Thaindian News

New York, Mar. 14 (ANI): An Iraqi defector has indirectly revealed how he fooled western intelligence services into believing that Iraq had a secret program to brew mobile biological weapons, which convinced the international community to invade that country.

Interviewed by CBS News at an undisclosed destination in Europe,the Iraqi defector, Rafiq Ahmed Alwan, who was code-named “Curve Ball,” is said to have provided the United States with an argument to declare war.

Alwan is said to have spun a web of lies which convinced America’s top spies. His allegations became the crown jewel of the case Colin Powell made to the United Nations before the war.

Alwan, a 44-year-old chemical engineer, now says he had a mission to destroy Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

During the interview, Alwan was unapologetic, hard to pin down and really nervous. He was not sure how much he should or could reveal about how he fooled western intelligence services.

He said that he came up with the plan after he escaped from Iraq in the late 1990s.

He told CBS News that he went to Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Spain, Belgium, back to Morocco, and then to Germany.

He said that he was funded by a well wisher from Belgium and by a neighbour in Iraq.

Alwan said he first revealed his plan to German intelligence in 1999, who were so staggered by Alwan’s story, they hid their prize source in a hotel in the town of Erlangen. He was given the code name Curve Ball, and was interrogated intensively for most of 2000.

The Germans told U.S. intelligence that Curve Ball didn’t want to meet with Americans. So all Washington got were summaries of his debriefings. But the reports were quite enough to make American intelligence analysts stand up and take notice.

The most alarming part of his story was something he said happened at Djerf al Nadaf in 1998: a biological accident that killed 12 technicians and turned their skin black.

CIA analysts also found Curve Ball credible because he named names. He said that while he was working at Djerf al Nadaf, Dr. Basil al-Sa’ati, a noted Iraqi scientist, was the senior official in charge of the secret biological weapons program.

In Germany, after months of interrogation, Curve Ball became less cooperative. He refused to talk to intelligence agents for nearly a year. He needed work and got a job in Erlangen at a Burger King.

The CIA didn’t know about his new career, or much else about him.

Tyler Drumheller, the CIA’s European Division chief at the time, recalled that when doubts were raised inside the agency over Curve Ball, the skeptics were shouted down.

“There were meetings that were so angry and so violent. You know, people cursing at each other, and yelling, ‘How dare you question us?’” he told CBS News.

Curve Ball had already provided what the Bush administration needed to beat the war drums against Saddam Hussein. (ANI)