Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Defector tells how US officials 'sexed up' his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion

A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.

"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.

He tries to defend his actions: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression."

The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003.

But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true. When it is put to him "we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie", he simply replies: "Yes."

US officials "sexed up" Mr Janabi's drawings of mobile biological weapons labs to make them more presentable, admits Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Powell's former chief of staff. "I brought the White House team in to do the graphics," he says, adding how "intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy".

As for his former boss: "I don't see any way on this earth that Secretary Powell doesn't feel almost a rage about Curveball and the way he was used in regards to that intelligence."

Another revelation in the series is the real reason why the FBI swooped on Russian spy Anna Chapman in 2010. Top officials feared the glamorous Russian agent wanted to seduce one of US President Barack Obama's inner circle. Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI's head of counterintelligence, reveals how she got "closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership... she got close enough to disturb us".

The fear that Chapman would compromise a senior US official in a "honey trap" was a key reason for the arrest and deportation of the Russian spy ring of 10 people, of which she was a part, in 2010. "We were becoming very concerned," he says. "They were getting close enough to a sitting US cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue." Mr Figliuzzi refuses to name the individual who was being targeted.

Several British spies also feature in the programme, in the first time that serving intelligence officers have been interviewed on television. In contrast to the US intelligence figures, the British spies are cloaked in darkness, their voices dubbed by actors. BBC veteran reporter Peter Taylor, who worked for a year putting the documentary together, describes them as "ordinary people who are committed to what they do" and "a million miles" from the spies depicted in film. He adds: "What surprised me was the extent to which they work within a civil service bureaucracy. Everything has to be signed off... you've got to have authorisation signed in triplicate."

Would-be agents should abandon any Hollywood fantasies they may have, says Sonya Holt at the CIA recruitment centre. "They think it's more like the movies, that they are going to be jumping out of cars and that everyone carries a weapon... Yes we're collecting intelligence but we don't all drive fast cars. You're going to be writing reports; you're in meetings so it's not always that glamorous image of what you see in the movies."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/man-whose-wmd-lies-led-to-100000-deaths-confesses-all-7606236.html

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Top officials feared the glamorous Russian agent wanted to seduce one of US President Barack Obama's inner circle. Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI's head of counterintelligence, reveals how she got "closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership... she got close enough to disturb us".
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More humane approach would have been to let the guy in on the secret and let him take as much "honey" as offered and feed them back junk !!! That would have been approved wholeheartedly by most of male population in USA !!!

^^ Well... yeah.

Could you imagine if she was stationed in Italy.

Damn, she would have gotten into the Prime Minister's pants in 10 minutes...

Come to think of it, I think something like that would have happened in pretty much any non-Anglo country.

On another note, this particular Iraqi liar of course reminds me of the "Kuwati babies removed from incubators" story from '91. That perfect-English speaking, beautiful young woman, who was the Kuwati Ambassador's daughter and who eventually went on to work for Hill and Knowlton IIRC.

Eff, we're such suckers sometimes.

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His lie is not important. US gov's lies were the real reasons led to 100,000 deaths.

You said it Tim, from time to time we are such idiots, it is frightening

The WEST has blood on its hands and you are all a part of it....Hope you stupid brainwashed fools sleep well at night knowning hundreds of thousands of human beings lost their lives because you want to play GOD....

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The guy should be court martial and electrocuted like in the old times.
The old US president and the gy that went to he united nations should in prison as well.

several secret services did not found evidence previous to the war ... too bad the the checks and balances no longer work in the US. That fact removes credibility to other democratic nations all over the world.


With Iran ... not only their leaders pledge for a world without Israel but they have found evidence about research for developing triggers for nuclear weapons.

^^^LOL
Do you know what ironic means? Think back, have they even bothered showing you just one picture, anything that supports their CLAIMS about Iran, or is it just statements that they have made and you believed? Especially for nuclear trigger. You believed it, because you wanted to, exactly same as the case for Iraq, no?
The funniest part is that you said it in the thread about people being lied to and duped by accepting everything they were told.

The WEST has blood on its hands and you are all a part of it....Hope you stupid brainwashed fools sleep well at night knowning hundreds of thousands of human beings lost their lives because you want to play GOD....

Yeah, it should keep the killings internally like China and Soviet Union... oh wait.

Siege of Tobruk - One German POW said: "I cannot understand you Australians. In Poland, France, and Belgium, once the tanks got through the soldiers took it for granted that they were beaten. But you are like demons. The tanks break through and your infantry still keep fighting." Rommel wrote of seeing "a batch of some fifty or sixty Australian prisoners ... marched off close behind usimmensely big and powerful men, who without question represented an elite formation of the British Empire, a fact that was also evident in battle."


"As a Internet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

China and Russia are not killing anyone at the moment, which can't be said about the west, u idiot

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Few nations period have not blood on their hands. Careful however, when you label the west having blood on their hands pertaining to the Iraq war. SOME western countries abstained based on lack of evidence.