US network names Iraqi who pushed US case for war -Curve Ball

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071102/wl_afp/iraqusintelligencewarweapons_071101195537;_ylt=Aq0uto2TlGng3YvL7.sUjgWs0NUE

US network names Iraqi who pushed US case for war

Thu Nov 1, 10:41 PM ET

NEW YORK (AFP) - US television network CBS said Thursday it had identified a man known to intelligence agents as "curve ball," whose fake story of biological weapons drove the US argument for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The network's 60 Minutes program identified the man as an Iraqi defector named Rafid Ahmed Alwan who arrived at a German refugee center in 1999.

The program said that after a two-year investigation it had found that Alwan had lied about being a chemical engineer in charge of a facility making mobile biological weapons in order to bolster his case for asylum in Germany.

60 Minutes had learned that Alwan did study chemical engineering but that he was far from a star pupil who later went on to work at a Baghdad television production company where he was accused of theft, it added.