BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- His phone number was published in a German phone directory -- Rafid Alwan, whose claims that Saddam Hussein was producing biological agents helped launch the Iraq war.
He was reluctant to speak on the record, initially denying he was Iraqi or that he was the defector dubbed "Curveball" by the CIA. But eight months after we first contacted him, Alwan agreed to an interview, and we met in an anonymous hotel room in a southern German town.
Trying to get details from him was difficult -- he spoke at length, often launching into a flowery history of Iraq or a description of Hussein's crimes, and in Arabic, which meant we had to wait after each answer for a translation.
We spoke for more than three hours, Alwan sitting across the room from me, wearing a stylish black suit. But in the end, he hadn't said very much at all.
In the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered a dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council. The United States had first-hand accounts, he said, detailing how Hussein was secretly creating biological agents using mobile laboratories in "road-trailer units and rail cars."
Source of Iraq WMD intelligence tells his story - CNN.com
He was reluctant to speak on the record, initially denying he was Iraqi or that he was the defector dubbed "Curveball" by the CIA. But eight months after we first contacted him, Alwan agreed to an interview, and we met in an anonymous hotel room in a southern German town.
Trying to get details from him was difficult -- he spoke at length, often launching into a flowery history of Iraq or a description of Hussein's crimes, and in Arabic, which meant we had to wait after each answer for a translation.
We spoke for more than three hours, Alwan sitting across the room from me, wearing a stylish black suit. But in the end, he hadn't said very much at all.
In the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered a dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council. The United States had first-hand accounts, he said, detailing how Hussein was secretly creating biological agents using mobile laboratories in "road-trailer units and rail cars."
Source of Iraq WMD intelligence tells his story - CNN.com
