Besides being a type of pitch in a baseball game, "Curveball" is the name of a source that the U.S. government used to justify going into Iraq. The scary scenario that Colin Powell portrayed was one where Saddam Hussein had mobile biological warfare capabilities. Unfortunately, the tall tales of Rafid Ahmed Alwan were all part of an attempt to get a green card. Alwan was simply a bad student of chemical engineering who worked at the Djerf al Nadaf plant where the WMDs supposedly were...with talent that partially deceived intelligence agents in Germany and the U.S.
From CBS News:
More than a hundred summaries of his debriefings were sent to the CIA, which then became a pillar - along with the now-disproved Iraqi quest for uranium for nuclear weapons - for the U.S. decision to bomb and then invade Iraq. The CIA-director George Tenet gave Alwan’s information to Secretary of State Colin Powell to use at the U.N. in his speech justifying military action against Iraq.
Tenet gave the information to Powell despite a letter - a copy of which 60 Minutes obtained - addressed to him by the head of German intelligence stating that Alwan appeared to be believable, but there was no evidence to verify his story.
Through a spokesman, Tenet denies ever seeing the letter. "[Tenet] needs to talk to his special assistants if he didn’t see it," says Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA senior official. "I am sure they showed it to him and I am sure ... it wasn’t what they wanted to see," he tells Simon.
Of course there were also many in the intel community that did not believe him. Surprisingly, the higher-ups did not want to hear anything of the sort. Now Presidential Medal of Honor winner George Tenet can't remember anything about the letter....seems to be a common trait of people who work under George Bush.
Oh and Mr. Alwan is reported to be living in Germany, free and under a new name, just as he had wanted.
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