ON APRIL 23, 2006 Tyler Drumheller shared what was billed as a bombshell with 60 Minutes viewers. In a segment called “A Spy Speaks Out,” the 26-year veteran of the CIA claimed that the Bush administration ignored intelligence collected from a well-placed source inside Saddam’s regime because it conflicted with their desire to go to war with Iraq.

According to Drumheller, the CIA had learned from Saddam’s foreign minister, Naji Sabri, that Iraq “had no active weapons of mass destruction program.” CBS correspondent Ed Bradley followed up, “So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam’s inner circle that he didn’t have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?” Drumheller replied, “Yes.” The transcript from the 60 Minutes segment notes that Drumheller “says there was [no] doubt in his mind at all.”