WASHINGTON: A new book on the government's secret anti-terrorism operations describes how the CIA recruited an Iraqi-American anaesthesiologist in 2002 to obtain information from her brother, who was a figure in Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme.

Sawsan Alhaddad, a doctor from Cleveland, made the dangerous trip to Iraq on the CIA's behalf. The book said her brother was stunned by her questions about the nuclear programme because he said it had been dead for a decade.

New York Times reporter James Risen uses the anecdote to illustrate how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction. His book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" describes secret operations of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

The major revelation in the book has already been the subject of extensive reporting by Risen's newspaper: the National Security Agency's eavesdropping of Americans' conversations without obtaining warrants from a special court.

The book said Alhaddad flew home in mid-September 2002 and had a series of meetings with CIA analysts. She relayed her brother's information that there was no nuclear programme.

A CIA operative later told Alhaddad's husband that the agency believed her brother was lying. In all, the book says, some 30 family members of Iraqis made trips to their native country to contact Iraqi weapons scientists, and all of them reported that the programmes had been abandoned.

In October 2002, a month after the doctor's trip to Baghdad, the US intelligence community issued a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program.

In the book, which quotes extensively from anonymous sources, Risen said the NSA spying program was launched in 2002 after the CIA began to capture high-ranking al-Qaida operatives overseas, and took their computers, cell phones and personal phone directories.

The CIA turned the telephone numbers and e-mail addresses from the material over to the NSA, which then began monitoring the phone numbers in addition to anyone in contact with the telephone subscribers, the book said, saying this led to an expansion of the monitoring, both overseas and in the United States.

The book said the NSA does not need approval from the White House, the Justice Department or anyone else in the Bush administration before it begins eavesdropping on a specific phone line in the United States.

In another chapter on a "rogue operation," the book said a CIA officer mistakenly sent one of its Iranian agents information that could be used to identify virtually every spy the agency had in Iran. The book said the Iranian was a double agent who turned over the data to Iranian security officials.

The book said the information severely damaged the CIA's Iranian network, and quoted CIA sources as saying several of the US agents were arrested and jailed.

Murtha 'wouldn't join army' today

John Murtha, a key Democrat voice who favours pulling US troops from Iraq, said in remarks airing on Monday that he would not join the US military today.

A decorated Viet Nam veteran who retired as a colonel after 37 years in the US Marine Corps, Murtha told ABC News' "Nightline" programme that Iraq "absolutely" was a wrong war for President George W. Bush to have launched.

"Would you join (the military) today?," he was asked in an interview taped on Friday.

"No," replied Murtha of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees defence spending and one of his party's leading spokesmen on military issues.

"And I think you're saying the average guy out there who's considering recruitment is justified in saying 'I don't want to serve'," the interviewer continued.

"Exactly right," said Murtha, who drew White House ire in November after becoming the first ranking Democrat to push for a pullout of U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as it could be done safely.

At the time, White House spokesman Scott McClellan equated Murtha's position with surrendering to terrorists.

Since then, Bush has decried the "defeatism" of some of his political rivals. In an unusually direct appeal, he urged Americans on December 18 not to give in to despair over Iraq, insisting that "we are winning" despite a tougher-than-expected fight.

Source: China Daily