Terrorism Weekly: The Problems of Informers --- From Iraq to the London Bombing

Mohammed Junaid BabarTwo stories in the news week point to the importance of human sources in supplying intelligence but also the risks involved.

The first is the well-known story of “Curveball”, an Iraqi named Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi. Under the control of German intelligence, he supplied information about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs.His "information" was an important part of the American case for invading Iraq, used by George Bush in his 2003 State of the Union speech and by Secretary of State Colin Powell in a February 2003 speech to the United Nations’ Security Council. Although some already had questions about the reliability of the source, it was only after the WMDs didn’t turn up that the inaccuracy was confirmed.

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