Curveball's foreign intelligence service handlers are intriguing. And U.S. overreliance on satellites instead of "humint" (human intelligence, and in this case, direct contact with a source) has proven problematic again.