Tyler Scott Drumheller (April 12, 1952 – August 2, 2015) was an American

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

(CIA) officer who served as chief of the European division for clandestine operations in the Directorate of Operations from 2001 until he retired in 2005.

Early life

Drumheller was born in

Biloxi, Mississippi Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in and one of two county seats of Harrison County, Mississippi, United States (the other being the adjacent city of Gulfport). The 2010 United States Census recorded the population as 44,054 and in 2019 the estimated popu ...

Career

Drumheller claimed the CIA had credible sources discounting some

weapon of mass destruction A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous individuals or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natu ...

(WMD) claims made during the

Iraq disarmament crisis The Iraq disarmament crisis was claimed as one of primary issues that led to the multinational invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003. Since the 1980s, Iraq was widely assumed to have been producing and extensively running the programs of biologi ...

before the

2003 Invasion of Iraq The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...

. He received and discounted documents central to the

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesyellowcake forgery The Niger uranium forgeries were forged documents initially released in 2001 by SISMI (the former military intelligence agency of Italy), which seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from N ...

prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He has also stated that senior White House officials dismissed intelligence information from his agency which reported

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutio ...

had no WMD program. According to Drumheller the Bush administration ignored CIA advice and used whatever information it could find to justify an invasion of Iraq. The CIA, brokered by the French intelligence service, recruited

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

i Foreign Minister Naji Sabri in Europe during the late summer of 2002. Sabri told the CIA in September that Hussein had no major active weapons of mass destruction programs, had no fissile material and that

biological weapons A biological agent (also called bio-agent, biological threat agent, biological warfare agent, biological weapon, or bioweapon) is a bacterium, virus, protozoan, parasite, fungus, or toxin that can be used purposefully as a weapon in bioterrorism ...

were almost non-existent, although he claimed that there were

chemical weapons A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be any chemical compound intended as a ...

. This information was then transmitted to the White House, but it was ignored in favor of the information acquired by Germany's intelligence service

Bundesnachrichtendienst The Federal Intelligence Service (German: ; , BND) is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinate to the Chancellor's Office. The BND headquarters is located in central Berlin and is the world's largest intelligence head ...

(BND) coming from a source known as Curveball. On September 6, 2007,

Sidney Blumenthal Sidney Stone Blumenthal (born November 6, 1948) is an American journalist and political operative. A former aide to President Bill Clinton, he is a long-time confidant of Hillary Clinton and was formerly employed by the Clinton Foundation. As a ...

, reporting at

Salon.com ''Salon'' is an American politically progressive/ liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events. Content and coverage ''Salon'' covers a variety of topics, including re ...

, supported Drumheller's account: "Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller's account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it." In March 2011, Blumenthal sent an email which included "apparently highly sensitive information" to then U.S. Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

with details received from Drumheller, who had spoken with a CIA colleague, mentioning the name of an intelligence source. Drumheller retired from the CIA in 2005 after a 26-year career, where he spent more than 25 years as an intelligence operative.

Death

Drumheller died on August 2, 2015, from pancreatic cancer at the age of 63 in Falls Church, Virginia. He is buried at

Columbia Gardens Cemetery The Columbia Gardens Cemetery is a cemetery located in the Ashton Heights Historic District of Arlington, Virginia Cemetery The Columbia Gardens Cemetery is located at the southern boundary of the Ashton Heights Historic District and is one o ...

Arlington, Virginia Arlington County is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The county is situated in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from the District of Columbia, of which it was once a part. The county ...

References

Bibliography

* ''On the Brink : An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence'' (Carroll & Graf, November 2006); * ''Wie das Weiße Haus die Welt belügt: Der Insider-Bericht des ehemaligen CIA-Chefs von Europa'' (Hugendubel Verlag, August 2007);

External links

Interview
with 60 Minutes
Video of CBS interview

Interview with MSNBC Hardball

Select Committee on Intelligence Report

Mystery flights
(TV program includes interview with Drumheller)
A Dispatches report on Extraordinary Rendition
broadcast on ''

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

'', June 11, 2007 (Also includes an interview with Tyler Drumheller)
Panorama
(TV program includes interview with Drumheller) {{DEFAULTSORT:Drumheller, Tyler 1952 births 2015 deaths American anti–Iraq War activists American spies Deaths from cancer in Virginia Deaths from pancreatic cancer People from Biloxi, Mississippi People of the Central Intelligence Agency