Report: Defector Admits WMD Lies Initiated Iraq war

JT Staff

Informant holds little regrets on stories fabricated, used by German intelligence to concoct war that brought down Saddam Hussein.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, the defector who had convinced the George W. Bush administration that Iraq had a secret biological weapons program, admitted to British news daily the Guardian that he fabricated his tales.

Janabi, codenamed Curveball by American intelligence officials working with him, concoted details about mobile bioweapons trucks and secret factories in order to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime from which he fled in 1995.

 Those claims were then used by former US secretary of state Colin Powell on Feb 5 2003, in a speech to the United Nation, to describe the real threat coming out of Baghdad.

Janabi explained that the BND, the German secret service, approached him March, 2000, after learning that he was a Baghdad-trained chemical engineer. According to Janabi, the BND was eager to extract information from him, providing him with a Perry's Chemical Engineering Handbook in order to aid his communication.

"Any engineers who studied in this field can explain or answer any questions they asked," he said, describing the BND as gullible.

"I had a problem with the Saddam regime. I wanted to get rid of him, and now I got the chance," Janabi related. 


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