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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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November 4th,
2007 - Faulty Intel Source “Curve Ball” Revealed |
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Faulty Intel Source “Curve
Ball” Revealed 60 Minutes: Iraqi’s Fabricated Story Of Biological Weapons Aided U.S.
Arguments For Invasion By CBS/60 Minutes November 4, 2007 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? 60 Minutes spent two years,
and traveled to nine countries, trying to solve the mystery. We talked to
intelligence sources, to people who knew Curve Ball and to people who worked
with him. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, Curve Ball's real name has
never been made public, nor has any video of him, until now. 60 Minutes has obtained video
of Rafid Ahmed Alwan at a 1993 Baghdad wedding, filmed six years before he
became the key Iraqi source known as Curve Ball, six years before he helped
launch the war. Former CIA senior official
Tyler Drumheller was an insider and watched Curve Ball emerge from nowhere. Asked how important Curve
Ball was in taking us to war in Iraq, Drumheller tells Simon, "If they
had not had Curve Ball they would have probably found something else. 'Cause
there was a great determination to do it. But going to war in Iraq, under the
circumstances we did, Curve Ball was the absolutely essential case." How did Rafid Alwan become
Curve Ball? 60 Minutes' investigation led us to Germany, where in November
1999, Alwan arrived by car and requested asylum at a refugee center outside
Nuremberg. The 32-year-old told German intelligence that he was a chemical
engineer in Saddam’s Iraq, and that he had done so well in university he had
been made director of a site at Djerf al Nadaf, just outside Baghdad. The
Iraqis called it a "seed purification plant." In reality, he said,
the place was secretly making mobile biological weapons. He told the Germans
specially-equipped trucks made their way to one end of a warehouse, entered
doors there, hooked up to hoses and pumps and brewed biological agents. The germ
trucks then exited hidden doors on the other side. Alwan’s story fit what
Western intelligence agencies feared: that Saddam might turn to mobile
weapons to evade American bombs. The Germans hid Alwan in Nuremberg, then
later in the town of Erlangen. He was given a code name: Curve Ball. He was
interrogated once a week, sometimes twice, for a year and a half. He told the
Germans he didn't want to meet with Americans. Only summaries of his
debriefings were transmitted to Washington. Still, there were enough details
to convince analysts at the CIA. "Curve Ball was the one
piece of evidence where they could say, 'Look at this. If they have this
capability, where they can transport biological weapons, anthrax, all these
horrible weapons, they can attack our troops with them. They can give them to
terrorist groups,'" Drumheller says. One of Curve Ball's reports
was especially alarming: proof that the agents were lethal, something Curve
Ball claimed he had seen while working at Djerf al Nadaf. "He said, 'In 1998,
working around these tanks, there was even an accident and 12 people were
killed.' And that got everybody’s attention," Drumheller explains. So much so that in February
2001, German and American experts met in Munich to discuss Curve Ball. The
Americans revealed they had located Djerf al Nadaf on overhead imagery; 60
Minutes found it on Google Earth. The imagery was very close
to what Curve Ball had described, with one exception: "If you look at
the photos, all the way back to 1998, there was a wall that was built
there," Drumheller points out. "Like a cinderblock wall that was
built there, that nothing could go through." The wall stood right in
front of where Curve Ball said the trucks went in. CIA analysts who believed
in Curve Ball had an explanation. "There was an idea that
it could have been a fake wall," Drumheller says. The analysts believed Iraq
had put up a fake wall to make the Americans think no trucks could pass
through. The analysts also believed Curve Ball because he named names. He claimed
that Dr. Basil al Sa'ati, a noted nuclear scientist, was a senior official in
Iraq’s mobile bio-weapons program. British intelligence found Dr. Basil
outside of Iraq and pressed him on Djerf al Nadaf, as did 60 Minutes. "Rafid Alwan told
German intelligence that you personally were fully involved in the project to
use Djerf al Nadaf for mobile biological weapons," Simon tells Dr.
Basil. "Big lie," the
doctor replies. If something were going on
there, Dr. Basil says he would "definitely" have known about it. "There are people in
the American intelligence community…who believe that seed purification is a
cover for biological weapons production," Simon remarks. "No. It was, it was
really seed purification," the doctor replies. Dr. Basil pointed out that
if he had been working on something top secret, why did Saddam let him
emigrate from Iraq in 1999? In Germany, Curve Ball was caught by surprise. He
didn't know Dr. Basil had left Iraq. Curve Ball became less cooperative, more
nervous in debriefings. The Germans became uneasy about their source. And
they weren't alone. At a CIA meeting in December 2002, the agency’s former
central group chief, Margaret Henoch, raised her own doubts. "I said, 'You know, I
don't know who this guy is. There's no proof that he is who he is. There’s no
proof that any of this ever happened. And, from my perspective, I just don’t
think we should trust this,'" Henoch recalls. The top analyst, who
believed Curve Ball, brought up the alleged accident at Djerf al Nadaf and
said there were pictures of Curve Ball in a hazmat suit. "Then I said, 'How do
you know that was him if he's completely covered? 'Cause it could be me.'
And, as God as my witness, she looked at me like a pig looking at a
wristwatch. And I thought it was over. And, when I went back, I sort of said
to my boss, 'Well, I'm such a genius,'" Henoch says. "That’s it for Curve
Ball," Simon remarks. "We killed that
one," Henoch says. "And it was whack-a-mole. I mean, he just popped
right back up." Curve Ball was still seen as
credible at the highest level of the CIA. On Dec. 18, 2002, sources
tell 60 Minutes that an urgent request from CIA Director George Tenet was
relayed to the head of German intelligence. Tenet was going to meet President
Bush in three days to discuss the case against Iraq. Tenet wanted the Germans
to let Curve Ball appear on television or have an American expert debrief
Curve Ball and then go on TV with the story. Failing that, Tenet wanted
to use Curve Ball's information publicly. An answer was requested within 48
hours, before Tenet went to the White House. The answer came from Berlin
48 hours later from the German intelligence chief, Dr. August Hanning. In a
letter, a copy of which 60 Minutes has obtained, Hanning began, "Dear
George." He said no to Curve Ball being interviewed on television or by
an American officer. Hanning wrote that Curve Ball’s reporting was
"plausible and believable," but, he added, "attempts to verify
the information have been unsuccessful." Curve Ball’s reports "must
be considered unconfirmed," Hanning wrote. If Tenet still wanted to use
the information despite these caveats, Hanning said he could if the source
was protected. Since the letter was
addressed to him directly, 60 Minutes wanted Tenet's response. Through a
spokesman, he said he never saw the letter. Former CIA European division
chief Tyler Drumheller doesn’t believe that. "He needs to talk to his
special assistants if he didn’t see it. And the fact is, he had very good
special assistants. I’m sure they showed it to him. And I’m sure it was just,
it wasn’t what they wanted to see," Drumheller says. The next day, Dec. 21, Tenet
met with President Bush and told him making a public case that Saddam had
weapons of mass destruction was "a slam dunk." Making that case
would be Secretary of State Colin Powell before the United Nations. Powell sent
his chief of staff, Col. Larry Wilkerson, to the CIA to prepare the
presentation. Wilkerson says Tenet and his experts brought up Iraq’s mobile
bio-weapons program. "They presented it in a
very dynamic, dramatic, we know this is accurate way," Wilkerson tells
Simon. "Did it make any
difference that the source on this was a firsthand witness?" Simon asks. "Certainly it did. This
was a man who had actually been in the belly of the beast. He had been in the
lab. He had been there when an accident occurred. He’d seen people killed.
And the implication was, strong implication, that they weren’t killed because
of the accident in the explosion, they were killed because they were
contaminated. Yes, the source was very credible. As it was presented by the
CIA," Wilkerson says. Asked if Colin Powell
accepted all this on blind faith, Wilkerson says, "Well, you’re the
secretary of state. You’re not the head of intelligence for the United
States. And you depend on the director of central intelligence to assimilate
all the intelligence community’s input and give it to you." Once the speech was ready,
Wilkerson felt the section on mobile bio-weapons was the crown jewel.
"This was the strongest part of the secretary’s presentation,"
Wilkerson recalls. "And Secretary Powell
was convinced as well?" Simon asks. "I’m convinced he was
convinced," Wilkerson replies. On Feb. 5, 2003, Powell told
the world that Saddam Hussein had mobile biological weapons. The source:
Curve Ball. "The source was an
eyewitness, an Iraqi chemical engineer, who supervised one of these
facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs.
He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians
died from exposure to biological agents," Powell said. Prominently displayed were
models of the mobile trucks Curve Ball had sketched to the Germans. The most
damning evidence in the speech had come from a source no American had
interviewed. Just three days later, U.N. inspectors in Iraq visited a
suspected WMD location - Djerf al Nadaf, Curve Ball’s secret site. And what
did they find there? A wall - the very wall that had appeared on the overhead
imagery back in 2001. Curve Ball had claimed the mobile bio-weapons trucks
entered through doors at one end of a warehouse. "When the inspectors
examined the facility, they found that this was an impossibility,"
explains Jim Corcoran, whose job it was to relay intelligence to the
inspectors in Iraq. Corcoran learned the wall
blocked any entrance to the warehouse. As for Curve Ball's hidden doors at
the other end that would allow the trucks to exit? "Again, there was a
wall there, no doors. And outside there was a stone fence that would have
made it impossible for this to have occurred," Corcoran says. Corcoran knew Djerf al Nadaf
was of great importance, so he sent inspectors back 20 days later to take
samples, to see if any traces of biological agents were there. "They
proved negative," Corcoran tells Simon. "There was nothing there." But the inspectors' findings
in Iraq made no impact; the war began three weeks later. Once the U.S. took over Iraq
and started looking for WMD, Curve Ball’s story began to unravel. His
university record was located. 60 Minutes obtained a copy. Rafid Ahmed Alwan,
aka Curve Ball, had claimed to the Germans he graduated at the top of his
class in chemical engineering. Well, not quite. 60 Minutes showed a copy of
the record to Dr. Basil, Alwan’s former boss and a scientist himself. "It’s a 59, 50, 50, 50,
50, 50, 67. I can see all his marks are 50, 50s," Dr. Basil remarks. Those marks were out of a
score of 100. "Not a great
student," Simon remarks. "Never. No,
never," Dr. Basil replies. Not only that, it turns out
Djerf al Nadaf was a seed purification plant after all. Dr. Basil was the
head of production design. Alwan worked for him as an engineer, but only
while the facility was being built. "Rafid left few months
after we finished Djerf al Nadaf, which was I would expect Rafid left
sometime 1995," Dr. Basil says. He did. 60 Minutes
discovered Alwan then worked at the Babel television production company,
where he stole expensive equipment. An arrest warrant was issued for him;
charges were dropped when Alwan agreed to repay Babel. After that
misadventure? The man who invited Alwan to his wedding, Dr. Hillal al
Dulaimi, says Alwan’s career took an even more unlikely turn. "He working for a
cosmetics," Dr. Hillal tells Simon. "He did some homemade
cosmetics." 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. External link: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/60minutes/main3440577.shtml |