2004-07-03

CIA Iraqi Rewards Program

In February 2004, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) caused worldwide amusement when they published details of their Iraqi Rewards Program on their website at: http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm

Through this program, the top spying outfit of the U.S. government attempted to solicit intelligence information from the public about “recently-made” Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

The Iraqi Rewards Program is no joke. (See this CNN Report.)

The CIA waited for the fuss to die and took down the English version of the page. However, I had a copy of the web page saved in an e-mail. So, I promptly published it as an archive on Moral Volcano.

Timeline

10 February 2004: The CIA posts information on the Iraqi Rewards Program on its website at http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm. It contains a feedback form (“secure online form”) through which members of the public can send information to the CIA.
12 February 2004: News spreads world over.
12 February 2004: I make a backup of the web page in an e-mail.
Interim: The page at http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm vanishes from the CIA website. Almost all the links now point to the Arabic version at http://www.cia.gov/cia/arabic_rewards.htm. The secure online form is now available only in Arabic at https://comm.cia.gov/cgi/arp_form.cgi.
July 2004: The Moral Volcano site log contains information about a visitor who had visited the site after typing “Iraqi Rewards Program” english translation in Google. I check the CIA website and find that the English version has been taken down. I then use e-mail back of the English web page and publish it as an archive of the CIA web page.
17 September 2004: I forward the e-mail to John Young, who maintains an archive of leaked secret government documents. Now, the English version of the Iraqi Rewards Program web page is available on his Cryptome.org website.
7 October 2004: A CIA report, authored by Charles Duelfer, who advises the director of central intelligence on Iraqi weapons, said Iraq’s WMD program had essentially been destroyed in 1991 and Saddam ended Iraq’s nuclear program after the 1991 Gulf War. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney later rejected the reports findings and said he believed Iraq may have moved its WMDs across the border into Syria.
13 December 2004: I notice that the CIA contact page at http://www.cia.gov/cia/contact.htm still points to the missing english_rewards.htm page. Will someone tell them?

Well, I did? I use their contact form to tell them about the broken link. I also give them my e-mail address.
23 December 2004: The CIA replies (“We removed the English-language versions of the Iraqi Rewards Program because the pages were being used inappropriately by visitors.”) that it will update the broken link. They use a different domain to send e-mail. ucia.gov seems to stands for Unclassified CIA.

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The CIA replied from the domain ucia.gov. I have blurred the name of the webmaster in the above image. In those days, Gmail was in beta and was available on an invite-only basis.
13 January 2005: U.S. officials announce that the 1,700-strong Iraq Survey Group had wrapped up physical searches in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. They have concluded that prewar Iraq had no WMD stockpiles.
26 April 2005: CIA has officially ended the search for Iraqi WMD. CIA man Charles Duelfer posted an addendum to the October 2004 report. The addendum stated that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria was unlikely. It could not, however, rule out an “unofficial” transfer of WMD material.
28 July 2008: The CIA has given their website a makeover to their website. The English and Arabic links to the Arabic version (the only one) of the Iraqi Rewards Program page is still on the home page but they are broken. I use their “contact CIA” page to notify them about the broken link.
29 July 2008: The CIA has fixed the link. Maybe, one day, the CIA will remove the link in a covert action.
12 January 2014: CIA has moved to an all HTTPS website. The old link to Arabic version is still there on the home page. The Arabic version is now at: https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/iraqi-rewards-program.html
2 February 2023: I checked the above URL and it finally shows a missing link error.