Iraqi defector "Curve Ball" speaks out

Next Saturday will mark the eighth anniversary of America's invasion of Iraq. And after all this time, questions still remain as to why the United States launched the war in the first place. The Bush administration said it was because of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

But there were no such weapons.

So how did U.S. intelligence get it so wrong? Incredibly, it was all because of one man - an Iraqi defector codenamed "Curve Ball" - who spun a web of lies which convinced America's top spies. His allegations became the crown jewel of the case Colin Powell made to the United Nations before the war.

Three years ago we told you part of this story. But we were missing one crucial element: Curve Ball himself.

We couldn't find him. Finally, we did and now we're going to introduce you to the man and ask you to ponder how anyone could ever have believed one word he said.

60 Minutes: the great "walk-offs"
See famous interview subjects rip off their microphones and storm off the "60 Minutes" set.

Segment: "Curve Ball"
Extra: The argument for war
Extra: How Curve Ball created his story

"Do you think you helped get Saddam Hussein out of Iraq?" correspondent Bob Simon asked Rafid Alwan, a.k.a. Curve Ball.

"Yes. Exactly," the defector replied.

Alwan, a 44-year-old chemical engineer, says he had a mission.

"So you left Iraq with the idea of destroying Saddam Hussein?" Simon asked.

"Exactly," Alwan said.

We sat down with Alwan in Europe; we agreed not to reveal exactly where.

What made him decide to talk to us? We still don't know. But he was unapologetic, hard to pin down and really nervous, not sure how much he could reveal about how he fooled western intelligence services into believing that Iraq had a secret program to brew mobile biological weapons.

"I plan for this for long time," he told Simon.

He came up with the plan after he escaped from Iraq in the late 1990s. But curiously, instead of taking his story to a western embassy, which is what defectors usually do, he just drifted from one country to another.

He told Simon he went to Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Spain, Belgium, back to Morocco, and then to Germany.

"That's a lot of traveling," Simon remarked. "How did you get the money to do that traveling?"

"Some person in Belgium. He's my neighbor in Iraq and he give me also a lot of money," Alwan said.

"Wow, you've got some nice neighbors," Simon said.

Alwan actually wanted to go to England, where he says he hoped to lure the British into thinking Saddam had biological weapons. In November 1999, he took a train from Belgium to Germany, where he was to contact a man who would smuggle him into Britain. The meeting point: the grand cathedral in Cologne. He waited and waited, but the smuggler never showed.

"The police found you?" Simon asked.

"Yes. And I don't have passport, I don't have identity card, I don't have visa, must go to the police station," Alwan said.

Alwan was taken to a refugee center outside Nuremberg, where he was visited by the BND, the German intelligence service. At first Alwan told the truth to his interrogators.

"I say I am chemical engineer," Alwan remembered.

He then mixed a few facts with a heavy dose of fiction. He told German intelligence that in 1995 he had been made a director at a site outside Baghdad called Djerf al Nadaf.

The Iraqis said it was a seed purification plant. But Alwan told the Germans he was present when mobile biological weapons were being made there.

Alwan told the Germans that specially equipped trucks made their way to one end of a warehouse, entered doors there, hooked up to hoses and pumps and brewed biological agents. Smaller vehicles then took the finished product away, exiting hidden doors at the other end.

Produced by Draggan MihailovichThe Germans were so staggered by Alwan's story, they hid their prize source in a hotel in the town of Erlangen. He was given the code name Curve Ball, and was interrogated intensively for most of 2000.

The Germans told U.S. intelligence that Curve Ball didn't want to meet with Americans. So all Washington got were summaries of his debriefings. But the reports were quite enough to make American intelligence analysts stand up and take notice.

"When you look at the written reports, and there are about 100 of them, you get a sense of someone who is there, it's convincing," Charles Duelfer, who had been a leader of the U.N. inspections team during the 1990s, told Simon.

After the war began, the CIA sent Duelfer to Iraq to look for those weapons of mass destruction. Duelfer has read the Curve Ball reports.

"It would be difficult for someone to read those and stand up and say, 'None of this can possibly be true,'" Duelfer said.

"So in other words, not only German intelligence, but the CIA wasn't making the mistake at first to take this very seriously," Simon remarked.

"Well, the CIA would have been at fault to not take it very seriously," Duelfer said.

Saddam had produced biological weapons until he was caught by U.N. inspectors after the first Gulf War. Curve Ball's information became especially alluring because in December 1998, Saddam kicked out the U.N. weapons inspectors, leaving CIA inboxes empty.

"So when the UN inspectors left, they were left blind," Duelfer said. "Nothing there. And all of a sudden they've got to make assessments and predictions based on no information."

"And then along comes Curve Ball," Simon remarked.

"Along comes Curve Ball. And Curve Ball spun a tale and he was telling everyone exactly what they expected to hear," Duelfer said.

"So Curve Ball was sowing his seeds in a very fertile field," Simon said.

"Precisely," Duelfer replied.

The most alarming part of his story was something he said happened at Djerf al Nadaf in 1998: a biological accident that killed 12 technicians and turned their skin black.

"You did tell the Germans that there had been an accident...at Djerf al Nadaf?" Simon asked.

"I told that. I told that. I told you exactly. I told this story," Alwan acknowledged.

CIA analysts also found Curve Ball credible because he named names. He said that while he was working at Djerf al Nadaf, Dr. Basil al-Sa'ati, a noted Iraqi scientist, was the senior official in charge of the secret biological weapons program.

American intelligence agents found Dr. Basil outside of Iraq and confronted him about the biological program.

"They were asking me what was the program, and how far did, did we go," Dr. al-Sa'ati recalled.

"They told you they believed that you were in charge of the program?" Simon asked.

"That I was in charge. I should tell them what was the program. Which I said, there was nothing like such a program. I had the feeling that they thought I was lying. So to encourage me to tell the truth, is to give me some money," Dr. Basil said.

He told Simon he was offered $50,000 by the U.S. "It was to encourage me to say what they thought it was the truth," he said.

Dr. Basil wouldn't take the money.

In Germany, after months of interrogation, Curve Ball became less cooperative. He refused to talk to intelligence agents for nearly a year. He needed work and got a job in Erlangen at a Burger King.

The CIA didn't know about his new career, or much else about him.

"We didn't know any of that stuff, beginning with we had never met with him, and didn't even know his name or what he did," Tyler Drumheller, the CIA's European Division chief at the time, recalled.

Drumheller says when doubts were raised inside the agency over Curve Ball, the skeptics were shouted down. "There were meetings that were so angry and so violent. You know, people cursing at each other, and yelling, 'How dare you question us?'" he told Simon.

Curve Ball had already provided what the Bush administration needed to beat the war drums against Saddam Hussein.

"He offered the best rationale for the course of action that the White House elected to take. The fundamental argument on weapons of mass destruction did pivot on this guy, Curve Ball," Duelfer said.

To make that argument before the world, President Bush selected the most trusted man in his administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"Could Secretary Powell have given his speech to the United Nations that he did give if there hadn't been a Curve Ball?" Simon asked.

"I don't think so," Drumheller said. "There would have been nothing else to talk about, except things that had been talked about a million times before."

On Feb. 5, 2003, Powell stated with no qualifications that Saddam Hussein had mobile biological weapons. The only source for that? A man no American had ever questioned, Curve Ball.

"The source was an eyewitness, an Iraqi chemical engineer, who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents," Powell said at the U.N.

Prominently displayed were models of the mobile trucks Curve Ball had sketched to the Germans. Curve Ball now admits it was just that; a sketch, a product of his fertile imagination.

"Did you see trucks carrying biological weapons...going inside and outside of Djerf al Nadaf...after 1995?" Simon asked.

"No, told you no," Alwan said. "I told you exactly, no."

And that biological accident at Djerf al Nadaf Curve Ball said he witnessed, the accident which killed 12 people and blackened their skin?

It never happened. And it turns out Djerf al Nadaf really was a seed purification plant.

Curve Ball, who worked there procuring parts, wasn't even at the plant when he said the accident happened in 1998.

When Simon asked Alwan how long he worked at Djerf al Nadaf, Alwan said "four months."

He told Simon he left the plant in 1994.

His tale, which helped launch the war, he now acknowledges was one big lie.

"The story that you said helped remove Saddam Hussein wasn't true, was it?" Simon asked.

"No, not true," Alwan admitted.

But there's still one maddening mystery: how did this low-level chemical engineer come up with such a detailed story? Did someone put him up to it?

"Did you make it up yourself?" Simon asked.

"Yes," Alwan said.

Curve Ball then hinted that someone may have helped him, but exactly who? He just wouldn't give us a straight answer. But he did tell us he considers himself a hero for the important role he played in ousting Saddam. He even ran for a seat in the Iraqi parliament last March. He got creamed. Perhaps the voters didn't see him as the hero he claimed to be.

We showed excerpts of our interview to former CIA senior official Tyler Drumheller, now a consultant for "60 Minutes."

"Curve Ball insists he did all this to get Saddam out of Iraq. You believe him?" Simon asked.

"No, I think he probably believes that himself now. I strongly feel that he did it at the time to be able to stay in Germany," Drumheller said.

If that's the case, he succeeded. Today, Curve Ball and his family have German passports and live in the southern part of the country. So now he apparently feels safe enough to tell his story. At least part of it. As our interview entered its second hour, we pressed him for the whole story, the full truth.

"Tell the truth is not for me," Alwan said.

"Telling the truth is not for you?" Simon asked.

"You can't ask me tell the truth," Alwan said.

"I cannot ask you to tell the truth?" Simon asked.

At this point, Alwan stood up, offered Simon a handshake, and said, "Until next time."

And with that Rafid Alwan, the man who pulled off one of the deadliest con jobs in history, disappeared back into the shadows.