[NYTr] The Record on CURVEBALL

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

National Security Archive Update, November 5, 2007
http://www.nsarchive.org

THE RECORD ON CURVEBALL

Declassified Documents and Key Participants Show the Importance of
Phony Intelligence in the Origins of the Iraq War

For more information contact:

John Prados - 202/994-7000


Washington D.C., November 5, 2007 - CBS News' 60 Minutes exposure
last night of the Iraqi agent known as CURVEBALL has put a major
aspect of the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq back
under the spotlight.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan's charges that Iraq possessed stockpiles of
biological weapons and the mobile plants to produce them formed a
critical part of the U.S. justification for the invasion in Spring
2003. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's celebrated and globally
televised briefing to the United Nations Security Council on February
5, 2003, relied on CURVEBALL as the main source of intelligence on
the biological issue.

Today the National Security Archive posts the available public
record on CURVEBALL's information derived from declassified sources
and former officials' accounts.

While most of the documentary record on the issue remains classified,
the materials published today underscore the precarious nature of
the intelligence gathering and analytical process, and point to the
existence of doubts about CURVEBALL's authenticity before his charges
were featured in the Bush administration's public claims about Iraq.

Visit the Web site of the National Security Archive for more
information about today's posting.

http://www.nsarchive.org

________________________________________________________

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research institute and library located at The George Washington
University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes
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