Ex-Aide: After Colin Powell Doubted Al-Qaeda/Iraq Links, CIA Pushed False Intel Derived From Torture

1,425 views · Published 6 February 2013 · 2:12 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Democracy Now! · 2013 · News & Politics

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Speaking to Democracy Now! to mark the tenth anniversary of Colin Powell's falsified speech on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, Powell's former aide, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson -- who helped put that speech together -- says parts of its claims on the links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda came from torture. According to Wilkerson, CIA Director George Tenet introduced new intelligence taken from the interrogation of a prisoner in Egypt just moments after Powell declared he was ready to "throw everything out" when it came to claims of Iraq/al-Qaeda ties. "Only much later did we learn that this information came from Shaykh al-Libi, who was waterboarded, probably in Cairo, with no U.S. personnel present," Wilkerson says. "We also learned within days of his have given this information under torture, he recanted."

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