Joe Wippl
Joe Wippl is the former CIA chief of station for Germany. According to journalist Ron Suskind it was at his instruction that the German intelligence service declined the CIA's request to give direct access to the Iraqi defector designated Curveball. As a result the CIA never got a chance to verify Curveball's claims about Iraq's alleged mobile biological weapon labs. Suskind avers that Wippl may have been acting at the behest of the Office of Vice President, since despite his questionable professional record (for which he was being investigated by the CIA), Cheney subsequently rewarded him with a plum job. [1]
Background
Joe Wippl, a German speaker, had served as the CIA chief of station for Germany since 2001. But but early 2002, writes Suskind, 'it was clear inside the CIA that there was a problem with Wippl'. Wippl was raising eyebrows by showing up in different European cities without authorization and was also turning up in electronic surveillance CIA was conducting on various top German officials, including intelligence men. The CIA launched an inquiry. Besides his extra-marital dalliances -- a cause of concern for the CIA since any of the women he was consorting with could be German agents -- he was also spending much time with Ernst Uhrlau, head of German intelligence. The surveillance revealed that 'he was telling his German counterparts things that were unauthorizied, highly critical of the current CIA leadership, sometimes at odds with U.S. policies, including -- importantly -- that Germans keep Curveball to themselves. [2]
Once the war started, and the defective nature of the intelligence was being confirmed, Wippl went 'essentially AWOL', according to Suskind. By summer he was relieved of his position. 'And then a strange thing happened', writes Suskind. The Vice President's office recommended that Joe Wippl be hired for the plum job of congressional liaison from CIA. Sources at the CIA speculate, according to Suskind, that when he advised the Germans to deny the CIA access to Curveball, he was 'secretly acting, in 2002, at the behest of the Vice President's Office. [3]
In 2006 Wippl was fired from his position as the head of CIA's Congressional Liaison Office, but somehow, writes Suskind, 'he remained on the CIA payroll -- and got another plum job, this time running a one man intelligence 'institute' at Boston University. [4]
