Germans Deny 'NY Times' Iraq Report, Keller Holds Firm

By: E&P Staff The German government today labeled as "false" a report in The New York Times on Monday that is causing an uproar in that country. The Times later said it is standing behind the story.

"The New York Times allegations are wrong in all their details," Ulrich Wilhelm, the government spokesman, said at his daily press briefing this morning.

The Times article by Michael Gordon had stated that two agents of the German Intelligence agency obtained Saddam Hussein's plan for the defense of Baghdad before the American invasion of Iraq, and that the information was passed along to American military intelligence in early 2003. The German government did not join the U.S. "coalition of the willing" in the assault on Iraq, so this makes for a difficult situation there.

After the German protest, the newspaper's executive editor, Bill Keller, said he stood by the story. In a statement on the paper's Web site late today, he wrote that "on the matter of German involvement, the Joint Forces Command study is explicit and unqualified."

But Wilhelm said, referring to the intelligence agency, "The BND, and with it the German government, were unaware of such a plan until now."

The Times said that its article was only the latest of several reports in both the American and German press "indicating that the German intelligence agency cooperated with the United States in its Iraqi invasion. The reports have kicked up a political storm in Germany, with opposition parties in particular demanding a formal investigation into whether the government deceived the public, publicly proclaiming opposition to the war initiative while privately helping in it....

"With the flat German denial of The Times report today, two entirely contradictory accounts of German behavior seemed to be competing against each other, with there being no independent way of determining which is correct."

Keller in his statement said that reporter Gordon is pursuing more articles based on the German report, "after which we will consider posting text from the report on our Web site."