# Curveball "Curveball" was the intelligence codename for Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi chemical engineer whose fabricated claims about mobile biological-weapons laboratories became a central pillar of the case for the [[Iraq War]]. He is the single clearest human source of the [[Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure]] — one man's invented story, laundered through two intelligence services into [[Colin Powell]]'s presentation to the world. ## The Fabrication Al-Janabi defected to Germany in 1999 and told German intelligence (the BND) that he had worked at a plant manufacturing mobile bioweapons labs disguised as ordinary trucks, hidden at sites across Iraq. The account was detailed, vivid, and entirely false. German intelligence never gave the [[CIA]] direct access to him and warned that he was unreliable — possibly an alcoholic and a fabricator. Those warnings were brushed aside as his story hardened into apparent fact. ## Into Powell's Speech Curveball's mobile-lab claim was the centerpiece of the [[Powell UN Presentation]] of February 5, 2003, complete with artists' renderings of the trucks. [[George Tenet]]'s CIA assured Powell and his staff there were multiple corroborating sources; there were not. In May 2004 the CIA formally concluded his information was fabricated. In a 2011 interview with The Guardian, al-Janabi admitted he had lied deliberately: "I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime." He said he had wanted to bring down [[Saddam Hussein]] and watched in shock as his lie was used to justify the war. ## RWKB Significance Curveball is a foundational case in the vault's study of [[Manufactured Consent]] and intelligence politicization: proof that a single uncorroborated, self-interested source could drive a superpower to war when the political appetite for that war already existed. The failure was not that one man lied — defectors lie — but that the system rewarded his lie and suppressed every warning against it. ## See Also - [[Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure]] - [[Powell UN Presentation]] - [[Colin Powell]] - [[Iraq War]] - [[Manufactured Consent]]