"Curveball" photos released

More leaking of secret intelligence by the media:

The Iraqi defector known as Curveball, whose fabricated stories of "mobile biological weapons labs" helped lead the U.S. to war four years ago, is still being protected by the German intelligence service, an ABC News investigation has found.

According to ABC News they were given the photos by "intelligence sources". Shall we make any comparisons between outing an intelligence asset and the Libby case? Speaking of which:

Powell told ABC News he is "angry and disappointed" that he was never told the CIA had doubts about the reliability of the source.

"I spent four days at CIA headquarters, and they told me they had this nailed," Powell said.

Some folks recently made hay with Valerie Plame's insinuations that Cheney and Libby were bullying CIA staffers by making trips to Langley to discuss intelligence. Plame told a tale about how a junior staffer was upset because the White House wanted further information about the yellowcake. Apparently that didn't apply to Powell's shop.

Former CIA deputy director John McGlaughlin also denied being told that Curveball was unreliable prior to Powell's speech, a fact disputed by another former CIA employee Tyler Drumheller, who claimed he had a meeting with McGlaughlin and told him not to use the Curveball stuff. Are everyone's pants are on fire around DC-land?

We know Armitage leaked to Novak, a journalist he never talked to but one of considerable reputation. Prior to that he'd leaked to Woodward, where he said the CIA was "not going to get hurt by this". Did he mean collectively (including those down in the bowels) or was he referring to the top brass (Tenet/McGlaughlin)? Hard to know, but we DO know that his boss Mr. Powell had a lot to lose on the WMD issue, as did George Tenet.