Washington ? A new book on the government’s secret anti-terrorism operations describes how the CIA recruited an Iraqi-American anesthesiologist in 2002 to obtain information from her brother, who was a figure in Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program.

Dr. Sawsan Alhaddad of 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 program 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 already has been the subject of reporting by Risen’s newspaper: the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping of Americans’ conversations without obtaining warrants.

The book said Dr. 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 program.

In all, the book says, some 30 family members of Iraqis made trips to contact weapons scientists, and all of them said the programs had been abandoned.

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

In the book, 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.