"... Pentagon policy officials ... undertook the collection of sensitive intelligence. ... It was a rogue operation."" ""Ahmed Chalabi"" is an Iraqi politician and Iranian agent who fed and promoted false intelligence reports of weapons of mass destruction to Bush Administration officials in order to encourage the 2003 invasion of Iraq. ""Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi"" is an Iraqi citizen who peddled fabrications regarding Iraqi WMDs to western intelligence services. Known under his codename ""Curveball"", his fabrications compromised the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. He was a prolific fabricator with his information generating over 100 false intelligence reports for the BND and"
"to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information,"" Pollack said. Some of the information used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq came from a discredited informant codenamed ""Curveball"" by CIA, who falsely claimed 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. Despite warnings to CIA from the German Federal Intelligence Service regarding the authenticity of his claims, they were incorporated into President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address and Colin Powell's subsequent presentation to"
"April Fool (spy) April Fool is the codename for the spy and double agent who allegedly played a key role in the downfall of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. According to General Tommy Franks, the commander of the U.S. military in the 2003 Iraq conflict, ""April Fool"", an American officer working undercover as a diplomat, was approached by an Iraqi intelligence agent. ""April Fool"" then sold to the Iraqi false ""top secret"" invasion plans provided by Franks' team. This decoy deception successfully misled the Iraqi military into deploying major forces in Northern and Western Iraq in anticipation of attacks via"
"Amir Hamudi Hasan al-Sadi Amir Hamudi Hasan al-Saadi or Amer al-Saadi (born April 5, 1938), ""the organizational genius behind the Iraqi superweapons program,"" was Saddam Hussein's liaison with the UN inspectors in the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Like the defector Hussein Kamel al-Majid, he insisted Iraq had destroyed its prohibited weapons. While he was dismissed by the US as a liar, he was vindicated by the subsequent failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction by the Iraqi Survey Group. He was #32 on the most-wanted list, and Seven of Diamonds in the card deck. He turned himself"
"and I've told them over and over and over again that this man is a documentable fraud, a fake, and yet they allow him to go on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and testify as if he actually knows what he is talking about. Khidir Hamza Khidir Hamza () is an Iraqi atomic scientist who worked for Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme in the 1980s and early 1990s. Following the Gulf War, he left Iraq in 1994 and went into exile in the United States. He provided testimony to Western intelligence agencies suggesting that Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programmes were active and"
"of Mr. Hans Blix and the IAEA. The BND had collected intelligence from an informant known as Rafid al-Janabi alias CURVEBALL, who claimed Iraq would be in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction, apart from torturing and killing over 1,000 dissidents each year, for over 20 years. Rafid was employed before and after the 2003 incident which ultimately lead to the invasion of Iraq. The payments of 3,000 Euros monthly were made by a cover firm called Thiele und Friedrichs (Munich). As a result of the premature cancellation, al-Janabi filed a lawsuit at the Munich industrial court and won the"
"the World"", author Ron Suskind alleges that the Bush administration itself ordered the forgery. Habbush then supposedly signed the letter, having already been resettled in Jordan with $5 million from the US. Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti Tahir Jalil Habbush al Takriti (; born 1950) is a former Iraqi intelligence official who served under the regime of Saddam Hussein; in 2001, he was Iraq's head of intelligence and as such, informed MI6 in January 2003 (shortly before the start of the Iraq War) that Iraq had no WMD. He was the Jack of Diamonds in the most-wanted Iraqi playing cards and"
"Weapons of Mass Deception Weapons of Mass Deception is pejorative expression used by some people to describe U.S. President George W. Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction as justification for the war on Iraq. The variation Weapons of Mass Distraction has also been used by pundits and satirists. This punning alteration accuses the Bush administration of using the war in Iraq to draw the nation's attention away from other problems, such as the economic recession of 2002. The meaning was later inverted to describe Bush's alleged attempts to divert attention away from the war following a"
"Curveball (informant) Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (, ; born 1968), known by the Defense Intelligence Agency cryptonym ""Curveball"", is a German citizen who 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. Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004. Despite warnings from the German Federal Intelligence Service and the British Secret Intelligence Service questioning the authenticity of the claims, the US Government and British government"
"Turkey or Jordan, which never took place. This greatly reduced the defensive capacity in the rest of Iraq and significantly facilitated the actual attacks via Kuwait and the Persian Gulf in the southeast. Inadequately defended, Baghdad fell to coalition forces within a few weeks and Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed. April Fool (spy) April Fool is the codename for the spy and double agent who allegedly played a key role in the downfall of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. According to General Tommy Franks, the commander of the U.S. military in the 2003 Iraq conflict, ""April Fool"", an American officer working"
"(to Hummel and Baxter), both near the end of the film. A scene from the film featuring Connery and Cage was the basis for incorrect and false descriptions of the Iraqi chemical weapons program. Britain's Secret Intelligence Service was led to believe Saddam Hussein was continuing to produce weapons of mass destruction by a false agent who based his reports on the Hollywood action movie, according to the Chilcot Inquiry. In September 2002, MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove said the agency had acquired information from a new source revealing that Iraq was stepping up production of chemical and biological warfare"
"Hussein, translated from Arabic to English by the FBI. Some of these quotes were highlighted in secondary source accounts of the reports, including these (grouped by subject in rough chronological order): A number of press reports describe the Iraqi dictator admitting to a catastrophic miscalculation, having misled the United States into believing Iraq still possessed biological and chemical weapons. According to the ""Associated Press"": ""Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran"". This interpretation has been"
"mass destruction and an associated military program were wrong. The official findings by the CIA in October 2004 were that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ""did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and had not begun any program to produce them."" Immediately following and during these searches, many theories were put forward on how it could be possible for these WMDs to have suddenly disappeared (assuming they were, in fact, there at first). These theories included conspiracy theories, accusations against other governments and claims of successful deception efforts by Saddam Hussein."
"out to be wrong"". The United States offered intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency and British MI5 to the United Nations Security Council suggesting that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. claimed that justification rested upon Iraq's violation of several U.N. Resolutions, most recently UN Security Council Resolution 1441. U.S. president George W. Bush claimed Iraq's WMDs posed a significant threat to the United States and its allies. An inspection team UNMOVIC, before completing its UN-mandate or completing its report was ordered out by the UN because the US-led invasion appeared imminent. In the past, Iraq had been"
"in part to the Defense Intelligence Agency in the United States. As an incentive to keep supplying information to German intelligence, Curveball had been granted asylum, as he had applied earlier in 1999 and failed. He had enough money that he did not have to work. He gave many hours of testimony about Iraq's WMD program and in particular its mobile weapons laboratories. Despite CIA technicians and weapon experts finding major flaws and inconsistencies with the designs and systems he asserted the military was developing, this information made it to the American government and although there were wide doubts and"
"this the whole of Iraq is suffering. Jordan granted asylum to the Kamels, and there they began to cooperate with UNSCOM and its director Rolf Ekéus, the American CIA and the British MI6. The initial promises of a wealth of information were, allegedly, not fulfilled. According to U.S. and Jordanian officials, the intelligence provided by Hussein Kamel on Iraqi secret weapons programs was of limited content and value. Kamel confirmed what inspectors had been able to ascertain shortly before his defection, that Iraq had operated a biological warfare program prior to the Gulf War, providing locations for large amounts of"
"a time when U.S. intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the war, according to senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program. The U.S. carried out this covert program at a time when Secretary of State George P. Shultz, United States Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci and National Security Adviser General Colin L. Powell were publicly condemning Iraq for its use of poison gas, especially after Iraq attacked Kurdish villagers in Halabja in March 1988. U.S. officials publicly condemned Iraq's employment of mustard gas, sarin, VX and other poisonous agents, but sixty"
"those weapons. By February 2003, 64% of Americans supported taking military action to remove Saddam from power. On 5 February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the UN to present evidence that Iraq was hiding unconventional weapons. However, Powell's presentation included information based on the claims of Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed ""Curveball"", an Iraqi emigrant living in Germany who later admitted that his claims had been false. Powell also presented evidence alleging Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda. As a follow-up to Powell's presentation, the United States, United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, Australia, Denmark, Japan, and Spain proposed a"
"Minister Tony Blair to justify an invasion of Iraq. ""Curveball"", Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, fed officials hundreds of pages of bogus ""firsthand"" descriptions of mobile biological weapons factories on wheels and rails. Secretary of State Colin Powell later used this information in a U.N. presentation trying to garner support for the war, despite warnings from German intelligence that ""Curveball"" was fabricating claims. Since then, the CIA has admitted that the defector made up the story, and Powell said in 2011 the information should not have been used in his presentation. A later congressionally appointed investigation (Robb-Silberman) concluded that Curveball had"
"weapons laboratories. This intelligence, which is later discovered to have been fabricated, was used by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his 2003 speech to the UN Security Council to justify the invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Near the opening of the show, the cast explains to the audience that some of the characters are loosely based on actual figures, while others are composites of multiple figures. The story hews closely to historical accounts of the period, particularly Bob Drogin's book ""Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War"" (2007) and Frank Rich's book"
"Security Council, which contained a computer generated image of a ""mobile biological weapons laboratory"". However, this information was based on claims of Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed ""Curveball"", an Iraqi emigrant living in Germany who later admitted that his claims had been false. Powell also presented evidence alleging Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda. As a follow-up to Powell's presentation, the United States, United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, Australia, Denmark, Japan, and Spain proposed a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, but NATO members like Canada, France, and Germany, together with Russia, strongly urged continued diplomacy. Facing a losing vote"
"for the Iraq War. This section argues that the George W Bush administration falsely claimed there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in order to convince Americans that we needed to go to war in Iraq. ""Part 3: Informers"" deals with the administration’s trust in unreliable, self-serving sources for intelligence regarding Iraq’s military capabilities, including the fiction of WMDs. ""Part 4: Sixteen Words"" exposes George W. Bush’s fake claim that Iraq had taken delivery of weapons-grade yellow-cake uranium from Niger. The film goes on to discuss how diplomat Joseph C. Wilson leaked information that refuted this"
"leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, stating ""the detainee was not in a position to know if any training had taken place."" Despite this, Colin Powell cited al-Libi's claims in his speech to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003. (See above). The next day, President Bush gave a brief talk at the Roosevelt Room in the White House with Powell by his side and stated the following: ""One of the greatest dangers we face is that weapons of mass destruction might be passed to terrorists who would not hesitate to use those weapons. ... Iraq has bomb-making and document forgery"
"to provide copies of UN documents and reports on their findings to MI6. Former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter revealed in his book, ""Iraq Confidential"" (2005), the existence of an MI6-run psychological warfare effort, known as Operation Mass Appeal. According to Ritter: ""Mass Appeal served as a focal point for passing MI6 intelligence on Iraq to the media, both in the UK and around the world. The goal was to help shape public opinion about Iraq and the threat posed by WMD."" MI6 propaganda specialists claimed they could spread the misinformation through ""editors and writers who work with us from"
"resigned from his position at ONA because he feared the humanitarian consequences of invasion, such as Saddam Hussein using his weapons of mass destruction or assisting terrorists. Following his resignation he said: Iraq's ""weapons of mass destruction program is very disjointed and contained by the regime that's been in place since the last Gulf War. And there is no hard intelligence linking the Iraqi regime to al-Qaeda in any substantial or worrisome way."" He opposed Australia's contribution to the 2003 invasion of Iraq under the Howard government. Wilkie later argued the Iraq War was based on a ""lie"". Wilkie has"
"in 2002, Media Lens argued that it was fraudulent for the UK and US government to claim justification for a war on the basis that Iraq still possessed a credible Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threat and had an active WMD programme. Media Lens cited the work of former chief UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who had stated 4 years previously, after thorough investigation by UN inspectors, that Iraq had been found to have ""fundamentally disarmed"" with 90–95 percent of its WMD capability eliminated. The editors further cited Ritter's opinion that it would have been impossible for Iraq to rearm"
"Dossier""), which contained the claim that Iraq possessed the ability to launch WMD within 45 minutes, and instead laid the blame for the weaknesses in its evidence on the Joint Intelligence Committee. Whitehall had early sight of the report and sources say that some lessons are already being applied. More specifically, the report blamed Secret Intelligence Service (better known as MI6) head Sir Richard Dearlove who presented so-called ""hot"" intelligence about alleged weapons of mass destruction provided by an Iraqi with ""phenomenal access"" to high levels in the Iraqi government directly to Blair, without first confirming its accuracy. The investigators"
"Scott Ritter, a former UNSCOM weapons inspector heavily criticized the Bush administration and media outlets for using the testimony of alleged former Iraqi nuclear scientist Khidir Hamza, who defected from Iraq in 1994, as a rationale for invading Iraq: We seized the entire records of the Iraqi Nuclear program, especially the administrative records. We got a name of everybody, where they worked, what they did, and the top of the list, Saddam's ""Bombmaker"" [which was the title of Hamza's book, and earned the nickname afterwards] was a man named Jafar Dhia Jafar, not Khidir Hamza, and if you go down"
"officer working undercover as a diplomat, was approached by an Iraqi intelligence agent. April Fool then sold to the Iraqi false ""top secret"" invasion plans provided by Franks' team. This deception misled the Iraqi military into deploying major forces in northern and western Iraq in anticipation of attacks by way of Turkey or Jordan, which never took place. This greatly reduced the defensive capacity in the rest of Iraq and facilitated the actual attacks via Kuwait and the Persian Gulf in the southeast. The number of personnel in the Iraqi military before the war was uncertain, but it was believed"
"Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti Tahir Jalil Habbush al Takriti (; born 1950) is a former Iraqi intelligence official who served under the regime of Saddam Hussein; in 2001, he was Iraq's head of intelligence and as such, informed MI6 in January 2003 (shortly before the start of the Iraq War) that Iraq had no WMD. He was the Jack of Diamonds in the most-wanted Iraqi playing cards and is still a fugitive with up to $1 million reward for information leading to his capture. According to the London Sunday ""Telegraph"", Mohamed Atta is mentioned in a letter allegedly discovered in"
"by Blair, who assured readers Saddam Hussein had continued to produce WMD ""beyond doubt"". On November 4, 2007, ""60 Minutes"" revealed Curveball's real identity. Former CIA official Tyler Drumheller summed up Curveball as ""a guy trying to get his green card essentially, in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth."" He lives in Germany, where he has been granted asylum. In a February 2011 interview with the ""Guardian"" he ""admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war."" Rafid Ahmed Alwan studied chemical"
"Khidir Hamza Khidir Hamza () is an Iraqi atomic scientist who worked for Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme in the 1980s and early 1990s. Following the Gulf War, he left Iraq in 1994 and went into exile in the United States. He provided testimony to Western intelligence agencies suggesting that Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programmes were active and ongoing. However, since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, most, if not all of his information on the Nuclear Weapons program have been widely discredited, and former UNSCOM inspectors insist that he was never part of the Nuclear Program at all. Dr. Hamza"
"8, 2002, calling on Iraq to make ""an accurate full, final, and complete disclosure"" of its WMD programs, and threatening ""serious consequences"" if it did not comply. In the wake of resolution 1441, Iraq allowed UN weapons inspectors to return to the country. While the inspections were taking place, the U.S. continued to lobby the members of the UN Security Council to pass a resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force against Iraq. As part of that effort U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a presentation to the UN on February 5, 2003, in which he detailed false intelligence"