Well all have heard of Curveball by now.
Download Rafid Ahmed Alwan defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program.[1] Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004.
It was Colin Powell's darkest hour, but he would have went to war with Iraq without briefing the UN anyway. (Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" tells us that) ..BushCo used this fraud who wanted a green-card in Germany to fool the American people and bring the country into an immoral war with Iraq. 60 Minutes did a fine piece on him Sunday night that should be seen so we will be reminded that "intelligence" can always be manipulated---even after it's debunked by our own intelligence department.
Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction? No, he did not. We've known that for some time now. So where did the intelligence come from that he was building up his arsenal? Fantastically, the most compelling part came from one obscure Iraqi defector who came in and out of history like a comet. His code name, ironically, was "Curve Ball" and his information became the pillar of the case Colin Powell made to the United Nations before the war. Who is Curve Ball and how did he fool the world's elite intelligence agencies?...read on
As for the biological accident that supposedly killed 12 people at Djerf al Nadaf in 1998? It never happened. Rafid Alwan wasn't even in Iraq when he said it happened. He had left the country, first traveling to Jordan, then Egypt, then Libya, before making his way to Morocco. From there, Alwan’s trail ran cold, until he showed up in Germany and became Curve Ball. The case finally ended in Munich in March 2004, when the Germans allowed a CIA officer to interrogate Curve Ball.
"And the key thing, I think, was the wall. He showed him pictures of the wall," Drumheller remembers.
What did Curve Ball say?
"'You doctored these pictures.' And he said, 'No, we didn't.' He said, we didn’t doctor them," Drumheller says.
The wall had been built in 1997. Curve Ball didn't know it existed because he had already left Djerf al Nadaf.
"Curve Ball was caught," Simon remarks.
"And Curve Ball said, 'I don’t think I’m gonna say anything else,'" Drumheller says.
The CIA finally acknowledged Curve Ball was a fraud. But why did he do it?
Former CIA insider Tyler Drumheller has an idea. "It was a guy trying to get his Green Card, essentially, in Germany, playing the system for what it was worth. It just shows sort of the law of unintended consequences," he says.
Rafid Alwan got what he wanted. He is thought to be living in Germany today, most likely under a new name, after pulling off one of the deadliest con jobs of our time
